All right, good to see everybody tonight. We're in session three tonight, and it's really part two of last week. Prolegomena, how we know, and we didn't get finished last week, so we're going to kind of pick up where we left off. But first, I want to begin with some old school, some considerations that we used in years past when we studied systematic theology together. And you'll recognize some of this and give you a chance to interact, and we'll both benefit together. as we do that. First of all, a quote from R.C. Sproul, which is a pretty significant observation. R.C. said, We must have passion indeed hearts on fire for the things of God, but that passion must resist with intensity the anti intellectual spirit of the world. RC said that in 1982. That's 36 years ago now. What do you think he meant by that living in an anti intellectual period of Western history? Say that again. Feelings. Yeah, we seem to want to react to and form conclusions based on feelings instead of thinking. That's one possibility, certainly one nuance of what he had in view. What else? What was R.C. What did he mean by that? What was he driving towards? Did he mean that we live in a culture or society that's against education? Okay, so there's not an opposition in our culture, certainly not an opposition in Western culture to education. In fact, it's in many circles seen as the ultimate solution for the human condition. We touched on that a little bit this morning. So it's not anti-education. And I think really if you consider it, and you could consider what R.C. said in and around that quote, which is hard to do because you can't see what I could see when I pulled that out. But what we really are talking about, what he's really talking about is people have lost the ability to think and to think for themselves. We live, you're seeing it now from the talking heads on the media. You're seeing it in our politics. There's this idea of identity politics, people aligning in groups. And one of the dangers of that is, depending on what group you're in, you're supposed to think the way that group thinks. However you identify, that's supposed to control your conclusions and how you view life. But the point there is, is that you're not thinking for yourself. And as Chuck mentioned, feelings reign supreme. You'll find when crises happen now, even the news media that is first on the scene to interview a person that was engaged in or maybe witnessed the crisis, what you'll typically hear them say is, how did you feel when that was happening? It even affects sports. Running off the team after a great victory, how do you feel right now after having That big win. And that seems like a reasonable question until you consider what would be a much more reasonable question is, what were you thinking when that was happening? What are you thinking about now as you consider that incredible victory? You'll almost never hear that question asked. We have a culture and a society and indeed entire Western civilization that is focused on emotionalism as opposed to intellectualism. How we feel as opposed to how we think. And that's invaded the church. And we think about things like, how do you give a Christian testimony? What's a Christian testimony sound like? And some of you have been in church for most of your life. You've heard lots of Christian testimonies. And see if you can relate to this. I would say the best Christian testimonies are the people who have had the most profound experiences. Does that make sense? You want to hear from somebody, albeit maybe a testimony of Christianity, but you want to hear from somebody's experiences. And when you pile that one on top of another, and you have that kind of discourse that prevails in a Christian church, then you realize what we're really giving testimony to is not the truth about Christianity, but the experience I had, and may or may not even be related to the truth. And so we've kind of turned the whole notion of a testimony on its head. A testimony is the idea of telling someone what happened, as opposed to telling someone what happened to you. Those aren't always the same thing. My former pastor in Houston was fond of saying that in the Christian church, we need to stop telling people what Jesus did for us. and start telling people what Jesus did 2,000 years ago on a cross outside of Jerusalem in order to forgive sinners of their sin. Do you hear the difference? One is a testimony of an experience, and your experience may not be like everyone else's experience. In fact, it quite likely won't be. But what Jesus Christ did, the facts, that is the same for everybody, and therefore opens up the benefits to everybody. But we've seemingly lost that. So anti-intellectualism in the culture, anti-intellectualism in the church. It seems to prevail. Now, Roger Olson some years ago published kind of a summary of basically six arenas in which we can consider and talk about theology. And he had six of them, and I've copied those except I changed the first one. uh... because if you were part of those past theology studies the first way we can do theology or think about the things of god he called tabloid theology and i realize when i was reviewing that that i'm looking at a pretty young group who probably doesn't know what a tabloid is i mean that's kind of old school way so i changed that i took some liberty and so one way we can do theology is facebook theology facebook theology number two folk Theology, and I put theology twice just in case you missed the point. Lay theology, these are Olson's categories, ministerial theology, professional theology, and then you have academic theology. And our purpose is not really to go through each of those, though I want to talk about the first two, but I want you to understand that the purpose of this course is essentially to take you out of those two categories and move you into either 3, 4, 5, or 6, and ideally 3 or 4. If you stayed with this course and graduated, so to speak, at the end, I would hope you would no longer practice Facebook theology or be bound by folk theology, but would advance into a much more careful and reasonable theology, starting with a layperson's theology. So that's our