And relationship to the issues we've been discussing, there is one issue that has come up over and over again, and that is the separation of religious knowledge or knowledge of God from every other aspect of human thought. That issue, that fundamental issue is behind many of the things we've talked about, as we've spoken about the ways in which the Evangelical Church has been tempted to accommodate its understanding of Scripture to the culture. Now in order to see the issue that's underlying this, I want us to go back and begin to look at some of the major philosophers who have been very influential on the development of West and thought. And we could say, who shape a seize as helping to create the modern world with its problems, the modern world not only here in the West, but everywhere in the world. Because these ideas have become increasingly influential everywhere as Western culture has gone around the world and the Western educational system. Now the fundamental issue we're going to try to think about, and this is a difficult subject, so we'll have to try to think very carefully, and I'll try to explain it simply for myself and for you. But the fundamental issue is this, how do we know anything? Because our knowledge comes from a knowledge of nature, our knowledge of ourselves, our knowledge of morality, our knowledge of God, where does our knowledge come from? And what I want to do is look at the way four different thinkers answered parts of this problem as each of them was very influential in their own time and has been the very influential ever since. The first is the English philosopher Locke and his dates are 1632 to 1704. We could choose many other thinkers, but the four I've chosen I think are very fundamental to any kind of understanding.
Now Locke answering this question, how do we know things? How do we get knowledge? Answered like this, he said that the mind of a child is like a blank piece of white paper. The mind of a child is like a blank piece of white paper.
And that onto that piece of blank white paper come impressions from the world around. You could call these impressions ideas. Another way of saying what his viewers is to say that he said that all knowledge is discovered by experience.
A second image he used along with the image of the white paper is this one which perhaps helps us to understand. He used the image of a photographic box from which is completely dark inside. And this box has a tiny aperture, a tiny opening through which the light is coming. And again, this is his image of the human mind. And the light coming in is the light of experience, the light of impressions. That's how we get our knowledge. What he was saying is that there are no innate ideas in the human mind. That people are not born with ideas about reality, about nature around us or anything like that. They are born blank, in a sense blank, with that dark box. What's important to notice too though is that without saying so, he's still assumed that this mind in here, in this dark box, has innate faculties, is born with faculties which enable it to process the impressions that come in, which enable it to order the experience which comes into the mind. Now, Locksview is described as empiricism that all knowledge is based on experience, our experience of reality. Now, the second thinker I want to look at, just very briefly now, is Hume. David Hume, a Scottish philosopher who lived from 1711 to 1776. Now, what is one of Hume's major contributions? Hume, in reflecting on our understanding, I'll read a passage here, Hume, in reflecting on our understanding of what's going on around us, had this to say about causality. That is, what is the relationship between events that take place in the world? Basically, what he said was this, that causality cannot be demonstrated by reason. Let me read him because it'll help you to understand. When I see a billiard ball moving towards another, my mind is immediately carried by habit to the usual effect and anticipates my sight by conceiving the second ball in motion. So, he sees one billiard ball moving towards another, he knows that when it hits that billiard ball, the other one is going to move. There is nothing in these objects abstractly considered and independent of experience which leads me to form any such conclusion. And even after I have had experience of many repeated effects of this kind, there is no argument which determines me to suppose that the effect will continue to be conformable to past experience. The powers by which things around us operate are entirely unknown. What reason have we to think that the same powers will always be there? It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom that alone determines the mind in all instances to suppose the future conformable to the past. However easy this stat may seem, reason would never to all eternity be able to make it. This is a very curious discovery. That's what he writes himself. Now, try and understand what he's saying. This thing about billiard ball going across the table, hitting another one. We just take it for granted, if one billiard ball hits another, the other will move because it's been hit by the other. He's saying you can't demonstrate that or you have his custom habit. His point is simply this that causality exists in the human mind. It doesn't exist in objects. Now, just imagine our camera again, our photographic box, we use locks image because this isn't heum's image but it's locks image. Lock had said these events are taking place out here. His one billiard ball hitting another one and so the other one moves off depending on what angle it's hit at and how hard it's hit. So this is taking place outside of the mind. It's taking place in the external world. And the mind sees it through its little opening, through the eyes. And understands what is happening. Experience, the experience of this event there and lock assumes this is existing in the external world and the causalities in the external world. Humans saying something quite different that