How could our culture in less than 50 years move to affirm Gay Marriage? Epistemology.

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Welcome to The Dividing Line from Alpha Omega Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona.

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I'm Pastor Dan Cofessi. I'm blessed to have this opportunity here today to spend some time with you on the subject of how did our culture so quickly go from having a minority who would affirm gay marriage to a majority in probably less than 50 years?

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How does that happen in a populace? How does that happen in people's minds? And the reason

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I want to discuss this is not just about gay marriage, but about how we are to communicate the gospel into our culture and our need to understand how our neighbors, people we work with, how they really think.

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And we're not modifying the gospel. The gospel is sufficient to address man's darkened thinking.

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But we need to understand in this transition to a majority approving gay marriage from a minority in just 50 years, how has this happened?

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And we're going to look at that here today. My answer is that the average

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American's epistemology has radically changed in this period of 50 years.

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It's a big word. I've got some key concepts we want to talk about today.

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I put them in a nice purple color there. And epistemology is one of them. It's a study, of course, of how the questions about knowledge, how do we know what we know?

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How do we know that what we know is true? And can we be certain about anything?

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Those are epistemological questions, theory of knowledge.

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And the majority of Americans today answer those questions very different than they did 50 years ago.

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How do I know that something is true? How do I know anything with certainty?

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My parents and grandparents did not answer those questions the way our culture answers them today.

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Few Americans even know the word epistemology, but most of them have adopted an epistemology very different from their parents and their grandparents.

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And as a result of this, they affirm gay marriage. And we want to walk through how this has happened.

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And then I'd like to present three ways to confront this change.

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We would say a darkening in the way that man thinks, a going to falsehood and darkness.

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But let's see how this has happened. Though I'm talking about only the last 50 years, these epistemological changes have been in the birthing for centuries, beginning with the

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Enlightenment. Until recently, most or all cultures would reject the idea of gay marriage.

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It wasn't even seriously discussed as far as anything like a majority.

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And those of us who believe in the scriptures, we can understand why they would reject it. They rejected it, even though they didn't have the

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Bible. They rejected it because of man's natural conscience or innate built -in knowledge of right and wrong.

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And that natural conscience is one aspect of revelation from God to man.

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And so God has standards about marriage and sexuality and all of these issues.

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And those standards are imprinted in the natural conscience of every human being.

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So all cultures universally rejected the idea of gay marriage.

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But due to the sinfulness of our human nature, we suppress the witness of natural conscience.

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We rebel against God's definition of right and wrong. Romans chapter 1 and other places, you're probably quite familiar with those passages.

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And here's the major thing that we need to understand in the culture we live, is this sentence

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I've highlighted here. Fallen mankind welcomes those epistemologies that justify his suppression of God's definition of right and wrong.

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He's not neutral about the epistemology he hopes is true.

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He actually welcomes those epistemologies that justify his suppression of revelation from God.

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And so here's what's been happening going all the way back to the first century. You hear these categories of epistemology.

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We have a pre -modern epistemology. Modern meaning not 20 and 21st century.

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Modern meaning from the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment period is modern, beginning in the 16th and 17th century.

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But pre -modern is prior. So we have a pre -modern epistemology. And I'm going to talk about each one of these here in a moment.

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But prior to the Enlightenment, this epistemology was significantly influenced by Christianity in Western culture.

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And it was based upon Judaism and the Old Testament. And the pre -modern epistemology tended to actually preserve or enlighten natural conscience.

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And that's why Christianity didn't convert everyone. But Christianity had a major civilizing effect on all

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Western cultures because this epistemology preserved natural conscience.

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But when we reach the Enlightenment of the 17th century, we have this modern epistemology which we'll see in a moment actually darkened natural conscience.

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And the key thing here with this modern epistemology is this belief in man's autonomy, in man's self -sufficiency in the realm of knowledge.

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Man doesn't need help to know things correctly. He is autonomous in the realm of knowledge.

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And so natural conscience is actually darkened by those that follow an

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Enlightenment epistemology. And then finally in the mid -20th century, since modernism didn't deliver, and we'll talk about that in a moment, we have post -modernism which you hear a lot.

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And post -modernism is turning the lights out on natural conscience. So let's take a look at each of these epistemologies and we'll see how our culture so rapidly has affirmed things like gay marriage and abortion and other issues.

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A lot of the thinking here, I'm indebted to D .A. Carson. He's done excellent work in his life on these kinds of questions.

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Pre -modern epistemology is loosely referring to Judeo -Christian epistemology before the

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Enlightenment. Christianity, founded in Judaism, had this major influence on Western culture which we've talked about all the way down to the 19th century.

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And a Jewish -Christian monotheism carried the day. And by the 4th century, most people assumed, without doubt, two things.

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1. God exists. 2. He knows everything.

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3. He is willing to impart his knowledge to mankind.

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And we have a special term for that. We use the term revelation. Pre -modern epistemology believes that we're not locked in a box.

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And I'm going to use that illustration a lot as we go. We're not in a box of the materialism of the universe, and there's nothing that penetrates that box.

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Pre -modern epistemology believed that God transcends that box and he reveals to us.

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So, all human knowledge, then, is a subset of God's knowledge.

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If God is willing to share some of his knowledge with us, and God's not a liar, then we can know some things with certainty.

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Because God is omniscient, he doesn't lie, and he's willing to talk to us.

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Therefore, he's truthful and omniscient, therefore we can know certain things with certainty.

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So this is a pre -modern epistemology. For pre -moderns, the foundation of knowledge begins with God.

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God is the ultimate knower. He created us with the capacity of knowing, and we are lesser knowers.

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And pre -modern epistemology tended, as I've already said, to preserve and enlighten natural conscience.

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God's knowledge and thoughts were to be sought as the final authority.

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Man was not the center of knowing and defining the truth with the pre -modern epistemology.

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Man received light, discovered light, perhaps reasoned from light to more light, but he did not generate light.

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He did not autonomously generate truth.

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He was a receiver of light, not a generator of it.

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Pre -modern epistemology. Well, what happened at the

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Enlightenment? Modern epistemology. 17th century to early 20th century.

