On the Real Existence of Concepts Wrapped in Words

Just a short thought which I will be developing further for my dissertation on "A Christian Philosophy of Forms and Imitation." :

Words should be understood as signifiers of objective concepts. The meaning of words may change in usage over time but concepts are eternal. For instance the word "tolerance" has changed from being agreeing to disagree about issues without threatening harm or coercing the other to agree. Tolerance now seems to denote the idea of affirmation and acceptance of other people's views as being as good and true as your own. Despite this evolution in the usage of the word "tolerance" the concept underlying its earlier meaning remains unscathed. Imagine that the word tolerance is but a mere wrapper around the concept by which one can quickly identify the concept. Now that wrapper has been removed from one concept and re-wrapped around a different one. The original concept (Idea) still exists as it always has (and always will) but now must be adorned by either a new word or the old word with many words of explanation as to how one is using the word in its classical sense. So when people argue that words/language are mere social constructions and are completely subjective they are only half correct. They are correct that words change over time in their meaning, and that by popular use and application. But this is not to say that concepts are arbitrary or social constructions. In fact they are quite the opposite because one cannot change a concept no matter what they may try to do to it. At best they may simply try to get people not to talk about the concept or they may strip the word-wrapping that has historically been associated with that concept and place it on a different objectively existing idea, but they cannot abolish an Idea itself. It persists because it is eternal, immutable, and in the mind of God from eternity.

On Oughtness

Introduction

One of the most interesting questions of history is ‘how ought man behave?’ Probably the most interesting part of that question, at least in this author’s opinion, is the word ought. If the word had been ‘does’ then we would have a whole different issue on our hands. We would begin to describe all the social habits of the curious creature known as man. If, on the other hand, the question had been ‘why does man behave as he does?’ then we would have yet another completely different discussion ensue. That discussion would probably take the form of evaluating the psychology of man and what things he does because of nature versus what things he does because of nurture and so on.

But our discussion for the purpose of this paper is oughtness. I propose to take a tour through some of the foundational works of social science and divide them between pre-modern and modern to see where there is agreement and disagreement. It is my supposition that what will be found is a distinct shift in thinking on oughtness (which is synonymous with objective moral truth) when the transition happens from pre-modern to modern. I will try to draw out, through the course of this paper, what it is that I believe has driven this shift in thinking.

For our pre-modern works I will consider Solomon’s Proverbs, Plato’s The Republic, and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. For the works of modernity I will be considering Machiavelli’s The Prince, selections from Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, and finally Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. Certainly a great deal of other works could be considered but these works may be representative of a general way of thinking in the pre-modern versus modern of world. Exceptions are, of course, always available to the norm.

Solomon’s Proverbs

First I want consider the oughtness presented to us by Solomon. Of what kind is it and where does it originate? Let us consider the introduction of Solomon’s work:

The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel: To know wisdom and instruction,  to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing,  in righteousness, justice, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth— Let the wise hear and increase in learning,  and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Here we Solomon’s purpose in writing. He is writing to instruct about the gaining of knowledge, wisdom, insight, wise dealings, righteousness, justice, equity, prudence and discretion. All of these words imply a sense of oughtness. Had we gone on to the next verse we would have found that Solomon is addressing his work to his son. These are things he wishes his son to know and apply to his life because Solomon believes he ought to.  But why ought he to?

The answer comes, I think, at the end of the section I quoted. “The fear of the Lords is the beginning of knowledge.” All of the oughtness of Solomon’s work has this as its reference point, the Lord. A closely related term for moral is justice and likewise for immorality is injustice. Though they carry a more legal connotation we may argue successfully that all legislation hails back to a moral standard. If it is unjust to steal or to murder, and if there is legislation against such deeds, then the reason those things are ruled against is because they are recognized to be immoral deeds, deeds that should not be done at all. So there will be some going back and forth between words like good and bad (or good and evil), just and unjust, moral and immoral as we move forward. While there are some reasonable distinctions to be made between some of these words there is, at the core, a common sense of appeal to oughtness.

Solomon gives us several example of justice and injustice in his Proverbs which may help us clearly see his connection of the origin of moral objectivity to God. He writes,

“For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints. Then you will understand righteousness and justice  and equity, every good path; for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech, who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil, men whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their ways.”

