SRR #82 | Christian Apologetics and Logic

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I do a podcast. I'm not interested in your podcast. The anathema of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone.
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When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield, exposing the error and combating the error.
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We are unabashedly, unashamedly, Clarkian. And so, the next few statements that I'm going to make,
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I'm probably going to step on all of the vantillium toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.
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We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style. I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing.
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It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible. Jesus said,
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Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.
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As opposed to, Blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness. It is on.
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We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle. All right.
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I want to welcome everybody to the podcast. This is Simple Riff around the radio, and my name is Tim. I'm going to be your host for today.
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And today, we're going to be talking about Christian apologetics and logic. And specifically, we are coming at this from the perspective of presuppositionalism.
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However, we are Clarkian, so we are coming at this from the perspective of Clarkian presuppositionalism, also known as scripturalism.
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And I'm very excited for today's episode because of the guests that I have. I have with me
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Tom Jodatus from the Trinity Foundation. So, Tom, let me just give you an opportunity to say hello and welcome you to the show.
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Thank you very much for having me, Tim. And it's really a pleasure to be with you. And hello, everybody. Well, Tom, it is a pleasure having you here.
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I appreciate you stopping by and joining me on today's episode. And we're going to get into the subject in a little bit.
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But first, let me give you an opportunity to share with our listeners what's going on at the Trinity Foundation.
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What's new? What can they be looking out for? Well, a couple of items I'd like to share with you.
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The newest article is up at the website, hasn't been mailed yet. It's basically the substance updated and edited of my lecture at our 2017
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Reformation at 500 conference. It was basically my lecture updated for the review for March and April.
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The next item I'd like to kind of plug here is we are reinstituting the
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Trinity Foundation Christian Worldview Essay Contest. And we did this for,
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I think, 10 years, nine or 10 years. And we took a couple of years off break and we are reinstituting it.
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But we've also added we've expanded the age range. It used to be from 17 to 23, you know, high school, college age students.
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But we've expanded it from 16 to 25. So if you're in grad school and need to pay off some of those student loans, you might want to enter and maybe you'll win $3 ,000 for the first prize.
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The first prize is $3 ,000 plus books. The second prize is $2 ,000 plus books.
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And the third prize is $1 ,000 plus books. And the content or the contest book this year is the book
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The Emperor Has No Clothes, Richard B. Gaffin Jr.'s Doctrine of Justification, written by Stephen M.
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Cunha. This really exposes Gaffin's teaching that justification is not by faith alone, but there's more in there.
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Works, basically, are smuggled in there. And this dovetails closely with what
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John Piper was teaching and writing in the end of 2017.
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He published an article in September of 2017 in which he said, basically, that justification is by faith alone, but you can't get to heaven by faith alone.
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You need the fruit of faith on the day of judgment is what saves us, is the fruit of faith.
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Not faith, but the fruit of faith. And basically, that's a second justification. It's justification by works, by faith and works, which is the teaching of Rome.
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But it's also the teaching of Gaffin and Shepard. They might use different words here or there, but when it comes down to it, the teaching is the same.
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There was Norman Shepard and Richard Gaffin in the Presbyterian circles. And I see the counterparts of John Piper and Tom Schreiner in the
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Baptist circles. John Piper is the Norman Shepard figure. He opens his mouth and stuff comes out.
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He's not as careful with his words, much like Shepard, I would say. Tom Schreiner also happens to be a professor at Southern Baptist Seminary there in Louisville, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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He was also up in Bethlehem Seminary with Piper for many years before moving down to the
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Southern Baptist Seminary. He's had a role in training men for the ministry, much as Richard Gaffin has had a role in training men for the ministry.
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He was at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia for, I think, 40 plus years. And Schreiner, like Gaffin, are a little bit more cautious in their language or more shrewd,
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I should say, in their language. But in essence, they're still teaching the same thing that Piper and Shepard were teaching.
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And so that's why I wanted to use this book as our essay contest book, because it's so apropos for this time.
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So we have our Christian Worldview essay contest. All the details are at our website. And the announcement of the winners will be on Reformation Day of 2018.
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The next thing I wanted to kind of also mention is that the
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Trinity Foundation, too, has begun podcasting. Now, we only have one podcast up so far, but our host,
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Steve Matthews of Lux Lucid, his podcast is Lux Lucid.
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He has also agreed to host podcasts for the Trinity Foundation. And the first one is up at our website, and it's him interviewing
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Tim Kaufman and Tim Shaughnessy. And I thank Tim for his work in helping Steve with that and much of the behind the scenes helping with that.
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I appreciate that, Tim. So look forward to more podcasts. I believe he's what we're trying to do is interview some of the writers for the articles that have been published, some of the writers behind those articles to get some more information about them and about the articles they've written.
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So look for should be some podcasts coming out with Stephen Cunha, who authored the book
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The Emperor Has No Clothes. In the latest review, the last two pages or I'm sorry, the previous review to mine, the last two pages were the forward and the introduction to Stephen Cunha's book as a way to whet people's appetite for the essay contest.