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You've probably heard it. The age of reason. Descartes, he had some intellectual friends who were no longer shared the pre -modern epistemology, and some of his friends were atheists.

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And Descartes wanted to convince them to convert.

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And interestingly, he believed he could find a common ground and reason his atheistic friends to faith.

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And he started with man in his famous axiom, I think, therefore

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I am. And he attempted to reason back to God using rationality and logic and reason.

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And though Descartes himself didn't doubt everything, he set about to doubt everything and then to prove everything and remove doubt.

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And he believed he could do it. He could do it with his axiom and reason alone.

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He could achieve this holy grail of epistemology, certainty, with reason alone.

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Given his axiom, I think, therefore I am. Now notice that God is not the given in this epistemology.

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But at best, God's the conclusion of the argument.

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And if you notice in apologetics, so often—I'm looking at Rich—so often that's how we have tried to do apologetics.

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God is the conclusion of the argument. He's not the given, he's the conclusion of it. And that's

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Descartes' method. And I'm not here to evaluate which method is good, bad, or indifferent, but just to point that out.

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So modernistic thinkers believed that a set of uncontestable foundations could be found, agreed upon, and from these foundations, using the right method, absolute truth could be obtained.

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So God was no longer the foundation of knowledge with this Enlightenment epistemology.

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Modernist epistemology embraced an understanding of truth that ascribed to it what some have called ahistorical universality.

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In other words, what is true is universally true. That is, it's not culturally or historically dependent.

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In other words, the definition of right in China is the same as the definition of right in America, and so forth.

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So that what is true is ahistorical and it's universal.

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That was Enlightenment thinking. And they set out to try to prove this. Now, modernism had great faith in mankind, in his abilities to answer the big questions.

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And modernism was fueled by the impressive attainments of the physical sciences.

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And we're under that today. We're not just postmodern today. We have a mixture of people that are thinking modernism and are thinking postmodernism.

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The more scientific a person is, you're back in the Enlightenment when you try to evangelize them.

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And it's fueled by the impressive attainments of the physical sciences. And the motto of the

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Enlightenment was, have courage to use your own understanding.

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And that brings us to another key concept, this idea of autonomy.

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Have courage to use your own understanding. You're autonomous.

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You have the equipment to solve this epistemological problem and attain to truth and certainty.

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So, man had left the superstitious age where he is dependent upon the gods or God to speak to him.

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That's our key term, revelation. The Enlightenment, we're leaving our dependency on the gods to talk to us.

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We don't really need them now that we've come of age. Man is now enlightened.

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He's leaving his superstitions. He's enlightened. And with his mind and science, he's realized that he has the tools in his own mind to discover truth.

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To discover all historical, universal truth. A new age of human reason had come.

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That's the Enlightenment. Our founding fathers were very much Enlightenment thinking.

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Some of them were Christians. But most of our founders were Enlightenment men. And they thought this way.

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And they had a theistic rationalism. The original men of the

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Enlightenment were not atheists. Enlightenment thinkers believed that absolutes and truth were desirable and attainable.

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Now, you need to hang on to that. We're going to get back to that. At least in the Enlightenment, truth was attainable and desirable.

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And if man discovered the right foundations and used the correct methods, he could discover absolute truth.

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Now, for modernism, the two most significant methods were rationalism and empiricism.

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Rationalism. Innate ideas inborn by God and deductive logic leads to truth and absolutes.

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That's Descartes. He still believed in innate ideas. But man possessed this natural revelation.

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We would use it if we were speaking biblically and theologically. Descartes believed that man was created in God's image and he had this set of innate ideas.

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But he also believed that's all he needed. And with this and deductive logic, he could discover truth and absolutes.

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We call that rationalism. Empiricism. You know, I'm from Missouri.

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Show me and I'll believe it. Knowledge comes not from innate ideas, but it comes from experience.

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What I see, hear, touch, feel, etc. And of course, science is fueling both of these ways of thinking because science is infused with mathematics.

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That's rationalism. Science is infused with experiment. We go out into the world and we perform experiments with instruments and we experience electrical current.

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We experience a magnetic field. We can, by experience, know there's such a thing as an electromagnetic field.

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So science seems to capitalize on both of these, the rationalism part and the empiricism part.

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And so knowledge comes from experience. Empiricism, we're going to get the absolute truth.

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Now, what has happened is over the centuries, modernism went from holding to traditional theism,

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Judeo -Christian theism. It went to deism, where God's created it, wound it up as a watch and tossed it out there and doesn't get involved anymore, to atheism.

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And that's the progression of enlightenment thinking, finally to atheism. And Darwinism, of course, fed the final step to atheism.

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We don't even need the original watchmaker any longer to wind up the watch because we can explain the creation of the world.

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So we go all the way from Christian theism or Judeo -Christian theism to deism to atheism as the centuries of the modernistic enlightenment thinking went on.

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So, modernism, however, did not yield what its early proponents believed it would.

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Its limitations to answer all the questions and achieve certainty became evident.

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Nor did it put man on a steady course of promise and usher in a human utopia as it had promised.

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Philosophers like Hume and Kant shook the confidence in man's rational capacities.

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Immanuel Kant's critique of pure reason showed that it was impossible to attain certainty by reason alone.

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And the Enlightenment's lofty confidence in man's innate goodness and rationality failed.

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In other words, skepticism was on its way by the 19th century especially.

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Skepticism was on its way at least among intellectuals. We really can't know anything with absolute certainty.

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That's skepticism. Other ugly facts did not help. The French Revolution, the

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Napoleonic Wars, World War I, World War II. Man had come of age, but he was more adept at being barbaric and destroying himself than ever before.

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So, modernism didn't deliver. Postmodern epistemology, early 20th century on.

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Postmodernism begins with the I also, as Descartes did, I think, see.

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But one of postmodernism's axioms is that every

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I is different and unique. Whether it is an individual

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I or a cultural I, the individual I is the product of the cultural

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I. That's postmodernism. Postmodernism rejects the idea of universal and historical, ahistorical foundations.

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Modernism believed if they found truth, it would be universal. If they found truth, it would be timeless, ahistorical.

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Modernism rejects the idea that such truth can be found.

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No universal ideas exist. No universal ideas on morals and no general revelation exist.