Solomon connects justice with walking on the right path and with exercising wisdom which is received from the LORD (this is YHWH in Hebrew, the personal name of God for Jews and Christians). Furthermore, he puts these in juxtaposition with the ways of evil and darkness, perverse speech and being devious in action. Elsewhere Solomon connects injustice to accepting bribes (Proverbs 17:23) and showing partiality for the wicked and depriving the righteous of their due (Proverbs 18:5). Solomon does not blush at connecting Justice directly to God as the origin and source, “Many seek the face of a ruler, but it is from the Lord that a man gets justice.”

So it is not hard to discover that, for Solomon, there is absolutely a sense of objective moral truth that all should seek to know and live out. Furthermore he directly links this objective morality to the LORD, the Creator of the universe. Upon the ultimate being Solomon places the weight of justice, goodness and truth and he is confident that its weight can be held by him.

Plato’s The Republic

Plato’s great work, The Republic, is entirely about the subject of justice which we have already said is closely related to morality and is without a doubt about oughtness.

In this work many ideas are proposed such as the one given early on by Cephalus when he argues that justice is “speaking the truth and giving back what one takes.” It does not take Socrates long, however, to poke some holes in this offered definition when he gives a counterexample that clearly shows it would be unjust.  At least in some specific situations it would actually be unjust to give back what one has taken from another. The  specific example Socrates uses is that of giving back a weapon to someone who is not in their right state of mind when they ask for it back. What follows from this discussion is perhaps one of the greatest treatises on the matter of justice that has ever been written. That being said, the definition of Justice remains elusive in The Republic. It is easier to recognize justice and injustice in practice and to point to examples of just behavior than it is to define the concept itself.

This difficulty of giving a proper definition of justice might lead some to conclude that there is not one and that perhaps justice itself, and not just the definition, is what is elusive. But this would be a mistake because Plato does not have a hard time showing us examples of injustice and if we recognize what is unjust we must admit that their is such a thing as justice no matter how difficult it may be to define.

While the proper or perfect definition of justice may remain just outside of our graps, according to Plato, its origin and basis is not. It would appear that he sees justice as being in accord with virtue and imitating the gods. To this point he writes, “For, surely, gods at least will never neglect the man who is eagerly willing to become just and, practicing virtue, likens himself, so far as is possible for a human being, to a god.” So then, injustice is to be unvirtuous and out of step with the gods. Furthermore, Plato has already said earlier in The Republic that the laws they create must be in accordance with what is good and patterned after the god who is good. In fact, it is outlawed to suggest that any god did any unjust thing but, rather, “the god’s works were just and good.” So then what is lawful in The Republic is that which is virtuous and mimics the gods who only do that which is good and virtuous.

This means, although Solomon and Plato would make significant departures from one another’s understanding of the divine realm, they both agree that morality, our objective oughtness, squarely rest upon the shoulders of the divine. There is no doubt between them that there is a right way to behave and a wrong way and that God (or the gods) are the reason why these things are so. They cannot think of another place upon which to safely rest the weight of morality.

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle continues down a line of similar thinking as Solomon and Plato when he gives us the example of the law abider and the law breaker and connects justice to that which is lawful when he writes:

he who is a lawbreaker is unjust and he who is lawful just, it is clear that all lawful things are somehow just…. The laws pronounce on all things, in their aiming at the common advantage, either for all persons or for the best or for those who have authority either in accord with virtue or some other such way. As a result, we say that those things apt to produce and preserve happiness and its parts for the political community are in a manner just.

Further, in Book 7 and Chapter 1 of Nichomachean Ethics Aristotle draws from Homer’s work where Priam spoke of Hector being “exceedingly good” and that “He did not seem to be a child of any mortal man but a god.” For Aristotle then (and Homer, although he is not currently under consideration, but certainly another pre-modern case) you have the connection of goodness or morality with the divine. Here we rest, once again, morality upon divine shoulders. This, then, places Aristotle in a camp agreeing with Plato (and essentially Solomon) that goodness and virtue lie ultimately with the gods.

As I said earlier, these are but a small sample of great thinkers from the pre-modern era but they are a good representation of the majority of thinking from that time on the present issue. But let us now turn our attention to some modern era thinkers and their view of oughtness and moral truth. I think what we will find is a definite and fundamental shift in the conception of oughtness and its origin.

Machiavelli’s The Prince

Machiavelli’s The Prince is an interesting work full of tongue in cheek statements but his aim is ultimately a serious one. He seeks to instruct towards what the ideal governmental system is and how to maintain control as a leader. One of the pivotal statements in his work is the following: “The principal foundations which all states have, whether new, old, or mixed, are good laws and good arms. And because there cannot be good laws where there are not good arms, and where there are good arms there needs must be good laws, I shall omit the reasoning on laws and speak of arms.”