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And he will also be interviewing Brad Zell, who wrote the article in that previous to mine,
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False Light After 500 Years, which really exposes much of the evangelical and even reformed world in their wanting to be more ecumenical with Rome, etc.
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So those are some new things going on, the essay contest, the podcast and my latest review.
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Well, Tom, I appreciate you sharing all of that with our listeners. And let me just say that I very much enjoyed working with Steve on the project to get the
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Trinity Foundation podcast up and going. So I'm looking forward to those episodes.
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And let me just encourage our listeners, even if you're not eligible for the essay contest, let me encourage you to still get the book
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The Emperor Has No Clothes. I think that it's really important to become familiar with this controversy that is currently surrounding
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John Piper. This is nothing new that just popped up out of the blue out of nowhere back in September of last year.
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This is a view that has been pushed by several people over the past, I'd say at least the past three decades.
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And it's really important, I think, to become familiar with it, to read the stuff that has already been written about it.
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And so my encouragement is still get the book. And we are aware of the fact that Piper recently just came out with a response to the controversy.
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However, we are still in disagreement with him. And hopefully we'll be coming out with an article addressing his view.
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Carlos Montijo is currently writing an article, and hopefully he'll be done with that soon.
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So with that, let's go ahead and start our topic. We were talking about logic and how that relates to apologetics.
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And Tom, hopefully we can just have an interactive discussion. So let me go ahead and throw out the first question.
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The first question is, what is logic and why should we study it? And I'll provide
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Clark's definition. Clark defined logic as the science of necessary inference, or we could say the science of right thinking.
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But let me give you an opportunity to answer the question. I would agree with Clark's definition.
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Mine might be a little bit more rough or crude, maybe. I would say logic is the rule or law of correct reasoning or thinking.
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And John Robbins also answered this question in terms of what logic is with a couple things here.
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Let me just read from what he wrote in his article, Why Study Logic. He says, what is there in common between calculating, reading, and writing?
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The answer, of course, is thought. One must think in order to read and write. Thinking, just as everything else, is supposed to follow certain rules.
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If we are to think correctly, sometimes we make mistakes in thinking. We jump to conclusions.
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We make unwarranted assumptions. We generalize. There is a subject that catalogs these mistakes, points them out so that we can recognize them in the future, and then explains the rules for avoiding mistakes.
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That subject is logic. Now, in defining things, we also want to define them in terms of what they are, but also what they are not.
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And this is also one of the rules of logic, one of the laws of logic, and that is the law of contradiction, sometimes now referred to as the law of non -contradiction, but it is the same law.
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So, logic is not psychology. It does not describe what people think about or how they reach conclusions.
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It describes how they ought to think if they wish to reason correctly. It is more like arithmetic than history, for it explains the rules one must follow in order to reach correct conclusions, just as arithmetic explains the rules one must follow to arrive at correct answers.
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So, logic concerns all thought. It is fundamental to all disciplines, from agriculture to astronautics.
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There are not several kinds of logic, like one for philosophy or one for religion, but the same rules of thought that apply in politics, for example, apply also in chemistry.
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So, logic is like the building blocks of correct thinking. Well, Tom, one thing that I want to reiterate that you said is that logic is not psychology.
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Logic deals with the way in which we should think if we are to think correctly. And oftentimes
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I get the impression that Christians sometimes think that logic is unnecessary or it's useless.
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And it's important, I think, for people to recognize that we have a moral obligation to think logically.
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And so I'm going to read a section from an article that I wrote titled Christianity and Logic. I write,
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It may come as a surprise to many Christians to learn that we have a moral obligation to think logically.
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Perhaps this is because they have not considered carefully that it is impossible to obey God if our thinking is illogical.
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We often associate sinful thoughts with devices of lust or hatred, but the truth is that all sin originates in our thinking.
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Although adultery and theft are commonly regarded as overt actions, their origin is in our thinking.
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Sin is the result of intellectual error. Clark was correct, then, to point to such verses as Proverbs 23, 7,
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Quote, Some might find this disturbing and may wish to separate logic from morality.
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But logic is necessary for morality as well because without logic there can be no distinction between deception and truth, good and evil, right and wrong.
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It is no wonder, then, that the scriptures are logically consistent. If this were not the case, we would not be able to discern truth from error.
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If God's thinking is logically consistent and the scriptures are part of the mind of God, then it is impossible to obey scriptural commands if we contradict the
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Bible in the way that we think. The reality is that we often do not stop to consider just how intellectually disobedient we can be in our thinking.
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It is important to realize that it is impossible to love God with all of our mind if we are illogical.
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How can we surrender every thought captive to the Lordship of Christ, as it says in 2
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Corinthians 10, 5, if our thinking does not reflect the logical consistency of scripture?
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The inescapable result of failing in this area is compromise, error, and sin.
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We inevitably begin to adopt worldly and secular thinking, which is firmly opposed to the
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Word of God. We should recognize that every attack from the enemy is an attack on the Word of God.
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A clear example of this can be seen in the current debates over same -sex marriage and abortion.
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We can easily infer that marriage is between a man and a woman from Jesus' response to the
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Pharisees in Matthew 19, 4 -5, when he answered, Have you not read, that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said,
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Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?
