Musings of a Seminarian

Over the years I have been taught that God's revelation can be viewed as two types, General and Special revelation.

General Revelation is God revealing Himself through His works, which can be seen in the creation around us by any person at any time in history.

Special Revelation would include God speaking to mankind through "special" efforts on His part. This, in my view, (which is a little different from most reformed references I have seen) includes,theophanies, prophesies, scripture and most profoundly, Jesus Christ himself as he walked the earth.

For Reformed people, Special Revelation has been a synonym for "scripture". Scripture is a written record of the items above (theophanies, Jesus time on earth, etc.)

When there is disagreement between what is said in the general revelation (science, archaeolgical finds, etc.) and what is said in scripture, how do we reconcile the two? Many of these disagreements are mutually exclusive. They cannot both be true. What do we do?

John Calvin said something to the effect that "the scripture [special revelation] are the spectacles through we can see and rightly understand the world [general revelation].

Although there are a few exceptions, the church, up until the mid 1800's, read the first chapters of genesis as being the literary genre of historical record. It was read as a true record of true history.

Science, a systematic study of the general revelation, has, since the mid 1800's or so, said that the earth was millions or years old.

Since that time the church has been under tremendous pressure, to change its method of interpreting scripture to conform with science's interpretation of the general revelation.

The scriptures speak of walking by faith not by sight. They also speak of the gospel as being foolishness to the wise. This appears to be consistant with Calvin's assertion that you should try to understand the "sight" information of general revelation through the faith glasses of scripture.

In other words, why should the church change its methods of scripture interpretation, to match the truth claims of science, history, archaeology etc. Should it not be that christians scrutinize the truth claims of science, history, etc.

The philosophical underpinings of the truth claims of science and history are being successfully assulted by secular postmodernist philosphers. The Enlightenment view of science is passing away from our culture. This deserves a lot more attention than I am able to give it here, but what is happening is that postmodern philosophy is saying that, contrary to the Enlightenment view, Science does not have the tools necesary to find truth.

Why do christians need to change the traditional view of scripture that has, until recent history, been the foundation of faith and practice, merely to accomodate the temporarily fashionable Enlightenment view of the natural sciences?

I won't argue that the "inerrency" terminology has risen in a reactionary way. The view of scripture that is being described by the recent term "inerrency" is an old view. Had not the "Enlightenment" happened it would still be the predominant view with little challenge.

So in a sense, "inerrency" is reactionary, but in another sense merely a new term used to define and defend an old and traditional view.

To shorten this up, I feel that if science and scripture disagree, look for the error in science, not for the error in scripture.

Recently posted here:http://www.christilling.de/blog/2006/11/ets-adopt-chicago-statement-on.html#comments

An interesting Blog.

The Village Green: The Shekinah Glory

<>I wrote this as a comment to a blog at The Pandas Thumb. It refers to a Wisconsin Law regarding the teaching of Intelligent Design in science classes.

The law was quoted there as follows:

SECTION 1. 118.018 of the statutes is created to read:

118.018 Science instruction. The school board shall ensure that any material presented as science within the school curriculum complies with all of the following:

(1) The material is testable as a scientific hypothesis and describes only natural processes.

(2) The material is consistent with any description or definition of science adopted by the National Academy of Sciences.


The establishment clause of the constitution creates many difficulties for education and the law.

This Wisconsin law looks to be a fair attempt to deal with the issues. It defines what Science is in the context of preparing curricula and setting educational standards.

The government has to define standards for education as long as education is compulsory. The Jeffersonian concept of democracy requires an educated populace. If education is compulsory and someone opens a school purporting to be educating children there must be some standard used to determine if there is compliance.

Meanwhile, the Constitution’s seperation clause says that then government cannot mandate religous training as a part of compulsory education.

So far, so good on the surface. No Bible teaching, no Koran teaching etc. One may say that those topics are to be taught by the parents and their church’s if they choose.

It gets dicier when values need to be taught in school.
Topics such as history, literature and current events cannot be taught meaningfully in a values neutral way. Where does the public education system go to find the values being taught.