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The postmodern has discovered that such universals were not universal at all.

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They were self -evident only within given cultures. And so, the postmodern is debunking modernism.

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And of course, it's relativism, of course, to your culture, to use that expression.

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Postmodernism insists that objective knowledge, now here's a twist, objective knowledge is neither attainable nor desirable.

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You know, at least during the Enlightenment, there still was a quest for the truth. It was a noble cause to try to find the absolutes.

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But not anymore with postmodernism. It's not attainable, nor is it desirable.

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And here's one of Carson's wonderful quotes about this. Far from thinking that this loss of epistemological certainty is tragic, postmodernism glories in the diversity of outcomes.

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It says epistemological certainty is undesirable because it breeds absolutism that manipulates people and controls them, trampling on the splendid diversity of creeds and cultures and races that constitute humankind.

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Let the diversity flourish, but let none of the disparate voices claim to be true.

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Or better, let them all claim to be true, but none in an exclusive or objective sense.

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So there we are. That's much of the pluralism and the attitude we're surrounded with.

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Certainty is not attainable and it's not desirable. Well, you might have trouble living without any certainty when you try to practice this, but that's an experiential issue.

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But that is exactly what is happening. Postmodernism has convinced so many people that nothing is certain.

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It causes them to lose their minds, of course, and so forth. But we're sidetracking a little bit.

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Now, no one with this epistemology would oppose gay marriage.

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Actually, they would resent those who do. So when we're dealing with the subject of sexual immorality and gay marriage, it's an epistemological problem.

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Nobody with this postmodern epistemology is going to oppose gay marriage.

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They're actually going to resent those who do. So you're not going to deal with these issues simply on morality based on innate ideas.

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I hear it on the talk radio every time. Every culture since we have known mankind and since human history has emphasized marriage between man and a woman.

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And I sit and I hear that argument and I say, I put on my postmodern hat, you know what

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I say? So what? So what? That argument is already dead.

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If you have this epistemology, that argument is dead on arrival. And so as Christians, we need to have a

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Christian argument. So no one with this epistemology would oppose gay marriage.

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So you might as well begin to argue about epistemology. And they resent those who do.

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Now, since the 1960s, this is the epistemology of the majority of our colleges, our public and government schools, and almost all popular forms of music and entertainment.

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Our culture is infused since the 60s.

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When I was growing up forward, it's infused with this epistemology. And I don't know how it happened.

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I was growing up on a farm and we never talked about this kind of stuff. And my parents never talked about this kind of stuff.

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I was growing up on a farm, going to public schools. But I can remember when

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I was, I don't know, 12, 13, 14, and my brother is 16 or 17, 18.

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I can remember us running around saying, it's all relative, it's all relative.

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Where did I get that? I got it out of the 60s culture.

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And we never even had a serious thought about this kind of stuff. But that's what we were saying. So, yeah, our public and government schools, all forms of popular entertainment is infused with this epistemology.

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People have an epistemology. They don't necessarily know what it is. They don't know what that word means. But they have imbibed it and they're attempting to live their lives on the basis of it.

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Common to modernism and postmodernism is a conscious or the unconscious conviction that there is no transcendent, credible, that is trustworthy, knower who will talk to me.

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That's the issue. There's no transcendent, credible, i .e.

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trustworthy, knower who will talk to me. That is, there's no revelation from a superior mind.

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Postmodernism is not necessarily anti -religious, not at all.

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However, when postmodernism spills in the religion, it spells ecumenism.

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Religion is okay. It's even good. But there just cannot be one religion that's the best and no religion can be considered wrong.

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Postmodernism's logical conclusion leaves us with no standard for declaring that something is good or evil for anyone but ourselves.

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Now, if we were the only person living on the planet, this might work.

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But the fact is, I would submit to you, that human societies self -destruct without some fundamentals in place regarding a definition of good and evil.

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As soon as I come across my neighbor, we're going to have a problem with the postmodern epistemology.

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But that's where we are and that's where we've been going. Now, as much as postmoderns decry the arrogance of the

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Enlightenment, decry this idea that there's absolute truth whereby we can enslave and trample on others, justify our trampling on others' freedom, postmodernism is itself deeply arrogant in its own way.

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Since nobody is right and nobody is wrong, does that not leave me personally always being right?

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And if you don't like it, too bad? And if I adopt this thinking personally, it leaves me uncorrectable, one of the chief traits of the fool in the book of Proverbs.

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And that's where we are. Postmoderns are extremely arrogant and when they try to live with each other and they try to get along with each other, it's not good.

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So, how did our culture arrive where we are today regarding gay marriage?

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Ever increasing degrees of autonomy regarding knowing good and evil.

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And ever increasing degrees of rejection of divine revelation, both general and special revelation.

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Increase our autonomy, reject divine revelation, general or special.

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You can look at it on a little chart here. First century pre -modern epistemology, we had special revelation, that would be

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Scripture and Christ. And we had general revelation or innate ideas.

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Open, sought after and discussed. Enlightenment, modern epistemology, we cross out special revelation.

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We don't need the Bible, we don't need miracles, we don't need

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Scripture. But the original Enlightenment thinkers do what? They hang on to general revelation.

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That's what all moralists in our culture are doing today. That's what unbelieving moralists in America are trying to do.

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They think they're going to stop the decay in America by hanging on to general revelation and innate ideas alone.

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And it's not going to work because they don't understand the nature of sin, but that's another subject.

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It may slow the decay, but it's not going to work. And as Christians, our hope is not in the reassertion of general revelation into the culture.

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I mean, we do that as we go, but we ought to do another dividing line on that thought alone, we could.

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But during the Enlightenment, we're crossing out special revelation, you see. General revelation is sufficient.

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By the time we get to postmodernism, we've crossed them both out. There is no autonomous knower that will reveal truth to us.

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So that's how we've gotten here. In just 50 years, this massive epistemological shift, and we need to understand that when we evangelize people.

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So what is a Christian response to the Enlightenment and postmodernism? How are we going to deal with this?

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Now, many have written on the subject, and my treatment here has been to focus on what

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I think is a fundamental issue. And the fundamental issue is revelation. That's the issue.

