Col 2:2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of
full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery,
which is Christ, 3
in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.
More on philosophy.....
I have often heard intellectuals say "all truth is God's truth". Is this a true statement?
Here are some excerpts from an
article that deals with this very thing.
Quote:
Those who integrate psychology with Christianity declare, "All truth is God’s truth." Under this umbrella statement, they embrace the speculative notions of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Abraham Maslow, Albert Ellis, Carl Rogers, and a host of other psychological theorists, depending upon their own individual biases.
Theologians have made this expansion of God’s truth quite respectable under such terms as "natural theology" and "general revelation," and Christian psychologists enthusiastically embrace them.
Lately, however, the important theological category of general revelation has been broadened to include all truth-claims made as a result of human efforts to understand the many aspects of the created order. Those who have broadened the category argue that the Scriptures are indeed the "special" revelation which God has left to us and that, because God is the Author of the entire created order, whenever men discover "truth" in that order, we can refer to that humanly discovered "truth" as "general revelation."
[Doug]Bookman identifies the very dangerous ramifications of the argument that replaces the biblical doctrine of general revelation.
First . . .
by defining general revelation as that body of truth which is gained by human investigation and discovery, the argument is guilty of neglecting the element of non-discoverability which is intrinsic to the biblical notion of revelation and supplanting that notion with its exact antithesis. Further, the approach is dangerous in that
it attributes to the truth-claims of men an authority which they do not and cannot possess, and renders it virtually impossible to bring those truth-claims under the authority of the one standard by which God demands that they be measured.
Second, the argument . . . is confused in its definition of the term "general." By mistakenly taking that term to refer to the content of the category (rather than to the audience to which the revelation thus denominated is available),
the apologists who employ this argument commit two fallacies which are destructive of orthodox theology: first,
they expand the category to include all manner of truth-claims which have no right to be thus honored; and second, they eviscerate the character of revelation by including in the category truth-claims which are admittedly lesser than the truths of Scripture, which demand that finite and fallen men measure them to determine their validity, and which at best can possibly issue in a higher level of insight into the demands of living.
Bookman concludes that:
. . .
as described in Scripture, general revelation is truth which is manifestly set forth before all men (Rom 1:17-19; 2:14,15); it is truth so clear and irrefutable as to be known intuitively by all rational men (Ps 19:1-6; Rom 1: 19); it is truth so authoritative and manifest that when men, by reason of willful rebellion, reject that truth, they do so at the cost of their own eternal damnation (Rom 1:20; 2:1,15). For this seamless, flawless and majestic tapestry of God-given truth is substituted a patchwork of "lesser" truths, of truth which "is obtainable at least in part," truths which "are not delineated for us by God" but are "discovered by fallible humans." . . . Surely such a concept of general revelation
represents a ravaging of the biblical concept.
Coe [John Coe, a faculty member of Rosemead School of Psychology] quite clearly
denies the effect of sin upon the fallen mind of man. Bookman identifies as absolutely basic to Coe’s argument the proposition that "
fallen man retains the ability and propensity to deduce truth from the created world and thus to arrive at conclusions which are as authoritative as the Scriptures themselves."
More central to the issue of biblical anthropology, however, is that Coe’s argument involves a
denial of the biblical insistence that divine truth is foolishness to the natural man (1 Cor 2:14), that apart from regeneration man’s understanding is darkened and alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:17), that all men are enemies in their minds until God transforms them through the work of salvation (Col 1:13)...
Bookman summarizes this issue of Coe’s bibliology in a personal letter to us, in which he says:
The issue here relates very directly to the character of inspired Scripture. Wisdom literature, such as that which is represented by the sage in the book of Proverbs, is one of many precious and profitable genres of biblical literature. But the recorded message of the sage, no less than that of the prophet, the Gospelist or the writer of a New Testament epistle,
is authoritative and dependable simply and only because it was breathed out by God (2 Tim 3:16). The prophets received their messages by means of dreams (Num 12:6); that doesn’t suggest that the dreams of men today are just as authoritative as those of the prophets.
The sage normally received his message by means of observation; it is erroneous to conclude that therefore the observations of any man are as authoritative and/or dependable as those observations of the sage which are recorded in the pages of sacred Scripture.
Note carefully that the debate here is not whether any of the observations made by human beings might be true. Rather,
the debate is whether the observations of men today ought to be regarded as possessing the absolute certainty and/or normative authority which the Bible possesses in all of its parts. The words of the sage are not certain and authoritative because they were discovered by observation, any more than the words of Jude are certain and authoritative because he cites them from the apocryphal book of Enoch (Jude 14).
The words of all biblical writers are authoritative because the recording of them was done under the careful supervision of the Holy Spirit which is known as "inspiration." To regard the words of men as possessing the same sublime dignity and ultimate authority that the words of the Bible possess is remarkably dangerous.
End quote.
Before you pass John Coe off as some liberal that certainly doesn't reflect those who REALLY know Scripture and stand for "Sola Scriptura", look at
this.
Robert Morey has said, “Just because someone says, “I believe in sola scriptura,” does not mean he really believes in it.
If he elsewhere says that the Bible is not the final authority in faith and practice, he has denied in substance what he supposedly affirmed as a slogan. Heretics have always done this.
What they affirm with the right hand is what they deny with the left hand. It does not matter what doctrine is at stake.”