Here Machiavelli cleverly tips his hat and reveals his priorities, namely, that of control by arms (force). Now Machiavelli is not suggesting that there be no laws, nor is he suggesting ruling purely by brute force alone, but he is talking priorities. He shows elsewhere in his book that his primary concern is that of maintaining power by whatever means are necessary and there is no objective moral ethic (merely a utilitarian one) to restrain what one should do while pursuing or maintaining power over a state. At one point he goes as far as saying, “Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use it according to the necessity.”

He must “learn to be able to be not good!” That is quite a statement indeed. For one it seems to recognize a notion of ‘good’ or perhaps ‘common decency’ but suggests that a prince ought (and there is that word again) to break with the good. It would seem in light of this and other comment made in The Prince that Machiavelli consider morality something like a social convention to be used when it is helpful and broken when it is more helpful. Of the references that Machiavelli makes to religion they are mostly utilitarian as well. Whether or not Machiavelli believed in God may be up for debate but what is very clear is that he did not fear him nor did he hold to an objective morality for all people (especially princes). Use religion when helpful, ignore when it hinders.

Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts

Where Machiavelli championed the cause of Princes, Marx believed himself to be championing the cause of the people. In this way they sat on opposite sides of one another. But there is definitely room for agreement because they are both utilitarian in their approach to problem solving. Marx responded to the suffering of the masses in his day with an attempt to cure the problem as he saw it. Marx felt that capitalism was a disease that kept the rich in power and oppressed the majority and he proposed a kind of communism as the answer. He wrote, “Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.” Furthermore he asserted that, “Communism begins from the outset with atheism.” Whereas Machiavelli taught princes to live like opportunist atheists who used religion to their own gain when useful, Marx says atheism is a presupposition and not a hidden one at that.

Because of this assumption of atheism the only guiding principle for Marx is the proletariat cause. So Marx would not see morality as relative but as defined by the cause. Actions and deeds are good when they support the communist agenda and bad when they hinder it. The utilitarian principle may never be clearer than in the Manifesto of the Communist Party when Marx describes the ideal Communist state. He states:

Nevertheless, in the most advanced countries the following will be pretty generally applicable: 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all right of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with the state capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state….

And the list goes on.

What is evident in Marx’s thinking is that the Communist agenda trumps all sense of individual rights. Anyone moving into his ideal state automatically loses all of their personal belongings or are labeled as a rebel (and then lose all their personal belongings). He is convinced that this approach, mutual state ownership, is the key to ending suffering and the class problem but anything that gets in the way will be annihilated with extreme prejudice. He concludes his Manifesto by saying, “The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals

Nietzsche sets out to give an explanation of the origin and evolution of morality in his book On the Genealogy of Morals. In his thinking the origin of the concept of good began with elite or noble class. What they did, what they were, was good and what stood in contrast to them (i.e. the lowly) was bad. He wrote, “The judgment “good” did not originate with those to whom “goodness” was shown! Rather it was “the good” themselves, that is to say, the noble, the powerful, high-stationed and high-minded, who felt and established themselves and their actions  as good…” He later argues that this concept becomes inverted by the religious, particularly the judeo-Christian tradition, to the point where what was once despised (e.g. weakness and low station) has become the ideal for moral goodness.

Regardless of who or what ‘the good’ is, it is clear that for Nietzsche that the concept originates with man and not with God. Nietzsche too is an atheist but he is not as optimistic of hopeful as Marx is in his Atheism. Nietzsche realizes that atheism equals no truth, moral compass whatsoever and that any principle for guidance we have is merely subjective and man made. He seems to agree that man will endure on by sheer act of will but he does so apart from any real meaning to life.

Conclusion

So much more could be and needs to be said to do each of these authors justice in representing their thoughts and stances. Nonetheless what I have hoped to draw out, and what I think should be clear from what we have seen, is that the shift in thinking about morality or oughtness that took place with the turn of modernism was a shift towards nihilism and subjectivity. The pre-moderns, while certainly having major disagreements about things, held a common presupposition that there was objective truth to be sought and found and that there was a real good and evil (justice and injustice) and that one ought to seek the good and turn form the bad. The common strand for the pre-moderns was the existence of the divine. God (or the gods) allowed a place outside of and above mankind upon which an objective morality could rest, a sufficient origin of morals and also a way to make them objective and equally obligatory for all people.

