I’ll restate the key unanswered point:

“You claim that science can provide us with truth. Science itself doesn’t even claim that. It merely provides theories with evidence – and all scientific advancement is built upon disproving previously held theories. Because it is constantly changing and refining, scientists don’t claim to provide TRUTH, they claim to provide a hypothesis the current evidence supports. They fully expect that someone else will come along one day and either completely disprove it or show where it was wrong.

The nature of Truth is that it is unchanging. Your Scientific truth changes all the time. They can’t possibly be the same, yet the philosophy behind “all truth is God’s truth” claims they are. You are redefining truth to continue with your false teaching.”

There is no room for sitting on that fence.

Thanks for the response. This was an interesting exercise.

You and I both agree that all truth is God’s truth. You just don’t think we can know much truth outside of Scripture. I think you’re far too cynical about what we can understand outside of Scripture and not realistic about what we can understand in Scripture.

Thanks for your comments. I’ve been way too busy lately which is why I’m just now responding.

I have done several classes on Psychology. I understand that there is much more subjectivity in these sciences than the uninitiated suspect. All this proves is that Modernism is in error, but that’s ok because I already knew that.

So I guess the conclusion is that you believe I’m teaching “heresy” and I believe your epistemology is mistaken. Pure Fideism is superstition and I believe superstition is driven by fear.

I appreciate the counter point and trust that iron has been sharpened.

Grace to you.

I wont go back over it all again, I’ll just summarize.

I think you attempted to discredit Brandenburg’s epistemology by finding a major flaw. From what I can tell, that flaw is “he doesnt realize that all truth is God’s truth”. I feel that sufficient has been posted for a believer to recognise that the philosophy behind that statement is ungodly and decieving.

Ironically, this is the flawed lynchpin of your own epistemology. While in the end we agreed that reason has some use, that is a far cry from proving the “All Truth” philosphy you espouse.

You claim that science can provide us with truth. Science itself doesn’t even claim that. It merely provides theories with evidence – and all scientific advancement is built upon disproving previously held theories. Because it is constantly changing and refining, scientists don’t claim to provide TRUTH, they claim to provide a hypothesis the current evidence supports. They fully expect that someone else will come along one day and either completely disprove it or show where it was wrong.

The nature of Truth is that it is unchanging. Your Scientific truth changes all the time. They can’t possibly be the same, yet the philosophy behind “all truth is God’s truth” claims they are. You are redefining truth to continue with your false teaching. God will hold you accountable for this. God warned Christians against you in the book of Colossians: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”

You seem like a nice guy Jason. You seem sincere in your faith. But what you are teaching here is heresy, and it harms the brethren. Don’t let Satan have the advantage over you through pride of intellect. God doesn’t care about how in you were with the current trend of thinking in your day. He never commanded you to integrate his truth with other stuff you derived from the reasoning of the wise of this world.

I agree with the importance of critical thinking.

I did a few psych subjects. The first thing the lecturer told me was that psychology has absolutely no idea where the mind is located in the body, and anyone who says he knows is lying. Psychology still debates nature vs nurture.

Psychology is heavily influenced by which particular big name you follow. Freud was once in – his theories are now widely regarded as discredited. For a while Jung was king, now he is mud. You can split professors up by which guy they follow – and the difference is like the diff between a Reformed Theologian and a Mormon. Their particular approach gives them massively differing takes on the same evidence. Hence the constant shifting in psychological dogmas.

You see this stuff in churches now. Is the “Truth” that Jung got from his spirit guide Philemon (The 4 personality types) God’s Truth? Christians everywhere love that stuff. Modern psychology almost completely rejected his thinking a long time ago – but all the books have been written! A Spirit-Controlled Temperment from LaHaye. Florence Litteur has Personality Plus. Use the Myers Briggs test to discover your spiritual giftings!