goal. Our goal is to get you out of those first two areas and you might be interested to know what they are. So here's a definition of a Facebook theologian. That's one who constructs his or her theology based upon naive hearsay information that has no basis in fact and very little if any evidence to be believed. Many times people are Facebook theologians because of the theology's appearance of originality. As well, it can be cutting edge in many people's minds. So that's what it means to do Facebook theology. So what are some examples of Facebook theology? And I mentioned this this morning. It's things like the Jesus tortilla. which I brought a picture of today, so in case you thought I was just making that up. In October of 1977, Maria Rubio was rolling up a burrito for her husband Eduardo's breakfast when she suddenly noticed a thumb-sized configuration of skillet burns on the tortilla that resembled, in her mind at least, the face of Jesus. Needless to say, Eduardo went hungry. I'm reading directly from the news article. Eduardo went hungry that meal, as Maria told family and neighbors of the miraculous event. It all happened in a small town of Lake Arthur, New Mexico, 40 minutes south of Roswell, New Mexico. Okay, you're making a connection there, right? But since then, literally thousands have had similarly miraculous appearance of Jesus in their tortillas. I think I've got some additional pictures of tortillas. I think I must have covered them up, so sorry. I had at least eight. I think I covered it with that big slide. But you get the idea? Or there's also this kind of a thing. How about Jesus in the clouds? Right? You've probably seen some of this on Facebook. Well, this one is particularly significant. Any picture can be faked. But what's made this picture sort of stand the test of time is it was taken with a Polaroid many, many years ago. You couldn't really mess around with a Polaroid picture. It's not a paint shop picture. It's also special because of its age. It has sort of stood the test of time. But what made it most special at the time was it wasn't just an average Joe that saw Jesus in the clouds. This was a missionary, right? See, feel the weight of that? This was a missionary who saw that. But my wife and I, some years ago, we got this picture sent to us. It wasn't on Facebook. They just sent it to our phones because my wife's grandfather had died and several of her family apparently on the way to respond to offer comfort. Well, they saw Jesus in the clouds on the way. Can you see him there? And they were powerfully and spiritually, emotionally impacted by Jesus in the clouds on the way to visit the family after the death of their grandfather. This is Facebook theology. This is shaping or forming some opinion about God or the things of God, but it's not really bound or ground in any facts. And almost inseparable from that is the idea of a folk theologian. In fact, these two kind of go together. That's one who uncritically and unreflectively constructs his or her theology according to traditions or religious folklore. The folk theologian is often very dogmatic about his or her beliefs for one simple reason. They've been taught that all their life. So this isn't shaping an understanding of God or the things of God by some contemporary social media, but this is what you're raised in. These are the things that you're taught in your Christian tradition or your family traditions, or we could go on and on from there. Now, understand this. A lot of folk theology can be accurate. You can be right about what grandpa told you about Jesus, but you don't know why you're right. You only know what grandpa told you and it just happens to be right. So, folk theology isn't all bad. The trouble is that the source is bad and that your, therefore, ability to defend it is extremely compromised because you do not know why you believe whatever the thing is you say you believe. So, some examples of folk theology. Who can give me one? Because I got a list, but I'd rather you make your own list. Not that hard. How about what you believe about heaven? Were any of you taught that heaven was a place filled with clouds upon which we sat and played harps? Some of you were taught that. Some of you, maybe tonight, maybe learning for the first time, that's not heaven. That's not a factual perspective of heaven according to the only thing we know really about heaven, which is what God tells us about heaven. So now maybe you can think of an example. When people die, they become angels. There's no truth to that. You'll even see it. I saw it some years ago. We had a dear friend pass away, and one of their family members went to one of the local churches that has one of those signs out front. By the way, signs out front of churches, that's really risky. The kind that you can change, you know? But in reference to her, it said, Heaven gained another angel today, and the idea being that when we die, we become angels. Stick around for a few months and you'll learn we do not become angels when we die. No human being becomes an angel. That's a good example. How about this one? How about ghosts? Are ghosts real? And if so, what is a ghost? And why is it so pervasive that people have even a concept when I say ghost, you know what that means. Why is that? Where does that come from? We don't have any example in the Bible of individuals who have died and whose spirits linger around. In fact, the Bible says completely the opposite of that. We do have one tricky text in the Bible about Saul, but that's for another discussion. But generally speaking, and even that one can be rightly understood, there's no teaching in the Bible about ghosts. You already mentioned angels, but what about angels' wings? Do angels have wings? Does the angel in the picture in your mind have wings? What else does that angel have? Wings and a halo. Where do we get these ideas? Folk theology. We don't get these ideas from scripture. You won't find in the Bible anywhere that an angel is identified as having wings. Now you will have seraphim and cherubim, and some would say comfortably those are created beings as angels, but those texts that mention those, the one having six wings, the