But when we arrive at the moderns we see that the oughtness begins to be a fuzzy idea. Machiavelli pays some lip service to the good, at least as a social convention that is normally expected to be upheld, but he says the Prince ought to ignore it as needed for maintaining control of the state. He does not out himself as an atheist but he encourages a practical atheism for princes. Marx assumes atheism and he adopts a utilitarian ethic which says all that helps communism is good and all that opposes it is bad. But this is not an objective reality, it is something to be imposed by force. Finally, Nietzsche presents himself as the honest one who embraces atheism and its logical outcome, nihilism. There is no meaning, there is no truth and there is no moral imperative.

Some of the greatest minds of social science bring us to this point of realization. If there is moral truth that is objective, equally true for all people in all places and at all times, then there is a divine being (or beings). If there is no divine reality then there is no basis for objective morality and ultimately there is only force, there is only the will to power. We now live in a confused society that needs to be honest about the options before them. If there is oughtness there is God. If there is no God, there is no oughtness.

Why is Homosexuality a Sin?

A student recently asked me why homosexuality was sinful and I could tell that she wanted a more in depth answer than 'because the Bible says so.' It's understandable, to some degree, that in our culture she would be repulsed by the notion of calling homosexuality sinful. Everything she sees, hears and reads in the media and entertainment industries is geared towards telling her that homosexuality is perfectly normal. They tell kids, as early as they can get their attention, that homosexuals are people just like you and I who want to love and be with people they care about.* They would like to say that it is no different than our mother and father's love for and relationship with each other.** To deprive homosexuals of the 'right' to same sex marriage*** is an atrocity and to condemn their love as sin is simply archaic and back wooded nonsense.

You cannot watch a new television show which does not feature a homosexual or two or three. Everyone has a gay friend and/or family member. It's normal and they are everywhere you go. They are presented as happy, healthy, attractive, and well adjusted people who are committed to a long term and monogamous relationship with their partner. They just want to love and be loved and to be accepted like everyone else.

So why call such a perfectly normal thing, a natural thing, a good thing...sinful?

This question is best answered by asking another question. Why call anything sinful? The term 'sin' has, after all, been attached to a lot of other things besides homosexual behavior. Heterosexual sex outside of the context marriage is also called sin. Lying is called sin. Stealing is called sin. Coveting is called sin. The list of sins rolls on. But why are any of these things sinful?

To put it another way, to use a bit less 'religious' term, we might say that these things are morally wrong. It is wrong to lie and steal and cheat. It is wrong to murder and enslave other people. It is wrong for a man to beat on his girlfriend or to sexually fondle a young child. It is wrong... Isn't it?

I think all but sociopaths just answered yes.

But why is it wrong? How can you say that murder or rape or molestation is objectively wrong? You may think these things are wrong but the person committing those same acts might not agree with you. If it is simply you against him then who is right? Why is your opinion more valid than his? Surely no human being can dictate morality for all others! 'Who are you to judge me?' the rapist says!

So you take the next logical move you can make and you appeal higher. You say that 'no individual person can dictate morality but society as a whole can'. Really? 'Yes,' you say 'society agrees together what is best for human flourishing and this agreement is what morality is. Murdering people does not aid the flourishing of our civilization, nor does molesting children, therefore they are wrong.' But I have a few questions.

What if I can get away with it? What if I commit the act and am never caught and therefore there is no punishment? Furthermore what if I really enjoy doing this act and feel it benefits me personally? Why ought I not to do it then? And before you say 'I should care for the good of the rest of society' I ask you why should I care about other people or what is good for society? It does not seem to follow that simply because a lot of people are saying something is so that it in turn actually is so. If an action benefits me and I can accomplish it without any harm to me, you have hardly given me a reason why I ought to not do the thing.

Furthermore your notion 'society defines morality' has some real difficulties. For one, it justifies a lot of atrocities throughout history and into our present day. Our society once felt that human slavery was permissible and, indeed, the majority supported it. Under the reasoning of 'society decides morality' we would have to say that slavery was morally good while the majority supported it. That moral reformers were actually evil because they opposed the norm and said the majority were in the wrong. Moral reform is impossible when we are simply counting noses.

Even further we have the problem that societies do not always agree with other societies. Who were we to tell the NAZI's to stop killing all the Jews and handicapped people? If their society was in favor of it then who is our society to judge them? This just takes us back to the difficulty we had before when you and the rapist were in a disagreement. You kicked it up the chain a bit to the level of society to avoid the problem of individual morality but it did not work. The problem is the same but merely on a larger scale. We think we ought not to murder people because of their ethnicity, they think it is for the good of all mankind to do so. Who is to say?

