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Well, good evening, everyone. It's wonderful to be here. It's a great privilege here for me, not just to deliver some lectures under the name of the esteemed B.B. Warfield, but also the invitation of such fine institutions as First Presbyterian Church and Erskine Theological Seminary. And thank you to you. for coming out. It's such a great encouragement to me. There's so many people interested to come out and listen to lectures on this topic, and particularly with the uncertainty and the weather conditions that we've had here. When I arrived this afternoon, Having driven down from Charlotte, I arrived and checked into the hotel about 4 p.m. and I had my suitcase, my little suitcase with me and I got into the elevator with an elderly couple and they looked at me and said, are you evacuating? And my immediate thought was, should I be? Maybe I should just turn around and go back to the car and head out again. No, they explained that they were evacuating, but they were evacuating to Columbia, not from Columbia. So I'm not going to be evacuating, Lord willing, until after I've delivered my two lectures here this week. One of my enduring childhood memories of Sunday evenings in the Anderson household is of the sound of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 floating across the living room. This was not because my parents were listening to a concert performance on the radio, but because they were avid viewers of the Antiques Roadshow. The Antiques Roadshow first aired here in the United States in 1997, but like so many other great ideas, America stole it from Britain, where it has been broadcast regularly since 1979. It's a fixture of British television. And the basic idea of the program, in case you're unfamiliar with it, is that members of the public will visit a traveling road show with what they believe to be antique items. Cabinets, chairs, coins, vases, and so on. And they will have the items examined and appraised by experts who will identify the items, give background information on their provenance, and place a value on them. That is to say that the experts will deliver an estimate of how much the item might fetch at auction, how much it's worth. Well, the program is quite educational, of course, but its popularity is mainly due to its entertainment value. The Antiques Roadshow is at its most entertaining when there's a large discrepancy between the owner's expectation and the expert's evaluation. And so perhaps a woman who discovered a dusty old book in her attic is informed that it's one of a handful of first edition copies published in the 17th century and is now worth several hundred thousand dollars. Meanwhile, the chap who brought what he believed to be a rare Ming Dynasty vase, which he was planning on selling in order to fund a very comfortable retirement, is excruciatingly deflated when the expert points out three tiny but significant words etched under its rim, made in Taiwan. And all of this, of course, is captured on video for our viewing pleasure. Well, there is a central question that drives viewers' interest in the Antiques Roadshow, a question that is posed of every item discussed. What is its value? Or what is it worth? But in order to answer that central question, two prior questions need to be asked and answered. First, What kind of thing is it? What kind of thing is it? What is its nature? And the second question that needs to be answered is, where did it come from? Where did it come from? This is the question of origins. So you need the question of its nature and the question of its origins. And you cannot determine the value or worth of something without knowing something about its nature, and its origins. And once you've answered those three questions, what kind of thing it is, where did it come from, what is its value, then a fourth question is raised. How should I treat it? How should I treat it? What should I do with it? If it's a first edition copy of a rare 17th century book, you should treat it very carefully. You should respect it. You should protect it. You should probably insure it. On the other hand, if it's a cheaply manufactured piece of pottery with nothing whatsoever to distinguish it, well, maybe you could put it in the garage as a holder for all those random nuts and bolts that you don't throw away. My topic this evening is anthropology, the study of mankind, the study of humanity. Now what does the Antiques Roadshow have to do with anthropology? Well, just in this, the four questions that I just mentioned can be applied to us, to human beings. What value or worth do we have? What are we by nature? Where did we come from? And how should we be treated? And I want to suggest that these four questions are logically connected in much the same way as they are when applied to the Antiques Roadshow. We cannot know how to treat other human beings without knowing something of the value of human beings, the worth of a human life. And we cannot understand the value of human beings without knowing something about our nature and our origins. Just consider for a moment some of the great cultural and moral debates in our day. Abortion, euthanasia, racial equality and civil rights, sexual morality and sexual liberty, religious freedom, environmentalism, animal rights, embryonic research, genetic enhancement, gender identity. All of these issues and many others turn on the issue of anthropology. And in fact, there are multiple anthropologies competing in our culture today, which leads to very polarized positions on these ethical debates. However, anthropologies, of which there are many, do not come out of nowhere. Anthropologies are not self-sustaining and free-floating. Every anthropology, every theory of mankind, is situated within, arises from, and finds its justification within a broader worldview, a wider perspective on ultimate reality, ultimate truth, ultimate meaning, and ultimate value. And so what I want to do this evening is to consider three prominent worldviews and the competing views of human nature that they entail. Now why three and why these three? Well here I want to follow the lead