other having four wings, those texts are clearly Texts filled with imagery and not to be taken literally. We do have literal examples of the Bible, in the Bible, of angels. And they are spirit beings without form that have to take on a form or a shape. And most often, what do they look like? They look like human beings. They don't look like bright, shining spirits with wings and a halo. Somebody mentioned this this morning, Nathan, this idea of good works salvation or all people are good at heart. These kind of ideas are just pervasive. Where do they come from? Folk theology. You were taught that in your tradition or by your family or increasingly in the church. When you go to heaven, what's the first thing you see? St. Peter at the gate, Peter's gate. There's no such thing as Peter's gate. And there are gates, but there's absolutely no indication that Peter is there waiting for you to check you in based on what? Based on the fact that you're basically a good person and your works will get you in. That's all folk theology. How about the devil and his pitchfork? We've all got pictures in our minds of the devil, whether it's from Looney Tunes or wherever, right? But that's the idea we get. Is that the idea the Bible gives us of the devil? No, he also is a fallen, created angel. He's a spiritual being. And when he does appear, the Bible simply says you would see him as an angel of light. In other words, he would look like any other angel because his intention is not to frighten you. His intention is to attract you and then deceive you. But yet, it's really hard to shake these images because we were taught these things, and that's folk theology. God helps those who help themselves. That was right out of Nathan's notes this morning. Where do we get that idea? Folk theology. He showed us in just six minutes, maybe max. He didn't get that out of the Bible. How about people who commit suicide automatically go to hell? Ever heard that one before? Folk theology. There's no truth in that. How about demon possession? we know from the bible demon possession is real but i want you to think about the world around you if you could conceive of a person who you might say was clearly demon-possessed who might that person be charles manson comes to mind demon-possessed individual fifth-grader fifth-graders in mike's class Not exactly the example I was looking for. How about Hitler? Who did you say, Judas? Oh yeah, the Jones massacre, Jonestown massacre. Okay, you think about these individuals and we identify them comfortably perhaps or consider them as being demon possessed. So think about the characters or the qualities of those individuals. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Manson, Jones. We think of them as demon-possessed because of the evil acts they committed, right? They were cunning, they were devious, they sought to control and destroy hundreds, maybe even tens of thousands of people. And so we get the idea that anytime we see something evil, certain level of evil, then that's an indication of a demon-possessed individual, a power-hungry, Right? Orchestrating to lead or oppose or annihilate entire groups of people. But when we open our Bible and we see recorded many, many accounts of demon-possessed people, they were never trying to take over the world. They were never trying to influence mass amounts of people or create destructive, destroy other individuals. What are they doing? What are they trying to destroy? Themselves. They're trying to destroy themselves because it seems that a human being in our dichotomy of body and soul, what it means to be a human is unable to tolerate a demon possessing us, and it drives us mad. It would drive you out of your wits, and it wouldn't drive you to devious, orchestrated cunning to control people and ultimately annihilate them. So even our ideas of real things like demon possession get twisted when we equate that with mass evil. And that's not a fair comparison. It's not how we would understand that. So a man without the devil is capable of great evil. Oh yeah. But see it's a lot easier to say it's not his fault, it's the demon's fault. But that's folk theology again, and it's not really ground in biblical truth. So just some things to get us thinking before we get back to the beginning. How is it we're supposed to think? We're talking about prolegomena, things that come before, before we can do theology. And so that we don't get trapped in folk theology or Facebook theology, we want to learn how to think. We want to learn how to know things. And prolegomena is just a combination of two Greek words, pro- before and lego- I speak. So before I speak about God, I need to have some understanding of how we arrive at truth. And we've already done a little bit of work. We did a little bit of work last week. We talked first of all about the pre- conditions, what you have to have before you can approach considering who God is. You first of all have to have the rational precondition, which is logic. secondly have to have the epistemological precondition what is truth and how do we know it and thirdly which we haven't gotten to which is our subject tonight the hermeneutical precondition you gotta know how to interpret that thing that you now have said exist which is true so you have to have some understanding of those three things or you can't really approach and consider something as incredibly uh... incomprehensible as the very nature of god himself and how he works in and among us as human beings. Now we saw this already last week. When we talk about logic, here was our definition. Logic is an inescapable tool that even those who deny it cannot avoid using it, for it's built into the very fabric of the rational universe. So we talked about that. We don't have time to review it tonight, but that's logic. Then we talked about truth. And this is how we arrived, or this is where we arrived. The nature of truth is crucial to the Christian faith. Not only does Christianity claim there is absolute truth, meaning truth that's true for everyone, everywhere, always, But Christianity also insists that truth is that which corresponds to the way things really are. Christian truth claims actually