Who is to say?

It would seem that you have a real choice to make. You can choose between option A) that there is actually no objective morality which is binding on the consciences of all people everywhere across all times and cultures or B) That God exists. You might think that I have just tried to pull a fast one on you but, I assure you, I have not. I have however backed you into a corner with only two options. It is time that you faced them.

The problem of objective morality, that some things are really right and others really wrong, is that if it exists it is not a product of man. Mankind cannot, in themselves, account for morality. If morality is man made then it is just 'you versus me' or 'us versus them' and, in neither case, do we have objective moral truth that is binding for all people. The only place such an objective moral standard could come from is a Creator-God.

If it is the case that we are made by God and that he designed us and placed us upon this earth then he alone can state what our purpose is and how we are to function in relationship with one another and with him. He provides the accountability, He is the ultimate will-answer-to, that we lack if morality is man made and subjective. I ought not to do something, even if I can get away with it and it benefits me immediately, because it is actually wrong and I will be held accountable for my actions before God.

If there is no God then there is no objective morality. If there is objective morality then there is a God. These are your options.

And so now we come full circle. 'Why is homosexuality a sin?' It is a sin because it is contrary to the design and purposes of God for human life and flourishing and he has made this plain both in natural revelation and in special revelation (Scripture). Or there is no God, homosexuality is not sin, and all is permissible.

What I have trouble tolerating is people who try to play around like there is a middle option. I assure you there is not. The problem is that mankind is in rebellion to its Creator. We think we know better than our designer how we ought to behave and function. We reject him, we normalize what he has forbidden and we destroy ourselves in the process. Homosexuality is sin, just as heterosexual sex outside of marriage is sin, just like lying is sin, just like murder is sin and stealing is sin, etc., because God has made us and knows what is best for us and has told us how to live and we are either in accordance with his will or in rebellion.

If we say that homosexuality is not sin then we simply are rejecting God either in his existence or his authority.




*And, of course, homosexuals are people just like you and I who want to love and be loved and we ought to love them as people. But they are also living in sin (just like you and I apart from Christ) and they need to turn away from sinful desires and submit to the will of God. All of us have sinful impulses whether they be homosexual or otherwise. All of us have to deny ourselves certain things we crave because they are wrong.

** There is an obvious difference, however, because the human form was designed in such a way that the opposite sexes were complimentary and that the sexual organs, male and female, actually complete one another and produce offspring.

*** The issue of rights is similar to that of morality. Who can give individuals 'rights' beside their creator? Who defines marriage but the one who created the institution in the beginning?

Free-Will Has Always Had Limitations

I think it’s funny how people talk about “free will” sometimes. Not that the discussion isn’t an important one, because it is, but I think the discussion is often flawed before it starts. Now here I am speaking generally, of course, and there are those who go to great pains to carefully define their terms when they speak on this matter. Still, most people seem to speak of “free will” in a way that I think is nonsensical. Let us first consider why the issue of freedom, as it relates to the will, is important at all and then we will address the matter of how we ought to properly think of freedom of the will.

The reason the issue is important is not difficult to discern. If all of the decisions a person makes are determined in such a way that they could not make different decisions than the ones they do then that person can hardly be considered morally culpable for their actions. It is for this reason that any kind of holistic determinism must be considered outright foreign to the Christian worldview. Moral responsibility must rest upon the shoulders of individual persons if those persons are to be justly condemned for their immoral (sinful) behavior. If all of a person’s decisions are controlled by forces which they themselves have no control over then they can be neither praised nor reprimanded for any act or moral consequence whatsoever.

This being the case, and with Christianity being a religion which unashamedly speaks of God’s goodness, his absolute justice, and the wickedness of sinful mankind, the freedom of the will is a crucial matter. It’s no small wonder, then, why so many people speak about it with passion and force as they do. To strip man of his free exercise of will is to free him from culpability for his actions and if God then punishes creatures who are not morally culpable it, in turn, impugns the goodness and justice of God. All of this said, as one who is Reformed in my theology, I understand the reason why many people rabidly defend the issue of free will. They are not primarily defending free will, they are defending the goodness and justice of God and for that they are to be commended.