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Therefore we stand in direct opposition to the Word of God if we insist that same -sex marriage is morally good.
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Likewise, when we insist that women have the right to abort their unborn children, then we defy
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God and advocate the murder of children on the altar of convenience and shame. Those who advocate such positions stand against Christ and His Word.
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Professing Christians who hold such positions display an incredible amount of logical inconsistency, and as a result have no basis for believing that Jesus died on the cross for their sins.
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If they do not believe the Bible when it speaks on the issues of marriage, the sin of homosexuality, and the life of an unborn child, then what basis do they have for believing the truth of the cross?
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How convenient it must be to arbitrarily pick and choose what suits us. Such advocates of logical inconsistency would be hard -pressed to provide a rational reason or justification for believing that the gospel is true, while rejecting the
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Bible as unreliable or untrue when it doesn't suit them. And so with that,
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I think that it's really important to just recognize the fact that we have a moral obligation to think logically, to think rationally.
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And with that, let's dig into this a little bit more. The next question is, what is the relationship between God and logic?
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And Tom, I'd love to give you an opportunity to respond. Well, thank you, Tim. Yeah, we are referencing that article,
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God and Logic. It's also, I believe, as an appendix, if I'm not mistaken, in Clark's textbook on logic.
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But to do this, let's think about John 1 .1. We all know it in the
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English as, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The word we translate that is translated
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Word in the original is Logos. And that word can also mean logic or wisdom.
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And so we could say, In the beginning was the logic, and the logic was
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God, and the logic was with God. So in that sense, we could say that logic, in a sense, is
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God. And I'm going to read a little bit from Clark here in this article that we referenced,
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Logic is God. He is one of the subheads in there. And Clark says this,
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This, any translation of John 1 .1 that obscures this emphasis on mind or reason is a bad translation.
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And if anyone complains that the idea of ratio or debate obscures the personality of the second person of the
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Trinity, he should alter his concept of personality. In the beginning, then, was logic.
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And he goes through before that and lists all these possible translations for this term
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Logos. And what they all have in common is this idea of reasoning or thought or logic.
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And so, thus, logic. Continuing on in this article,
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That logic is the light of men is a proposition that could well introduce the section after next on the relation of logic to man.
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But the thought that logic is God will bring us to the conclusion of the present section. Not only do the followers of Bernard, he's quoting
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Bernard of Clairvaux, entertain suspicions about logic, and there are many people today that have the same views as Bernard of Clairvaux, but also, even more, systematic theologians are wary of any proposal that would make an abstract principle superior to God.
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The present argument, in consonance with both Philo and Charnock, Stephen Charnock, does not do so.
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The law of contradiction is not to be taken as an axiom prior to or independent of God.
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The law, that is the law of contradiction, is God thinking. For this reason, also, the law of contradiction is not subsequent to God.
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If one should say that logic is dependent on God's thinking, it is dependent only in the sense that it is the characteristic of God's thinking.
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It is not subsequent temporarily, for God is eternal, and there was never a time when
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God existed without thinking logically. One must not suppose that God's will existed as an inert substance before he willed to think.
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So, logic is there with God in the beginning. And think of the Proverbs where wisdom is personified, speaking,
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I was there in the beginning, with me God made the heavens and the earth.
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And you hearken that to what John says in John 1, 1, and the writer to the
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Hebrews says in Hebrews 1, Christ is that Logos that also created the world.
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By him all things were created, it says. And so, he is that wisdom,
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Christ is that Logos, that wisdom of God, that we know that the whole Trinity, that the
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Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were active in creation. And it is the second person, the
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Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was that wisdom that was used to create the world.
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So, logic is, in this sense, is God, and it's
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God's thinking. The laws of logic are God's thinking. God cannot contradict himself, and so the law of contradiction finds itself in the person of God himself.
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Well, Tom, I agree with everything that you just said, but I know that there are some people in the
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Cornelius Van Teel presuppositional camp that might take issue or might disagree with Clark's definition.
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And from what I understand, Cornelius Van Teel viewed logic a little bit different than Clark.
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So, let's go ahead and address that. Would you be able to speak on the difference between the way in which
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Cornelius Van Teel viewed logic and the way in which Clark viewed logic? From what
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I can understand, Van Teel's view makes logic part of the creation, not in the person of God.
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And so, with that, with his doctrine of analogy, man as the analog of God, Van Teel said the knowledge possible to man and the knowledge that God has do not coincide at any single point.
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Not only was that in the complaint that was written at the time of the Clark -Van
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Teel controversy over the ordination of Gordon Clark in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, but that's also made mention of in several of Van Teel's works, his systematic theology,
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I believe, in his book on apologetics. So, for Van Teel, logic is part of the created order.
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It's not in the person of God himself. And so, God has his logic, and the weasel words that were often used to criticize mere human logic that you would see in Van Teel and others that followed after him, saying that, you know,
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God's logic is higher than ours, and our mere human logic doesn't get us to God, doesn't give us the truth, etc.
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So, Clark's view is that logic is in the creator, and it's part of what is given to man as the image of God.
