God and the proposition of Faith (with allied topics )

 So today what we are looking at is the acquired knowledge of God and allied topics.

 

Before I start though, I am so happy that Spring is here.  I took this picture on my walk as it reminds me of Pilgrims progress.  The walk of faith has many roads, many mountains and valleys to climb.  This crack in the road reminded me of God's grace. 

On page 72 Bavinck makes the point that in the past, what the innate knowledge of God was about is that actually we have been born with and have the capacity from our own being to know God, and acquired knowledge is basically comes to humans from outside of ourselves, externally by observation, and serves to augment and expand the former.

Bavinck goes on to say that this isn't exactly 100% accurate. He says that all knowledge enters the human mind from without, innate only is a capacity for knowledge, but this innate capacity is only activated by the action and impact of the world within; while the seed of religion is indeed inherent in humans, it takes the whole field of human life to make it germinate and grow.

 

That's quite interesting actually, because.  What he's saying there is that we have the capacity for this knowledge.  Then later on in the same chapter, he goes on and says is that the question about God's existence is really taken for granted, amongst almost universally and let's get back to the topic again, and then he says later on he says on page 73. He says that there are distinctions between innate and acquired.

 

1.      he says innate knowledge of God is acquired spontaneously without effort or coercion, whereas the acquired knowledge of God is achieved by reasoning and argument, reflection and demonstration along the lines of causality, eminence and negation.  The former was noetic apprehended by the intellect.   What noetic means the latter dianoetic?   The result of discursive thinking.  You know you get word like dialectic here is Dianoetic the dia on the front of the word.

 

2.     from this arises the further distinction that, whereas the former consists only in principle and is universally unnecessary, the latter is more detailed and elaborated, furnishes more concrete propositions, and is therefore subject to all sorts of doubt and criticism.

Almost everyone accepts as an established fact that God exists.   The proof of the existence of God, however, have been developed by the human mind and therefore have in turn been both disdained and highly valued. (that's page 73.)

 

 

Before I start, I want to say that there's nothing wrong with the terms of innate and acquired knowledge of God.   Those terms there's no problem with it at all. But unfortunately, within the Christian Church especially in the last century there's been a move to separate God’s revelation of Himself found in scripture away from nature itself, which I think is quite silly really, because God created Scripture, gave Scripture to us, and he created the world as well. There's only one God of creation.  We're just creatures that God has created and we're going to carry on now and on page 74 in the second half of the page. This is what?

 

Bavinck starts to write:

“The division between innate and acquired knowledge of God is usually applied only to natural theology, which is then distinguished from an often set in opposition to revealed theolog theology.”

This is really serious!

Herman Bavinck and Karl Barth realized that when you put the human mind first and make God second, It's the wrong way of doing things and Bavinck has realized this as well.  Earlier on He agrees with Karl Barth In that if you start from the point of doubt working to faith, working to conclusions, and that that somehow has to be scientific.  Bavinck and Barth would say no, that's not that's not the case as we all have propositions.   Even scientists have got propositions.  They start from propositions; they start from the point of faith.

They lay down their rules and then they, with their hypotheses, and then they move forward so there's no difference between theology and the other sciences in methodology of a starting principle.  They all start from the same position, and he's argued this earlier on in reformed dogmatics Book 1; Pages 302 to page 322, which is about general revelation.

Theologians after the time of Bavinck, which followed the line of natural theology, I'm thinking about Pannenberg and Heikki Räisänen etc that they believe that God is revealed in nature itself, so it is from nature itself we can find facts about God.   But they don’t get rid of Scripture completely.   They haven’t made that complete move, although I don't agree with it with the within practicing natural theology that way.   This way of doing theology puts God in second place and nature somehow is prioritized.  This is a categorial mistake.  This is what Bavinck says later on in Page 74:

 “The natural knowledge of God Is incorporated and set forth at length in Scripture itself accordingly Christians follow a completely mistaken method when in treating natural theology. They, as it were, divest themselves of God's special revelation in scripture and the illumination of the Holy Spirit, discuss it apart from any Christian presuppositions and then move on to special revelation.”  

So, this is what he's saying; Basically, you get rid of all the special revelation that God has given to us and if we do that, we don't have anything left and in actual fact, some of these theologians this is what they've done and basically it affects everything it affects ethics and faith matters at the core.

·        It affects the walk of faith.

·        It affects the Christian life and what it means to be a Christian.

 

 

No, my friends to be a Christian you have to stand on the bedrock of revelation that's found in Scripture. This is what he writes on page 75:

 “…even when Christians do theology from the very beginning, they stand with both feet on the foundation of special revelation. They are Christ believers.   Not only in the doctrine of Christ, but equally in the doctrine of God standing on this foundation, they look around themselves and armed with the spectacles of holy Scripture they see in all the world a revelation of the same God they know and confessing Christ as their father in heaven then.”

 

This is where Bavinck, Karl Barth and Professor Gunton agree again for that matter is we start from faith.  We believe that we might understand.   God has given us the scriptures and by the Holy Spirit.  He explains to us who we are as persons we've been created in the image of God and in the image of God we've been created. This is a very important foundation.

If we throw that away, what do we have left?   We don't have anything.   So, calling yourself a Christian and then and saying that, oh well, we don't want the Bible we can find, we can find God just by looking at nature and the things around us and patterns and things like that.   It's a very… you can't, no, no, no, my friends we cannot come to a place of knowing who we are without special revelation.   So innate and acquired knowledge of God has to be within a framework of scripture and nature we call general revelation, but God has revealed himself in nature when we look at nature, we can see what he's created.   His handiwork has been there, and we are a part of that handy work as well.   Although before we became Christians, we were completely alienated and angry towards God but God, through his mercy, and through his love, through the work of Christ at the Cross, has brought us into a place of special relationship and special fellowship.

My friends, we don't have to prove that God exists as Christians.  This is our assumption before we even walk along the road that God exists that he is.  That he's there for us. He's our Lord and Master. He created us. This is what else Bavinck writes as well on Page 75:

 

“This applies both to innate and to acquired knowledge of God as well.   We are indebted to scripture for both.   It is true that Scripture makes no attempt to prove the existence of God.   It proceeds from it and assumes that humans know and acknowledge God.   It does not regard humans as having fallen so deep that in order to believe they need prior proof of God's existence, for they are gods, image bearers, cards, offspring and endowed with their mind (Greek word nous to discern God), eternal power, and deity in the work of creation. Scripture views the denial of God's existence as a sign of folly, of profound moral degradation. Psalm 14. Verse 2 “the Fool has said in his heart that there is no God.” (Just off memory.)   People guilty of this are exceptions, not the rule.   As a rule, scripture counts on people who freely and instinctively, and knowledge existence of God.   It appeals to the rational and moral consciousness, not to the reasoning intellect.   It does not analyse and argue which shows us God in all the works of his hand but that it does abundantly unemphatically heaven on Earth and all creatures, leaf and blade rain and drought fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty, all things, in fact, speak to believers of God. “

If we start from the place of doubt with Descartes and say, well, I'm starting from doubt.   I don't believe anything until it's been proven to me.   Then this does not come from Scripture, this comes from ancient Greece, From Plato and that, brothers, sisters; we don't have anything to do with that.   Many theologians over the centuries have used philosophy.  Our philosophy can be good for reasoning things, but it's not the be, and end all of everything and all knowledge.  In a lot of senses, it makes people arrogant that they know more than the person next to them.