This morning we begin with Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 5, Section 2. You should have it there printed in your bulletin. Although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly, yet by the same providence He ordereth them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily freely or contingently this morning I wanted to pause and consider just one doctrine and that doctrine is that God is the first cause if you know something about the history of theology you know that this is loaded language which evokes a long history of theology and if I could open up the pastoral study for you for just a moment I really struggled whether to preach this or not because here we have to do with a good bit of what we call natural theology not so much the book of scripture as the book of nature but as I looked at the word of God and tried to get an answer from Jesus Christ as to whether or not it was appropriate at this time to pause over this bit of theology I do believe that I got my answer Turn in your Bibles to 1 Peter chapter 3. I asked myself, why include a sermon on natural theology or why include a sermon on apologetics? And the first answer that came to me as I reviewed my own studies in scripture was that it's a Christian duty. And being a Christian duty, it's a proper subject of preaching here a very famous text 1st Peter chapter 3 verse 15 halfway through and be ready always to give an answer apologion in Greek where we get the word apology or apologetics always be ready to give an answer to every man that asked if you are reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and with fear so part of the business of preaching is equipping for this duty so that you'll be prepared to give an answer, a reason for the hope that is in you but it goes even a little bit further than that because this bit of natural theology is necessary for the understanding of certain texts of scripture now we don't normally devote whole sermons to this but this is something that we do all the time in the understanding of scripture we open the book of nature to make it plain what the scripture means just a couple of examples in Isaiah it said that Jehovah teaches the laboring farmer how to bring fruit out of the earth how to till the ground and all of these things well when you read that you immediately have recourse to your experience you see that immediately A preacher might develop for just a few minutes, you know, this is what this kind of husbandry looks like, and Isaiah saying that the Lord actually gave the man the wisdom to do that, and to bring it forth from the earth. So we do this sort of thing all the time. Another example, have you ever found it helpful in preaching when a minister opens to you the history of some text? say for example as we did last week in understanding where Ezra fits into history and what's going on with Cyrus and the Persian kingdom those things are frequently very helpful well there once again we are opening the book of nature if you will the book of secular history to get further insight into what the scripture is saying to us what's unusual about this sermon is we don't normally do it so much but here it seems advisable to do this There is a biblical basis or ground for natural theology. The Puritans always used to say that God gave us two books, not just the one. And so they called it the book of nature and the book of revelation. God revealing himself in the things that he has made, the book of nature, and then the book of scripture, God revealing himself in words and in writing. And the Puritans believed that both were proper study for Christians. it is no accident and no mistake that the greatest biblical theologians that the world is yet to produce also produce the greatest scientific community that the world has ever seen these people looked at nature convinced that God has revealed himself in it and so let's go searching through it to see what God is saying to us to understand something of his speech this is the most biblical idea turning your Bibles to Psalm 19 in Psalm 19 we have the doctrine of the two books with striking clarity really Psalm 19 beginning at the first verse the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork so here you have the assertion of the book of nature that God is revealing himself in the things that he has made and so the psalmist goes on Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. So here nature is being portrayed as speaking to man concerning the glory of God, which also speaks of man's duty to listen and to see God's glory in it, to hear those words and to receive them. Verse 4 their line has gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world in them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun which is a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race his going forth is from the end of the heaven and his circuit unto the ends of it and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof now here we have and again unless you understand the The doctrine of the two books, this is almost unintelligible. Now you get an immediate hard shift to praising God for scripture. You see, but it's really nothing other than God has revealed himself in the things that he's made, and he's revealed himself here in this book, and God is being praised and extolled for all of it. So in verse 7 he begins, The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. You also get an intimation here, what is it that is sufficient for the conversion of the soul? You see, nature is declaring the glory of God, but what is it that converts the soul? It's the word, spoken word, God revealing himself in scripture. That is what's useful for converting the soul. Nature is only enough to damn a man's soul, gives him enough light to damn his soul and make him responsible before God. Well, we find the very same thing in Paul, and this is where I want to spend the rest of my time, turning your Bibles to Romans chapter 1. This is the text that we're going to be looking at, and we're going to be considering the natural theology that's necessary for understanding this text. What it is that Paul was presupposing you already know when you come to read his epistle here, and know from nature. Romans 1, beginning in verse 18, also a very famous text. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has showed it unto them. So here, just get what he's saying so far. God has made himself manifest to them. effectually. In other words, they know him because God has shown it to them. And he's always effectual in his work. They do know, but they are said to hold the truth in unrighteousness. It also could be translated suppress or hold down. So God has put this truth in them, and they're trying to shove it down. And then we get some explanation of this verse 20. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even as eternal power and Godhead. So here you really have our second warrant here for natural theology. They're saying that the invisible things of God are understood by the things that have been made. So invisible things being understood by visible things. The uncreated, invisible God being understood by created, visible things. And then we know some, just some general truths about Him, here described as eternal power and Godhead. You see, this is a long way from understanding God as He's revealed in His Word. Nature compared to Scripture doesn't reveal very much. But it does reveal something, eternal power and Godhead, enough so that they are without excuse and then he goes on because that when they knew God so men do know God from nature they glorified him not as God neither were thankful so here's the problem unbelievers will almost never represent the problem in this way but when we deal with unbelievers we must understand it in this way they will try to cast a cloud into the room by saying It's not clear to me that there's a God. I don't understand it. I don't understand all of this sort of thing. God isn't obvious to me. He might be obvious to you, but not to me. OK, they cast a cloud into the room to obscure the real issue. Paul gives us the insight into the unbelieving mind so that we can strike at what's really going on, which is they do know God, so you can blow away the smoke. They just don't want to worship him or have him as God over them. so again verse 21 when they knew God they glorified him not as God neither were thankful but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened professing themselves to be wise they became fools and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man into birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things so They don't want to worship this god, so they invent some of their own. You think about the gods of the Greeks and the Romans, these are gods that could hardly reprove any kinds of sins that the people loved, because they participated in all of the same sins. You end up fashioning a god after your own image, that will approve of you just the way that you are. So it's not that they didn't want to have any other gods, they wanted to have gods like unto themselves that would permit them to continue in their sins. Now with this warrant for natural theology, and you want to keep your Bibles open because we're going to come back from time to time to Romans chapter 1. I want to now back up from this text and consider something of the history of the argument for the existence of God. And I would say, more particularly, this is something of the history of what's known as the cosmological argument for the existence of God, which appears to be the oldest and most common, as I'll unfold it here for you. If you look at your outline there, this first section I called primitive apologetics, this first subdivision. Now by that I mean two things. One, it's primitive in the sense that it's very old. It's something that As we look at secular history writings, we find pagans doing in ancient times, proving the existence of God. But it's also primitive in that it's the argument that children do on their own. And it's very interesting in that way. Now the idea is this, that a first cause, and this brings us back to the confession and why this is such a loaded term, a first cause is a rational necessity. Now, we'll talk about the argument some more. But in brief, it works like this. A cause and effect series or chain, where you have a cause that produces an effect, and that effect becomes a cause which produces another effect. So you've got cause and effect series. Well, those units of cause and effect are numerable. And nothing that is numerable can be innumerable or infinite. So there has to be a first. So they said the idea of a first cause is a rational necessity. And so we need go nowhere else than to Aristotle who said the idea of an unmoved mover was a rational necessity. And here that takes us all the way to the 4th century BC. They were already talking about this and we have clear evidence of it in our histories. That first motion had to have a cause. And so he talked about an unmoved mover that set all things in motion. This is important in another way because remember Paul has said that the knowledge of God in this kind of argumentation is something that all men do. So a new argument for the existence of God can't be what Paul's talking about. That's why I say that a primitive apologetic is really what we're after. Something that all men do. Something that men have always done. And maybe not even just in what we would call believing circles, but among the pagans. The reason they all came to the conclusion that there was a God. And that certainly has been the consensus of the nations. You must lift yourself out of our contemporary context a bit. This atheism that we see around us is a historical aberration. Now people treat it like it's the most common thing in the world and that a belief