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And I would like to suggest three responses, and these may and should be used together.

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Three responses to this. First, we have a negative approach, showing the bankruptcy of man's knowledge when he rejects revelation.

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This is very important. Second, we must confront man's intellectual sin and rebellion.

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What the Church has been doing for so long is addressing the lower part of Romans 1 and not the upper part.

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The Church is addressing all of his sins of practice, maybe.

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And we might say sins of practice of sexual immorality and the hate or all these other things.

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But we're not addressing his intellectual sin. And I've coined that phrase.

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I don't know if anybody else uses it, but I'm using it. We must confront man's intellectual sin.

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And I'll talk about that in a moment. And the third thing, as a positive approach, we must proclaim a biblical epistemology.

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Now, if we preach the gospel biblically, we will proclaim a biblical epistemology. And I'm going to try to show you that in a moment.

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And I'm speeding up because I'm so conscious of time limits. But there's not supposed to be any time limits here. So maybe

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I can slow back down. Well, let's look at these three things. First, the negative approach.

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Here's the negative approach. We are in the dark and doomed without revelation from outside the box.

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As Christians, we need to show people that. Remember the box. The box is naturalism, atheism.

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All there is is this box. We're in it. There's nothing outside. Well, if that's true, we're doomed.

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And this is the Proverbs 26, verse 5 approach. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.

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That's very much part of sharing the gospel, is to show the doom and the darkness we're in.

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What's powerful about this approach is that this doom is the conclusion of Western philosophy.

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After 2 ,500 years of working on the epistemological questions, after autonomously working on the epistemological questions, that's the conclusion of Western philosophy.

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Where did it end? It ends right there, skepticism. We really can't know anything with certainty, and it ends in nihilism.

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Everything is meaningless. And that's where Western philosophy has ended.

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And the philosophers have done a good job of exposing the limitations of unaided human reason and the limitations of human experience as the means of knowing anything.

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And the two main approaches to attaining certainty, rationalism and empiricism, have failed.

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Now, the philosophers knew that already in the late 18th century, but that hadn't spread out yet into the culture.

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But they knew that in the 18th century, and then it just all accelerated in the 19th century.

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However, it doesn't take a philosophic genius to know why these epistemologies have failed.

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Rationalism. Every truth learned by reason is based upon reasoning from a major and minor premise.

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But the premises can never be proven by rationalism.

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It's that simple. The premises are either assumed, or they're brought in from some other epistemology.

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Descartes reached over into empiricism to get started. You see that?

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I think, therefore I am.

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Well, I think is not a rationalistic statement. I think is a statement of experience.

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I'm thinking. I'm alive. That's an experience.

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You know, maybe you're a hologram. You know, and you're a computer program running in an AI machine.

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So the very premise that Descartes builds his structure of rationalism on is based on experience.

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So he dips over into empiricism to get started, because rationalism can never prove its first assumptions and premises.

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And of course, the philosophers beat up on Descartes in many ways.

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But it really is that simple, I think, is an experience.

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So, okay, well, empiricism. Our senses are often deceived. What we experience often does not line up with reality.

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So there's no certainty here. There's no certainty here. My experience may be invalid.

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Someone may have deceived me. Someone may have tricked. You know, my eyes can only see at about 25 frames a second.

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And you can slip something in there that I can't see and deceive me.

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My experience is not infallible. So there's no certainty there. Furthermore, there are many things that we need to know that we cannot experience.

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You know, I can't experience that the earth is round where I live, unless I can go out in outer space and look at it.

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But more importantly, there are things we need to know that we cannot experience.

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You can't know whether there's a heaven or hell by experience, at least not ahead of time.

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Got it? You can't know whether there's a heaven or hell ahead of time by experience.

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And there's all kinds of things we can't know by experience. I can't know Rich's mind by experience.

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It's not possible. I can only know Rich's mind by revelation, small r.

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He has to reveal it to me. So there's all kinds of things we can't know by experience.

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We either know them by revelation, a credible knower reveals them to us, or we know them by reason.

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We have a valid major and minor premise, and we can reason to another truth from it.

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But rationalism and empiricism cannot bring certainty.

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And it doesn't take a philosophic genius to know why these epistemologies have failed when these epistemologies are used at the exclusion of revelation.

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Now, with rationalism and empiricism dead, remember we're answering the fool according to his folly here, what's left?

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Skepticism. We really can't know anything with any degree of certainty. Nihilism.

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Everything really, that's a typo, but maybe it isn't. Everything real is meaningless.

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You know, that kind of sounds... I really meant the type there. Everything really is meaningless.

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Nihilism. Or subjectivism. I make my own definitions.

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Why not? We are on our own. That's what we're left with. If we insist nothing penetrates the box.

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If nothing penetrates the box, hey, pick what do you want?

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Skepticism? Nihilism? Rampant subjectivism? Now, Gordon Clark's final statement in his

44:26

History of Philosophy text, from Thales to Dewey. Dewey, Thales is 585

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B .C., Dewey, the American philosopher, 1859 to 1952. His final statement is very chilling, but perceptive.

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And I attempted to read all the way through. I didn't make it, but the first couple chapters.

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And then I jumped to the back and read the conclusion. It still is my goal to read from Thales to Dewey, written by Gordon Clark.

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But he makes this perceptive statement. And think about this statement with me.

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And I've inserted some of my own interpretation of what

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I think Clark is saying. Some of you out there probably are Clark scholars. And you can correct me if I'm misinterpreting what

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Dr. Clark is saying here. But I think I've got it right. But I'd appreciate any feedback on accurately understanding

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Clark's summary here, because it really is profound and helpful. And this is what he says at the end of that volume.

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The history of philosophy began with naturalism. And so far as this volume is concerned, it ends with naturalism.

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The pre -Socratic naturalism dissolved into sophism, and by that he means skepticism.

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Knowledge is ultimately impossible. And he shows how that happened in the

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B .C. time period. It dissolved into this sophism of skepticism, from which a metaphysics arose.

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And the metaphysics lost itself in a mystic trance. I don't quite understand what he means by that.

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Maybe some of you can help. Then, under the influence of an alien source, and I think here he's referring to Judaism, Christ, or the

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Word. Then, under the influence of an alien source,

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Western Europe appealed to a divine revelation.

