As the Waters Cover the Sea, 3

Continued from "As the Waters Cover the Sea, 2"

Goals and Strategy

In the struggle to reclaim all knowledge to the service and glory of  Christ, the victory belongs to His people. Nevertheless, to achieve that end the Church needs clearly defined goals and a winning strategy. This requires that Christians carefully derive their objectives and methods from Scripture.

Perhaps the greatest danger in doing this lies in adopting the attitudes and practices of integrationism or syncretism. Integrationists follow a modern version of the Thomistic approach.

They reason, "Since all truth comes from God, we can pick up truth wherever we find it. And since the truth we find in Aristotle or modern biology has equal validity to the truth we find in Scripture, we can simply put them together."

While this may sound enticing -- for all truth does indeed come from God -- the integrationist does not give God's Word its rightful place as the final arbiter of truth. Therefore, he fails to see the necessity of corrective measures to knowledge propagated by those in rebellion to God.

This does not deny that unbelievers have a capacity to apprehend certain functional  knowledge which permits them to live and act in the world that God created. But the integrationist fails to acknowledge the basis and nature of the unbeliever's knowledge.

You see, the unbeliever is actually double-minded. At base all men know God as His creatures, but as sinners all men refuse to acknowledge their Creator and live by His revelation. Hence we can say that men both know and do not know God; they know Him in judgment and in virtue of natural revelation, but they do not know Him in blessing unless it is in virtue of supernatural revelation and saving grace. Though hampered by his moral condition, the unbeliever's scholarship is not completely defunct. he can attain knowledge despite himself. In principle his unbelief would preclude understanding of anything, for (as Augustine said) one must believe in order to understand. However, in practice the unbeliever is restrained from a consistent self-destructive following of his unbelieving system. (Always Ready, Greg Bahnsen [Robert R. Booth, ed.], Atlanta [American Vision] and Texarkana [Covenant Media Foundation], 1996, p. 38)

As a consequence of the unbeliever's double-mindedness -- which results from suppression of the truth at a presuppositional level -- every fact he knows carries with it the taint of unbelief. In order to redeem knowledge from the unbeliever's grasp, the believer must discern what the unbeliever has apprehended that conforms to God's created order and place it within the context of Biblical presuppositions.

To be continued

Success Story

              SAID THE

                LITTLE

            RED ROOSTER

      “MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS!             

     THE THINGS ARE TOUGH.                 

   SEEMS THAT WORMS ARE GET-                          0

 TING SCARCE. AND I CANNOT FIND                      00

       ENOUGH. WHAT’S BECOME                        000

           OF ALL THOSE FAT ONES                   0000

            IS A MYSTERY TO ME:                   00000

       THERE WERE THOUSANDS THRU                 0000000

      THAT RAINY SPELL – BUT NOW                000000000000

     WHERE CAN THEY BE?” THE OLD               0000000000000000

    BLACK HEN THAT HEARD HIM DIDN’T           000000000000000000

   GRUMBLE AND COMPLAIN. SHE HAD GONE        00000000000000000000

  THROUGH LOTS OF DRY SPELLS. SHE HAD LIVED 000000000000000000000

   THROUGH FLOODS OF RAIN. SHE FLEW UP TO THE GRINDSTONE AND SHE

  GAVE HER CLAWS A WHET, AS SHE SAID, “I’VE NEVER SEEN THE TIME

  WHEN THERE WEREN’T WORMS TO GET.” SHE PICKED A NEW AND UNDUG

 SPOT. THE EARTH WAS HARD AND FIRM. THE LITTLE ROOSTER JEERED:

“NEW GROUND! THAT’S NO PLACE FOR A WORM.” THE OLD BLAK HEN JUST

SPREAD HER FEET, AS SHE DUG BOTH FAST AND FREE.  “I MUST GO TO

THE WORMS,” SHE SAID, “THE WORMS WON’T COME TO ME.” THE ROOSTER

VAINLY SPENT HIS DAY, THROUGH HABIT, BY THE WAYS WHERE FAT ROUND

WORMS HAD PASSED IN SQUADS BACK IN THE RAINY DAYS. WHEN NIGHT-

FALL FOUND HIM SUPPERLESS,  HE GROWLED IN ACCENT ROUGH,  “I’M

 HUNGRY AS A FOWL CAN BE.  CONDITIONS SURE ARE TOUGH.” HE TURNED

  THEN TO THE BLACK HEN AND SAID, “IT’S WORSE WITH YOU,

   FOR YOU’RE NOT ONLY HUNGRY, BUT YOU MUST BE TIRED, TOO. I

    RESTED WHILE I LOOKED FOR WORMS SO I FEEL FAIRLY PERK: BUT

     HOW ARE YOU? WITHOUT WORMS, TOO, AND AFTER ALL

       THE WORK.”  THE OLD BLACK HEN HOPPED

         TO HER PERCH AND DROOPED HER

            EYES TO SLEEP, AND MUR-

              MERED IN A DROWSY

              TONE: “YOUNG MAN,

               HEAR THIS AND

                  WEEP:

                  0000

                  0000

                  0000

                  0000

         I’M FULL OF WORMS AND HAPPY, FOR I’VE

         DINED BOTH LONG AND WELL. THE WORMS ARE

      THERE AS ALWAYS. BUT I HAD TO DIG LIKE CRAZY.”

How Great Leaders Lead

Christian Warrior Online: WARSKYL on Steroids

My new blog is called Christian Warrior Online, and you can find it over at christianwarrior.co

The Central Myth of the Conservative Movement

Conservatives run for office promising smaller civil government and lower deficits. When they become elected, government and deficits continue to grow. Part of the reason for this is the central myth of the conservative movement.

You will hear it in speeches, read it in articles and see it in blogs and comments: "Get back to the Constitution." This is an expression of the myth that the U.S. Constitution is about limited government.

Gary North takes on the myth here:

The U.S Constitution: Tool of Centralization and Debt, 1788- Today

Welfare for the Super Rich?

As the Waters Cover the Sea, 2

Continued from "As the Waters Cover the Sea"

One the Church's needs today includes present day Joshuas and Calebs -- farseeing individuals who will educate themselves in the Biblical theory and methodology of knowledge and who will digest the seminal works that set out Biblical paradigms for various fields (law, government, economics, art, music, literature and the sciences) and then pass the legacy on to others. As pastors, church officers, Sunday school teachers or leaders of other church ministries, they must whet the flock's appetite for a godly understanding of every facet of life.

Those with a stake in the status quo -- including professional ministers and teachers -- will oppose them. For this reason self discipline and self motivation will mark this vanguard, and the going will not be easy.

Consider, for example, a former student of mine who caught the vision of grounding all his knowledge in Scripture. He used to visit me every time he came home from the prominent evangelical college where he studied. He would share with me his frustration at profs who opened class with a verse of Scripture and a word of prayer and then opened a humanist text and taught the class from the same perspective one could find in any secular humanist school.

This student voluntarily undertook a dualist education. He listened carefully in class, but when he returned to his dorm, he would study with his Bible in hand to unlearn everything he learned in class. Then he would relearn it from the perspective of Scripture. He earnestly pursued this strenuous practice, although the stress of it exacted its toll on him in terms of his health.

He went on to graduate school and became a respected professional in his field. Nevertheless, his commitment to remain faithful to his God in the realms of knowledge cost him the strength of his youth. If the Lord calls you into the battle to appropriate all knowledge to His glory, then you must also face the personal costs and sacrifices for such a life calling.

You will engage the enemy in this war of conquest, so you will need to face the reality of that war. With wars come casualties; people suffer. And because the enemy recognizes the far-reaching consequences of ideas, he will not permit us the luxury of ivory-tower somnambulance. Although he will most certainly engage us in our flesh and spirit, he will not prevail.