Saturday, June 01, 2013

Is "All Truth God's Truth"?

If "all truth is God's truth" is a valid statement, then one is equating revealed (special), inspired (from God's very mouth), truth which is by its source holy and pure, with that which is unholy, worldly, temporal, of the flesh, seen, discoverable by all men even or especially those who are unregenerate God-haters. It is to lower the Scriptures to an unholy place, as if its just another truth, another textbook. Such a claim takes away the authority and power of Scripture which is unique only to it (2Tim. 3:15-16; Matt. 4:4). Ps. 138:2  states that God exalts His Word and His name above all else, but the statement "all truth is God's truth" lowers it from such a lofty and authoritative and unique place where God has placed it. In fact, its to reverse what HE does with His Word. It lowers the holy Scriptures to a mundane, finite place of truth that even unregenerate dead men can understand as easily as a mathematical equation. God's revelation is not discoverable, as Bookman discusses below; rather it is proclaimed by God Himself.

Observation is not revelation. 

Foundation matters because it shows the origination of where something is from and thus whether it has any authority.. James 3 states there area but two places, two kinds of wisdom in this world--one is true and pure and beneficial for the soul; the other is deadly and demonic:

Jas 3:13  Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom.
Jas 3:14  But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth.
Jas 3:15  This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic.
Jas 3:16  For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing.
Jas 3:17  But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.
Jas 3:18  And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

Peace starts with God and His salvation because man is at war with Him. There is no spiritual peace (which is true, eternal peace) for those not saved nor for those with worldly wisdom.

Because psychology's foundation is literally worldly and demonic, it is powerless to deal with man's true over-arching foundational problem: sin.

Psychology in its foundation and principles deny:
each person of the Trinity
that the triune God of Scripture is Creator and thus has all authority over all creation
that Jesus is the risen Savior and Master
the authority and power of Scripture
the Person and work of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life
the reason and goal of salvation
man's total depravity before the thrice holy God
the Fall

Psychology  is Self-seeking and Self-preserving, not Christ-glorifying, Christ-honoring, nor Christ-loving; therefore psychology cannot lead a person to Christ, cause them to love Him above all else, follow Him to the exclusion of all else, and cannot deal with the problem of sin.

2Co 6:14  Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? 
2Co 6:15  Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?
2Co 6:16  Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, "I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM; AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE.
2Co 6:17  "Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE," says the Lord. "AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN; And I will welcome you.


Col 2:2  that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ Himself, 
Col 2:3  in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 
Col 2:4  I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument. 

Col 2:8  See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. 
Col 2:9  For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, 
Col 2:10  and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; 

Col 2:20  If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, 
Col 2:21  "Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!"
Col 2:22  (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)--in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? 
Col 2:23  These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence. 

Col 3:1  Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 
Col 3:2  Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.
Col 3:3  For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 
Col 3:4  When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

James 3 as noted earlier, calls the wisdom of the world to be earthly and demonic and produces nothing but evil and chaos and bloats pride.

Psychology can't nor does it promote spiritual truth. It doesn't call the sinner to repentance, self-denial, to exaltation of Christ Jesus above all else, to love God with all of one's heart, strength, mind and soul (even though "psychology" means "study of the soul"). In other words, psychology cannot deal with the soul at all, nor the absolute all-encompassing problem of disobeying the first and greatest of all the commands in all of Scripture: to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Instead, psychology makes the sinner, who has repeatedly offended the thrice holy God of Scripture, to be the victim, the offended one. The customer/client of psychology is at war with his Maker and pride is his problem. Because of this foundational truth (starting from Gen. 3- Rev. 22), there is no peace for the sinner. Unless he stops warring with God and bows in humble repentance before Him, confessing his sin to God and realizes he is earning God's wrath for all of his lawless deeds, then he'll never be whole.

For your consideration:
http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/sproul11_6.html :


Bookman refutes the notion that human discoveries can be regarded as God’s revelation. He says:


The issue, then, is not whether it is possible that truth might be discovered by human investigation of the natural and moral universe; rather, the issue is whether truth thus discovered can be assigned to the category of general revelation, and to prove that such material discovery can effect spiritual change.
My contention is that by reason of the proper definition of the theological category "general revelation" and by reason of the intrinsic and divine integrity and authority that must be granted to any truth-claim that is placed under that category, it is erroneous and misleading to assign to that category humanly deduced or discovered facts and theories. The issue is larger than appropriate taxonomy. In fact, to assign such humanly determined truths to the category of general revelation introduces a twofold fallacy into the argument when it is used as a rationale for the integrationist position.

First, there is the fallacy that might be termed falsely perceived validity. Revelation is from God; thus it is by definition true and authoritative. To assign human discoveries to the category of general revelation is to imbue them with an aura of validity and consequent authority that they do not, indeed, they cannot merit. Thus, to assign a concept to the category of general revelation when that concept is in fact a theory concocted by a person is, in effect, to lend God’s name to a person’s ideas. That is fallacious, no matter the intrinsic truth or falsehood of the theory under consideration.