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And Van Teel disagrees with that. Logic is part of the created order.
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That's my understanding. Well, that was my understanding as well.
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And I think it's interesting, because I don't think that Dr. Jason Lyle has taken this view.
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From what I understand, his view is that logic is the characteristic of God's thinking. And I know a lot of our listeners would be familiar with Dr.
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Lyle. He was a student of Dr. Greg Bonson, who was a student of Cornelius Van Teel.
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And so, I think that it's worth noting that not everybody has taken Cornelius Van Teel's side on this.
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And I'd also mention that I've written an article titled, Getting Clark Right on Van Teel's Notion of Analogy, in which
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I defend Clark, because I think that a lot of people, especially in the Reformed community, are just prone to criticizing
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Clark without actually reading him directly. And I'll just pose the question to you,
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Tom. Why do you think that it is that some people have had this reaction to his view of logic?
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Well, I think, and Clark made reference to this in the portion that I read.
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His translation of John 1 .1, where he says, logic in the beginning was the logic,
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I think is what really probably grates on people. And we've probably been so conditioned with the translations, especially of Word, which
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I believe was a translation more in line with the Latin Vulgate than it was with the actual text.
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I believe the Latin Vulgate used verbum, verbum, which does translate word.
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But in the original Logos, you know, and you go look at any lexicon, a
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Greek lexicon, and it gives you all these options that deal with, you know, reason, with thinking, with computation, etc.
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All that have to do with reason, with thinking and with logic. But I think in the age in which we live, you know, in the 20th century, even after the 19th century, with the rise of liberalism and so forth, and in the 20th century, you know,
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Neo -Orthodoxy and these other things, I think you see this antagonism to reason, to logic.
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And so when Clarke comes along and says that, you know, logic is God or translate
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John 1 .1 is, in the beginning was the logic, I think that really chafes many people.
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And they think that he's somehow making some abstract principle
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God. And that's not what he's doing. But, you know, but I think that's,
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I think that's why the reaction. Interesting you brought up Jason Lyle. When he was here in the community that I was several years ago for a conference,
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I was able to hand him several books by Clarke, which he did take. And he was familiar with Clarke.
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So it's interesting. So maybe hopefully that's having some good impact on him as well.
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Well, and I've interacted with Dr. Jason Lyle as well, and I'm sure he has no idea who
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I am. But I do consider him to be a brother. And I think that he's got some good stuff to offer.
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So hopefully he appreciated the books that he got from you. And he is benefiting from Clarke.
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I find that a lot of people who read Clarke for themselves don't necessarily get caught up in what
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I would describe as an echo chamber of criticism against Clarke. So hopefully he is benefiting from what
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Clarke wrote. So with that, let's go ahead and get into the next question. The next question is, what is the relationship between logic and scripture?
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And I found that it was interesting that Clarke, in his book titled God's Hammer, basically points out that the
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Reformers used the law of contradiction in their interpretive method. He writes on page 107,
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What is clear in one passage can be understood by a comparison with other passages is nothing other than the application of the law of contradiction.
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Logic, therefore, must have been the only test that the Reformers could have used. And Steve Matthews also had something good to say about this in his book.
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Steve Matthews is the gentleman who is doing the Trinity Foundation podcast, and he also has Lex Lucid.
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But in his book, titled Imaging a Vain Thing, you can find this at the Trinity Foundation, he writes,
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This irrational method produced, as it must, an irrational superstitious understanding of the
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Bible. The Protestant Reformation, believing that God was not the author of confusion, rejected this equivocal method and insisted that a given passage of scripture have but one meaning.
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The Bible could be read and understood by the same means that one could read and understand other writings, the principal tool being the laws of logic.
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This approach to scripture was given confessional status by the Westminster Assembly.
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Section 1 .6 of the Westminster Confession of Faith establishes logical inference as the primary tool of biblical interpretation.
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Quote, The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life is either expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture.
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And so there we have it, that we are to make valid deductions from scripture, and not just believe the things that are expressly stated.
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So, Tom, can you just give us your thoughts on this? Yeah, this is a subject, logic was a subject that used to be taught at the seminaries, that ministers were trained in it.
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Think back to the Puritans. Isaac Watts, a great ham writer, actually wrote a textbook on logic.
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The Puritans studied logic. God does not contradict himself, therefore his revelation to us does not contradict itself.
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So thus, if we have what seems to be a contradiction, what Van Til and others would call a paradox,
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Clark famously said, it's just a charley horse between the ears. Something must be wrong with our thinking about those, you know, maybe those two passages that might seem to contradict.
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We have a false interpretation, a wrong interpretation for the scripture as the mind of God.
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Paul said we have the mind of Christ, and he's talking about the scriptures. The mind of God, the mind of Christ, the scriptures do not contradict themselves because God does not contradict himself.
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So thus, you know, in our own age, as I said, logic probably is not taught at seminaries, much less
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Christian colleges and so forth. But it was important not only to the
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Reformers, but even the Puritans, and probably up through much of the 19th century.
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And it's only, I would say, within the latter half of the 19th century through the 20th century and even on into this 21st century that this deprecation of logic has happened, and what has it done?
