Unbelievers, Knowledge, and Truth - 03
Can the unbeliever properly gain knowledge of God's Creation?
First, I want you know that I felt compelled to add a footnote qualifier to a comment I made in the last post, where I wrote, “I think both models have value, but also that the Hebrew model is mandatory to convey God’s knowledge and wisdom.”
This is what I wrote in the footnote: When I say both models have value, I say it hesitatingly. I do think certain question and answer techniques from the Greek model have helped men think harder in the world, though questions and answers were not absent from the Hebrew model. Also, I do not doubt that truth gets uncovered by non-believers, (like the Greeks and others) though I think, because of their unbelief, it is like finding a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that they are not sure where to put it. They have no picture to look at as their starting point (the box cover of the jigsaw puzzle) for they refuse the self-revealing Christian God. Nor do they submit their thoughts to Him, though He has established the final picture they are ultimately supposed to build toward.
Here is today’s post:
Some people think that un-believers and regenerated Christians stand on the same solid ground for obtaining knowledge. Having to do with all things involving the mind and matter, they argue that truth is truth. They contend that knowledge is available to all who want to learn it.
People who hold this position, of mankind and knowledge and the mind and matter, typically do not factor in the self-deceiving quality of a man’s sinful nature. Or, they do not think that someone, who is a sinner, is necessarily going to pervert and obscure knowledge to his own harm. Or, they are convinced that the knowledge that will be lost to the non-believer will only be knowledge pertaining to religion and spiritual matters, not to the material world in which they remain interested.
In other words, they do not agree that a Christian has an advantage over the non-Christian when it comes to such things as mathematics, science, chemistry, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology, geology, astrology, archaeology, meteorology, neurology, zoology, or even theology when pressed on it. They see the facts of the universe as indiscriminately available to all.1
In a certain sense, God has made facts available to both believers and non-believers. However, God does discriminate. And neither group is allowed to do whatever they wish with His facts, as if they were given permission to define a thing.
When Adam named the creatures and birds in the garden, it became the thing’s name.2 A giraffe was now called a giraffe, a hippo became known as a hippo. However, Adam didn’t define what a hippo was. God defined the hippo. And the giraffe. And man for that matter!
Furthermore, this took place before the Fall of mankind. After the Fall, after the man and his wife decided to be pursue autonomy - and decide things for themselves - they and their offspring escalated efforts to redefine the creation. Their knowledge would need to originate with man, not God.
But this pursuit of redefinition, to worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, cannot occur without God changing man’s ability to think. The Apostle Paul speaks of this in Romans:
Romans 1:18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Romans Chapter 1 is hugely important for Christians’ understanding. You should really read the passage above again, for its appraisal of the unbeliever’s incapability to view the world, its facts, and knowledge (mind and matter) is enlightening.
When a man is ungodly and unrighteous, he intentionally suppresses truth. His thinking becomes futile, foolish, and darkened. To him, it is better that way.
Again, sinful man is motivated to redefine things. It is him wanting to drive his race car away from God, and God’s facts, into a wall if need be. Further, men actually join each other to do this concertedly. It is an UNSPOKEN agreement, but if stated out loud, it would sound very much like what Moses recorded for us in Genesis 11:4.
Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”3
Mankind at Babel spoke clearly and defiantly. They planned in unison. However, unbelievers throughout history have usually kept their their inner-drive under wraps.
Jesus identifies it when he says, “For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”4
How can an unbeliever be freed from himself and his thinking? I would have to agree with Cornelius Van Til, here.
He writes, “…It is precisely Reformed preaching and Reformed apologetic that tears the mask off the sinner’s face and compels him to look at himself and the world for what they really are. Like a mole the natural man seeks to scurry under ground every time the facts as they really are come to his attention. He loves the darkness rather than the light. The light exposes him to himself. And precisely this neither Roman Catholic nor Arminian preaching or reasoning is able to do.”5
Even many Christians argue for this to be true, that believers and unbelievers have the same access to knowledge and truth, as if it were a matter of fairness and unfairness.
Genesis 2:19-20, “Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.”
This is the Tower of Babel incident.
John 3:20
Van Til, Cornelius, The Defense of the Faith, The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1955, p. 166.