So tell me, what is God’s truth that we have from Psychology? Is it the most current accepted psychological science?: it has rejected Jungian psychology. If all Truth is God’s truth, and you can get that delivered fresh from the latest in psychological science, then these guys have been importing falsehood into the church (I’m guessing all falsehood is Satan’s falsehood now?) and calling it truth.

How do you know you aren’t doing this? Certain sciences (and of these psychology is king) change very rapidly from year to year. How can you tell whether you are bringing in Satan’s lies or God’s Truth?

I still think you’re struggling with a false notion of science and scientists. Perhaps your uni has an option for you do a few electives in psychology so you can see this stuff first hand? Even better – 10 minutes on wikipedia researching the founding names in psychology will show you what it really is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung#Relationship_with_Freud.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud

I’ll drop you an email, but I think the bottom line is this:

The integrationist approach you are teaching here is heresy and ultimately will weaken the brethren. Satan has used your mind to gain an advantage over you, and then is using it to harm others. The Apostle Paul specifically warned Christians against you when he wrote: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” I think you are resisting the Holy Spirit of Truth so you can continue to walk and teach in your own Wisdom.

Thanks for your response.

I do think your comment clears up a lot of the areas of difficulty between us.

1) The sciences.

“I just assign them a low level of credibility.”

Sure. I can understand this sentiment. I think I would prefer to say that I approach them with a higher level of caution, but the point remains.

I’m probably not quite as skeptical as you, but I do agree that critical thinking is crucial at every level. This includes when the Word is being preached. That’s part of why the InFocus purpose statement says we want to help “develop a generation of readers, thinkers, and theologians.”

I find it interesting (though not surprising) that you specifically single out history, psychology, and lower textual criticism as more suspect than other sciences. Granted, some of these do tend to be more speculative than others.

Still, taking Psychology for example, you would think that even unsaved people who studied man in-depth would emerge with some very helpful insights, especially inasmuch as man’s mind and body are closely connected in many ways (eg. the mind functions in the context of tissue and cells). I would think these intricacies would be cause for caution both in our acceptance and in our condemnation of such a science.

2) Lower textual criticism.

I agree that these matters are extremely complex. In fact, I suspect that those who hold most adamantly to either position tend to know the least about the issue. Still, there is much readily accessible material published from both sides and it’s not difficult to get a fairly good idea of the issues merely by reading that.

That said, I’ve invested a significant portion of my life in understanding the issue and always try to approach it as carefully and critically as possible.

Your speculation made me laugh though it wasn’t too far off! =P I am actually doing postgraduate study in accounting right now, though I do have a degree in theology. Most pastors in Australia would have an idea of where I stand on this particular issue. Unfortunately, I find discussing the issue tends to create more heat than light, and that does the cause of Christ no service, so I try to handle it carefully.

Drop me an email at jason @ givemetruth . net if you want to give me your email.

3) Creation science.

I agree that the science community is a closed community which tends to ostracise those who don’t conform. I’m often frustrated by the completely unfounded claims of evolutionary science. I think that particular field is a great example of the lengths rebellious men will go to in order to protect the presupposition that there is no God.

But even there, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (no pun intended!) to see that evolution is at times downright unreasonable.

4)Conclusion.

I think we both agree with Francis Schaeffer that autonomous reason is futile. While I think there are some significant differences in our thinking, particularly in matters of nuance and degree, I do think we both recognise at least the basic legitimacy of reason and the inherent dangers it presents for fallen man.

I’ll look forward to hearing from you if you’re interested in going on by email.

Grace to you.

I think we are getting somewhere. I forced myself to think about the whole thing over the weekend rather than replying, and I’ve found it very helpful. I reviewed what I’ve written, and I don’t think I like my tone, so I will endeavour to change it.

I’ve had a good think about what I mean when I say reason isn’t a good provider of truth. I think it applies to what we are talking about.

I don’t think I’m totally against reason as in “trust nothing your brain tells you!” For example, I do trust my reason to make a simple step like “it is raining, you are getting wet, go inside”. Short steps like that are okay.