of the eminent Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga by suggesting that in the contemporary Western intellectual world there are, as Plantinga puts it, three main competitors vying for supremacy. Three fundamental perspectives or ways of thinking about what the world is like, what we ourselves are like, what is most important about the world, what our place in it is, and what we must do to live the good life. And Plantinga labels these three perspectives, or three worldviews, Christian theism, perennial naturalism, and creative anti-realism. Now those are his terms. I'm going to simplify matters somewhat by simply referring to them, and in a slightly adjusted order, as naturalism, postmodernism, and Christian theism. And this isn't a sermon, but it does have three points. There they are. But what I want to suggest is that in the end, of these three worldviews, only one, Christian theism, can supply any firm basis for human dignity and human rights. Now, before I launch into that discussion, I need to say something about worldviews in general. What do I mean by that? Well, roughly put, a worldview is an overall philosophical perspective or outlook on the world, an all-encompassing perspective on everything that exists and matters to us. A worldview concerns not only what is the case, it makes claims about what is the case, what we would call descriptive claims, trying to describe the world. It also makes claims about what should be the case, what we would call normative statements, that things should be a certain way. Now, when we talk about a worldview, we can talk about it as the perspective of an individual person, their own fundamental guiding beliefs, assumptions, ideas, and values. But we can also talk about a worldview as a generalized type, and that's the focus this evening. I'm going to be treating these three worldviews as generalized types that we find represented and defended in our culture today. Now, the content of a worldview can be carved up in different ways, but to keep matters relatively simple, I'm going to explore each of these three worldviews under four headings. First, its view of God. Secondly, its view of ultimate reality, what is ultimately real. Third, its view of truth and knowledge. And fourth, its view of goodness and value in general, how we value things, but particularly moral judgments. So those are the four headings that I'm going to use to break down each worldview. Well, let's begin then with naturalism, naturalism. Here's a simple definition of the worldview of naturalism that captures the core idea. Naturalism states that only the natural universe exists. Only the natural universe exists. Now, this raises immediately the question of what natural means. What counts as natural? And there's some dispute, even among naturalists, about what exactly counts as natural. But a pretty standard definition would be this. something is natural if it can be studied and, in principle, explained by the natural or empirical sciences. So that would be physics, chemistry, and biology. A fairly common view among naturalists is that all of the sciences can, in fact, be reduced down to physics. So biology reduces to chemistry, and chemistry can be reduced to physics. And so on this view, naturalism turns out to be some version of physicalism. The only things that exist are physical things. And as a whole, the only thing that exists is the physical cosmos. As one naturalist puts it, Alex Rosenberg, who is a professor of philosophy at Duke University, and who wrote a book entitled The Atheist's Guide to Reality. He defends a naturalist worldview. And he says that naturalism comes down to this. The physical facts fix all the facts. The physical facts fix all the facts. So everything can be explained ultimately in terms of physical facts. Now within this naturalist camp, there are divisions and we can actually distinguish between what are called hard and soft naturalists. Hard and soft naturalists. Soft naturalists say that everything is ultimately physical in nature, but they still allow for the existence of minds and mental entities like thoughts and ideas as long as these minds are grounded in physical reality. So the mind may be something non-physical, but it has to arise out of a physical brain. That would be a soft naturalist. Hard naturalists, which I would argue are the more consistent kind, will deny outright the real existence of minds and mental entities. On their view, strictly speaking, there are no such things as minds. You have to wonder what's going through their minds. Now, naturalism is closely associated with a view called scientism. Scientism is the idea that scientific knowledge is the paradigm for human knowledge. And in its most radical forms, it says that scientific knowledge is the only true knowledge. We only really know something if it has been scientifically demonstrated. Perhaps the most memorable summary of the naturalist worldview can be credited to Carl Sagan. Perhaps some of you will remember the television series that he presented entitled Cosmos, and he put it this way. The cosmos is all that was or is or ever will be. That's naturalism. Now, while there may not be many pure naturalists out there, the basic worldview of naturalism exerts a strong influence on academia and on culture today, in fact, far beyond its numbers. Now, let's look in more detail at naturalism as a worldview, starting with its view of God. What is naturalism's view of God? Well, very simple, there is no God. God, of course, is a supernatural being, and therefore God cannot exist on a naturalist view. Naturalism rejects the idea of any transcendent supernatural cause. The universe must either be eternal or it came into existence spontaneously, out of nothing, with no cause. And you can find both views defended among naturalists today. So his view of God is very simple. There is no God. What about naturalism's view of ultimate reality? Well, on this view, the ultimate reality is physical material reality. Everything that exists ultimately has its basis in physical entities, matter and energy. Again, to quote Alex Rosenberg, The basic things everything is made