It is my contention, however, that many speak of free will in a way that simply cannot be the truth about how human will is exerted. Many times when I listen to someone talk about free will I hear them speak as though free will means “a person can make any choice they desire to.” Not only can they exercise their will and make an inward mental choice, but many proponents of free will seem to suggest that such a mental state as “choice” (which is an internal reality) must not be hindered in physical action or follow through (which is external). Allow me to demonstrate what I mean.

A person with free will can decide he does not want to be handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car. That same person may not, however, be able to do anything but be handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car. But the person’s freedom of will is not thereby annulled because he cannot do what he wants to do. The fact of the matter is that there are always external (and sometimes internal) factors which constrain our ability to do what we might desire to do.

Even in the state of absolute freedom, the Edenic state prior to the fall, where man was surely as free as ever he has been, Adam, presumably, could not burst into the sky like Superman. It was not in his nature, as God designed him, to be able to fly in the sky even if Adam willed to do so. The freedom of the will simply does not mean, nor has it ever meant, that a person can do anything that they want to whenever they want to do it.

To be sure, there are situations where actions are forced or coerced in which it might be fair to say “they were not acting of their own free will” such as when a man is put into the back of a police car although he wills to do otherwise. But it does not follow that because of this the man, as a being, ceases to have control of his will. He remains able to make decisions and to will things internally regardless of his outward ability. Outward ability and inward will are two different issues that really ought to never be confused.

Often when there are discussions about “Calvinism” and “Arminianism” the debate is coined in terms of “determinism” vs. “free will.” But here, again, I think many who have these heated debates aren’t careful about their terms. To be sure there are some Calvinists who believe in a holistic determinism in that they would say every single decision of mankind (and everything that occurs in the natural world) is predetermined by God’s decree. Not merely that God knows what will occur (and could change it if he desired), or that he is actively engaged in the salvation of the elect and bringing certain things about, but that the reason that all things occur the way they do is because God causally-determined them to occur before the foundation of the world (including actions like rape or even basic choices like what kind of toothbrush you pick at Wal-Mart). On the flip side there are extreme Arminian positions which exalt the freedom of human choices to the extent that they deny God’s ability to definitely know what will occur in the future. They reason that if God knows man’s choices beforehand then those choices are not free.

But I believe both of those extremes are flat out denied and refuted by Scripture. Indeed I think Christians can affirm the genuine exercise of freedom of human will and the total sovereignty of God without falling into either of these extremes. We may disagree on how God works within the hearts of men and women to draw them to himself by his grace but we need not suggest that the Calvinism/Arminian debate is merely about determinism versus free will. We must all, as Christians, affirm that freedom of choice is essential for moral culpability and therefore necessary to maintain the goodness and justice of God in condemning the wicked. But we must also all realize, as Christians, that the will is not free in this fantastic sense which says “there are no factors which can narrow your range of desire or ability.” Our very nature as human beings narrows our field of ability we can make (again, we cannot fly in the sky like Superman). The fall of mankind into sin (unless we affirm Pelagianism) further funnels our range of ability due to our inherited sinful nature. Indeed man’s fall was something like being put into the back of the police car, the will is still in tact but my range of ability has been significantly limited.

What freedom of the will must mean is that when given a choice between A or B, all thing otherwise being equal, I can choose either one. And we most certainly do have free will in that sense. I’m convinced that when you walk into the toothbrush aisle at Wal-Mart and are trying to decide between a blue Oral-B or a red Reach toothbrush that the decision is really and truly yours. God knows what you will pick, but he didn’t predetermine it. God could intervene if he wanted to, but in many such cases he really just leaves that to us. But all things are not always equal. We must admit there are other constraining factors that limit our ability to carry out desires, or even their are constraints that sometimes limit our very desires themselves.

But if we can ever say about a man that he has the above kind of free will, and option A was to do something morally praiseworthy and option B was to do something morally reprehensible and he chose B, then we have someone who is morally culpable who is a sinner and deserves God’s judgment. Just because their are constraining factors that limit mankinds range of of choices or that change their desires thereby affecting their range of choices does not thereby invalidate the genuineness of the decisions before them or the culpability they bear for the decisions that are theirs to make.

On Facts, Beliefs, Knowledge and Certainty

What is a fact? Is something only a fact if you can prove it or is it merely something that is the way it is whether you can prove it or not? I was talking with an individual recently who told me that in order for something to be a “fact” it has to be absolutely uncontested. The problem with that definition is that I contest it! There is a real difference between the nature of a fact (facts are that which correspond to the way something really is or was) versus determining what the facts are.