The second fallacy might be called crippled accountability. That is, once it is acknowledged that these theories are revelatory in nature, the issue of challenging them becomes moot. Much may be said about testing the ideas thus derived before acknowledging them as part of that august body of truth that God has communicated in the natural order of things, or about honoring the distinction in intrinsic authority between general and special revelations, but to craft an argument for integration based upon the equal merits and authority of general revelation and special revelation is functionally to short-circuit such efforts and to deny such distinctions. Very simply, if it is revelation, then God said it; if God said it, then it is true; when God speaks truth, mankind’s responsibility is not to test that truth but to obey it. It is self-contradictory to insist that general revelation can include truths that must be "studied and examined for their trustworthiness."

In summary, then, the integrationist rationale that arises from the claim that perceived truths established by human research constitute a subset of the category general revelation, and thus possess the authority and dependability native to revelation, is flawed first of all in its misdefinition of the term revelation. Inherent to the biblical concept of revelation is the idea of nondiscoverability.***

[***Douglas Bookman. "The Scriptures and Biblical Counseling" in Introduction to Biblical Counseling, John F. MacArthur, Jr. and Wayne A. Mack, eds. Dallas: Word Publishing, 1994, pp. 74. 75.]

I have written about this before:

Natural Theology's Fallacy:

Natural theologians constantly commit one of the simplest errors. They take an idealized and romantic modern concept of human “Reason,” that developed during the Renaissance, particularly during the French Revolution,and insert it back into biblical times and even attempt to insert it into biblical texts. But is it possible that ancient writers, most of whom died thousands of years before the Renaissance, knew of and believed in modern Renaissance romantic ideals of an exalted and abstract “Reason,” before whom all must bow, including God?

Ideas have a history that we cannot ignore. We can trace when, where, and through whom an idea first appeared in history. Newton’s idea of the “law of gravity” and Einstein’s “theory of relativity” are good examples of this.

The attempt to take a modern idea and push it back thousands of years before it appeared in history is a grave mistake. If someone claimed that Einstein’s theory of relativity was taught in the Bible, they would be grossly mistaken. But this is exactly what those who believe in Natural Theology, Natural Law, and Philosophy do all the time.

The French Natural Philosophers had abstracted, idealized, romanticized, and then absolutized human reason into an all-seeing, all-knowing, omnipresent, omnipotent, infallible, “Reason.” They took man’s limited and faulty ability to think about issues and then came to a conclusion and elevated it into the Origin of truth, justice, morals, meaning, and beauty. “Reason” was the measure of all things, including God. They had replaced “God” with “Reason. During the French Revolution, people were dragged before the “bar” or bench of a rationalist judge who proclaimed their guilty verdict in the name of “Reason.”

This is one of the fundamental methodological errors of J.P. Moreland, Norman Geisler, William lane Craig, Greg Koukl, Francis Beckwith, et al. They cite such texts as Isa. 1:18 (”Let us reason together”) and Acts 17:2 (”Paul…reasoned with them”), to prove (sic) that the modern Renaissance concept of “Reason” can be found in the Bible. They assume that the mere presence of the verb “reason” in such passages is sufficient proof that the authors of Scripture knew of and believed in the Renaissance concept of the noun “Reason.”

First, it is outrageous for them to insert a modern idea into ancient biblical times and texts.

Second, none of them even attempt to do any exegesis of the texts they cite. It would appear that they never bothered to check the Hebrew or Greek. They cite texts much like Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Third, even if we pretended, in a moment of insanity, that modern Renaissance ideas like “Reason” could magically appear in ancient biblical times and texts, this would still require hard exegetical work to support it.

Nearly all the Hebrew and Greek words translated “reason” have nothing to do with human “reason” per se but are simple conjunctions. They are grammatical, not anthropological, in nature.

Unquote.

Morey goes on to use a Hebrew and Greek examples using Greek and Hebrew. Then he says:

Quote:

One last comment is in order. Some Natural theologians have argued that if we reject the Renaissance abstract concept of “Reason,” we are denying that man can “reason” from point A to point B. But this argument is an example of the fallacy of equivocation.

To reject an abstract idealized “Reason,” i.e. Rationalism, is not the same thing as rejecting man’s capacity to “reason.” The biblical authors viewed man’s capacity to think through issues and to come a conclusion as a reflection of the image of God. While they believed in “reasoning,” this does not mean they knew or believed in “Reason.”

Another Natural theologian objected to our use of the lower case “r” and the capital letter “R.” But his objection fell flat when we asked, “If the use of capital and lower case letters bothers you, does the distinction between the capital “G” and the lower case “g” in “god” and “God” bother you as well?”

In conclusion, the authors of Scripture did not know of or believe in the modern Renaissance concept of an abstract absolute “Reason.” Any attempt is to read that concept back into the Bible is sheer ignorance at best and gross deception at worse. Thus, Natural Theology is a total sham.

Unquote.

Dr. John Robbins of The Trinity Foundation says: "Decades ago Francis Schaeffer warned the church about Thomas Aquinas and ‘nature eating up grace.’ By this he meant that if you give ‘natural revelation’ an epistemological inch, it will displace Scripture."

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