causality is only inside the mind and there is simply custom or habit which interprets it as taking place outside in the external world. We just observe that one ball hits another and it moves off. It's only our mind which makes the connection and suggests that one is the cause of the other. Heum recognized, they say why is this important? Heum recognized that this leads to a profound skepticism about all knowledge. You can't really know anything for certain. You can't really know about what is happening in the external world. You can't even prove that it exists. Perhaps the billiard balls are only in the mind if you like and I'll draw them here for you. Going off like this. Perhaps the billiard balls are really only in the mind. There is no external world at all. Does it really exist? As he applied his reason as well, he had to say perhaps I don't exist either. He couldn't by reason demonstrate his own existence. He couldn't demonstrate the existence of the world outside him or of himself. So he had to put a big question mark. Not only about the billiard balls out here. We'll have them going off like this. He put a big question mark. Do they exist? He had to put a big question mark by his own existence. Do I exist? He even had to put a question mark by reason itself. I can't even demonstrate reason, though that was his only source of knowledge. That's our second thinker. Most people in Hume's day didn't take that skepticism really seriously. It remained till the 20th century to take Hume really seriously in the sense of saying yes, he was right. Can we know anything at all with any kind of certainty? We can in a way put Hume in a kind of bracket, if you like, and even he himself didn't take it seriously. There's that famous quotation I think I've mentioned it to you before where he says, when I go back from my study to sit down with my friends and to talk with them or to play a game with them, these appear such absurd, such cold speculations. I think, well, do they have any importance? And that's how everybody else seemed to think about them as well. That this is an interesting thought, but you see, you have to understand that he's living at a time when a Christian view of reality still dominates the whole culture. Yes, there is an external world there. We do have real knowledge. Reason is an important faculty which has been given to us by God. And of course, Locke was operating from that. That it's God who has made us this way. So with the certainty that real knowledge can be found. But let's move on to our next thinker. I'm not doing any of these men justice at all, but I'm just trying to give you some idea of some of the basic elements of their thinking. So we can understand where we are today. And why Schaeffer keeps referring to Kant and Hagel in particular who will come to now. Our third one is Emmanuel Kant, Emmanuel Kant, the German philosopher, 1724 to 1804, Emmanuel Kant. Now, he was intrigued by Hume's problem. How do you demonstrate causality? And this is how he answered it. He said this. We can only understand nature. If we see that behind our experience of events lies a framework in our minds of knowledge that is already there of our priori knowledge. Let's use our little box again. And we've got nature out here, our billiard balls and everything else. They're not supposed to be atoms. They are supposed to be billiard balls. So we've got the human mind here and outside of it nature. He says, we must see that behind our experience, what's coming in here, there lies within the mind. And innate, that is an inborn, it's already there when we're born, an innate framework of knowledge. But knowledge is already there, a knowledge which understands nature. Another way he put it was to say that man and nature are in profound accord. Man and nature are in profound accord. Man and nature no longer separate. You see in Hume's understanding, man and nature become pulled completely apart so I can't even know whether anything is really out there. Now Kant says man and nature are profoundly in accord. We might sort of embrace them like this if you like. Man and nature in accord, so much in accord that man is already born with a knowledge of, he has ideas, innate ideas, innate knowledge about nature within himself. So every child is born into the world already with a knowledge of nature, of causality, et cetera. But he went further than this to say that also in the human person when they're born is the knowledge of morality. So there's a knowledge of both nature and morality in the human person already that the expression you may have heard if you've read any philosophy at all is that there are imperatives, imperatives, things that we must do and that we must not do within the human mind at birth. That is who we are as human. There are these imperatives inside the person. Now you might say well from a Christian perspective that's fine isn't that what we believe that that's how God has created people with the law written on the heart. It's not what Kant was saying. What he's doing, he's saying yes there is this profound accord between man and nature, that's one thing. Secondly he's saying that there is a new status and you dignity given to the human person. God is not needed for any of this knowledge either knowledge of nature or knowledge of morality. God isn't needed at all. We don't need God, we don't need the Bible. God's revelation to either understand the world around us or to understand morality because we have that dignity within us simply in ourselves. He put it this way. Because moral man's reason and moral nature need no guide by their own dignity. That's a very modern standing statement because that's where culture is today. Man's reason and moral nature need no guide by their own dignity. Now again you must understand that when Kant wrote this and it began to be very influential on his contemporaries and the people immediately following it didn't bear the kind of fruit that we see immediately in our culture today. Because when he made these statements