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It's opened the floodgates to all sorts of, you know, false interpretations, mystical interpretations, etc.
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Because of this deprecation of logic, what you've seen happen also is that systematic theology is basically thrown under the bus in favor of what's called biblical theology or the historical redemptive approach, etc.
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And while this denies that God is logical, he's not going to contradict himself.
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And so to subject systematic theology, which we're trying to look at the whole of Scripture and see what the teaching is on each of what we call the loci or loci of doctrines, we want to see what the
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Scripture says as a whole and build our doctrine on that. Oh, that's downgraded in favor of what's called, again, biblical theology or historical redemptive.
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But this leads to all sorts of teachings that contradict sound biblical doctrine from our systematic theology.
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A case in point, we've been talking about Piper and Gaffin and so forth, is this teaching on justification.
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A person can be justified by faith alone, but that's not enough to save him.
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He must add his works somewhere in there. Well, that's foreign to the
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Scripture. That's a man -made insertion of false teaching. And Paul pronounces his most severe criticism and curse anathema on those who would teach another gospel.
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He has choice words for those that teach false doctrines, but no other place does he actually bring down God's curse than on those who would change the gospel and teach another gospel, which is not another gospel at all.
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So logic is very important in that regard. Well, I think that you're absolutely right to point out how important logic is.
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And for those who might be tempted to disparage logic, John Robbins writes, this is in the article that we've been referencing,
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Why City Logic. He writes, the opponents of logic misuse the law of contradiction in order to denounce it.
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They must assume its legitimacy in order to declare it illegitimate. They must assume its truth in order to declare it false.
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They must present arguments if they wish to persuade us that argumentation is invalid. Wherever they turn, they are boxed in.
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You see, for those who wish to disparage logic, it is very likely that they don't understand that they cannot present an argument or make an argument intelligible without first assuming the law of contradiction.
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I would like to just interject here something from Clark's article on God and logic in terms of the relationship between logic and scripture, just to bring this even more home.
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He says, therefore the law of contradiction as such and by itself is not made the axiom of this argument.
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So those who would say that Clark just exalts logic are really not reading
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Clark carefully. He's not making the law of contradiction or logic his axiom.
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He has a different axiom, but he uses the law of logic to deduce the applications of that axiom, the theorems, etc.,
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much like geometry. And so, continuing to quote here from Clark, he says,
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For a similar reason, God as distinct from scripture is not made the axiom of this argument.
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Because how do we know God except through the scripture? He says, Undoubtedly this twist will seem strange to many theologians.
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It will seem particularly strange after the previous emphasis on the mind of God as the origin of all truth.
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Must not God be the axiom? For example, the first article of the Augsburg Confession gives the doctrine of God and the doctrine of the scripture hardly appears anywhere in the whole document.
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In the French Confession of 1559, the first article is on God. The scripture is discussed in the next five.
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The Belgic Confession has the same order. The Scots Confession of 1560 begins with God and gets to the scripture only in article 19.
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The 39 articles begin with the Trinity and scripture comes in articles 6 and following.
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If God is sovereign, it seems very reasonable to put him first in the system. But several other creeds, and especially the
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Westminster Confession, state the doctrine of scripture at the very start. The explanation is quite simple.
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Our knowledge of God comes from the Bible. We may assert that every proposition is true because God thinks it so, and we may follow
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Charnock, Stephen Charnock again referenced here, in all his great detail, but the whole is based on scripture.
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Suppose this were not so, then God, in quotation marks, as an axiom, apart from scripture, is just a name.
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We must specify which God. The best known system in which God was made the axiom is
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Spinoza's. And he goes on through Spinoza. So we start with scripture because scripture is what gives us the knowledge of God.
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So that is his axiom. Clark's axiom is not logic, it's not even
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God as an undefinable term, but it's the scripture which gives us the information, the knowledge of God.
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Right, and you know it's interesting that Clark was criticized by his opponents as being a rationalist, when really all he was doing was presenting
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Christianity as a system of belief that was in fact rational. If he's a rationalist, then so are the writers of the
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Westminster Confession. Right, right. And you know, Tom, one of the things that I want to bring out here is that I had heard somebody at one time make the claim or say something to the effect that this whole idea that we're supposed to believe the things that we can deduce by good and necessary consequence was something that the
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Reformers came up with, was something that the Reformers invented. And that's not true because we get this in scripture itself.
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We see that Jesus himself deduced the resurrection from the tense of a verb.
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And so we have this example from Christ and basically what Christ was saying was that his hearers were obligated to believe the resurrection as well.
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And I know that this is a reference, it's in Matthew, I was trying to look it up earlier, I wasn't able to do it.
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Do you by any chance have that on hand? Yeah, it's Matthew chapter 22 and I'll start at verse 23 and read through verse 32.
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This is when the Sadducees come testing the Lord and the scripture says, The same day the
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Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him, saying, Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.
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Now there were with us seven brothers. The first died after he had married and having no offspring left his wife to his brother.
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Likewise, the second also and the third, even to the seventh. Last of all, the woman died also.
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Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had her. Jesus answered and said to them,
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You are mistaken, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels of God in heaven.