in God is peculiar, but in the history of the world it's not been so. and likely this atheism will pass out of fashion again and it already is I believe as it has in times past when men have attempted to develop it it doesn't last because ultimately it's irrational and it can't explain anything now as we move on a little bit from pagan apologetics I want to move to Thomas Aquinas You remember Thomas was the great medieval theologian who tried to marry Aristotle to Christian religion. So his connection with Aristotle here is very important. And Thomas' expression of the cosmological argument, as I've already given it to you, kind of became the classic expression. You know, he said that a cause and effect series can be divided up into its individual units, which have numbers, it cannot go back infinitely so there must be a first cause and as Thomas would say and some people call that God okay so that's the way Thomas runs the argument but we're far from finished because medieval men in their briefs were anxious to take on that old Christian apologetic and so we introduce another figure here 500 years after Thomas Aquinas mid 18th century David Hume David Hume was what we call an empiricist. David Hume said you can't know anything for sure except what you experience by the senses. That's empiricism. Now he knew that ultimately this couldn't work out philosophically, so he'd even say, when I put down my philosophical pen, I make the same assumptions about things that I haven't experienced and sensed the way everybody else does. So he had a philosophy that he recognized couldn't be worked out, practically speaking. But here, he's an empiricist. The only thing that you can know for sure is sense perception. Now we're going to come back to the cosmological argument, but understand what he does. If you're watching pool balls on a pool table, you see one ball moving, and you see it strike another one, and the other one starts to move. But you don't see a third thing called causality. you don't have any sense perception of a third thing called causality you only see two balls moving so he said at most you could say that they have a relationship of contiguity that the one event followed the other in other words the pool balls collided and then the other one started moving after that but he said you couldn't make any necessary assertion that one caused the other So you see what Hume is going to go on to do, he's going to attack Thomas Aquinas' argument by saying Thomas assumed too much. He assumed that there was such a thing as a cause and effect series. But such a thing has never been experienced by the sense perception of men. So the argument falls to the ground. It's grounded upon cause. but it's an undefended presupposition I've attacked it and in his mind defeated it so the whole thing falls to the ground here by this time you've had nearly 6,000 years of human history and Hume thinks that he's untied this argument this most ancient argument now we raise the question did Hume really triumph over Aquinas? If I could just add a little note here. I remember sitting in my seminary classroom and learning about the theology of Thomas Aquinas and of course as being Protestants. I remember there was some chuckling in the room over this or that point and the professor stopped everybody for a second. He said this is really easy to chuckle at Thomas being so many years removed and because he's not here in this room. But Thomas Aquinas may very well be the greatest raw intellectual genius that the Christian Church has seen since the Apostle Paul. I mean, as far as just raw genius and ability. They said it wasn't unusual for him to dictate to five or six different secretaries on different subjects at the same time. That's how he was able to produce a hundred pages of literature during every single day during his productive years. So he'd dictate to one on one subject and while he's writing, step to the next. dictate to him, step to the next. This is a man of powerful intellect. David Hume wouldn't want to face him in a debate. This is something like the pygmies attacking the giants here. But at any rate, did Hume overcome Thomas? Was this just a blind spot in Thomas' theology? It's clear that Thomas presupposed it, but the real question is, was he wrong to presuppose it? Was he wrong to presuppose it or assume it? Or, in fact, was David Hume wrong to call the presupposition into question? So, who's right here? Here we come to our next section, which I call the Epistemology, Causality, and Jonathan Edwards. Here we're going to draw another giant onto the stage to enter into our debate. Remember, epistemology is just the science of how we know things. How do we know what we know? So ontology, say for example, is the study of being, coming from the Latin word ontos, study of being. Epistemology is the study of how we know things. So here we need to get at the very foundation of knowledge. What are those first principles of knowledge upon which everything else is built? You might call them the unquestionable, and usually unquestioned assumptions that everybody has to make in order to do any thinking at all. And first of all, we can't be naive here. If you hear somebody say, you know, we want to attack this problem without any presuppositions, there's no such thing and there can't be. The reason being is finite human beings, we cannot run an infinite regress of proof. In other words, there's got to be a ground at some point where we hit the ground and that becomes the foundation for building all of our other proofs. So what we're going to talk about is a small handful of what are called axioms, the first principles of thought that are not proven, but rather they are the ground of all proof. If you attempt to prove an axiom, you have not yet understood what an axiom is. And you're attempting to enter into the infinite regressive proof, you see? These are the first principles. Now although they are