correspond to the state of affairs about which they claim to inform us. And again, that was last week. Can't review it, but it boils down to really this. True statements are those which correspond to objective reality. False statements are those which do not correspond to objective reality. So we've simply said that we can reason. And we must reason. We have said there is truth, and we've suggested that it can be known, though we'll talk more about that tonight. But given that, how do we interpret truth? So we have to talk about this precondition, which we are calling the hermeneutical precondition. Hermeneutics just is the doctrine or the principle or the theory of interpretation. How do we interpret whatever it is that we see as truth? So follow this, logic and truth are bound up without contradiction in the very nature of God himself. Men and women, man in his image, that's all of us, have the capacity to reason, logic, and to come to truth. That is a part of the human condition. But the question is pressed on us, can a finite being us, man, meaningfully express the nature of an infinite God or the infinite God of Christianity. In other words, and this is how some theologians put it, can we actually have, finite human beings, can we have God talk? Are we even able to comprehend an infinite being adequately enough to communicate about it? To use language and understanding to share that, to express that. That's our question. Can we do God-talk? And there are three prevailing answers to that. And they don't all agree. In fact, they necessarily disagree. So the question is, can we do God-talk? And the history of philosophy and reason has arrived at three considerations, three different answers. Number one, They would say to speak or to think about God is an equivocal. In other words, it's not possible. Whatever we might say about God would be totally different from the way God actually is because they would say He's incomprehensible. So that is the position that says concerning, can we speak about God? They would say it's not possible. It's equivocal. In other words, it's completely different. Anything we would say would be different because He can't be known. By the way, deists would fall into this category. That's the idea, those people who believe in a God, but that He is unknowable. And so to communicate about Him would be a waste of time because we cannot understand Him. That's the idea of God talk being equivocal. There's another view and that is that God talk can actually be univocal. Univocal meaning that we are actually able to say the same thing as God actually is. that He is so knowable by us that we can adequately, sufficiently, even completely communicate one for one, this is what God is. This is how God is. The problem with that is if that is true, then that's really saying that I have in my finiteness the ability to fully comprehend and communicate the infinite. In other words, that would deify me. That's the argument against having a univocal perspective, God-speak about God. If He can be that clearly understood by a finite being, then either He's finite Himself, and we would say He isn't, well then we are taking on an aspect of the infinite whenever we speak about God. However, there's a third option. And that is that when we use God-speak, it's analogous. In other words, what we say about God is similar to the way God actually is. It's not exactly the way God is, and it's not completely different than the way God is. The only way we can communicate about God is through this means, analogous. Does that make sense to you? I can tell you what God is like. but i cannot completely and accurately tell you what he is and i and i won't accept the fact that i can tell you anything about it so what i'm bound up in we would argue is the analogous perspective concerning god talk here's how that would sound the only viable alternative to avoid self-defeating skepticism on the one hand can't know anything about god and self-deifying dogmatism on the other hand i know everything about god is to demonstrate that legitimate God talk is analogous to the way God actually is. That is to say, language about God is neither equivocal, totally different than Him, nor univocal, totally the same as Him, but is similar. It is analogous to the way God truly exists. So, with that understanding, that the only way we can do God speak is in the realm of the analogous then we begin to approach how then do we understand God at all and when we enter into that realm how can I know anything about God what I'm looking for is not how can I know him exactly as he is and I'm certainly not entering in that realm where I can know something about God and say I can't what I'm doing is I'm entering into the realm where I can have some understanding about God and understand that I can learn what he is like I can get an analogous understanding So what are those realms that we enter into where the infinite God is able to communicate to us, even through analogy, what He is like? In other words, how does an infinite God, listen, reveal Himself to finite beings? And of course that begs the question, is that even possible? And what we would say is that biblical doctrine, what we're studying, affirms that God has two great revelations. Special revelation, which is the Bible, and general revelation, which is nature. Both of those ways, God seeks to take the infinite being and reveal himself to finite beings. But when you enter into either of those realms, you need to understand the best you can do is get an analogy of God. So whether we enter into the Bible, we can only learn there what God is like. or we observe nature, I can only see there some of what God is like. But I can't reach full disclosure, and I don't accept the fact that I can't know anything. All right? That's what we're suggesting. Why? Because God is beyond our thoughts, and He is beyond our concepts. The Apostle Paul writes in Scripture, Oh, the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments. How inscrutable His ways. The Apostle Paul is saying as a foundational understanding of this God that He is unknowable. Yet, he is saying it, the Apostle Paul, in the midst of a revelation of God to