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This is pre -modern epistemology. Now we advance to the 16th century.

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In the 16th century, one group... This is the beginning of the

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Enlightenment now. In the 16th century, one group put their complete trust in revelation.

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And I imagine he's referring to the Protestant Reformers. While another development turned to unaided human reason.

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That's the Enlightenment. And what we have historically happening is not only the

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Protestant Reformation, which we all glory in, but we have operating in parallel with the

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Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment. Those that reject the gospel and reject the divine revelation, they are going to solve humanity's problems, not by the gospel and the king and God's son sent into the world.

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They're going to solve mankind's problems through reason. This is all happening in the 16th century.

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Complete trust in revelation, Protestant Reformers, while another development turned to unaided human reason.

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And I believe he's referring to the Rationalism of the Enlightenment. This latter movement, the

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Rationalism of the Enlightenment, has now, he's writing in 1957, this latter movement has now abandoned its metaphysics, its rationalism, and even the fixed truths of naturalistic science.

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1957! It has dissolved into sophism, back to skepticism.

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Does this mean that philosophers and cultural epics are nothing but children who pay their fare to take another ride on the merry -go -round?

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Is this Nietzsche's eternal recurrence? Or could it be that a choice must be made between skeptical futility, what

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I'm calling nihilism, get back on the merry -go -round, is it, or could it be that a choice must be made between skeptical futility and a word from God, Revelation?

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Must we make a choice between nihilism and Revelation? And I say yes.

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This is answering the fool according to his folly. There's no other logical choice.

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It's either nihilism or Revelation. To answer this question for himself, the student, since he cannot ride very fast into the future and discover what a new age will do, might begin by turning back to the first page and pondering the whole thing over again.

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This will at least stave off suicide for a few more days.

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Isn't that chilling? That's his point. That's his point.

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We're doomed if there's no Revelation. That's where these epistemologies lead.

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And don't we see that in our culture? You better believe it. We see what he said.

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This will stave off suicide for a few more days. Now, what's exciting is, is the

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Bible agrees with these conclusions of the philosophers, given the assumption which many of them have held.

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That is, man is on his own. The Bible agrees with this before 580

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B .C. And you can read the wisdom literature of the Old Testament.

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And the wisdom literature makes it so clear that if man rejects

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Revelation, he's a fool. If what man knows is limited to what he can find out via the use of his own faculties, whether that be rationalism or empiricism, we are doomed.

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Emperor autonomous philosophy has no clothes. Got it? Emperor autonomous philosophy has no clothes.

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Whether it's autonomous rationalism, whether it's autonomous empiricism, whether it's autonomous postmodernism, that emperor is naked.

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And we need to point out this nakedness. Clark also said this of Dewey, the

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American philosopher, the first half of the 20th century, that massively influenced the

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American public education system. Quote, referring to Dewey, his works on educational problems, both particular and general, altered the nature and purpose of the

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American public school system. Now, this is happening during the first half of the 20th century in America.

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It altered the nature and purpose of the public school system. Dewey's basic irrationalism is seen as clearly as anywhere in his disparagement of epistemology.

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Although the philosophers from Plato to Hegel had divided into schools by their differing positions on this crucial problem,

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Dewey considers epistemology a pseudo -problem and a waste of time.

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And I'm telling us as Christians, no, epistemology is not a waste of time.

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It is the issue. It is the issue. Are we autonomous, arrogant knowers?

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Are we created as dependent knowers? That's epistemological question.

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Dewey thought it is a pseudo -problem and it's a waste of time. Going on with Clark, obviously

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Dewey gave up, as many skeptics did, on finding any absolutes or ultimate goods.

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Now, that's before the 1960s. That's the first half of the 20th century.

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So, in the university intelligent circles, they're already skeptics.

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They already understand there aren't any absolutes since we've taken the autonomous road.

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He gave up, as many skeptics did, on finding any absolutes or ultimate goods. Not surprising that he is credited with creating the one philosophy produced in America, pragmatism.

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Do what produces some end you have chosen, never really knowing with certainty, that's our word, never knowing with certainty if that end is truly good or evil.

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Isn't that, that's where we're at. That's where we're at. You're never going to hear good or evil, right or wrong discussed in a public school.

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You're not even going to hear that terminology used. You're not, unless it's applied to us, who say there is right and wrong and there is absolute truth.

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So, many people under 40 feel this futility. Their minds are rational enough to see the implications of the fact that the

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Enlightenment failed to deliver on its promises. No certainties.

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And the voice of the skeptics sounds loud in every college and in every public school today.

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Furthermore, postmodernism isn't going to turn out to be a nirvana. These realizations lead different people to different evidences, to different experiences.

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I mean, despair, hardness, brutality, I don't care. Epistemology matters and everyone has one.

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Our teenagers, the time to begin with this stuff is with our teenagers. That's when to begin.

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When their minds kick in, when their rational capacities begin to work. That is when we need to discuss epistemology with our children and in our churches.

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Now, as part of our negative apologetic, we should make it clear that the Bible agrees with the conclusion of the philosophers even before many of them went to work on the problem.

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If you receive no revelation from God, man becomes hopelessly dark. Just two biblical citations, we could do a lot more.

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As a result of suppressing natural revelation, they became futile in their thoughts.

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What's happening in Romans 1? They're suppressing natural revelation. What happens to their thought life?

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It becomes futile. They became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened.

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Professing to be wise, we could put professors in there. Professing to be wise, they became fools.

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Agar, this is a wonderful epistemological passage in your Old Testament. You need to learn to use this.

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Agar acknowledges, I'm sorry, I'm talking to you as if I'm preaching to my own congregation.

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When I said you need to learn to use this, I'd encourage you to learn to use this.

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I don't have the same level of authority here. Agar acknowledges his darkness apart from the

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Word of God. Listen to this. Surely I am more stupid than any man.

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Now that's not, he wasn't an enlightenment guy. Okay? He wasn't an enlightenment thinker.

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Surely, and he's a wise man, as you see if you read Proverbs chapter 30.

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Surely I am more stupid than any man, and do not have the understanding of a man.