not proven the way we normally run logical proofs, they can be validated by very simple process which is a demonstration that they are necessary for every human thought. And that without them there are no human thoughts. You say, well what would those things be? Very simple things that nobody proves but everybody assumes. The first is existence. There is no thinking without existence. You remember Descartes, I think therefore I am. There is a thinking individual existing and an object of knowledge. Both of these things. But existence is not proven. It's necessary. It's a necessary presupposition or ground for every thought that we think. Consciousness is a second. There aren't going to be any proofs without a conscious individual running the proofs. So you see how very basic it is. But you can't prove consciousness. Have you ever sat as a child and just thought, now I know first hand that I'm conscious and that my brain is operating. How do I know everybody else is not a robot? You don't know and you can't prove it. The effects look the same as what comes out of you, and you know what the causes are inside of you, but it's very difficult to prove consciousness. Your own, to anybody else's satisfaction, or anybody else's. You see? So it's taken as a presupposition, because you cannot think without it. It's at the heart of every single proof that you'll run. And then finally, the law of identity. That A is A. A thing is itself. And this is so fundamental that people will tend to miss it. That doesn't sound very profound, but we'll talk about how it's been messed up in recent years in reform circles when we talk about the Vantillian apologetic. But A is A. A thing is itself. And this is very necessary even in the function of words. The word God, for example, is made up of three letters and three sounds, and each one of those has an identity. When you put them all together, they have an identity and form a concept. That's how rudimentary this is. G-O-D, each letter having an identity, three sounds that combine together to form a concept for us. We'll talk about that. I hope that'll become more plain as we go. Some necessary corollaries to these. So here we've laid the axiomatic level, and now we're taking one step up a little bit higher, but these things aren't proven either, but rather they are very closely related to what we've already done. The relationship between the law of non-contradiction and the law of identity is pretty plain. If a thing is itself, then it can't be itself and not itself at the same time and in the same relationship. So it's said to be a corollary because of its close relationship to the law of identity. And it also is presupposed in every word that you speak. Now here, I said identity helps you identify each one of those letters in a word. Law of non-contradiction actually gives them their distinction. That G is G and not something else. It's not G and not G, or it's not G and not G at the same time and in the same relationship. And the G is not an O. See, so identity and distinction necessary for forming up even the most basic human thoughts. Now these things are so basic that children do them right away. This was, having been trained in philosophy, I remember holding my firstborn son and looking at him He could, without very much in the way of understanding, identify me. A is A, and not something else. Law of non-contradiction. You know, I'm able to identify him and distinguish him from others. And a rudimentary understanding of causality. When I cry, they come. You see how sophisticated already that little human mind is in putting these kinds of things together. These are things that are innate in man and things that we do. We don't normally think about them because we do them so automatically. But, and I would say, if I could just add this as a caveat, normally I wouldn't find it necessary to talk about these kinds of things until somebody called them into question. You see, we have to become as sophisticated as those that are accusing to answer all of the different objections. I don't think Thomas was wrong to assume causality, which is where we come next. Causality is also a corollary of identity. It's identity applied to action. If a thing is itself identity, then it acts according to its identity in a given context. You say, wow, that sounds like a lot of babble. OK, consider the chairs that we're sitting on here. The light coming from these fluorescent bulbs acts as a causal factor. Now that chair, because of its identity, absorbs a certain frequency of light and reflects the other frequency of light. So it's absorbing some frequencies and reflecting some others because of its identity. So we say that it causes, as it were, this reflection of green because of what it's doing. But it's acting according to its identity and its given context. It reflecting then becomes another cause that has an effect upon my eye when I look upon it. So it hits those rods and cones, and those rods and cones acting according to their identity transmit that to nerves, and those nerves, each one acting according to their identity, become a cause and effect sequence to translate it to my brain. You see? You see the cause and effect sequence. Now I use that illustration because this is really where this assumption of causality which is necessary for every human thought is really the grounding for the reliability of the senses and what I would call a full reliability but we'll come to that in just one second Jonathan Edwards demonstrated that the law of causality is a necessary component of every human thought in this sense And this is the way it's validated and not proven. He said it's necessary for every thought that you think. Because if effects can arise without a cause, then none of the ideas in your mind can be trusted. Because they all can be effects without any antecedent cause. Your whole life, as you imagined it, might just be an idea in your mind, in