there was still a consensus in the society about the nature of the universe and about what is morally right and wrong and that consensus was shaped by a biblical Christian understanding. Both of the nature and order of the world around us it's a created universe with a real structure which can be discovered, relationships between events etc. And that there is an objective morality given by God because God exists and stands behind that. So these statements are made within the context of a Christian consensus. Now that makes all the difference because even though you may say yes man's reason and moral nature need no guide but their own dignity. In the 18th century to say that doesn't necessarily dramatically alter anyone's life because they're still living within a culture which is assuming that what Scripture says is true across all of life. Whether it's moral issues or the nature of the universe or who we are as human persons. When you make this statement in the 20th century where our culture is far more consistent to it and the consensus has begun to disappear. When you get a consistency to this what you understand is that what this leads to is that if you like knowledge becomes personal. Knowledge becomes personal but if you say there is no guide but man's reason and man's moral nature that is sufficient for him his own dignity. What you're saying is that the individual knows the individual can choose whoever they are but when you no longer have a moral consensus what you have is moral relativism. That's what you have because you've said that these things are innate in the individual. Let's move on to our next thinker. Our next thinker is Hegel and Hegel's dates or I've got them somewhere. He died in 1831 I think something like that so something like 1770 something I think 1770 odd to 1831 I forgot to write it down. Yes. Hegel then asks the question what is the accord, what is the agreement, what is the unity between the mind of man and nature, between the mind of man and the external world. Because Kant says there is a unity we put them together here of man and nature. So Hegel's asking the question what is it, what is it that binds these two together, the human person and nature, the human person and the external world. He says there must be, he assumes there must be a unity between the knower and what is known. Of course actually everybody assumes that as soon as you get in your car and drive down the road you assume that there is a unity between the knower and the known. Otherwise you couldn't drive anywhere if you didn't assume that there was a unity but he's asking the question what is that unity between the knower and the known. And this is where Hegel is so interesting and where he made his profound contribution. He said this unity is a unity of opposites, a unity of opposites. What did he mean? Let's say the man seeking to know and I'm talking about man as a human person here and I don't mean a male man in that sense as a human person. Man, a man seeking to know is his thesis. So here's this individual looking out to the world around. That's the thesis over against this person seeking to know is nature which is his antithesis. So his thesis, the knower, the person seeking to know the antithesis which is nature. Why an antithesis? Because nature is impersonal. Man is a personal knower or when seeking knowledge. Nature is impersonal. So there is man, the thesis, nature, the antithesis. The impersonal world resists the knower. The person wanting to know has to work hard to understand nature. Between the two, you might say that the nature is moving away from man resisting. So that's why there is this conflict as you seek to understand. Knowledge is a struggle. Between these two, there is this conflict and that conflict is resolved only by a synthesis which fuses the two and which generates knowledge. So eventually out of the conflict comes the third step of his dialectic which is the synthesis. And that synthesis is knowledge, human knowledge. That is how knowledge is generated. These opposites are united in each step of human progress. Each step of knowledge which is a fusion of these two opposites becomes a new thesis which has over it against, against it again its antithesis. There is a new struggle for knowledge and a new synthesis is discovered. That is his understanding of how knowledge advances. He uses a very famous image of the bud and the blossom. Let me see if I can find it and read it to you. See, what he is saying is that life is not simply a matter of being. It is a matter of becoming. Life is a process. From that today we even get the idea of process theology, of God in the process of becoming. But for Hegel, life is a process not of being. It is not static. It is a process of becoming. That is how life progresses. There is this constant conflict and resolution. Read what he says. The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through. We might say that the bud is refuted by the blossom. In the same way when the fruit comes the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant's existence. Existence for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. These stages are not merely differentiated. They supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. And then he goes on to say however, the ceaseless activity of that own inherent nature makes them at the same time moments of an organic unity where they do not merely contradict one another but where one is necessary as the other. And this equal necessity of all moments constitutes in the outset life the life of the whole. You might put it, he uses image there. He's saying the bud, the blossom, the fruit which are all necessary steps in the bud and the blossom and necessary steps in the realization of the fruit. In one sense you can say they contradict each other. They are radically different from one another. And each one as it comes means the extinction of the other. Each one gives a way in turn to the other. But all are necessary to bring about the final end.