up of are fermions and bosons, that is, basic physical particles. That's it, he says. Well, what this means, of course, is that the universe is ultimately impersonal in nature. There is no moral agent or rational intellect behind the universe. Nature, on this view, is ultimately non-moral, non-rational, and non-personal. It is just raw, physical stuff. And so there's no ultimate meaning or purpose in the universe. Nothing ultimately exists for a reason. Nothing happens for a reason. In the end, it's all sound and fury signifying nothing. Well, what about naturalism's view of truth and knowledge? What truths are there and how can we know them? Well, the naturalist will say there is such a thing as objective truth, but only science can really deliver that truth. Objective truth for the naturalist means hard scientific facts or whatever can be reduced to them. If your belief cannot be scientifically established, then it isn't knowledge. If you have a belief that presupposes some sort of non-natural entities, then that belief isn't true. It can't be true. So on this view, truth and knowledge range over natural entities alone, and they are circumscribed by the methods of science. Now, some naturalists do find a very strict scientism too restrictive, but they will still affirm empiricism. That is the view that everything that we know, we must know through our senses. Everything has to be detected with the senses in order to be known. And that would allow non-scientists to know some things, and science would be a very special, refined form of empirical knowledge. And then fourthly, we have naturalism's view of goodness and value. What would goodness and value be on a naturalist view? Well, whatever goodness is, it has nothing to do with God. Goodness would not be defined by God, by God's character or his will. On this view, if there is such a thing as goodness, then it must be defined entirely in natural terms. Now this puts naturalists in something of a predicament because science cannot deliver value judgments. Science tells you how things are. It does not tell you how things ought to be. There's no should in science. It doesn't deliver moral judgments or value judgments. And the same goes for ordinary sense experience. Your sense experience tells you how things are, tells you how the world is, but it doesn't tell you how things ought to be. So there's a bit of a challenge here for naturalists. But nevertheless, naturalists have offered various theories of goodness and value, particularly moral goodness and moral value. And there are two particular theories. that are quite common among naturalists. One would be subjectivism. Subjectivism is the view that moral goodness can be reduced down to or explained in terms of human preferences or sentiments. What's good is what I prefer, what I desire. And so if I prefer company to solitude, then that's what it means to say that company is good. And there can be collectivist versions of this theory as well, where moral judgments are on the basis of society's preferences. The other moral theory would be utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is the idea that moral goodness is defined in terms of human pleasures or human happiness. The utilitarian philosophers offered what they called a principle of utility. Whatever is moral is whatever promotes the greatest happiness for the greatest number, or the greatest pleasure for the greatest number. So that would be another naturalist theory of morality. Well, with this overview of the naturalist worldview in place, let's turn now to our main topic, which is anthropology. Remember our four questions. What kind of beings are we? What is our nature? Where did we come from? What are our origins? What value or worth do we have? And how should we be treated? How is a naturalist going to answer these typically? Well, first of all, the question, what kind of beings are we? For the naturalist, we are physical, material beings. There is no soul distinct from the body. The body is all there is. And so when the body ceases to exist, we cease to exist. The atheist Richard Dawkins was once asked in an interview, what happens after we die? He replied, what happens after you die? You decompose. That is the naturalist view. So we are biological organisms, basically biological organisms. We are particularly advanced, complex mammals that have arisen by natural processes, ultimately reducing to physical facts. Now that leads to the second question, where did we come from? Well, naturalism has its own creation myth, and it is an evolutionary story. It begins with the idea of cosmic evolution. The universe somehow came into existence, but through a process of cosmic evolution, we have the formation of stars and planetary systems that, in one case at least, can support life, which leads to the next kind of evolution, chemical evolution, the formation of rudimentary organic material and the first living cells. From there, you have biological evolution, where single-celled organisms, over a process of natural selection and genetic mutation, evolve into complex multi-celled life forms, including us. And then lastly, you might add to this cultural evolution, where things like language, social practices, art, and technology develop. So overall it's an evolutionary, a natural evolutionary story. And this evolution has to be entirely natural and therefore it is undirected. There's no direction, there's no intention, there's no plan to it. George Gaylord Simpson put it this way, man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind. Well, what about our value? The third question, what is our value? What are we worth? Objectively speaking, for the naturalist, we have no value because there is no objective value to be given to anything. We have no more intrinsic worth than any other arrangement of atoms that you might encounter. On the naturalist worldview, no particular arrangement of atoms is objectively better or worse than any other arrangement of atoms or physical particles. The universe just is what it is. End of story. The only way you could really ascribe value to a human being would be subjectively. You are valuable