effect, with no antecedent cause. There was no life and no experience and no reasoning and nothing before right now. You see, what Edward said is to attack the law of causality is to overthrow all human learning, and all human judgment, and all human reasoning. And here, if you understand this, here as we've talked about human epistemology, there are no other options. First of all, you have to adopt these things in order to attack them, which always becomes clownish. You say, no, you can't really know anything at all. And you begin to defend that and develop it. You just become, the more sophisticated you become, trying to prove that you can't know anything at all, the more clownish you become. You see? To attack the law of identity, if you're going to utter a single word, the argument's over. Because the word has an identity. And it can be distinguished from others by the law of non-contradiction. And you're a conscious and reasoning person that's uttering these words. More causality. You see that? And you're intending them to have an effect upon my mind. You see, there's no alternative philosophy to this. The only alternative really would be to speak no words, expound no theories or ideas, and become a stone. But these are the necessary presuppositions for all human thought. And, interestingly enough, the law of causality, as I explained, is behind sense perception, which is where we get all the particular data for the body of knowledge. If the mind is using these axioms to interpret information, the information's got to come from someplace, and it comes from outside of us. Our sense is acting upon the universe that God has created around us. So for example, and this is very interesting, the better philosophers didn't argue for a basic reliability of the senses, but for a full reliability. And say, well, on what grounds? For example, one of the famous problems is, let's say I have an oar, and I'm going to paddle my boat in the water, and I stick it into the water, and now it appears bent. And then you pull it out, and it's straight. And you put it back in and it looks bent. And so that led a lot of people to say, my senses can deceive me. But you see, the senses haven't deceived you at all. You drew a false conclusion from your sense data. The oar is bent. But the senses didn't deceive you at all. They told you accurately that water is reflected, or that light is reflected at different speeds in air and in water. You see that? So it told you exactly what's happening. Because your eyes, of course, aren't telling you directly about the aura, they're telling you about the light that's reflecting off of it. But the senses, acting in a cause and effect sequence, can't deceive you. You see, they can only act according to their identity in a given context. So at any rate, here we have a human epistemology with no other alternatives and this is very important because what I'm asserting here is that human epistemology of the human mind acting upon God's creation always derives this conclusion that there is a God. And that's what Paul is saying. There's no alternatives, there's no other epistemology, only this one and acting upon the created world always derives this conclusion that there is a God. And so this brings us to that next subsection, a return to the cosmological argument. We already looked at one form, which is basically, you know, cause and effect series can be broken up into discrete units. Numerable things cannot become innumerable. You know, how many of them would you have to put together before the number suddenly became infinite? The whole idea of undefined is a concept. It doesn't have anything to do with anything that is actual. And that's a very important thing to understand. So since it can't go back indefinitely or infinitely, there has to be a first cause. And interestingly enough, you can learn quite a bit about that first cause by an examination of what would be a sufficient cause to produce all of these effects. Very interesting stage of investigation. We're not going to develop all of that. A second form of the argument would look something like this, and you'll see the relationship. Time is finite. You can break it up into discrete units. Minutes, hours, days, You can't have an infinite regress of this number, so there has to be a beginning. The idea of a beginning is a rational necessity. Motion, now basically it works like this. The concept of time is basically material objects moving and changing in relationship to each other. That's where we get the concept of time. And as we talked about it before, the heavenly bodies become a common way for men to judge time together. So that you don't have one country, you know, setting marbles in motion and watching them to determine time and then another one doing it, you know, looking at some other objects. But we look at common objects and determine our concept of time in a public, observable way like this. But if there has to be a beginning then there was a point when there was no matter in motion. It really gives you two things. Either there was no matter at all to be in motion or matter eternally existing but by definition inert. Now here the law of identity is very important. I don't know if there could be anything inert matter really because I'm not a physicist but it seems as if motion is necessary to its being. But I won't undertake to prove that that's a little bit beyond my competence. But what you see is that if the if by definition it's inert, the motion has to be introduced from outside of the material system. It can't be introduced from inside the system. So here you would say, well, whatever it is that introduced this motion is. immaterial, not part of the material system, powerful enough to produce all of these effects. You might even say, if it's not part of the natural system, a non-natural or supernatural something has introduced the motion. But what's really interesting is when you do all of