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But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, and here's the quotation from Exodus, I am the
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God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
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And he makes the argument from I am the God of Abraham, the
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God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Not I was, but I am in the verb tense.
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So therefore, all live unto God. And so he deduces, as Tim was saying, he deduces the resurrection from the verb tense.
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That is incredible that Jesus corrected his opponents by deducing the resurrection from the tense of a verb.
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So that really, I think, highlights how important logic is.
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And here we have the Logos, the logic or wisdom of God, setting the example. So next we want to talk about how understanding and using logic is necessary in order to defend the faith.
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And going back to Gordon Clark's book, God's Hammer, on page 106, Clark writes, with regards to defending the
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Bible as rational, he writes, In this case, a rational revelation is one that preserves the distinction between truth and falsity.
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It is, in its entirety, self -consistent. Christianity is under no obligation to justify itself as rational in any other sense, for the history of philosophy has shown that all other senses or systems result in skepticism.
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Therefore, to claim that election, or the atonement, or any other doctrine is, quote, irrational, is nothing more than to assert that these doctrines are distasteful to the objector.
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The accusation is not a substantiated intellectual conclusion, but an emotional antipathy.
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If the Bible doctrines are self -consistent, they have met the only legitimate test of reason.
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The test of logic is precisely the requirement that a set of propositions be meaningful, whether spoken by God or man.
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And if propositions have no meaning, obviously, they reveal nothing. So, the
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Bible presents a complete and comprehensive worldview, and it's self -consistent, it's non -contradictory, and therefore it is rational, and the
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Christian really is under no obligation to justify it any more than that.
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So, Tom, did you have anything to add to that? I think the word sense should be systems,
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I believe. That's why, you know, if Christianity can show that it's non -contradictory, it justifies itself there.
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From the Bible, we can deduce the laws of logic from the Bible itself, and therefore we have an epistemology, or what we would say is the theory or study of how we know what we know, which allows us to account for logic within our own axiom, and this is something that no other system can do.
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In formal logic, there are three fundamental laws, which are the law of contradiction, also called the law of non -contradiction, the law of identity, and the law of the excluded middle.
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These laws are deduced from Scripture, which allows us to account for them as universal and unchanging principles.
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Truth, by its very nature, has to be universal and unchanging, otherwise it's not truth.
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The law of contradiction, which states A cannot be A and not
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A at the same time, in the same respect, is revealed in Scripture as part of God's eternal character and nature, for he cannot deny or contradict himself, 2
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Timothy 2 .13. In this verse, the law is expressed in the form of a proposition.
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In the symbolic notation, however, A can represent either a proposition or a word. Therefore, the law of contradiction is embedded into every word of Scripture.
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When Genesis 1 .1 declares, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, it does not mean,
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In the beginning God dismantled the heavens and the earth, for that would contradict the proposition of divine revelation.
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The word created does not mean dismantled, and vice versa. Each word has a specific meaning, and although a word may have more than one meaning in general, it cannot have more than one meaning in any proposition.
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And quoting from Clark here, he writes, A word that means everything means nothing.
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In order for a word to mean something, it must also not mean something. In other words, what makes communication possible is that words have meaning.
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And so one word means one thing, and it doesn't mean all other things in that same sentence, in that same proposition.
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The law of identity, A is A, which holds that everything has a specific nature, is expressed in God's name,
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I am who I am, Yahweh, Exodus 3 .14. Everything exists as something in particular to itself, and everything has specific characteristics that make it what it is.
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For example, God is holy, righteous, sovereign, loving, and good.
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God's identity, however, includes all His specific traits or attributes and not just the ones mentioned.
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This law is crucial because it means that God has a definite nature and is therefore knowable.
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The third law that we mentioned was the law of the excluded middle. It's also known as the principle of the excluded third.
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The Latin is Principium Terti Exclusi. It holds that a proposition is either true or its negation is true, and there is no third option.
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This law is deduced from Jesus' own words to the Father, Your word is truth, in John 17 .17.
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In this verse, Jesus affirms that all propositional revelation is true, thereby upholding the law of the excluded middle.
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Another verse I want to bring out is Matthew 12 .30, which shows this law of the excluded middle.
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It says, He who was not with me is against me. There is no third option. You're either with Christ or you're against Christ.
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There is not a third option. It's the same thing with truth. A proposition is either true or false.
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There's no halfway position with a proposition. It's either true or it's false.
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We're dealing again with the laws of thinking. Matthew 12 .30,
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He who was not with me is against me. Also, I think it shows this law of the excluded middle. It is because these laws of logic are embedded in Scripture that the
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Christian is able to establish from an epistemological standpoint that they are fixed and universal laws.
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We're talking about the laws of logic. Epistemology seeks to answer the question, How do we know?
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Well, the Scripture is the answer. Without the epistemology of Scripture, we cannot account for the laws of logic, and it is for that reason that Scripture rather than logic itself is chosen as the
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Christian axiom. What we see here is with this deprecation of logic, we're left hanging in the air.
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People don't have a truth. They don't have anything solid, we might say.