for me if you are valuable to me. Your worth is what you are worth to me. Value and worth will be entirely in the eye of the beholder. And then fourthly, we have the question, how should we be treated? How should we human beings be treated? I think that for a strict, consistent naturalist, this is a question without an answer. It is what we might call a pseudo question rather than a real question because it's not a question that has any objective scientific answer. From a strict naturalist perspective, the question, how should we treat a human being, has no more of a right or wrong answer than how should we treat a pile of leaves. However, naturalists will inevitably run this question through their various moral theories. So for subjectivism, if they were a subjectivist, they might say that we should treat people as we prefer to treat them. That's how we should treat people, as we prefer to treat them. Well, the problems with this view should be glaringly obvious. I mean, that is exactly what the Nazis did. They treated people as they preferred to treat them. On utilitarianism, the answer would be that we should treat people so as to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number. That's how we treat people, to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number. But this, of course, allows any human being to be treated as a means to an end, namely the happiness of other human beings. On this view, an individual human being has merely instrumental value. And on neither of these views can there be any absolute duties or constraints, any absolute duties that we have to one another or absolute constraints on how we should treat one another. That is the naturalist view in sum. Let's turn now to the postmodernist view, to postmodernism. First of all, I need to issue an apology for even using the term postmodernism, because the terms postmodern and postmodernism have been used to describe a multitude of different movements and viewpoints. On some definitions of the term, everyone in this room is postmodern. As someone once quipped, trying to define postmodernism is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. However, I am going to define it, and I'm going to be using the term simply as a sort of a covering label for various philosophies that share some common themes. And these themes arguably go back to the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. They can be traced through philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche and the 20th century existentialist philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre. They would represent this view generally. And they find their most radical expression in the deconstructionist movement. But these ideas can also be found in very crude forms in popular culture today, and I think you'll recognize them when you hear them. Here's my summary of the postmodernist outlook. There are no absolute norms, and there is no objective reality. There are no absolute norms, and there is no objective reality. According to this view, there are no absolute standards to which we are all subject. And that would include moral standards. And there is no objective reality in this sense. There is no reality that exists independently of us, that exists independently of our thoughts and our language. Or at least, if there is such a reality, it's not one that is relevant or accessible to us. On this view, on the postmodernist view, what is real and what is true is ultimately defined by us. This view is sometimes called constructivism. Reality and truth are constructed by us in the way that we impose or project our thoughts, our ideas, our values, and our goals onto the world and thereby, in effect, create the world. Postmodernism is generally more dominant in the humanities, whereas, in contrast, naturalism would be more dominant in the sciences, if you're going to break down a university into those two categories, humanities and the sciences. Naturalism tends to rule in the sciences. Postmodernism is more dominant in the humanities. Well, let's get into some more detail. How would we break down postmodernism as a worldview? Starting with its view of God, its view of God. Well, on the postmodernist view, there is no God in the classical sense of the term. There is no transcendent personal creator who exists objectively. The only God or gods that there could be would be our projections. Now, postmodernism on the surface can seem quite religiously liberal and quite pluralistic, but it has an absolutist and exclusivist core to it. It cannot tolerate an absolute God. So, that's its view of God. What about its view of ultimate reality? What would the postmodernist view be there? There is no ultimate reality in any objective or absolute sense. There is no ultimate reality that simply is what it is, independent of us. There are, on this view, only relative realities, relative to individuals, or perhaps to societies, or to cultures. So in one sense, there is no ultimate reality for the postmodernist, but in another sense, there are multiple ultimate realities. What is ultimate is simply what is ultimate for you in terms of the way that you construct the world. What about postmodernism's view of truth and knowledge? Well, on this view, truth is not something that is discovered so much as something that is created by us. There's a contrast here with the naturalist view. On the naturalist view, truth is something to be discovered by science. On the postmodernist view, truth is something that is actually created or constructed. Truth is a social construction. Truth arises out of the choices, and the preferences of human societies. In short, something is true because we have decided that it is true, either individually or collectively. We have projected a particular interpretation onto our experiences, and we've made them to be true, or made that interpretation to be true. As for knowledge, there is no such thing as knowledge in the traditional sense, something like a well-grounded or well-justified belief in an objective reality that corresponds to an objective reality. On the postmodernist view, knowledge has to be viewed quite