I think what I actually mean is that I do not trust the largescale organized systems of reasoning we call the sciences that much. That doesn’t mean I’m skeptical of everything they produce, I just assign them a low level of credibility.

Whenever we interact with the sciences, particularly in the way that popular science is conveyed to people, you need to have a certain level of trust to accept their conclusions. The common man has this in spades – he believes that just about everything science tells him must be true. He believes the biologist talking millions of years because he sees him as part of the same system that gave him TV and medical advances. He assigns him the same level of credibility, even though it is grossly unjustified. The man who builds the bridge and the X-ray machine I give a lot more credibility because his science has a very solid feedback mechanism if it’s flawed – the bridge falls down and the X-ray picture doesn’t develop. The other sciences have a remarkable ability to build castles in the air – giant systems of logic with A built on B built on C based upon the perceived credibility of particular authors who arrive at utterly wrong conclusions based off the wrong presuppositions. Thousands of incredibly smart men and women all checking each others work and all digging themselves further into error because of it. To these I give very little credibility.

MTC, Psychology and History falls squarely into the latter category. When you then add in that the unsaved are of their father the Devil who has a distinct interest in influencing men’s minds in areas pertaining to Scripture, Church history and human behaviour, then your approach to these issues is extreme scepticism. When you discover that not only their presuppositions but also their conclusions are at odds with Scripture, then they are entirely rejected. What bothers me is that I think your claim of “all truth is God’s truth” actually translates to “I trust and assign credibility to these guys and thus I accept what they are saying as truth”. In order to engage with what they do and what they discuss, you of necessity have to trust them. You can’t verify everything Metzger claims with authority. You don’t check his every reference – you just have to trust him. This trust can be based on “he is respected in his field, therefore he can’t be telling porkies because all the other smart guys in this field think he’s wonderful”, but we both know of entire fields that you find the more respected the man the more deceived and in error he is. Biology and Charles Darwin, Psychology and Freud or the entire field of Gender Studies make good reference material to prove my point. Intellectuals can and do build logical castles firmly rooted on thin air.

You can’t help but have to make these leaps of trust with authors you read. I do it all the time with Creation Science magazines, or even when I’m reading Kent Brandenburg. Because I admire their presuppositions, because they are believers and because their conclusions line up with Scripture, I feel comfortable accepting their claims once filtered through my own reasoning. Does this then make it Truth? I don’t know if I’d go that far. I don’t know if I trust my own reasoning that far.

So yeah, I worry that you are giving these intellectuals more credibility than they deserve, particularly when you start mentioning their conclusions in the same sentence as God’s Truth. I don’t think they deserve the trust you are giving them. Just because you or I read something that sounds like it hits the nail right on the head doesn’t mean we’ve just discovered God’s Truth, written from before the foundation of the world.

So what we get throughout our debate is my constant attack upon the reliability of reason as seen in science, and your defence of the use of reason itself. I think we’re arguing cross purposes because I haven’t been careful to narrow down exactly what I mean. Perhaps looking at it in this light we’ll have more we can agree on?

A few other points that you are welcome to respond to or ignore:

The “not credible because you’re not published” argument came from a debate I had with a University biology intellectual. He said Creation Science wasn’t a real science because they didn’t get published in peer reviewed journals like everyone else. I said they were rejected out of hand because they were creationists. He said that was because they didn’t have any credibility. I asked how to get credibility. He said “get published in a journal”. We went round and round and round that train of circular logic. He ended up claiming I was cynical and paranoid because of this “conspiracy” to keep Creationists out of journals. Perhaps you’ll find you’re just as paranoid and cynical as I am in this area also?