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It's because we have the Scripture, and the Scripture is logical, and that God is the logic, and He has made us as His image.
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It's not only is man made in the image, but the Scripture says that man is the image of God, and that is logic.
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We can reason. We can think God's thoughts after Him. Continuing, we would agree with Dr.
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Clark that Scripture, the written words of the Bible, is the mind of God, and we talked about this a little earlier.
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What is said in Scripture is God's thought. Think of the passage in Corinthians, we have the mind of Christ, and there are other passages as well that deal with, in the
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Scripture, we have God's very mind. This is how we know that the laws of logic are fixed and do not change, because the word of our
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God will stand forever, Isaiah 40, verse 8. Likewise, we also know that they are universal, because He, that is
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God, upholds the universe by the word of His power, Hebrews 1 .3. In other words, we know these laws of logic are laws.
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God has made not only laws that the universe runs on, but He has made the laws for how we are to think correctly, how we are to deduce truth from one proposition to the next and come to a logical, a valid conclusion.
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Right, and so what we want to point out here, what we want to drive at here is that the
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Christian is really under no obligation to justify the Christian worldview as rational, other than to show that it is consistent.
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And when we talk about the Bible as our axiom, we want to point out that it answers all the questions of life, that it provides a complete and comprehensive worldview.
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And so, really, Christianity is rational and it is justifiable to believe in it.
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And I think that a lot of Christians would be impressed or encouraged to hear about how logical the
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Bible really is. And so, Clark, I think, does a really good job of pointing this out because he was a logician by trade and a theologian by preference.
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And in his book, God's Hammer, he writes, On this basis, that is, on the basis that Scripture is the mind of God, the relation to logic can easily be made clear.
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As might be expected, if God has spoken, He has spoken logically. The Scripture, therefore, should and does exhibit logical organization.
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For example, Romans 4 .2 is an enthematic hypothetical destructive syllogism.
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Romans 5 .3 is a hypothetical constructive syllogism. And 1 Corinthians 15 verses 15 through 18 is a sororities.
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Obviously, examples of standard logical forms such as these could be listed at great length.
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And, you know, when I first read that, I had to think to myself, what is a hypothetical destructive syllogism?
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I know what a hypothetical proposition is, but if you want a further explanation of that, you can get
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Clark's book, In Defense of Theology. He gives an extended explanation of what the hypothetical destructive syllogism is and he even gives the symbolic notation for it.
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And then you can also get Clark's book, Logic. The book is titled Logic and that's also found at the
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Trinity Foundation. But what we want to do is we want to show Christians that the
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Bible really is logical and that it really is rational. And furthermore, then what we want to do in our apologetic method is we want to give an ad hominem reply.
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Now, I wrote an article titled The Scripturalist's Ad Hominem Reply and basically what that is is it's an internal critique of the opponent's worldview.
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And so we want to use logic in our defense of Christianity in our apologetic method because in the article that I just referenced,
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The Scripturalist's Ad Hominem Reply, and I've read this in another episode on apologetics, but I write,
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The task of Christian apologetics is to contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all handed down to the saints.
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This requires us to always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks for the reason for the hope that is in you.
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It is to destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of Christ, as it says in 2
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Corinthians 10 5. So one interpretation is to say that it is to cast down arguments and I know that a lot of our listeners are probably aware of the fact that Stephen Hawking recently passed away and I wrote an article against Stephen Hawking's view a number of years ago.
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Now Stephen Hawking was pretty adamant about being an atheist and I would say he was an atheistic propagandist, but a number of years ago
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Stephen Hawking proposed the idea of a universe that was self -created. And so in my article
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I write, The Theoretical Physicist and Atheistic Propagandist Stephen Hawking is one such example of somebody who ultimately had to reject the law of contradiction in order to propose his view.
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Hawking writes, R .C.
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Sproul also notes that, For something to create itself or to be its own effect as well as its own cause, it would have to exist before it existed.
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The universe to be self -created would have to be before it was. Stated in terms of the law of contradiction, the universe would have to be and not be at the same time and in the same relationship.
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So that is one example. And just to give another example, recently some Jehovah's Witnesses came and knocked on my door and I've had the benefit of going through their theology and understanding it and so what
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I wanted to do was give them an ad hominem reply or give them an internal critique of their system.
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And so I have two of their Bibles. I have the 1984 edition and I have the 2013 edition.
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But what we can do is we can show that their Jesus is self -contradictory.
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Because the Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus was created by Jehovah and then used to create everything else.
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So for the sake of argument, let's just accept their proposition as true so that we can deduce from it contradictory propositions and reduce it to absurdity.
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That is the ad hominem approach. So according to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Jesus is not eternal but had a beginning.
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According to them, quote, the Bible says that Jesus was created which means that Jesus had a beginning, close quote.
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And you can find this on JW .org. In other words, Jesus is not eternal and did not always exist.
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Although the Jehovah's Witnesses will attempt to cite passages of Scripture in support of this claim, it stands merely as an unsupported assertion which leads directly to a self -contradiction.
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From this theological position, we shall construct our minor premise. We're going to create a categorical syllogism but we'll construct the minor premise,
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Jesus is a being that came into existence. And the Jehovah's Witnesses should readily agree with this.