differently. Knowledge is either a myth, sort of a throwback to a modernist pipe dream. Or knowledge might be a disguised attempt to exert power over some group. Some postmodernists have suggested that. Or knowledge is just a matter of an internal coherence within your own interpretation of the world. So you know something if it fits together with everything else that you believe about the world. And then we have postmodernism's view of goodness and value. That's part of the postmodernist worldview as well. What would be the postmodernist view of goodness and value? Well, it would be that there are no absolute norms. There are no objective criteria of goodness. Nothing on this view is objectively good or bad, independently of us. Rather, if something is good, then that's because we decided that it is good. If something is valuable, that's because it is valuable to us, because we ourselves have valued it, projected value onto it. Nothing has intrinsic objective value simply because of what it is. It is given value by us. Well, with this overview of the postmodernist worldview before us, let's turn again to anthropology. to human nature, human purpose. What would postmodernism's view of human nature be? Well, here's the essence of it. Human nature is not something that is defined independently of us. Human nature is not something that's defined independently of us by the decree of God or by objective scientific facts. On the postmodernist view, there is no objective, determinative answer to questions like, what is a human being? What does it mean to be a human being? We ourselves define what it is to be human, what it means to be human. And again, we either do that individually or perhaps we do it collectively, but we do it. Consequently, whatever we call human nature, if indeed we can speak of human nature at all, will be relative, fluid, and ultimately up for grabs. So in answer to our four questions, first of all, what kind of beings are we? What would the postmodernist answer be? What kind of beings are we? The answer would be, whatever we define ourselves to be. And that can operate individually or collectively. I think the most consistent postmodernist position is that it actually operates right down on the individual level, at the level of the conscious subject who projects their interpretation onto the world. But whichever it is, we ourselves define what it is to be human. Second question, where did we come from? The question of origins, where did we come from? Well, on the postmodernist view, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Except that we cannot find our origins in the creation of God. That's one answer that's ruled out. But it could be evolution, it could be aliens seeding the earth, it could be something else. It doesn't really matter because the question is what we ourselves are defining ourselves to be now. Then we have the third question, what is our value? What is our worth? How will the postmodernist answer this? Well, our value is whatever value we ascribe to ourselves. Human beings have no intrinsic, objective, universal value or worth. We have no value that is independent of our own preferences and our own judgments. If we value ourselves highly, then we are highly valuable. And if we don't value ourselves highly, then we aren't highly valuable. And these valuations can vary from person to person, from culture to culture. It's a relativistic view at its core. And then the fourth question is, how should we be treated? How should we be treated? This is particularly tricky for a postmodernist because there are no absolute norms, absolute rules, absolute standards that could provide an objective answer. How should we treat human beings? But the typical answer that's given is that we should treat people with pluralistic tolerance and without judgment. Inclusivity is in, exclusivity is out. Now before I turn to the third worldview of Christian theism, I do want to make a few observations about how these first two worldviews, naturalism and postmodernism, differ with respect to their view of human nature, as well as what they have in common. At first glance, it looks as though naturalism and postmodernism are polar opposites when it comes to valuing human beings. Naturalism presents a very low view of human beings. We're basically just animals, which in turn are just complex arrangements of physical particles. As Marvin Minsky, the MIT professor and pioneer of artificial intelligence put it, humans are simply meat machines. Postmodernism, on the other hand, ascribes to us virtually godlike power and authority. We are creators of the world. Indeed, we are the creators of ourselves. We define ourselves. We are the ultimate authors of reality. The world is what it is, and it has the meaning and the value that it does because of us, because of our thoughts, our words, our activities. So on the face of it, there seems to be a big difference. But at a deeper level, these two worldviews are actually close siblings. They're peas in a pod. They are united in denying the existence of a personal transcendent creator. And so they are united in affirming human autonomy and rejecting any absolute reference point for truth, reason, meaning, purpose, and value. And therefore, neither of these two secular worldviews can give an adequate account of the objective value of human beings and human life. Naturalists can actually be quite open about this. They can be quite candid. Postmodernists, as is their want, tend to be more equivocal about it. But both worldviews are engaged in a kind of metaphysical alchemy, an attempt to derive meaning and value from ultimate meaninglessness and valuelessness. Here's the dilemma for worldviews that reject an absolute personal God. Either they must make man nothing, or they must make man everything. Either they must make man nothing or they must make man everything. Man is either promoted to the level of deity or demoted to the level of dirt. Well, it seems appropriate at this point to remind ourselves of the words of Psalm 8. I'm sure you're familiar with it, but think about it now in the context of what has just been said. Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. You have set your glory above the heavens. The first thing the psalmist does is to acknowledge the Lord God, the creator and his glory. But he continues, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? The psalmist, as it were, expects there to be a low view of man. When he thinks about how great God is, well surely man is going to be nothing, but that's not what is said. You have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings. The word in Hebrew, in fact, is Elohim. Actually, it can be translated gods. And you've crowned him, that is man, with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the work of your hands. You have put all things under his feet. So man is not God, but neither is he nothing. He's something quite significant. Well, that leads us to our third worldview, the worldview of Christian theism, Christian theism. This is the worldview that is presented in and presupposed by the Bible. And all of the points of the Christian worldview that I'm going to lay out here are either explicitly stated, implied, or taken for granted by the biblical authors. So how would we summarize Christian theism as a worldview? Again, I'm going to use these four headings, or four areas that I've used already. Starting with Christian theism's view of God. Well, there is a God, that's the first thing to say. There is a God. There is one and only one God. And that God is not just any God, that God has definite attributes. Here I'm going to quote from the Westminster Larger Catechism, the question, Question number seven, what is God? God is a spirit in and of himself, infinite in being, glory, blessedness, and perfection, all sufficient, eternal, unchangeable, incomprehensible, everywhere present, almighty, knowing all things, most wise, most holy, most merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth. That is the God who is. Some particular points of note here, God is both a personal being and an absolute being. God is both a transcendent being but also an imminent being, present within his creation. And God is both one and many. He is a trinity. One in essence, three in person. And from this understanding of the nature of God, it follows that God is the sovereign creator of everything else that exists. Whatever else exists is the creation of God. Which leads, secondly, to Christian theism's view of ultimate reality. What is the ultimate reality? Well, it is God. God is the ultimate reality. He alone is self-existent, self-sufficient, absolute. God is the source and the author of every other reality. God is the definer of every other reality. Everything that exists, exists only because of God. And it is what it is because of God's sovereign decree. All this to say, Christian theism affirms a very clear creator-creation distinction. What about Christian theism's view of truth and knowledge? What is the Christian view of truth? Well, we might be tempted to say that truth is simply whatever corresponds to reality. But actually, I think we need to say something deeper. Truth doesn't exist in the abstract, independent of God. Rather, truth itself is grounded in the mind of God. We might say that truth is ultimately identical with God's thoughts. And for that very reason, truth exhibits coherence because of God's inner unity and truth exhibits correspondence with reality because it is God who defines reality. God is the ultimate knower, the source of all knowledge. We can have knowledge because God made us and he made us to be derivative knowers. He's provided us with intellectual faculties, And he's provided us with divine revelation. Christianity has what we would call a revelational epistemology. We know what we know because of the revelation of God. And then fourthly, Christian theism's view of goodness and value. Our view is not merely that God is good, but that God is goodness. God himself is the absolute norm. God himself is the ultimate standard of truth and goodness and beauty. And so whatever has value, has value because of its relationship to God. Something is valuable, objectively speaking, because God values it, because God delights in it. And God, of course, delights in himself more than anything else. And moral goodness specifically is grounded in God's character and God's will. Right and wrong are defined by God's law, which is a revelation of his own righteousness, holiness, and loving kindness. So these, in very brief outline, are the main points of a Christian theistic worldview, which leads us now to anthropology. What would be a Christian view of human nature? Again, we turn to our four questions. First, what kind of beings are we? What kind of beings are we? A number of things to say here. First, we are creatures. That's the most foundational thing. We are creatures. But more specifically, we are creatures made in the image of God. Genesis chapter one, God says, let us make man in our image, in our likeness. And so God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. This is utterly profound. And it has the most profound implications for how we view ourselves and how we treat one another. But there's more to say. Thirdly, we should note that we are gendered creatures. We are gendered creatures. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. The human race is structured around a basic gender binary, man and woman. And it's very important to note the Hebrew parallelism in this verse. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Man and woman are created equally in the image of God. Another biblical fact is that we are social creatures. We are social creatures. We are designed by God for community. Genesis 2 verse 18, the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him. And so we have the creation of the woman as a fitting companion for the man and thereafter the institution of marriage and the family. And while I wouldn't want to overstate or overextend the point, there is a sense in which human community is a created reflection of the inner divine community of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Fifth, we are not merely physical creatures, we must note. On a biblical view, we have both body and soul. We have a physical aspect, but also a spiritual aspect to us. And then sixth, we should note that we are fallen creatures. We are created in the image of God, but we are fallen in sin. And here I'm simply going to quote the Westminster Shorter Catechism to summarize the point. Question 17, into what estate did the fall bring mankind? The fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery. Question 18, wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate wherein to man fell? The sinfulness of that estate wherein to man fell consists in the guilt of Adam's first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin, together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it. Question 19, what is the misery of that estate wherein to man fell? All mankind, by their fall, lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever. In summary then, we are creatures made in the image of God, gendered, social, both physical and spiritual, and corrupted by sin. The second question, of course, is where did we come from? Closely connected to the first, where did we come from? The Christian worldview has a very distinctive and significant origins story. Humans were created by God. But more than that, humans were specially created by God. We were not created indirectly via natural evolutionary processes. There is a clear boundary between mankind and other animals, not a evolutionary continuum. And we are all descended from one man and one woman, as Paul affirms in Acts chapter 17 in his sermon at Athens, speaking of God, that he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth. This has tremendously important ethical implications. Think just one example, racial equality, very big issue today. There, you have a profound statement with implications for that issue. Thirdly, we have the question, what value do we have? What value do we have on a Christian theistic worldview? Well, we have enormous value, not merely as creatures, but as creatures made in the image of God. We see this in at least two ways in scripture. First, we see it in the institution of capital punishment. Back in Genesis chapter 9, following the flood, Noah is told that, for your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning. For every beast I will require it, and from man, from his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image. And this is further underscored in the Mosaic law by the different penalties for human death and animal death. If an ox gores a man to death, the ox is put to death. But if a man kills his neighbor's ox, the man is not put to death, rather he has to make restitution to his neighbor. Big difference in value between a human being and an animal. But secondly, we see the value of mankind in the incarnation and the atonement. The value that God puts on human life is nowhere demonstrated more dramatically than in the fact that God himself was willing to take on a human nature and to make an atoning sacrifice to save human beings from an eternal hell and to bring them into eternal fellowship with him. God did not take on a canine nature and make an atonement for dogs. So how should we be treated? How should we treat one another? Well, of course, we should treat each other with the greatest respect, dignity, and care. We should make every effort to protect and to preserve human life and to promote what is now often called human flourishing, the flourishing of human life as God has intended it to be. Certainly, we must treat our fellow humans as having immeasurably more value than non-human animals, never mind plants. But at the same time, we should treat each other as fellow creatures and not as gods. We are created in the divine image, but we are not divine. We may be made only a little lower than the heavenly beings, but we are lower. Now, one question that might come up at this point is what's distinctively Christian about this? Couldn't someone who is Jewish or a Muslim say the same things? Well, if I had more time, I would draw some distinctions that I think makes the Christian view very distinctive. And if you want to ask me about that in the Q&A, then I'll use my time there. But as it is, since time is rushing on, I want to just draw this to a conclusion, try and tie the threads together. Our fundamental anthropology, our view of human nature and human origins will inevitably have huge implications for how we view other people, how we value them, how we relate to them, and how we treat them, both individually and as a society. And our anthropology arises in turn out of a broader worldview. The worldviews of naturalism and postmodernism hold considerable sway in our culture today, but they can offer no meaningful basis for human dignity, human rights, human equality, and human solidarity. They are sterile soils. Nothing good will grow in them. But to underscore once again the importance of having a sound anthropology, I want you to just consider this selection of news headlines from the last few weeks, just four of them, just gathered from the last few weeks of the news. Think about the implications of an anthropology for these. Woman has abortion because she couldn't fit into her wedding dress. First child dies by euthanasia in Belgium. Transgender man gives birth after conceiving with transgender wife. First baby born using three-parent technology. Clearly, there are deep divisions and highly polarized debates in our culture today. And the fact is that there can be no resolution of these issues while people hold such radically divergent views of human nature situated in such diametrically opposed worldviews. What can Christians do? The fact is that worldviews cannot be imposed from the outside. worldviews have to be planted and grounded in the heart. And in reality, these divisions and these debates will never be resolved without real gospel transformation. And so our first priority as Christians must be what it has always been, to proclaim the gospel and to pray for revival. Thank you. We are deeply grateful, Dr. Innison. You have fed us richly. We have just a few minutes, questions before we go tonight. Dr. McCain. Yeah, I think that is right. Oh, sure. Well, it