Let me ask you a very simple question. Who is your mother? Now that you have responded let me follow that up with another simple question. How do you know she is your mother? Likely you answered “I know my mom is my mom because she told me so, my dad confirmed, my grandparents confirmed it, everything I know about the woman and my past life experiences seem to confirm it.” So then, is it a fact that (your mother name here) is your mom? Well, that depends on reality. If indeed the woman you called mom carried you in her womb for 9 month and gave birth to you then yes it is a fact. If she didn’t, then no it is not a fact. (Please note that I am not trying to be insensitive to adoptive parents and adopted children. I certainly recognize that as valid motherhood!)

It could be that your mother breaks the news to you tomorrow that you were adopted and that your birth mother is someone else. But even though that is possible, is it unreasonable for you to have a real amount of certainty that your mother is really your mom? Of course not. You have taken it on reasonable authority and it has been corroborated by many lines of evidence and you belief that you mom is in fact your mom is completely rational.

Now notice that I just did something funny in that last sentence. I dared to use the word “belief” and “fact” within the same sentence together. But aren’t beliefs and facts opposites? This is what many in the world would like to tell you today in an attempt to completely invalidate the truth claims of “religious believers.” Yet I would submit to you that this idea that “belief” (faith, confidence, trust) is the opposite of “fact” is a foolhardy use of the term belief. In fact epistemologists (philosophers who study in the area of knowledge) suggest that knowledge should be understood as a “Justified, true, belief.”

In other words, if I am to be able to say “I know that Lori is my mother” then that statement must be justified by the evidence that I can come up with to support my knowing, it must indeed be true that she is my mother (corresponding to the way things really are), and I must believe she is my mother. All three of those components are necessary for me to “know” that Lori is my mom. Sometime we think we have knowledge when in reality we don’t. If I said “I know Lori is my mom” but then found out today that I was adopted then it turns out I didn’t know what I thought I knew. Or if, perhaps, I said my friend Michael Licona is my mom then I wouldn’t have knowledge in this instance because it is neither true (corresponding to reality) nor is it justified because I could come up with no evidence to support it. If all I have is a belief about Michael Licona being my mother then I don’t have knowledge. At least when I said “Lori is my mom” that was justified it just didn’t end up being true. Finally, Lori could be my mom in reality, I could have ample justification for acknowledging this as a fact, but I could still not believe it and then it wouldn’t be knowledge. So knowledge is constituted by these three things in harmony, that what I claim to know is 1. Justified 2. True and 3. I believe it. Otherwise I don’t have knowledge.

What this means is that it is possible to think we have knowledge about certain things when in reality we don’t. What we think we know can be undermined suddenly when new information appears. Furthermore we can cease to know true things if we stop believing them. Let’s say for instance that a person knows that Jesus rose from the dead. They have justification (evidence), it is true (it really occurred) and they believe it. If it is proven that Jesus never rose from the dead then they didn’t actually know what they thought they did. On the flip side, if a person stops believing Jesus rose from the dead (even if it is a historical reality) then they cease to have knowledge concerning this fact.

So let us come full circle to our original question. What is a fact? A fact is something that is true (it corresponds to the way things are or were). A fact is a thing that has brute existence and my belief in it doesn’t make it any more or less real. That is what a fact is. How can we determine what facts are? We determine them by investigation of evidence so as to form justification for why we believe something is a fact. And if we have end up with justification for our belief that something is a fact (true) and we are correct that it is a fact (true) then we also have knowledge.

Now, with all of that being said, what about certainty? As we have already stated, it is reasonable for you to assert as a fact that the person you call “mom” is indeed you mother but, even so, it is not beyond any possibility that this is false and you do not know what you think you know. Indeed all kinds of things we take for granted as facts are not above being questioned. Rene Descartes’ famous thought experiment involved doubting everything one could possibly doubt in order to find some base line of knowledge that was absolutely certain. He asked questions like how can we really know that we as individuals exist, or other people outside ourselves exist, the external word exists, etc.? Could not these be mere illusions, or perhaps I am only a figment of a demons dream? Philosophers have even posed questions like “How can we know that the world wasn’t created 5 minutes ago with all of your memories and experiences just implanted into your mind?”

The “fact” of the matter is that we all take certain things on faith. That is not to say we take things on some mystical blind leap but, rather, that we decide to trust something for a set of reasons. For instance it could be that my senses are wrong and that although I perceive the external world and other persons and object in it that they are in reality not there at all. But a better question is, given what I perceive why should I believe that my senses are generally unreliable? Common sense dictates that my senses seem to tell me the truth most of the time. Not that they cannot ever be fooled, they can, but generally they are reliable and enough so that I was able to drive to work today without dying.