I would be curious to hear your position on the textual issue, and would be happy to read it via email. As to why you don’t write openly about this, I’ll give you some pure speculation on my part: From how you write, and the fact that you’ve mentioned study, it sounds like you’re a Bible College student. If that’s the case, and you’ve rejected the KJV as the best translation available in the English language, then you’ll most likely be branded a heretic in a good proportion of IFB churches in Australia. I suspect you have some nuanced position on the KJV well short of “any Bible version is fine!” but also well short of “based on the right manuscripts using the right translation method with the stamp of approval from Bible believing Churches and thus the only option in the face of the heretical pretenders spawned from MTC”. If you’re in Bible College, then you probably want to preach and serve as a Pastor, but word of that stuff gets around like wildfire and will ruin you. You probably are quite conservative on issues, hence being an IFB, but think we’ve got a few little hangups on issues you are hoping will die with time but at the moment are unwilling to attack publically. All speculation though, let me know how close or wildly far off I am!

Anti-intellectualism is self-defeating. You cannot understand and hold sound doctrine without careful and precise intellectual pursuit. There is just as much heresy coming from fundamentalist anti-intellectualism as from autonomous intellectualism.

You say all these fields are “famous” for their rejection of God. Fact is, humans are famous for their rejection of God and were doing it quite well before any of these fields were developed.

Fact is, science is famous for scientific research. Psychology is famous for studying the human mind and how humans function and interact. Archaeology is famous for digging for buried artifacts.

Every person that God gave to the church is an intellectual. We are made in God’s image and God is an intellectual.

As far as the rest of your thoughts on intellectualism, all I can say is “wow.” Just wow. It’s been a while since I’ve talked to someone with that level of cynicism and conspiracy thinking.

Still, I’m guessing that next time you’re sick, you won’t be going to your Sunday School class for help even though you seem to believe they have a monopoly on the truth.

3a. “I know you are talking about Kent, but that’s actually a brilliant summation of the entire field of Modern Textual critics.”

My point exactly. I have a reasonable defense of my epistemology while the other side claim to be fideists but actually rely on the same material I do to back their supposedly strictly Scriptural assertions.

I wasn’t complaining about Kent’s long defenses. I asked him to write this series. I’m saying that the logic of verbal, plenary accessibility is merely that… logic. It is not Scriptural.

Re: historical revisionism. I have very intentionally chosen not to debate the text/translation issue publicly for years now for my own reasons. If you are suggesting that I did not answer because I don’t have a good answer, you can believe what you want to believe.

Suffice it to say, I have a very personal understanding of the devastation this issue has caused in Australian Fundamentalism. It is a matter of great heartache to me. If you feel that you could benefit by discussing this issue with me openly, I’d be happy to do so by email.

3b. “If used in the correct way, guided by the Holy Spirit and Scripture, it can be a medium through which God explains truth.”

It is impossible to know truth apart from reason. It is our rational mind that takes symbols on a page and turns them into meaningful syllabic sequences which then evoke meaning and ideas in our minds. God made it that way. There is absolutely no understanding of any truth at any time independent of reason. To be unreasonable or a-reasonable is to be either ungodly or mentally ill.

4. “All truth is God’s truth.”

Good point. It’s like saying to your child “Food is food. Eat it.”

We only say it when the point is so obvious that there is no other way to say it than to make an insultingly obvious statement.

The statement is not meant to prove anything. It’s meant to remind us of a simple reality that is painfully obvious.

You still haven’t responded to my illustration about rain. You’ve been pretty hard on me for calling “what [I've] derived from that mess: His truth.” So I’m interested to know, do you get out your Bible every time you feel rain falling on your head to find out of it truly is raining? Is it slanderous to say “it’s raining”?

—

Well, I’m not sure if we’re getting anywhere. I do sense that perhaps the real issue that is important to you here is the text/translation debate. If that’s the case, perhaps we’d be more productive having that discussion privately. Let me know if you think it would be beneficial.

Grace to you.