One place that seems appropriate is the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. So there we find equality, democracy, freedom, tolerance, etc. We then use these as a basis for the necessary values.

Does the selection of these values constitute the “establishment of religion”? What is a religion?

For the purposes of this discussion I propose that we define religion as a worldview whose source of values is based on supernatural input. It seems then that the constitution says that all values imposed on the public must have a source found in nature.

Science, as defined in Wisconsin, requires that nothing be taught in a class labled in the curriculum as a “science class” have any souce outside of nature. Looks like a marriage made in heaven (oop’s sorry for the allusion to the supernatural there.) Further the state requires a certain number of science courses be included in the curriculum.

Now what has happened is that the state has required that the children of theist parents must sit and listen to hours of subject matter that discounts and ignores ideas that are central to their worldviews and values.

I agree to a certain point that because science is by definition a study of the natural world, and that it is not a suitable method for inquiry into the supernatural,(because if science were to investigate the possible supernatural cause of a phenomenon it would no longer be science.); non-natural explanations for the beginning (or lack thereof) should not be taught in a class labled “science”.

On the other hand, the value of tolerance in the constitution, seems to require that these students be assisted in dealing with this contradiction they are facing.

Where are these issues going to be dealt with? To a certain extent it is the responsibility of the parents and their religious institutions.

The government and their public schools owe it to the theist children to deal openly and honestly with these issues. If it is not dealt with in the class labled “science” where will it be addressed? The history and literature classes (lumped by the education establishment into the pot labled social studies) may be one place. But does the average history or literature teacher have the science background to address the issues effectively? I don’t think so.

What do we do?

Well, lets go back to the values found in the Constitution. Where did they come from? There were many religious people involved in writing the Constitution and Declaration, but lets give them the benefit of the doubt that when they wrote the establishment clause they included non-establishment of their own religion. The answer as I see it is the discipline of philosophy. Not all philosophy results in religion, but all philosophy results in worldview.

The worldview of the constitution requires that all law be based on materialist principals. Hence all ethics taught in public schools must be based on materialistic principals. Values based on non-materialistic principals may not be taught by the teachers. The students, via free speech, are allowed to express these principals, however these not yet educated children are not equipped to adequately state the worldviews of theists.

It could be said that teachers can teach that these theistic worldviews exist and explain to a certain extent what they are. But this begs the question, because when it comes down to brass tacks, the teacher has to teach from the standpoint of some wordview. And the only allowable worldview is materialist.

The teachers may not teach theistic values and the children are inadequate to express it. Wow, that looks like intolerance and religious discrimination. But I thought the Constitution did not allow that.

It looks like Catch 22 has won game, set and match.

Is there an answer?

Yes —— Live with it.

Is there a more helpful answer? Well a good idea is to start by offering philosophy of science classes, or at least a 2-4 week section of the class labled “science” be jointly taught by the science thacher and a liberal arts teacher trained in philosophy. During this time the foundational presumptions of science should be covered. Also the limits of the competancy of scientific inquiry should be taught. Until the basis of the philosophy of science be explicitly taught (and taught well) alongside the actual science itself we will never get out of this particular science theist/materialist pickle.

On the bigger issue of the materialist bias of public education and the law all I can see happening is the US just trying to muddle through. It won’t get solved. We’ll all just have to live with it the best we can.

Epistemology has progressed (regressed?) to the point that skepticism is the order of the day.

Popper says that Science cannot prove anything.

The world is filled with belief systems that are internally rationally coherent but are without external reasons to believe in any one of them. We cannot know whether they are "true".

I agree that we cannot know they are true in a foundationalistic sense because all "foundational" truths can be questioned.

Humans, however, do not need to know if anything is true. If the skeptics are right then all human beings have lived their lives without knowing anything is true.

On the other hand, humans do have to "do" something. People are born and find themselves, as Howard the Duck, says "trapped in a world they did not create."

Here they sit.

Now what are they going to do?

They may find that there is nothing that they can "know" with absolute certainty but the have to do something, they can't just sit there.