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I neither learn wisdom nor have knowledge of the Holy One who is ascended into heaven outside the box.

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That's the problem. You and I can't go up there. He knows, he knows there's something outside the box.

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So he says, who has ascended into heaven? I can't go up there, you see.

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He's not an, empiricism is limited. Who has ascended into heaven?

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Or descended? And you know the Lord Jesus uses this very terminology in John chapter 3 about revelation.

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He knows there's this outside of the box reality and he knows he can't go there.

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Who has ascended into heaven or descended? Who has gathered the wind in his fist?

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Who has bound the waters in his garment? Natural revelation. Who has established all the ends of the earth?

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General revelation has, he's listened to general revelation. He knows there's an incredible God or something beyond this general revelation.

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And you know, what is his name? In other words, to know the name in Hebrew is to know the nature and the essence but he doesn't know the name.

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He needs knowledge. He doesn't have it. That's why he says, I'm more stupid than any man. And what is his son's name if you know?

01:00:05

And then look at what he says. Every word of God is pure.

01:00:11

He is a shield to those who put their trust in him. There's revelation.

01:00:17

He doesn't end in despair. He doesn't end in despair because there's a word from God.

01:00:29

So we could go to many more passages but the

01:00:36

Bible agrees with the conclusion of the philosophers. Nihilism if there's no word from God.

01:00:46

Okay. Second, how do we confront this? That was the negative.

01:00:52

That was the negative apologetic. Second, we need to confront man's intellectual sin and his rebellion especially in the area of defining good and evil.

01:01:05

I would say, spend your time arguing about definition of good and evil. Just go there.

01:01:11

Just go there. Defining good and evil, how we're going to do it, who gets to define it, you know.

01:01:19

Do not simply focus on a moral evil but focus on the moral evil and that's man's intellectual rebellion.

01:01:32

Every individual evil goes back to the singular contest of who, not what, who defines good and evil.

01:01:49

Let me repeat that. Every individual evil goes back to the singular contest of who, not what, defines good and evil.

01:02:02

Good and evil are personal concepts created by a personal god for humanity, created personally in his image.

01:02:12

And somebody has authority and somebody is supposed to submit. It's all personal.

01:02:18

It's not impersonal. Who gets to define good and evil? And so of course, we go back to Genesis 3, don't we?

01:02:26

And think of the case of Eve and Satan's temptation of Eve. Excuse me there.

01:02:35

Her temptation of Eve. Now first, think about Eve's susceptibility to being deceived was not a result of sin.

01:02:49

I've had to think this through. Eve's mind was not corrupted by sin when she was deceived.

01:03:01

However, Eve's unfallen mind was not autonomous.

01:03:10

That's the point. Eve is very good. Adam is very good.

01:03:18

Yet, her mind is not autonomous. The devil inserted false premises into her rational mind.

01:03:34

He didn't tell her to think irrationally. He inserted false premises from which, if she reasoned from, would be disastrous.

01:03:47

And that's exactly what she did. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and the tree was desirable to make one wise, she reasoned from there and it was a disaster.

01:04:04

Once false premises are accepted, or remain unconsciously assumed, her mind can reason from there and end in disaster.

01:04:15

Satan intellectually raped her with lies. That's what he did.

01:04:25

Yeah. And he does that to every human being.

01:04:31

And that's what we need to talk to our fellow human beings about. We need to reprove this intellectual sin of autonomy.

01:04:44

Eve was sinless, but she was not autonomous. She needed revelation, and she needed to act upon the revelation she was given in order to function properly in God's world.

01:04:59

And this is true of every one of her descendants, true of our children, true of our teenagers.

01:05:09

And notice the temptation. Your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

01:05:19

He didn't say, you know, you'll be like God and omnipotent.

01:05:26

You know, you'll be like God and be omniscient as far as knowing facts.

01:05:34

You'll be like God and be omnipresent, and you won't have to, you'll be able to be everywhere at the same time.

01:05:42

You know, Satan could have said, you know, you'll be like God in all these other kinds of ways. But no, the temptation was, you'll be like God, knowing good and evil.

01:05:55

And I understand this to mean, she will know good and evil like God knows good and evil.

01:06:05

That is, autonomously. She will not need him to know good and evil.

01:06:15

She will be able to make definitions of good and evil on her own.

01:06:22

You will be like God. See, Isaiah, who has directed the

01:06:30

Spirit of the Lord, or as his counselor has taught him,

01:06:36

Eve, you'll be like God. You won't need to be taught by God as to what is good and evil.

01:06:44

You'll be autonomous, Eve. You'll be like God in this area.

01:06:50

You won't need to be taught. With whom did he take counsel? Eve, you won't need to counsel with God to know good and evil.

01:07:01

God didn't take counsel with anybody. You'll be like him. And who instructed him?

01:07:07

Eve, you won't need any instruction to know what's good and evil in God's world. Just like God, nobody instructed

01:07:13

God. And listen to this, and who taught him in the paths of justice?

01:07:21

Now we're right on the issue of good and evil, aren't we? Nobody taught

01:07:26

God the paths of justice. He's autonomous regarding the definition of good and evil.

01:07:33

And that's the temptation, Eve. You'll be like God. Satan's fingerprints and DNA are all over the epistemological scenes, crime scenes, of the

01:07:49

Enlightenment and postmodernism. Got it? Satan's fingerprints are all over the epistemological crime scenes of the

01:08:01

Enlightenment and postmodernism. Bruce Waltke commenting on Genesis 3, and there's a few bracketed words in there which are mine.

01:08:12

Nevertheless, a self -reliant human attempt to establish an ethical system is in itself symptomatic of sin.

01:08:27

That's right. The human quest for autonomy to be independent from God's revealed word was, is, and always will be the primary issue.

01:08:40

And I inserted the word sin. Only the omniscient God knows truly what is good.

01:08:49

And I inserted an evil. So this is what I mean about confronting man's intellectual sin and arrogance.

01:09:02

This is the place to argue. This is the place to go. Man's intellectual sin needs to be reproved and much more could be said on that.

01:09:16

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

01:09:29

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes.

01:09:36

You thought that was only Romans 1, didn't you? No. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight.

01:09:46

God pronounce is a woe, a judgment on that intellectual arrogance.

01:09:56

You will be like God, Eve, knowing good and evil.

01:10:02

So that's the second approach of trying to deal with this.

01:10:08

And we need to develop that as Christians. The third is a positive approach and we've got to be very brief here.

01:10:18

Now remember, we're arguing as Christians. We're not arguing as moralists or traditionalists.

01:10:28

So keep the discussion focused on who Jesus is.

01:10:36

The one sent by the Father. And focus on revelation.

01:10:43

The light is shining into the darkness. The light, it penetrates the box.

01:10:53

You can know things with certainty because Christ sent by the

01:11:00

Father is the truth. And contrary to Andy Stanley, begin with the

01:11:09

Incarnation by all means. Begin with the Incarnation front and center.

01:11:17

And assert the most fundamental claim of the Gospel in the beginning was the

01:11:25

Word. Huh. Now you think that has anything to do with epistemology?

01:11:32

The Word? Huh. I know

01:11:37

Philo and all the broad discussions of what in the world does logos mean and the way

01:11:45

John used it. But listen to me. The fundamental here, the

01:11:51

Word. A Word is that which reveals the mind of another.

01:11:59

That's what a Word is. That's what language is. The Word is about revelation of the mind of God.

01:12:11

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was

01:12:17

God and what? The Word penetrated the box and the

01:12:22

Word became flesh, human, and dwelt among us.

01:12:28

And then what? We have seen His glory. Glory as the one and only

01:12:34

Son. The only Son, what? From the Father who is outside the box.

01:12:41

We see the glory of the Father outside the box through the Word that has been sent into the box.

01:12:50

This is all about revelation. It's all about epistemology to use those terms.

01:12:57

The Bible doesn't need to use those terms to teach those concepts. And the

01:13:05

Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we've seen His glory. Glory as the only Son from the only

01:13:10

Son of the Father. Full of grace, what?

01:13:15

And truth. There's your certainty. The Gospel is about revelation.

01:13:23

It's about light shining in the darkness. Those who, what? Sat in the darkness saw a great light.

01:13:32

There's a hundred texts to preach the

01:13:38

Gospel and epistemology at the same time. That's how we need to preach it to our generation.

01:13:48

Full of grace and truth. When discussing

01:13:57

Jesus as man and deity, don't initially focus on sacrifice in our culture.

01:14:06

Hold that off for a while. When discussing Jesus as man and deity, focus on the fact that He is the

01:14:14

One sent by the Father. He is the means of revelation from the

01:14:22

Father to mankind because He is man and deity. Make the issue of revelation and epistemological certainty front and center.

01:14:35

Don't skip over this point. Not in our culture.

01:14:42

And when this is believed about that the Son is the revelation,

01:14:48

He is the truth, when this is believed, every other issue is going to come.

01:14:55

When this epistemological earthquake takes place in the human mind, that Christ is the

01:15:04

Word and what that means, that Christ is the Light. I am the

01:15:10

Light. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the Light of Life. When that epistemological earthquake takes place by the

01:15:21

Word of God and the Spirit of God in a human being, all these other issues are going to come.

01:15:28

There isn't going to be a problem anymore with gay marriage. There isn't. Because there's revelation from the

01:15:35

Son of God about the subject. So we need to discuss the humanity and the deity of Christ, but we need to bring that into our epistemological discussion of revelation.

01:15:51

And so discuss this apostolic claim of Jesus first.

01:15:57

Look at it here in just John chapter 1. It's all over John chapter 1.

01:16:04

Jesus often refers to His mission in revelatory terms, especially in the

01:16:10

Gospel of John. The Word, verse 1. The Light of Men, verse 4.

01:16:18

To bear witness of the Light, verse 8. That was the true

01:16:23

Light which gives light to every man coming into the world, verse 9.

01:16:30

Full of grace and truth, verse 14. No one has seen God.

01:16:35

The only God, He has what? Made Him known. Look at that. It's epistemology from verse 1 through verse 18.

01:16:44

This is the positive aspect of the message. We're not in the dark. Jesus is who

01:16:52

He claimed to be. We may have to apologetically argue that point. Why do we believe Jesus is who

01:16:59

He claimed to be? That's another issue. But we need to...

01:17:06

Christ saves us from this darkness of human autonomy and rebellion in this sphere.

01:17:15

And people in our culture need to know this. Our teenagers need to understand the Gospel this way if they're ever going to survive in this culture.

01:17:25

And in the college setting. So that's positive.

01:17:33

John 18, verse 37. I went from the beginning of the Gospel of John to the end of the

01:17:38

Gospel of John. John 3 is a motherlode of this epistemological issue about who's ascended above.

01:17:47

No one's ascended but the Son of Man who has come down. He's come down to bear witness so that we might know these things.

01:17:57

John 18, verse 37. Pilate therefore said to Him, Are you a king then?

01:18:03

Jesus answered, You say rightly that I am a king.

01:18:08

For this cause I was born. And for this cause I have come into the world that I should bear witness to the truth.

01:18:21

Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.

01:18:27

If you agree with Jesus' words you are of the truth.

01:18:34

Now that's a Christian epistemology and that's the challenge we need to put upon the unbeliever.

01:18:45

How many times have we said, and I'm not minimizing the cross, but how many times have we said

01:18:52

Christ came into the world to die? And that's true. But listen to this statement.

01:18:57

I was born. And for this cause I have come into the world that I should bear witness to the truth.

01:19:04

We don't quote this, do we? We need to. In our postmodern generation this is what it's all about.

01:19:14

So, if you agree with Jesus' words you are of the truth. Now, once this is clear then insist that we can't ignore the words of Jesus.

01:19:24

Christ bears witness to the truth. We can't ignore his words. And that's what Protestant liberalism wants to do, right?

01:19:31

They want to create their historical Jesus and they want to ignore everything he said. That's autonomy.

01:19:42

That's the intellectual sin. They want to ignore God's revelation.

01:19:49

Well, once this is clear then insist that we cannot ignore Christ's words.

01:19:56

Point out that the Father said regarding the Son this is my beloved Son in whom

01:20:01

I am well pleased. Hear him. I bet you I use this every month.