finite beings in which we can, with right interpretation, know what God is like. But yet we can't know Him fully. Why? Because He's infinite and we're finite. That's the idea. But Deuteronomy 29 says this. There are those things that we can't know. The secret things belong to the Lord our God. But look at this. The things revealed belong to us. Not just to us, but to our sons forever. So that we can observe all the words of this revelation and that's the law that's That's the Bible. So there, not to argue against Paul, but to clarify, Paul would say when you think of the infinite, it's incomprehensible, yet God has revealed himself to us, not all that he is, those are the secret things which we cannot know, but we can, look what it says, we can know what he's revealed to us. We can come to apprehend that. It belongs to us. He has given that to us. We can, I would just simply say, know what He has revealed. We can know that. That's what we believe. Yet at the same time, watch this, an adequate expression of God in human language will always be limited. At best, it can only be analogous. And no term taken from human experience, and all of the Bible is taken from human experience, can do any more than tell us what God is like. It's bound up in the finiteness of human language. None can express comprehensively what God really is. So if you're following with me, right? We still got a little thinking man up there. You got to think about this. It's not that we cannot know, but we can only know what He has revealed to us. And as an infinite being, His revelation to us must be finite or we wouldn't know anything. And that means that we can't know exactly what he's like, and we can't say we can't know anything, but what we can know, we can't know exactly what he is, but what we can know is what he's like. And he's used, through his revelation, analogous God speak. That's how we know anything about him. Now, in general revelation, nature itself. How do we relate or understand or know about God? Now, this is pretty philosophical stuff here. I don't think this stuff up, but I can think through it a little bit, and we're just gonna follow it and not really dwell on it. All created beings have actuality because they actually exist. And, watch, they have potentiality because they have the potential to not exist. That's a philosophical statement about being. I am actually here. I know that because I exist. That's my actuality. But I also have potentiality, and that doesn't mean how successful I can be. It means I have the potential to not be here. You follow that? So a created being has both actuality and potentiality. But God is pure actuality. He has no potentiality because he cannot cease to exist. So in that way, we are like Him and not like Him. There has to be a difference between the Creator and its creation, because the creation has both actuality and potentiality. The Creator has only actuality. Do you follow that? Maybe not sure what point it makes, but you're following it. That's my point, is that you can follow the reasoning behind it. Created beings have limitations. God does not have limitations. Yet it can be said that the creation is an expression of the actuality of God because it came from Him. So what we are actually like is similar in some sense to our Creator's actuality. That's the point. We can therefore speak of God as He has revealed Himself in creation with one big proviso. He is not like His creation in its potentialities. He is only like His creation in its actuality. Because it comes from Him. Now we are peculiar among His created beings because we bear His image. But all of nature expresses something about God. And the Bible teaches us that. Why? Philosophically? Because it actually is. And because it came from Him who is pure actuality. So it must in some ways be like Him. That's what we're saying. Strictly from a philosophical perspective. If we wanted to say that in the Bible, we would say it like this. God's invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and His divine nature, have been clearly perceived Ever since the creation of the world, you can see that in the things that have been made. That's the same thing stated biblically, as we previously stated philosophically. You can see God in creation because it actually is. And He actually is. But it's not exactly like Him because everything you see in creation has potentiality. It can and will one day cease to exist. But He will never cease to exist. You following me? Everybody with me? Okay. Since the general revelation and special revelation are the bases for all we can know about God, it's essential that we understand them correctly. That means we want to seek to understand it objectively because that's what we believe is the right way to perceive what we can know. If we cannot understand them objectively or we do not understand them objectively, then we cannot ever say our understanding of God is either logical or truthful. If we cannot apply objectivity to our interpretation of the revelation of God, then we can never say anything certain about God. We could never know anything really about God. And whatever we said about Him wouldn't be logical and it wouldn't be truthful because they demand objectivity. So we're entering into a discussion now, how do we interpret this revelation that God has given us? And the answer is we need an objective hermeneutic. How do we as finite beings objectively interpret either God's special revelation or God's general revelation? Well, we're talking about general revelation. We're talking about an objective understanding of God through creation. And we enter into the realm of philosophy again. Point number one, we can arrive at this objective truth. There is the existence of an absolute mind, which we would call God. So how can I objectively know that such an absolute exists? Here's the logical, reasonable, objective pursuit of the truth of that statement. Number one, I know that at least one finite mind exists. Me. I exist. And, I could say it this way, I think, therefore I am. That's profound. Right? That's been around since philosophy. I think, therefore I am. It's another way of saying there is at least one