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This should be easy to establish. However, according to the New World Translation, the official
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Bible translation of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, speaking of Jesus, it reads, quote, all things came into existence through him and apart from him not even one thing came into existence, close quote.
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That is John 1 verse 3 that's in their Bible. Notice that the first proposition in the verse, all things came into existence through him, is converted to its logical equivalent, quote, apart from him not even one thing came into existence.
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By changing the quality from all things to one thing and negating the predicate.
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In formal logic, this is called an aversion and it not only affirms Jesus as creator in the strongest way possible but it also demonstrates once again that the scriptures exhibit logical form.
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The translators of the New World Translation didn't mess with this verse. So as Christians we can agree with what it says.
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We should notice also that the passage says all things and when you compare this with their
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Bible in Colossians, they've added the word other four times to Colossians verse 16 through 17.
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But for more on that you'll have to read the whole article. But what we want to do with this passage in John is we want to construct the major premise in our categorical syllogism.
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That would be all things that came into existence are created through Jesus. So our categorical syllogism is this.
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Our major premise is all things that came into existence are created through Jesus. Our minor premise is
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Jesus is a being that came into existence. The conclusion, therefore,
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Jesus was created through Jesus. In this categorical syllogism we have a valid deduction but the conclusion is necessarily false because it is self -contradictory.
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In order for Jesus to be created through himself he would have to exist and not exist at the same time and in the same respect.
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This however is a clear violation of the law of contradiction because again the same attribute, in this case existence, cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject,
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Jesus, and in the same respect. This is a prime example of making a valid deduction from a false premise.
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And we know that at least one or more of the premises is false because the conclusion is self -contradictory and contradictions are false.
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It is very important to point out to the Jehovah's Witness that in spite of the conclusion being false it is the inevitable consequence of their theological position.
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And of course what they are going to do is they are going to correct you and say, well no, Jesus did not create himself through himself and he was created as the first of Jehovah's works and then
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Jehovah used him to create everything else. And so I tackle that as well. That also leads directly to a contradiction.
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And so you can check out the full article on that to see that really if they say that Jesus was created no matter what their system falls apart because it is logically irrational, because it is self -contradictory.
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And so those are just two examples of how we can use logic, we can use logic to evaluate the other person's system, the other person's worldview.
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And we will be giving more examples of this. We are going to get into science. We are going to get into morality.
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We are going to get into really all of these subjects in future episodes on apologetics.
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But Tom, did you have anything to add to that? I just want to, for those that would really like to see this worked out,
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I would recommend highly Clark's book Religion, Reason, and Revelation where we see his method which is to use the ad hominem to reduce their starting point, their axiom, to absurdity to show its contradictions.
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And once that's done, then you present the Christian axiom as one which there are no contradictions.
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And he does that so well in Religion, Reason, and Revelation. So I would like to encourage all your readers to look at that.
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And finally, just kind of wrapping up, we asked the question, why study logic? And I'd like to quote here from John Robbins' article by that same title.
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And we would first say that our first answer must be that we are commanded by Scripture and by God, obviously, to study logic.
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Without learning how to think properly, we shall misunderstand Scripture. Peter warns against those who twist the
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Scripture to their own destruction. So a study of logic will help us avoid twisting the
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Scripture and trying to make it imply something it does not imply. And as Tim gave the example of the
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Jehovah's Witnesses, if we don't use logic in our interpretation of Scripture, we will often be led astray, even to the point that we might become a false teacher or hold to false teaching.
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Continuing on in the last paragraph, he says, But logic is indispensable not only in reading the Bible, but also in reading history, botany, or computer programs.
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It is applicable to all thought, and mistaken arguments may be found in every subject. The study of logic will help us understand all other subjects better, not just theology.
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Therefore, as God said through the prophet Isaiah, Come, let us reason together. Amen. I think that we should end it on that note.
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I think that's a great place to close out this podcast. And I want to just reiterate the points that we should endeavor to study logic as Christians.
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Because God is rational. He is not a God of confusion. And it is very important.
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It will be a useful tool in defending the faith and understanding the Christian worldview.
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So I want to recommend our listeners go check out the Trinity Foundation, trinityfoundation .org
59:39
And Tom, I just want to say thank you for coming on the podcast. It is always a pleasure talking to you.
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Thank you, Tim. It's been a privilege to be with you. And thank you to your listeners. Yes, and you know, speaking of the listeners,
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I want to make our listeners aware of the fact that Tom has agreed to come on the podcast and just participate whenever he is able to.
01:00:04
So be looking out for more episodes with Tom Joditis. And you know, go ahead and check out that essay contest if you're between the ages of 16 and 25.
01:00:14
Because you could win some money to either pay off some student loans or buy some books or do something with.
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But go ahead and check that out. It's at the Trinity Foundation. And with that, we want to wish our listeners a good week.
01:00:30
And we will check you next time. God bless. Hello, this is Tom Joditis, President of the
01:00:36
Trinity Foundation. Thank you for listening to Semper Reformanda Radio. For more information on the
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