was more of a, I guess, a comment on the biblical testimony towards God having placed eternity in the hearts of men, and perhaps you're thinking of Romans 1 as well about all men knowing God through natural revelation but suppressing that truth in unrighteousness. That is right, and what that means then is that those who hold and propound these worldviews never do so consistently. They cannot live them out consistently, and there's always a tension within them. Some will live it out more consistently than others, and that's why you get these appalling headlines, because there are some people who are living out these worldviews, taking them to their logical extent. But because of common grace, because of natural revelation, there's never going to be a fully consistent application of these. And people feel the tug of the moral law in their hearts, even though their consciences are corrupted and suppressed. And we can still appeal to that. There are remnants of moral truth and knowledge of God, even in people who hold these worldviews. I mean, I'm describing these worldviews in ideal terms, but the way that we actually find them, we always find a mixture, sometimes we find a mixture of postmodernism and naturalism together, which is interesting. But there's also remnants of what we would recognize as genuine truth, natural revelation there. And so that gives us something to appeal to. It can be a starting point for conversation about these matters and highlighting inconsistencies in the way that people live. Yeah, that is right. Of course, I'm focusing on the dominant worldviews in what we call Western society. But of course, that concept of a worldview applies to Islam. There is an Islamic worldview. Actually, there are variations on it, depending on different Islamic traditions. But certainly, Acts of terrorism are motivated by an underlying worldview. There's a worldview in terms of which those acts are actually justified as morally good. with other worldviews find it incredible to believe that, why people would do this. But if you have a worldview with a very different ethical system, view of human nature, view of the afterlife, then that's going to lead to different kind of behavior. And I think one of the blind spots of our leadership today is a failure to recognize that these acts are rising out of ideologies and worldviews that are fundamentally opposed. But of course, once you do that, you then have to start thinking more critically about your own worldview, and that's where things get a little uncomfortable. So rather, let's just deal with the symptoms rather than the root cause. Dr. Belding? If Christian worldview espouses a social behavior or a male and female gender, is it sin that accounts for the atypical phenotype or for the antisocial behavior? Certainly antisocial behavior, I mean, that's a broad category. There's lots of behavior. Yeah, sure, I'll try to. If it's part of the Christian worldview to affirm that we are social creatures and that we are gendered creatures, male and female, is it sin that accounts for antisocial behavior? And what was the term you used? Atypical phenotype. Now, do you mean physiological abnormalities where a person's body is a mixture of male and female, what we would call intersex cases? Yeah. Those are different categories. The antisocial behavior is, of course, an act of sinful rebellion. There's no question about that. When people do not love one another, care for one another, that is rebelling against God's order. activities that undermine the family and so forth, again, are acts of sinful rebellion against God's design for humankind. As for those cases that you describe where there are, I mean, there are very rare cases where people have chromosomal abnormalities or just physiological disorders where their bodies do not form in a Consistently male or female way that is that is a result of sin, but of course in different sense We would we would attribute that to the to the curse, you know on on nature that because of man's sin There's a curse upon nature. And so that's why there's cancer. That's why there's Viruses why there's illness and this would this would fall into that sort of category of physiological disorder but it wouldn't be attributable to the sin of the person themselves because They're born with it. We might think of John 9 and the case of the man born blind. It would, I think, fall into that sort of category. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. We'll close the evening with prayer. Dr. Max Rogelin is the acting dean of Erskine Seminary. I'll ask Dr. Rogelin to come and close us in prayer. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this lecture this evening. We thank you for Dr. Anderson and his gifts that you have blessed him with. And we thank you for the reminder of the great dignity that each of us possess being created in your image, whether male or female. We acknowledge that we are made in your image. Lord, help us to acknowledge that in others, to treat others with that dignity and honor that they deserve being, indeed, creatures made after your image, the image of the Almighty God. And Lord, as we were exhorted, we do want to proclaim the gospel and pray for those who reject these truths. We pray that we might be filled with the spirit of wisdom and discernment and boldness to engage with our culture that seems to be plunging faster and faster into error. We pray that we might be well equipped from the lecture this evening, the lecture tomorrow, as we continue to study your word in every way. We pray that you would prepare us to be your image bearers and your truth proclaimers. We pray also for those who need to hear the message. We pray that their hearts would be softened by the work of your spirit. We pray, Lord, that Christ would be honored and that your kingdom would advance. We pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen.
From Genesis to Gender Issues - What Are We? Three Views on Human Nature
Series BB Warfield Lectures
Sermon ID | 107169503 |
Duration | 1:07:33 |
Date | |
Category | Conference |
Language | English |
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