The anti-intellectualism is justified. Heresy generally starts with the intellectual who exalts his reason over God’s. Why are so many of the once great American universities and theological colleges now hotbeds of heresy and blasphemy? The general public can see that the field of science and those who practice is (scientists) have gone to war against the notion of God. Psychology was created by men with a particular interest in the occult and a total rejection of God.

All the fields you mention are veritable goldmines of examples for fundamentalists who deride them. These fields of knowledge are FAMOUS for their rejection of God – they are operated by men who are heavily influenced by the big names that came before them: Darwin, Freud, Jung, Kinsey, Dewey etc etc. Where do you think “I don’t believe in God, I believe in Science” came from?

I think the anti-intellectual suspicion is justified. 1 Corinthians 1:26 says: For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

These wise men after the flesh are not who God has chosen to teach truth to the believer. Notice that God never gave intellectuals to the church. He gave them prophets, he gave them teachers, he gave them preachers, he gave them elders and deacons, but no where is the intellectual found. Their is more understanding of the origins of the world and universe to be found in our 8 year old Sunday School class than there is in the entire Academic Faculty of the University of Queensland. Perfect fulfillment of the verse above, repeated in Bible believing churches and apostate scientific faculties across the world.

I’m not some hick Christian railing against education and learning. I teach for a living. I have two university degrees. I went to a private school and got a good OP. I read books to increase my understanding. I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but this isn’t some kind of jealousy against folks that can achieve academically. I’ve been there in the science lab. I’ve seen it up close. And this is in real hard scientific fields like chemistry, not pseudosciences like blokes pontificating on the possibility that some guy 1500 years ago might have been tinkering with his copy of another couple of hundred year old document that may or may not have been an accurate copy of the original.

And even these chemistry professors end up with their petty biases about the proper understanding of microscopic particles. They get involved in thinly veiled flamewars with other guys who don’t think their view of the particle theory is up to scratch. They have their heavyweights on each side who everyone likes to reference for years, until someone figures out that his dogmatic quote repeated in every journal wasn’t quite true all the time. They reference each other, mis-state, over-state their support and understate their difficulties. They come to amazing conclusions and discover it’s all bunk years later. They steal theories and research off each other, while jealously guarding their own. This is all describing real scientists who use real equipment to measure solid data.

So I know what goes on. I don’t have this illusion the general public has about the heroic scientist in a white coat nobly pursuing truth no matter what the cost. I have even less of an illusion when you start getting into the world of evaluating ancient documents. They don’t even have instruments to use in their measuring, unless they’ve been breaking out the C13 dating on their papiri. It’s even more subjective and “big name” based. Metzger puts a slam on Erasmus in one of his textbooks, and suddenly everyone knows 1 John 5:7 was only included in the TR because of pressure. The small print “my bad” 30 years later doesn’t quite change the damage. All the bigwigs think their was a Bzyantine Recension? Who needs hard evidence, it must be so! Why no emphasis upon hard evidence? Because the entire field is built around educated guess, unsupported but possible hypothesis and consensus.

In order to sustain this, you create an academic field around it. That way, you and like-minded friends get to decide what is called good evidence and what isn’t. Everyone knows that you have to weigh, not count manuscripts. Got some serious dissenters from that party line? Easy – don’t let em write in your journals, because only real credible scientists can write in your journals. If he asks why he isn’t credible, tell him it’s because he hasn’t been published. Follow that logical merry-go-round until he feels ill and wants to get off.

Do you have a really strong point for your article? Make it the first paragraph! Not so strong? Get more references from other blokes all making a rough guess but together you can make it look like comprehensive agreement. Got a really weak point but it sounds like what folks in your field are dying to hear? PUT IT IN ANYWAY! Sure you might cop a bit of flak, but if the waves aren’t too large your article will still be sitting there when the next johnny-come-lately scientist comes along so he has someone to reference to keep the ball rolling: “As Professor Peters states in his authoritative article on the effect of solar flares upon primitive scribal tendencies towards conflation…” The list goes on.