this natural theology, don't you come up with about what Paul told you you are going to come up with? Something about his eternal power and Godhead? Kind of vague. to be sure that's about what you come up with it's a powerful something to be sure an eternal something not inside the system of time but that's about what you come up with very interesting and very necessary I think for the understanding of the text but I want to I want to stay here, plant the foot for just a moment, because children, I would continue to encourage you to do this kind of reasoning with your parents. You might have already done it. Mommy, Daddy, where do I come from? You come from Mommy and Daddy. Well, where do you come from? Our Mommy and Daddy. Him? Where did he come from? And you start walking it back and walking it back and walking it back. That's the cause and effect chain. You see there? And the only thing that they're going to need at some point is the law of identity. It's got an identity, which means it has an end point, you, and a beginning point, which is God. Luke chapter 3. Isn't that the way that the genealogy of Jesus Christ widens backwards? The son of Adam, the son of God. See? Very important. Now, I've said that all of this is pretty plain. People do this. We don't generally do it with this kind of sophistication. This kind of sophistication became necessary as sophisticated objections started coming. David Hume introduced the kind of sophistication that Aquinas didn't have to wrestle with, probably because men were smarter and knew better than to call it into question. It's necessary for human thought. But Hume considered himself a very clever wag in that way and so now the arguments got to become more sophisticated and more explicit. But what's interesting about this is I have not described to you anything that you don't already do. All I've done is try to make it explicit and clear what you are doing. Now before we wrap up here I wanted to talk a little bit about the recent reformed debate and in doing so I wanted to give a bit of a disclaimer. I don't want to sound as if this is a really aggressive attack against the Vantillians, but some of you may be familiar with the name of Cornelius Vantill, some of you not. But Cornelius Vantill was a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary of the last generation. So he's about one generation removed for most of us. He set forth what was really a new apologetic that he called to be the only true reformed apologetic. He thought all of the rest, all of this kind of arguing that we did this morning, he thought was inherently Arminian. And we'll talk about that in just a minute. But here, he said, we don't want all of these axioms as being what he called the, Fentil loved language like this, the epistemological principium. All it basically means is the ground of knowledge. He said we don't want all of these axioms to be the first principles of knowledge. God himself is the first principle of knowledge. God is an innate concept in the human mind. So for Van Til, it's not that you look at creation and creation tells you that there's a God. The idea of God is already imprinted in your brain. It's an innate concept that doesn't come to you through any means or medium. So you're born with this knowledge already, as it were. And it's a presupposition that you must embrace by faith, because he recognizes that all presuppositions are ultimately things unproven. Now you say, well why is it, Dr. Van Til, why would that be necessary? Some people don't like a lot of philosophy, but this is actually going on in reformed churches. A lot of debate about this kind of thing. You should beware of philosophy, but be aware of enough of it in order to protect yourself because these ideas do affect you. We came from an OPC church where almost everybody had embraced this view, but they couldn't really tell you very much about where it came from. Van Til's whole idea is grounded in what's called a Christian Platonism. This runs all the way back to Plato. And the idea that in order to know anything for sure or to interpret any fact rightly, you have to know everything. In other words, you have to know the entire system and how that particular thing relates to everything else in the system in order to know it truly. But you say, well, no human being can know the entire system of knowledge. the entire system of existence. So how is it that you're going to know anything for sure? God knows all of it and he communicates to you covenantally and by inspiration what you need to know in order to function. So that's Van Til's idea. It still doesn't quite answer the question because God still doesn't communicate to you the full system of knowledge. And even with the scripture, you don't even understand the full system of scripture, much less the full system of possible knowledge that exists in God. So he still asks the question, how does this help you? It's not a question that I think he's satisfactorily answered. But here you might raise another question. Well, I mean, consider, if God is at the ground of knowledge, But unbelievers will not acknowledge it. Wouldn't you expect that they would develop a system of knowledge that's completely alien and doesn't look anything like yours? I mean, isn't that what you would expect? The presuppositional system is completely different. So what's built on top of it is completely different. It's like we had a foundation for a house in New York and this other person had a foundation for a house in Iowa and never the two shall meet. You see, there's no overlap. for them to meet or run into each other. This was actually the view of Abraham Kuyper, a famous Dutch theologian and statesman. He said that the unbeliever, although he looks like he understands what you're saying and acts like he understands what you're saying, there's no epistemological common ground, no common ground in knowledge. You really don't understand