01:20:11

This is my beloved Son. Hear him. Listen to him.

01:20:18

That's revelation. Emphasize it's not ultimately what you believe, who you believe.

01:20:31

Tell them that and see what they start saying. Not ultimately what you believe. It's who you believe.

01:20:38

And then argue about who Jesus is. Not one particular moral issue.

01:20:46

You know, let's just argue about who is Jesus. That's what we need to be arguing about.

01:20:54

Because ultimately it's not what you believe but it's who you believe. Now, you'll need some apologetic approach from this point, sure.

01:21:05

But remember, you are always asking the skeptic. You get to ask questions too, you know.

01:21:15

That's what we forget. We think we have to bear all the questions from the skeptics. That's not true. You get to ask questions.

01:21:23

Remember, you always ask the skeptic. Why should I believe so and so? You know, why should

01:21:30

I believe Bart Ehrman? You know? Why should

01:21:36

I believe Bart Ehrman? I believe Jesus. I believe John, the

01:21:41

Apostle. I believe Paul. So, you know, why should I believe Bart Ehrman? And so forth.

01:21:48

I mean, that's who you're trusting in. You've never done as much textual criticism study as Bart Ehrman.

01:21:54

You're trusting, you're believing him. Why should I believe him? You know, you've got to level the playing field here.

01:22:01

I think the Bible has two of the greatest philosophers that ever lived, Solomon and Jesus. You know, why when you study philosophy do you leave them out?

01:22:12

They addressed all these questions before... Solomon addressed all these questions before 585

01:22:18

B .C. You know, why do you leave them out? So, you know, level the playing field.

01:22:27

Because most people in our modern culture, they've watched 60 Minutes, right? They believe the newscast.

01:22:33

Great. You believe 60 Minutes? Sorry, fellow. I'm not going to stake my soul on that. Not what you believe, but who you believe, and then you can begin to assess the credibility of the witnesses.

01:22:48

Okay? And Jesus said, hey, don't believe me. Assess my credibility. You read the Gospels. Hold on. You read the

01:22:53

Gospels. There's a place. And Jesus said, that's fine. You can test my credibility.

01:23:00

And we're kind of getting off more into a matter of apologetics now. But, so, just remember, you're always asking the skeptic, why should

01:23:09

I believe so -and -so and who you put forth instead of Jesus? And I'm not saying that there's only one right way to confront the post -Enlightenment and post -modern thinking of our culture.

01:23:22

But keep the discussion focused on who Jesus is. We are Christians, not moralists or traditionalists.

01:23:31

Don't try to go through a long series of arguments and finally end up at Jesus. It's my guy versus yours.

01:23:40

That's right. My guy is Jesus. And I can assert all kinds of reasons why trusting my guy is far better than trusting yours.

01:23:50

Yes, ultimately, there needs to be a Holy Spirit revelation. But it's my guy versus yours.

01:23:57

I really think we can get to Jesus much faster. But we have to present

01:24:03

Christ as a revelation regarding this whole epistemological dilemma that us post -moderns find ourselves in.

01:24:12

And it really is an opportunity because the nihilism and the skepticism is among us.

01:24:20

And we need to talk about revelation. Everything else will come. So it's my guy versus your guy.

01:24:29

And you won't always be dealing with skeptics, you see. God will prepare some to desire to know who

01:24:35

Jesus is. I mean, when people are suffering, it's a maze, all those skeptical questions.

01:24:43

When they're suffering, suddenly they are no longer looking for perhaps a reason not to believe at times.

01:24:52

When they're beginning to suffer and be humbled, they might be wondering.

01:25:00

I'm not denying the doctrine of total depravity. The Spirit works in different ways. But when they're suffering and despairing, they may be softening up.

01:25:11

And they want to not believe what the skeptics have told them, that there really is nothing outside of the box.

01:25:19

So you won't always be dealing with skeptics. And when you're not, you want to ground them epistemologically in the authority of Christ and his revelation.

01:25:30

And from there, you're going to pick up all the rest of Scripture, you see. If you evangelize this way, that Christ is the authority, he's the authoritative revelation, we are his disciples, we follow his teaching, and he taught a doctrine of Scripture.

01:25:45

And so since he taught a doctrine of Scripture, you can't discard the Old Testament. And so there's a lot of avenues you can go, but make him the center.

01:25:55

He is our authority. Christ is our authority. And when we talk about Christ, we're going to use the

01:26:02

Word of God to talk about him. We're going to use extra -biblical data too, but we're not going to confine ourselves to extra -biblical data.

01:26:09

We're going to use all historical data. And guess what? The Gospels are part of that. We're going to use all of that.

01:26:16

We're going to use the Word of God when we talk about Christ. We're not going to hold off on exposing people to the

01:26:22

Word of God as well as to extra -biblical data. But we're preaching

01:26:28

Christ, and we have to preach him about this epistemological question. That's what

01:26:34

I want to leave with you. And so if people believe Jesus as a revelation of truth from God, then believing every other doctrine will come, including marriage.

01:26:47

I'm done. So thank you.

01:26:53

I'm not used to not seeing the audience. I'm not used to sitting down this long. There's not enough room in here to walk around.

01:27:04

But I think we've used enough time. Okay, Rich is telling me to take a moment to talk about Sovereign Grace.

01:27:14

I'm one of the two co -pastors at Sovereign Grace Bible Church here. We're in downtown west -central

01:27:20

Phoenix. It's a great place to be because we're surrounded by all kind of diversity here.

01:27:27

Our church body doesn't quite reflect the diversity of the neighborhoods around us.

01:27:34

We reflect it some, to some degree, which is a blessing. And so I don't know what else to say.

01:27:44

We want our ministries to be centered on Christ as a revelation of the glory of God to us lost sinners.

01:27:54

And been here quite a while, and it's a blessing to participate here with Alpha Omega.

01:28:01

Thank you. So just a programming note,

01:28:08

I will be doing the Dividing Line on Thursday. So Dan is, as you can see, already left the building.

01:28:17

And so I look forward to it. I want to thank Dan Confessi for being our guest host today. And thank all of you for listening, and hope you were blessed, and I will see you on Thursday.