Thinking to Believe

Many see philosophy and theology as dichotomous—like oil and water.  The only dichotomy, however, is between false philosophy and good theology, or between good philosophy and false theology.  Everybody has a philosophy.  It’s unavoidable.  The only question that remains to be answered is whether our philosophy is good or bad, right or wrong.

Philosophy provides us with the tools of rational thought.  As such, philosophy is essential to the task of Biblical interpretation and systematic theology.  In terms of the knowing process, philosophy actually precedes theology because we cannot discover the meaning of the text unless we first learn the principles of rationality required for interpretation.  That is why the content of our philosophy is so important, and the presuppositions of our philosophy need to be exposed and examined to determine their validity, for if we come to the Biblical text with a bad philosophy, it will ultimately lead to a bad theology.

We often use words like reality, belief, and truth without thinking much of what we mean by them.  With some inspiration by J.P. Moreland I have devised a brief definition of each that makes it clear how they differ from each other.

Reality is the way the world really is independent of our beliefs about it.

Beliefs are what we think reality is like.

Truth is the corresponding relation between our beliefs and reality.  If our beliefs about reality correspond to the way the world really is, truth is obtained.  As J.P. Moreland says, truth puts us into contact with reality.  We have truth when we have true, justified beliefs about reality.

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Fox News picked up a story from The Washington Times reporting on recent drops in support of abortion rights:

Popular support for abortion rights has dropped seven points in the past year due in part to the election of a pro-choice Democratic president, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life said Thursday.

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J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig wrote:

[T]he single most important institution shaping Western culture is the university.  It is at the university that our future political leaders, our journalists, our teachers, our business executives, our lawyers, our artists, will be trained.  It as at the university that they will formulate or, more likely, simply absorb the worldview that will shape their lives.  And since these are the opinion-makers and leaders who shape our culture, the worldview that they imbibe at the university will be the one that shapes our culture.  If the Christian worldview can be restored to a place of prominence and respect at the university, it will have a leavening effect throughout society.  If we change the university, we can change our culture through those who shape culture.

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During an interview at Cambridge University William Lane Craig was asked how postmodern students reacted to his “rational approach.”  He said:

Frankly, I don’t confront many students who are postmodernists. For all the faddish talk, I think it’s a myth. Students aren’t generally relativistic and pluralistic, except when it comes to ethics and religion. But that’s not postmodernism, that’s modernism. That’s old-style verificationism, which says things that are verifiable through the five senses are factual, but everything else is just a matter of taste (including ethics and religion). I think it’s a deceit of our age to say that modernism is dead.

Craig echoed similar sentiments in To Everyone An Answer on pages 21-22:

[E]nlightenment rationalism is so deeply imbedded in Western intellectual life that these antirationalistic currents like Romanticism and postmodernism are doomed, it seems, to be mere passing fashions. After all, no one adopts a postmodernist view of literary texts when reading the labels on a medicine bottle or a box of rat poison…In the end, people turn out to be subjectivists only about ethics and religion, not about matters provable by science. But this is not postmodernism; this is nothing else than classic Enlightenment naturalism–it is the old modernism in a fashionable new guise.

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A judge in Dallas Texas has decided that two men who married in Massachusetts who now reside in Texas can get a divorce in Texas.  What’s interesting about this is that Texas does not recognize same-sex marriages.  In the eyes of the law of Texas, these men are not married, so how can that same state grant them a divorce?  What is the legal basis?  According to the judge, the basis is the fact that Texas’ law opposing same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.  You see how this works?!  Many voices prophesied that this would happen: same-sex couples marry in a state that recognizes same-sex marriage, move to a state that does not recognize same-sex marriage, and then successfully challenge that state’s marriage laws by filing for divorce. 

As I understand it, the judge’s decision does not, in fact, invalidate the law.  If I am understanding it correctly, it merely challenges the law, which, if pressed, could require a constitutional review by the Supreme Court of Texas, who could overturn it if they agree that it is unconstitutional.  If anyone knows more about the story, more about the judge’s decision, or more about the legal matters involved here, please step in and either correct me or fill in the blanks.

C.S. Lewis pointed out that all men recognize the existence of a universal moral law, even if they do not follow it.  How does he know this?  Because all men offer excuses.  When someone offers an excuse for their actions, they are admitting that they have violated some higher law, but think their violation is justified.  They seek to justify their behavior, rationalizing their way out of the guilt they know is due them.  As J. Budzeszewski noted, “No one has ever discovered a way to merely set aside the moral law; what the rationalizer must do is make it appear that he is right.  Rationalizations, then, are powered by the same moral law which they twist.”

A while back I asked for your help in creating a new logo.  Thanks to the feedback and insights of so many of you, I have settled on the logo below.  While I hope to make it look a little more three-dimensional in the future, this is pretty much it. (more…)