each other in any kind of meaningful way. That was Kuyper's position. Van Til didn't go that far. Van Til moderated Kuiper by the doctrine of common grace basically the idea was the unbeliever in order to function in God's world has to borrow concepts from the Christian system he has to always be robbing the Christian system in order to at least be functional so he doesn't look like an alien because you have to function in God's world so you are going to have to borrow informational content from the system Now a final thing about this, he thought any other kind of argumentation that didn't just take God as a fundamental presupposition was inherently Arminian. You think that you're going to be able by that cosmological argument to reason people to God. And so you'll get people like Van Til and Mike Bonson after him, Greg Bonson who was probably the loudest of the Van Tilians, saying this is the reformed apologetic and there's not any other. reformed apologetic. And I should say, you know, I want to be careful here because at the end of the day I don't think that this idea ends up being very harmful the way it plays out in practice, but no error is completely safe. And so we it is necessary in order to critique it in some level or to get some defense of what I would call the old reformed apologetic because the old reformed apologetic was the same way that you will see it in Thomas Aquinas and in Aristotle not surprisingly because this is a bit of natural theology something that Paul says all men do now first of all I would say that the newness of Adtil's method overthrows it right from the beginning The fact that nobody did apologetics the way that Van Til is doing apologetics, until Van Til did it, is the death of the argument, really. Because Paul said it was active in his day, and it was something that all men had always done. We always knew all men were always blameworthy, you could add there, from the creation of the world. They didn't just start being blameworthy with Aristotle or with Paul or something else. They were always blameworthy. Now, Vantill, there's been a lot of historical work from the later Vantillians to try to argue that the older thinkers were really Vantillians, but it doesn't really work. Because Vantill is a self-conscious mediation between Kuyper and Warfield. Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch theologian, and B.B. Warfield. Kuyper taught this doctrine of absolute antithesis. There is no epistemological overlap between believers and unbelievers. No common knowledge. You are in separate spheres and you don't overlap. The only way they're going to come into your sphere is if God flicks them out of there and puts them in yours by regeneration. Otherwise, you're never going to meet. Now, B.B. Warfield was, on the other hand, a common grace man. He thought, you know, when you speak to the unbeliever, common grace gives you a great connection and it can be profitably used. Van Till thought Warfield did too much of that but Van Till is a self-conscious mediation between these two men and so the Van Tillian apologetic couldn't be done until you had Kuiper and Warfield but it never existed in the world before that but as to the substance as I already explained before God cannot be an axiomatic concept or as Van Til says the epistemological principian he cannot be the ground floor because prior concepts are necessary to understand the word which means it can't be the first concept or principle as we said the law of identity has to be at work in the human mind to identify the letters and the law of non-contradiction in order to distinguish them and God is a very complex concept with many ideas that are tied up simple being but a complex concept for us see lots of ideas tied up in the idea of God and so if you have prior concepts it can't be the first concept you understand that? if there are one prior concepts that must be functioning epistemologically it can't be the first it's a contradiction also now It sounded very pious when Van Til talked about God being an innate concept in the mind. But at the end of the day, I don't think it's biblical. I don't think the Paul supports it here in Romans chapter 1. Now, the question is not, just to be clear, the question is not, is the idea of God inscribed in man's mind? We all agree on that. The question is, how did it get there? How did it get inscribed? Did it get inscribed by God immediately? Did he, as it were, write it with his own finger in the mind and you were just born with it? Or did it come to you by means? Van Til said that the idea was inscribed immediately by God, you were just born with it. I think Paul is saying that it was mediated to you. Basically that your mind, acting upon God's creation, drew a conclusion that there is a God so you might even do it like this your God-given epistemology acting upon God's creation can only draw one conclusion that there is a God okay and this is what Paul is saying in the 20th verse of Romans chapter 1 and look at this and I do think that this is significant particularly in the grammar for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made now this is in the Greek a dative it's in the dative case and it's what's called a dative of means so you might translate it being understood by means of the things that have been made so it's not an innate concept in the mind put there without means but rather a concept that was inscribed in the mind of man by means by looking at the things that have been made and finally I would say that the old method was not inherently Arminian the belief that an argument is valid does not necessitate the conclusion that all men will therefore accept it or embrace it so you can believe that this argument is perfectly valid and that any unbiased right-thinking person would embrace it but that doesn't mean that you believe that sinners are going to embrace it and that's also the thing that Paul is talking about here in