But yes they can, you say, they can just sit there.

Exactly.

Just sitting there is "doing" something.

So, now what do they do?

They have to find ways to make decisions, choices.

If they are "rationalists" they want to find methods of making choices that are rational.

How do you rationally make decisions if you don't have the facts?

That's not a hard question. We do it every day.

What executive, when faced with a decision and a deadline, did not want more information before she made a decision.

We make plans for the future. What career field shall I choose? What shall I major in? What shall I make for dinner? We make these plans knowing(?) full well that we cannot foresee what the future holds.

We cannot say "I'm not going to do anything until I know it is right." We take in data, and using our reason and best judgement (or not) we act.

Notice I say "data" and "information", not "facts". The word "facts" implies that the stated proposition is true.

Data and information can be determined as as "reliable" or "unreliable" or somewhere on the continum between, but from a skeptical viewpoint we cannot know they are true.

The term "reliable" indicates that one can "rely" on them. Reliability implies that one can make good decisions based on that assumption.

Good decisions can and must be made without "knowing". What is needed is a method for determining "reliability".

But thats another day.

"One way of describing this perplexing situation is that we live in a multiply ambiguous world. This is a world in which Christianity competes, it seems, with other doxastically rational religious traditions which are increasingly well­understood by it, and it by them, and them by each other; and in which each such tradition competes with many forms of secularised naturalism of which the same can be said.

This situation is one that is tailor­made for someone who thinks like the pre­Cartesian sceptic, who saw a large variety of competing ideologies and belief­systems, and saw that each could sustain itself by philosophical argument, and judged this very fact to be a reason to suspend judgment about all of them. This is a rational response, and readily understandable after a few courses in philosophy and comparative religion. But it is not the only rational response. What is one to say if one recognises that this is our intellectual situation, but does so while remaining in one of the competing belief­systems, such as Christianity­­ or Buddhism, or whatever?

I submit that the doxastic obligation of the rational being faced with this ambiguity is to try to resolve it; to try to dis­ambiguate our world. If it is doxastically proper to retain a set of convictions in such a world, it is nevertheless obligatory to find some arguments to sustain them. This, after all, is what traditional natural theology sought to do. It predates Enlightenment foundationalism, and I submit that Christianity has more need of it than ever. The arguments of Reformed epistemology do not show it is not needed. All they show is that Christians have not been irrational to come by their beliefs without doing it first. This is not enough, once one comes to see how readily the same point can be made about so many other world views. One does not defeat one's opponents by beating one's own chest. Reformed epistemology does not show us we do not need natural theology. It helps reveal a situation in which we can see we need it more than ever."

Terence Penelhum

University of Calgary
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~nurelweb/papers/other/penel.html

This view indicates that because the good rational basises for all these beliefs are the same principal, there is no rational basis for selecting any one of these beliefs. The most reasonable solution is to "suspend judgement".

This indicates the need to use traditional natural theology as a basis by which to select between them.

Is natural theology the only or best means to select between the competing "programs"?

# posted by Dan @ 11:38 PM 0 comments

"... the similar argument for the rationality of Christian belief developed by Alston in Perceiving God, which I think is the finest document of Reformed Epistemology to date."

Same Source

"The protest begins with a self­referential argument that Plantinga has stated several times. Why should we assume that no belief is rational if it is not either self­evident, or an incorrigible deliverance of consciousness, or inferred from some other belief that is in one of these two classes? The thesis that only beliefs that conform to this requirement are rational ones can not itself be stated without violating this principle, since it is neither self­evident nor incorrigible, nor deducible from a proposition that is. "It is no more than a bit of intellectual imperialism on the part of the founationalist." But if we resist it we will see that belief in God may well be rational even if it is not inferred from beliefs that conform to the foundationalist programme. It might be ~ properly basic." Those who believe in God this way have not been shown by the foundationalist to have violated any epistemic or doxastic obligations in doing so."

Professor Terence Penelhum



http://www.ucalgary.ca/~nurelweb/papers/other/penel.html