Some things we may hold as more certain than others. For instance when Descartes proclaimed “Cogito ergo sum” or “I think therefore I am” he decided that this was the most certain thing there is. If I am thinking then it is necessary that I first exist in order to think. Regardless of whether Descartes achieved his goal of getting from this starting point back to rational belief in the external world and even God, he makes a fair point here in his famous statement.

As such my degree of certainty that I exist is extremely high. My degree of certainty that my friend Jeff Piepho exists is slightly less certain although highly certain. My degree of certainty that my mom is indeed Lori is pretty high, albeit less certain than the fact that Jeff exists at all. Not that I doubt my mother exists but the certainty that I have that she is truly my mother is logically less certain than that Jeff actually exists. I am highly certain also that the pyramids in Egypt exist although less so than all of the things I’ve mentioned before because I have never seen them myself, nor touched them myself. Even so, I have very good reasons to believe in the pyramids of Egypt because they are so well documented, I know people who have been there; I’ve seen pictures, etc.

So then, after all of this mental exercise, here is another question: Is it a fact that God exists?

If you’ve been paying attention then you know the answer is “It is a fact that God exists if indeed God does exist”, because your belief or your evidence doesn’t actually affect the brute nature of facts. A better question then is “Can a person have reasonable certainty that God exists?” To which we can answer “Yes!” There is indeed ample evidence in support of idea of God’s existence to make belief in God rationally justified. Furthermore if you have justification for God’s existence, you believe God exists, and he really does exist then you can say “I have knowledge that God exists.” Indeed I would argue to say “I know God exists” is perfectly rational just like saying “I know  ______ is my mom” or “I know that there are pyramids in Egypt.” It’s not that any of these things are beyond contestation or that something couldn’t ever disprove what I think I know, but I am well within my reasonable mind for saying I know these things.

All of this is said to establish that there is a difference between the existence of a fact and the acquiring of certainty that you or I or we know that fact. Whether a certain claim is contested or uncontested that has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not that claim is factually accurate. The only thing that makes a fact a fact is if it really corresponds to the way things are or were (it is true). It is our job to have justified beliefs about things that we deem to be true if we want to argue that we have knowledge, it is not our job to make facts uncontested. I have reasonable certainty that I know God exists.

The Folly of Scientism

Scientism, perhaps more accurately described as philosophical naturalism, is the idea that the only means by which we may know things with certainty is through scientific inquiry. By scientific inquiry they mean that which can be observed and tested by means of the five senses, sight, hearing, touch, smell, or taste. It’s the idea that only that which has a physical existence actually has existence.

It is by this notion that many who consider themselves “enlightened”, who hold to the hard sciences as the only means for knowing truth, declare that there is no God. I cannot see God with my eyes, or smell him with my nose, or hear him with my ears, etc., therefore the concept of God is meaningless and has God has no real existence. “Where is the evidence?” they say. “You can provide no evidence that God exists and therefore it is not reasonable to believe!” they proclaim.

But what they have done is set the parameters of evidence so as not to include anything which might serve to prove the existence of God or the supernatural. It’s like trying to measure the volume of the ocean with a yard stick and insisting that if you can’t do it by means of this particular tool then the ocean must not exist. To set the boundaries of inquiry into the possibility of the existence of an immaterial being so as to only use instruments that can examine material existence is begging the question.

By “begging the question” I mean that in the formal logical sense. It is to assume your conclusion in your argument.

Only the material world exists

God is immaterial.

Therefore God does not exist.

There is nothing invalid about this syllogism in form, but the problem is that the first premise is what in question to begin with. Does only the material world exist? Isn’t that the heart of the debate itself? Is it merely enough to simply assert that the immaterial world doesn’t exist?

The problem with philosophical naturalism (scientism) is that it is indeed a philosophy. It’s a point of view that has to be come to apart from scientific method itself. The statement “You can only know truth through science” is not itself something that can be examined under a microscope or tested and repeated in a lab. That claim is philosophical and one has to interact with it on the level of reason.

The truth is that as soon as someone asserts that “you can only know truth by the means of scientific inquiry” they have refuted themselves. All we need ask is “How do you know that to be true?” and we have them. The fact is there are immaterial realities such as numbers, logic, and even the thoughts you are thinking right now. Science is not able to measure the value of an idea, the beauty of a painting or the existence of objective moral values but these are real things.