finite mind that exists. And I know I'm finite. How? Because I'm limited in my thought. I have doubts about things, and I discover new things. That exposes my finiteness. If I wasn't finite, I could never doubt, and I could never learn anything new. So I know I exist because I think, and my thoughts are limited. But I also know any finite thing demands a cause. Something had to cause me because I'm finite. Any finite thing demands a cause I can't cause myself because of my finiteness. So there must be an infinite mind. or perhaps you've heard it this way, there must be an uncaused cause that caused my finite mind. It's through that logical sequence of thought that I arrive at the objective truth of my premise. There must exist an absolute mind. There must be an uncreated creator. There has to be an infinite mind because I am and I am finite. We're not here to test all of that. We're just here to think. And this is how we think toward an objective hermeneutic. Now, secondly, I have to consider the absolute nature of meaning. You see, if there is an absolute infinite mind, then there has to be absolute meaning. And that absolute meaning has to come from the absolute infinite mind. It cannot come from my finite mind. Whatever an infinite mind means by something is what it means objectively, infinitely, and absolutely. I first objectively arrive at the conclusion that there has to be an infinite mind, and now I arrive at the conclusion that that infinite mind is the nature of absolute meaning. And it has to be that way. So whatever that infinite mind says about a thing is the truth about that thing. Absolutely, infinitely, always. Number three. We have to make a brief analogy of infinite meaning and finite understanding. So just follow this. The infinite mind has infinite knowledge. We would call that omniscience. He knows everything. But also because he's the uncreated creator, we also would understand that the infinite mind has all power. He is also omnipotent. That means that he has the power to do whatever can be done. Logic and reason, not theology, logic and reason would say he does not have the power to do what cannot be done. He's infinite in power and he can do whatever can be done. Now why that's important is because the infinite mind cannot act contrary to reason. He cannot act in a contradictory way. It's not conceivable and you can think on just that point for a week or two. It is, however, not contradictory for an infinite mind to convey meaning to a finite mind. There's no contradiction in that. He can choose to do that, and he has the power to do that, but he cannot, in the doing of that, ignore reason. He cannot do it and disregard the rules of logic. He cannot do it through contradiction, because he would not, in fact, be revealing any truth, and he would cease to be the infinite understanding or the infinite mind. So we can know if He tells us. We can know if He reveals it to us. This infinite mind. Now, we must admit this. An infinite mind knows things in a much higher way than finite minds do. But this has to be true. Watch this. What He reveals is the same as what He knows. Which is another way of saying the thing signified is the same as the thing. If he says I'm like that, you can believe it and know it's true because he said it and he cannot contradict himself. And we can know whatever he chooses to reveal. That's all we're saying, at least to this point. Number four. Concerning an objective understanding of natural revelation. It is not impossible for an infinite mind to communicate with finite minds because there is common ground between them. It's the analogous connection. Because we are His creation, we are in some sense, what? Say it. Like Him. In some sense, like Him. And therefore, it is possible for Him to communicate to us in an analogous way, at least. Even though we're finite and He is infinite. Which simply leads to this conclusion, it is possible to know. It is possible for a finite mind to know. Whether one actually knows depends on meeting the necessary conditions for understanding the objective meaning. It is possible to know. It is possible to know. So why don't we all know? Because we don't use the rules of interpretation. We do not apply the necessary means by which a finite mind can know what has been revealed to them by an infinite being. So the rules of hermeneutics are absolutely essential. So how do we objectively understand special revelation? Now understand, we'll do a whole series of sessions on this. concerning the Bible and how we interpret it when we do bibliology and hermeneutics. This is just to get us through an introduction to how we think about these things. So how do you objectively understand God's special revelation, Scripture? You're finite. He's infinite. He has revealed some things to us, and we can know them. He has the power to do that, to communicate to us, although we're finite. And the best we can arrive at is an analogous understanding of who He is, but whatever we arrive at, we can know it's true because He is the one who revealed it. Number one, look for the author's meaning, not the reader's meaning. And by the way, this is true if you're reading Edgar Allan Poe, too. Good luck figuring out what he meant. But the point is, this is how we approach language and understanding of any revelation. But we're talking about Scripture, and this is how He chose to communicate to us. Understand the objective meaning lies in the author's intent, not in the reader's opinion. Said another way, stop asking when you go to the Bible, what does it mean to me? That's the wrong question. The right question is what did he mean? What did the author mean? That's the right question. Follow me? Number two, we're trying to arrive at objective truth or interpretation of God's special revelation. Number two, look for the author's meaning, the what, not the author's purpose, the why. Now this is hugely significant for a room of mostly Christians who study their Bible and have learned long ago to stop asking what it means to me and start asking what it means. But then we stub our toe on this one. Look again at what it says. Look for the author's meaning, the what, not the author's