Romans chapter 1 Paul's not saying well you know creation wasn't quite clear with men and therefore men walked around in a haze about whether or not there was a God he said no there was something else involved apart from reason they knew God they saw it quite clearly but they didn't want to acknowledge what they saw that's a completely different thing I learned this lesson in a way I was just a little boy probably less than five I might have told this story before Star Wars had just come out and my parents had taken us to see it and I think I slept on the floor of the theater but they got us a record of a lot of the dialogue back when they used to have records and so we would listen to that And I remember telling a boy on the street, who obviously was just learning to read, about Han Solo. And he insisted, no, it's Han. I think his phonics were... I didn't know why he was doing that, but at the time, you know, you read it, and phonetically, that's what it looks like. Han. And I said, no, Han. And he said, no, Han. I said, no, I have a way to... I have a way to solve this. Well, go listen to my record that has dialogue from the movie. And so we listened, and there it was, Han. And he still insisted, Han. And that let me know that there's something else at work in man. You know, even a little tyke here had his pride become inflamed to where he didn't want to admit that he was wrong. And so there was no kind of proof that you could bring to settle this very simple and obvious matter. And I never forgot that. I thought, you know, there's more to convincing people of things than just communicating information. is a separate thing, the heart's got to be ready to take this information so you can think that this cosmological argument is a valid argument and sound and that it ought to persuade but that doesn't mean that you necessarily think it will and Paul tells us here in Romans and other places that nobody will without the regeneration of the spirit changing the heart so that now they want to worship God, they want to know this God, they want to have the salvation there's got to be a renewing of their hearts and see this is why the old reformed man never felt any tension by presenting what were valid arguments for the existence of God and they didn't think that they were Arminian they serve actually a different function because as Paul says we don't have to persuade anybody of anything and you ought to remember that they already know and don't forget it But if you ever present an argument like this you have to think of it in the right way. Remember we used the language of the cloudy room. They'll present all of these intellectual objections to cloud the room so that you cannot see the true nature of their face. And if they were to look in the mirror they can't see the true nature of their face and why they're really objecting to these things because Like after you've showered and the room's all steamy, you can't see yourself in the looking glass. They want to believe that they have certain intellectual objections. They don't want to face their true face, which is that they hate the true God of Heaven and don't want to worship Him. All you're doing with this kind of argumentation is turning the fan on to clear the room of the smoke so that they can see the true nature of the case. The problem is not that you don't know. The problem is that you do know, and that you're sinful, you hate God, and you don't want to worship Him. But ultimately, and here I do think that the reason I said practically speaking we don't end up being very different with Vantillians, at this point we can simply join hands with them. The work will not be done. Don't take up this cosmological argument and forget the Gospel. Because it's the gospel that's going to remove the blindness of their minds and the hardness of their hearts, not the cosmological argument. You have to understand what its function is. It's not to convert their soul, although God could, it's simply to clear the room. So that they can see what the true problem is. But you've got to give them the gospel. The only solution of the human heart is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us pray. This Reformation audio track is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. SWRB makes thousands of classic Reformation resources available, free and for sale, in audio, video, and printed formats. Our many free resources, as well as our complete mail-order catalog, containing thousands of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reform books, tapes and videos at great discounts is on the web at www.swrb.com. We can also be reached by email by phone at 780-450-3730 by fax at 780-468-1096 or by mail at 4710-37A Edmonton, that's E-D-M-O-N-T-O-N Alberta, abbreviated capital A, capital B, Canada, T6L3T5. You may also request a free printed catalog. And remember that John Calvin, in defending the Reformation's regulative principle of worship, or what is sometimes called the scriptural law of worship, commenting on the words of God, which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart. From his commentary on Jeremiah 731, writes, God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since He condemns by this one phrase, I have not commanded them, whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions than that they are not commanded by God. For when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to His commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the papists, all those fictitious modes of worship in which they absurdly exercise themselves would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying His word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The Prophet's words, then, are very important, when he says that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind, as though he had said that men assume too much wisdom when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew.