Monday, June 13, 2011

Presuppositionalism, the Fool, Irony, and the Perfect Preservation of Scripture

Recently I had a multi-versionist throw Proverbs 26:4 at me, implying why it is he couldn't answer some simple questions of mine. The implication was that I was a fool whom he couldn't answer. He wrote it in Hebrew so that most people at his blog wouldn't know what he wrote. Here it is in English:

Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.


The fool according to scripture says there is no God (Psalms 14:1; 53:1). Calling me a fool is obviously off base, maybe because the young man who used Proverbs 26:4 is ignorant of its meaning. The fool presupposes there is no God. He rejects the existence of God based upon his own presupposition. We know this from Romans 1:18. The fool "hold[s] fast the truth in unrighteousness," that is, suppresses the truth about God's existence in his own unrighteousness. The problem for the fool is not evidence, but rebellion. He knows the truth, but He suppresses it.

Presuppositionalism has two parts: "pre," which is "before," and "suppositionalism," which is an "assumption." Everyone comes to a discussion with already established assumptions about the world and the truth. Everyone is guided by his previously made assumptions.

God enables everything that is known because God created everything. Truth comes from God, so it is objective and absolute. We know because of God. What we know, we know because of Him. Even the discussion of what we know comes because of God. The answer to "how do you know?" is God.

It is ironic that this young man called me a fool because of my belief about the perfect preservation of scripture. How do we know that scripture is perfectly preserved? Multi-versionists would say that we come to the knowledge of perfect preservation of scripture through evidence, and evidence doesn't indicate the perfect preservation of scripture. But we don't know except for God and God said He would perfectly preserve scripture. Do we deny God?

We're not having this discussion without God. We can't conclude without God. Logic consists of rules or laws that are unchanging, universal, and immaterial. Logic comes from God because God is unchanging, universal, and immaterial. Logic comes from outside of man. Man did not make the rules or laws. God did. So if our view is to be logical, it must agree with God. And God said he would perfectly preserve every Word. We go to Scripture to find the truth about preservation.

To deny what God said about preservation is to deny God. Who denies God? The one who denies perfect preservation is arguing from a secular world view. Every fool must borrow from a Christian world view to argue about his evidence. He is saying that he can know something, but He only knows because of God, and God is the God of Christianity. If He says He knows, then He admits absolute truth. Absolute truth comes only from God. So He cannot know what denies what God said. So the problem of preservation is not knowledge, but rebellion. The one denying perfect preservation poses as a fool. He may not be a fool, but he is taking the fool's point of view by denying God.

I think the young man called me a fool because of his subjective guess or speculation about fools. It wasn't based upon the truth. If he was basing it upon the truth, he would have relied on a scriptural understanding, an Divinely inspired knowledge, of the fool. His view of the fool seems to be a person who rejects what he thinks is evidence.

This is the irony of a multi-versionist calling me a fool.

3 comments:

Erik D said...

No one called you a fool. I explained why I quoted that verse, and I pointed out that it was not in any of the comment chains for a specific reason. If I had intended it to be toward you, it would have been in reply to one of your comments.

The entire discussion was getting out of hand and it was there as a general statement as to why ALL OF US should have halted the debates and let things lie.

I am sorry that you continue to misunderstand my purposes.

Kent Brandenburg said...

"All of us"? I don't know who you are talking about. And it's easy to be unambiguous, Erik. I think of 2 Cor 7 with Paul's description of repentance, the great clearing of yourself. This is not that. I'm fine not commenting on your blog. I thought that opportunity might be available when you wrote about me like you did, but I'm fine not commenting over there even when you do. You are welcome here as long as you've got something to write that actually deals with what has been written, and isn't only insults.

Joshua said...

Erik,

I strongly encourage you to tape and YouTube the response you get next time you quote that verse in an argument with anyone. Try it on your wife. Try it on a fellow church member. Try it on the unsaved. I guarantee you'll get thousands of hits on YouTube and probably at least one in real life.

Either it was an exceptionally poor choice of words or it was a naked insult. Given Christ's warnings regarding the 'raca' curse, I'd say you have nothing to lose by giving a profound apology. Certainly no one here will jeer at you if you humble yourself to do so.