"The basic theological and philosophical problem with organizations such as The White Horse Inn, Modern Reformation magazine, Westminster Seminary, Ligonier Ministries, Table Talk magazine, Stand to Reason radio, Summit Ministries, and Coral Ridge Ministries is not simply their failure, but
their refusal to be captive to the Word of God. The “Reverend Doctors” think they are smarter – or at least more widely read – than the Holy Spirit himself, and
so they promote the wisdom of men, not the wisdom of Christ. The Apostle Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians and Colossians are the death-knell of all non-revelational theories of knowledge." -
Trinity Foundation
Natural Theology's Fallacy:
Natural theologians constantly commit one of the simplest errors.
They take an idealized and romantic modern concept of human “Reason,” that developed during the Renaissance, particularly during the French Revolution,
and insert it back into biblical times and even attempt to insert it into biblical texts. But is it possible that ancient writers, most of whom died thousands of years before the Renaissance, knew of and believed in modern Renaissance romantic ideals of an exalted and abstract “Reason,” before whom all must bow, including God?
Ideas have a history that we cannot ignore. We can trace when, where, and through whom an idea first appeared in history. Newton’s idea of the “law of gravity” and Einstein’s “theory of relativity” are good examples of this.
The attempt to take a modern idea and push it back thousands of years before it appeared in history is a grave mistake. If someone claimed that Einstein’s theory of relativity was taught in the Bible, they would be grossly mistaken.
But this is exactly what those who believe in Natural Theology, Natural Law, and Philosophy do all the time.
The French Natural Philosophers had abstracted, idealized, romanticized, and then absolutized human reason into an all-seeing, all-knowing, omnipresent, omnipotent, infallible, “Reason.” They took man’s limited and faulty ability to think about issues and then came to a conclusion and elevated it into the Origin of truth, justice, morals, meaning, and beauty. “Reason” was the measure of all things, including God. They had replaced “God” with “Reason.” During the French Revolution, people were dragged before the “bar” or bench of a rationalist judge who proclaimed their guilty verdict in the name of “Reason.”
This is one of the fundamental methodological errors of J.P. Moreland, Norman Geisler, William lane Craig, Greg Koukl, Francis Beckwith, et al.
They cite such texts as Isa. 1:18 (”Let us reason together”) and Acts 17:2 (”Paul…reasoned with them”), to prove (sic) that the modern Renaissance concept of “Reason” can be found in the Bible. They assume that the mere presence of the verb “reason” in such passages is sufficient proof that the authors of Scripture knew of and believed in the Renaissance concept of the noun “Reason.”
First, it is outrageous for them to insert a modern idea into ancient biblical times and texts.
Second, none of them even attempt to do any exegesis of the texts they cite. It would appear that they never bothered to check the Hebrew or Greek. They cite texts much like Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Third, even if we pretended, in a moment of insanity, that modern Renaissance ideas like “Reason” could magically appear in ancient biblical times and texts, this would still require hard exegetical work to support it.
Nearly all the Hebrew and Greek words translated “reason” have nothing to do with human “reason” per se but are simple conjunctions. They are grammatical, not anthropological, in nature.
Unquote.
Morey goes on to use a Hebrew and Greek examples using Greek and Hebrew. Then he says:
Quote:
One last comment is in order.
Some Natural theologians have argued that if we reject the Renaissance abstract concept of “Reason,” we are denying that man can “reason” from point A to point B. But this argument is an example of the fallacy of equivocation.
To reject an abstract idealized “Reason,” i.e. Rationalism, is not the same thing as rejecting man’s capacity to “reason.” The biblical authors viewed man’s capacity to think through issues and to come a conclusion as a reflection of the image of God. While they believed in “reasoning,” this does not mean they knew or believed in “Reason.”
Another Natural theologian objected to our use of the lower case “r” and the capital letter “R.” But his objection fell flat when we asked, “If the use of capital and lower case letters bothers you, does the distinction between the capital “G” and the lower case “g” in “god” and “God” bother you as well?”
In conclusion, the authors of Scripture did not know of or believe in the modern Renaissance concept of an abstract absolute “Reason.” Any attempt is to read that concept back into the Bible is sheer ignorance at best and gross deception at worse. Thus, Natural Theology is a total sham.
Unquote.
Dr. John Robbins of The Trinity Foundation says: "Decades ago
Francis Schaeffer warned the church about Thomas Aquinas and ‘nature eating up grace.’ By this he meant that if you give ‘natural revelation’ an epistemological inch, it will displace Scripture."
I would suggest two other articles to read:
http://biblicalthought.com/blog/why-natural-theology-fails/
http://biblicalthought.com/blog/raphaels-school-of-athens/
Morey mentioned that ideas have a history. This includes psychology. Consider this:
"
The End of 'Christian Psychology" :
"
After Jung repudiated Christianity he became involved in idolatry and the occult. He renamed and replaced everything having to do with biblical Christianity with his own
mythology of archetypes. As he developed his theories, his archetypes took shape and served him as
familiar spirits.
One such personal familiar spirit that helped Jung develop his theories was Philemon." -Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, op. cit., pp. 170-199.
"
Jung also participated in the occult practice of necromancy. Jung
mythologized Scripture and reduced the basic doctrines of the Christian faith into esoteric gnosticism.
Freud was also involved in idolatry and the occult. He collected a large number of ancient Greek, Roman, Oriental, and Egyptian artifacts, including rows of statuettes arranged on his desk and around his office."
Also go
here for a treatment of the history and founding fathers of psychology by Dr. John Street, Chairman of the Biblical Counseling Department at The Master's College.
The basic foundation for psychology is humanism and the occult. Claiming either has truth about man's condition before a Holy God is outrageous and anti-biblical. There is no combining Truth with error. Shame on those who think they can.