purpose, the why. Let me give you an example that illustrates that. If I say to you, come over to my house tonight, Michael, can you understand that? And you know what it means. And you know what the expectation is. But you don't know why I want you to come over to my house. I could want you to come over to my house to break the bad news to you that your dog died. Do you have a dog? See, he died. Or I could want you to come over my house to tell you I've got great news, you won a million dollars. Now, knowing why I want him to come over my house might affect his deportment, his attitude, his motivation, but it has absolutely no effect on what the statement meant, does it? It does not change what it meant. It's easy to understand, and it's easy to see what the expectation is. Does that make sense? Very, very simple. In the one setting, the invitation was to a negative. In the other setting, the invitation was to a positive. But that's irrelevant to what the statement meant. So stop asking why when you open your Bible. Just consider what. Because that's the meaning of it. And that's what we're talking about is how do we objectively understand it. You won't find the answer in the whys. Now let's use a biblical example. That was my secular example. I killed his dog. Here's a biblical example. Exodus says in chapter 23 verse 19, speaking of the festival of the end gathering of the first fruits, you shall bring the choice first fruits of your soil into the house of the Lord your God. And then God says, the infinite being speaking to finite mind says this, you are not to boil a young goat in the milk of its mother. What in the world does that mean? Did you hear what I said? What in the world does that mean? That's a stupid question. It's obvious what it means. No, what I meant when I said what does that mean is why would He have us do that? That's what I meant. And see, you buy into it, too, because that's just how we think. We confuse what does that mean with why would He say that? But it's not hard to see what He means. It's pretty plain. Don't boil a young goat in the milk of its mother. And guess what? We have no idea why not. Let me give you the five most common interpretations by Bible scholars as to why God said that. Number one, it would profane the feast of the ingathering. It would be a profane thing. Number two, If you boil a young goat in the milk of its mother and eat it, it will cause indigestion, and God doesn't want you to have indigestion. Number three, it's cruel to the goat to cook it in its mother's milk. I guess it's not cruel if you cook it in water. I don't know. Number four, it was a form of idolatry. Number five, it's a violation of the well-established in nature parent-child relationship. But let me tell you, we do not know why God said that. But that does not mean we do not know what that means. We know exactly what that means. And the Israelites knew exactly what God meant, and they knew that they were not to do that. So do you understand? The purpose of what God says has no connection to the meaning of what God says. Our task to objectively understand God's divine special revelation to us is to find out what it means. It's not to find out why He said it. You with me? Alright, so that's number two. Stop looking for the why. Look for the what. Here's the next one. Look for meaning in the text, not beyond the text. This is what we mean by that. The meaning's not found beyond the text, somewhere in God's mind. It's not found beneath the text, in the mystic's mind. It's not found behind the text, in the author's unexpressed intentions. It's found in the text. It's found in what the author actually said. That's how we find out what a text means. The actual meaning, do you see what it says? The actual meaning is in the text, in God's special revelation. In other words, what is signified is found in the signs that signify it. Find out what he said, and you'll learn something about what he's like. And you do not have to know why he said it. And you don't have to imagine that there's something else out there besides what he said. We've got to read between the lines. All that stuff is really dangerous, and you will never arrive at an object of understanding. Number four, look for meaning in affirmation, not in implication. Ask what the text affirms or denies, not what it implies. A text can only have one meaning, but it can have multiple implications. It can have multiple applications, but it can only have one meaning. And if you try to find the meaning in its implications, guess what? You got a dozen meanings. You got two dozen meanings. Because the scripture's implications are vast. But it still only means one thing. And that's the thing that we want to know. What does the text mean? You got it? Now that's just a really basic hermeneutic of how we understand divine revelation. Let's talk for just a minute about general revelation before we finish up. We've already learned these three things. As we observe nature and try to comprehend it, we're always bound by these three things. We studied these already. The law of non-contradiction, the law of identity, and the law of excluded middle. When I look at nature, I have to look at it and consider it reasonably. An A cannot equal non-A. If I think it can, I'll be really confused when I start to examine and try to reach decisions about the revelation of God in nature. So I'm bound by these three, and we talked about those and I won't go through them again. But let's add to them. The principle of causality. When I'm observing God's revelation in nature, which would include in human beings, I need to embrace the principle of causality. Here it is just summed up. Everything that could not be but yet is, it could not be because it could not cause itself, but yet it is. Everything that could not be but yet is needs a cause. And Richard Taylor said it this way. If all would agree that a small glass ball found in the woods needs a cause, and all would, then making a bigger should say ball does not eliminate the need for a cause even if someone makes it as big as the whole universe you follow the principle something had to cause it when we look at nature we have to put blinders