Now he applied this to history and to the evolution of life and to just any kind of advance. And he saw all progress whether in human history or in the history of nature as a succession of revolutionary steps. Now let's think about that for a moment. What he has suggested is that everything is true at different stages. So what is true for me at one moment in my life will be contradicted at a later point. And that in turn will be contradicted. It means that truth is entirely relative to where you are. Again this leads to relativism of a different kind because instead of speaking about opposites and contradictions or apparent contradictions find their unity. So the fact that people disagree or that one moment of history seems to be a revolution compared with what went before does not mean that you therefore say what went before was wrong or invalid or anything like that. It was true in its own moment of time. What you believe today is true for you where you are. You will be somewhere else in 10 years time and then that will be true for you then. I hope you understand the importance of this because truth is something which is always being discovered. It's always in the process but it's never final. There is always more truth ahead. You never can fully arrive. So it does two things at the same time. And the one hand it says that things that seem different that seem opposite can be equally true or equally valid. So it establishes relativism in that way. But at the same time it says that any knowledge we have is incomplete because there is still more to find it is just a process of becoming. You can see what a radical difference this is made in philosophy departments if you study philosophy at almost any university today. Philosophy is not seen as a discipline which finds out what is true. But as simply a road which you're traveling and it's the process which is important not the end which you arrive at. You may not arrive anywhere. You probably won't because while on the one hand it seems to give tremendous importance to everything to where I am right now. Now this is the truth now. So it supports that kind of emphasis on the individual and the truth that the individual knows for themselves. It puts every man if you like in possession of the truth for himself or herself. At the same time it encourages a radical skepticism in another kind of way because what I've discovered won't remain true for long. It will be supplied by something else. Now as we think about this all of this how you know anything can't was leaving knowledge of God entirely outside of all this knowledge of God religion comes in a different way religion comes in a different kind of way altogether. Now where is this led us to today? Why are these thinkers so important? I've suggested some points as we look at our culture in general in terms of the kind of relativism truth being found in the individual which we have come to in our culture which arises both from Kant's and from Hegel's understanding. And then skepticism about knowledge at all going back to him but for the church what is the influence of all this or why is this important? Let's think about the effect of what Kant says on the sciences. Basically he is saying that all the sciences are sources of knowledge which are totally autonomous from God are completely independent from biblical revelation. You don't need the Bible, you don't need the word of God to understand the sciences, the physical sciences. Now as the 19th century progressed and we come into the 20th century when we talk about sciences we're speaking not only of the physical sciences physics and chemistry and biology and zoology and so on. We are also talking about the social sciences or the human sciences, psychology, sociology, anthropology because in our world man is seen as part of nature. Even in Kant's day man was so seen as separate in a sense from nature because he was still operating from within a consensus which so man is having a unique dignity within nature but that's no longer true. The sciences now see a human person as a part of nature just as much as a rat is part of nature or a tree is part of nature. So whether we're looking at the individual person in psychology or whether we're looking at groups of people in sociology or whether we're looking at whole cultures in anthropology man is simply an object to be studied like any other object. It's that of course which existentialism reacts against because it washes to hold on to the unique dignity of the human person. But notice if you include psychology sociology and anthropology in the sciences these now are all subjects which operate entirely independent of any knowledge from the Bible. This is the important point here. They are completely autonomous from Scripture. Our knowledge of the human person, our knowledge of human morality and Kant would have said that our knowledge of morality is not dependent on God. It is not dependent on revelation. That's why these men like Kant are so important because basically just vast areas of our life of the life of the modern world pursue their existence and pursue their knowledge without any regard whatsoever for what God's word for what the Bible has to say. So over here you've got the Bible which is giving religious knowledge and over here we have man and nature man with his own dignity and his accord with nature gaining knowledge about himself, about human society, about human culture and the two are in completely separate categories. Now you understand why Jack Rogers for example who I don't know if he still does but talked for many years at full of seminary accuses Schaeffer of wanting everybody to become precantian. That's an accusation he makes against Schaeffer. That's a very profound accusation. That's quite true. Schaeffer was wanting us to become precantian in that sense because what Schaeffer was saying is we must have a unity of knowledge. Knowledge is one, all truth is God's truth. Every discipline, every science whether the physical sciences or the human sciences, the social sciences must be subjected to Scripture. Because truth is one and God's word is true but Jack Rogers says we cannot any longer hide ourselves from the fact that these two areas of knowledge are now totally separate religious truth over here and the knowledge of the sciences over there. They are autonomous from each other. See he is an evangelical who is saying this and we cannot understand the evangelical church today unless we realize that we are living in a moment where the church is largely shaped by this split of knowledge. You have those who acknowledge it openly, in England there's a famous book written by an evangelical Malcolm Gives called Christianity and Psychology, the view both ways. You see what he's done? Over here we have Christianity, over here we have Psychology and we have the view both ways. He even says at one point in his book that when I am working as a psychologist, if somebody comes to see me and asks what is the meaning of life and says I need to know God, when I am wearing my hat as a psychologist, I will not tell them about Christianity because I have to deal with their question in psychological terms. Within the bands of Psychology, outside of my office on another occasion, I would answer the question differently. You see what he's saying? He makes it very, very clear what he's saying or another would be the MacKies book Christianity in a mechanistic universe. Again you see here you've got even in the title of the book again you have the two set apart Christianity and the acknowledgement we live in a mechanistic universe. Now I would say the Christian can never say we live in a mechanistic universe because we live in a universe which is orderly yes because God has created it and God upholds it but this is a created universe, it's in a universe into which God acts all the time. Not just occasionally when like throwing a spear into it and the sort of daistic understanding when some miracle happens but God is acting into this universe all the time, this universe is upheld by the power of God. But here what you've got basically is an enormous split between your two halves of reality. And that's why Don MacKie really hated what Schaeffer used to do. He rejected it out of hand with what Schaeffer would do in the book of Genesis or his appeal to Romans 1 and say we can show as we look at the human person that human beings are unique. We think that human beings are in fact made in the image of God as we study people and we see that people love and that they are moral and that they are creative, that they are significant, that they're not machines. We can demonstrate that Christianity actually fits that it makes sense of the real world. And what MacKie says no no there is nothing about man which can be used in any apologetic argument. You can never bring the two together, this is an absolute gap. And so why criticize Schaeffer was so strongly was because Schaeffer tried to say what we understand in the physical universe truly whether it's about nature or about man will lead us to Christianity just as Christianity interprets truly and faithfully the world that is actually there which shines discovers. Schaeffer was saying there must be a unity of truth that Christianity is not operating in a separate universe but there is only one universe the universe that God has made. Now we'll take this up again on Friday and I want you to be thinking about this to try to think of examples yourself. Not only in those who deny inerrancy and this is why it is very important for some people to deny inerrancy because by denying inerrancy you can then say well the Bible is true in all that it affirms and it only affirms things in the religious area. It doesn't make statements of affirmation about truth in the areas which the sciences touch psychology sociology anthropology whatever else. But I want you to think of examples not only of people who deny inerrancy in order to uphold this division but also of people who uphold inerrancy and yet still live by this division. And that's what we'll move to on Friday.