on our reason and we cannot violate any of those previously laid down rules of logic and we cannot violate this rule It had to have a cause. And so as I consider nature, I can never separate from the principle of causality. Secondly, or fifthly, the principle of consistency. This is simply Newton's third law. That's all we mean by this. Anybody know what Newton's third law is? Go ahead. For every action, there is an opposite and equal what? reaction. Things act consistently. Now, that's Newton's observation of the natural world. And we've learned we can't violate that and reach any understanding about the natural world. We're saying the same thing. Logic leads us to an objective interpretation of nature. All we have to see is the action. And by this principle we know there was a reaction. Or, as is often the case in observing nature, we arrive too late and all we see is the reaction. But that means we can arrive at some understanding of the what? Action. That's all we're saying about God's revelation and how we understand it. So it's the principle of consistency. We cannot violate the principle of uniformity when we observe God's revelation to finite beings in nature. For instance, we can all know that we shouldn't do harm to another human being. We can know that. In fact, that's a moral consideration and there are other principles involved. We know that we shouldn't do harm to another human being because we don't want what? Harm done to us. See the logic in that? Okay, so watch, we can know that we shouldn't do harm to another person, but it takes a different kind of logic to know that a gun can do harm to another person. What kind of logic does that take? The principle of uniformity, which is just another way of saying what experience has taught us. I know I shouldn't harm you. But I cannot know this gun will harm you except that I know by experience or other data inputs that guns kill people. And they do what? They do that uniformly. And so if I have a gun, it can do you harm. I'm just, I'm practicing the principle of uniformity. Things are the way they are uniformly. Cause and effect, predictability. I'm arriving at an understanding if I've never ever shot a person, right? I don't have to have personal experience of that to know that that gun can kill that individual. By the way, this is how we arrive at the understanding of whether or not a person had intent when they do harm to someone else. They cannot have intent if they did not know that the action would cause harm. And we exercise that kind of judgment in our courts all the time. They can be guilty of a crime, but not of intentionally doing the thing. They can only intentionally do it if they knew that it was, based on the principle of uniformity, going to cause the problem or going to create the harm. And we exercise that kind of judgment in our courts. We're just saying when we observe nature, we have to follow the principle of uniformity. Next, the principle of teleology. That's our biggest word in the list, maybe. I'm not sure. No, it's the strangest word, though. This simply says this. Every rational being acts, watch, acts for an end. We all do what we do with a purpose. And we do not have the ability as finite human beings to act contrary to our desires. That's another study. But we always do what we do for an end. And listen, if intelligent beings act for a purpose. When we observe things in nature happening and they appear to happen for a purpose. Even though we may not know what the purpose is, something's happening right now in nature dramatically all around us. The trees are changing. We can observe that and we know some of us know the purpose in that. We understand that that created thing is happening. What is happening is happening for a purpose. And we're thinking beings. And everything that we do, we would say, happens for a purpose. And again, if you could act without any purpose in mind, you couldn't be responsible for that act. And we do have those times when we might say we did something unintentionally in that sense. But the point is, is that if things have a purpose, and it's observable, then there has to be an intelligent being that created or assigned the principle of purpose. Purpose had to come from somewhere. All right. Is your head hurting? We're out of time. But here's our summary very quickly. God, the infinite mind, the uncaused cause, has two great revelations to finite beings, general and special, natural or supernatural, we would call Scripture. Both are objective and both are clear. Both are capable of great distortion by depraved human beings. We can get it wrong. There are proper and improper ways to interpret each revelation, natural or special. Concerning nature, general revelation, these include the basic rules of logic as well as the principles of causality, consistency, uniformity, and teleology. If finite beings use those properly, we can reach objective understanding about nature. And we live in a blessed era of scientific understanding, and it all came that way. That's how it came. It's not a principally Christian thing, but we understand it as Christians, perhaps in a way others don't. For special revelation, the Bible. These include looking for the author's meaning in the text and what it affirms. And if you use it properly, the finite mind can reach an object of understanding of what we call divine revelation, God's word to us. Neither the general revelation nor the special revelation is hard to understand, but it's really hard to practice a faithful principle of hermeneutic. It's really hard to consistently apply mind and reason and logic and basic principles, and that's why we make so many mistakes. The revelation of God is never distorted. It's our understanding that's distorted. And that comes from one reason only, our unwillingness to obey the truth that it reveals. And I don't know that from logic. I know that from God's special revelation to us, where he said, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them. Because God has shown it to them. The only reason we can't understand it is because we will not obey what we do understand. That's what God says about what he said to us. Got it? You're dismissed.