Re: Cobb County

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 12:18:29 -0800, "Edward Hassertt"
<ehassertt@mac.com> said:
> No discipline can exist apart from God and his revelation, to say so
> is to claim that man is autonomous from God.
>
> drsyme@cablespeed.com wrote:
>
> > If you are of the reformed persuasion, you believe in man's Total
> > Depravity. Man has a mind that is unable to see spiritual truth,
> > and no one is able to come to Christ unless God open's their eyes to
> > the Gospel.
> >
> > But, that does not mean that man cannot reason, and make
> > observations, and use logic and mathematics to understand how things
> > are. Man's depravity has nothing to do with science.
>
> Man's depravity is total, it affects every area of his thinking,
> although not completely. Total does not refer to complete destruction
> in a specific area as you misstate above, but some impairment in all
> areas. The total is in scope, not depth.
>
> > Many of the YEC'ers, want to make all scientists evil because they
> > do science without a religious bias. But religion is religion, and
> > science is science, they are different disciplines. They cannot be
> > mixed.
> >
> > So science needs to be interpreted without any reliance on the
> > Bible. It is science, not religion.
>
> That is functional atheism, not Christianity. We can do nothing apart
> from God's word, to try to do so leads to error, deception and an
> ultimate rejection of GOd's truth in favor of man's own will. It is
> the first and greatest sin, to claim we can have knowledge of anything
> apart from God.

And now a word from *cough* functional atheist, Charles Hodge. Hodge
argues that the facts of nature point to the same God as Scripture does.
Thus, you can be study nature qua nature and not be autonomous. There
are different classes of facts which science and Scripture best point
towards. Presuppositionalism makes enemies out of friends because it
makes David (cf. Psalm 19:1) a functional atheist.

     IF the views presented in the preceding chapter be correct, the
     question, What is Theology? is already answered. If natural science
     be concerned with the facts and laws of nature, theology is
     concerned with the facts and the principles of the Bible. If the
     object of the one be to arrange and systematize the facts of the
     external world, and to ascertain the laws by which they are
     determined; the object of the other is to systematize the facts of
     the Bible, and ascertain the principles or general truths which
     those facts involve. And as the order in which the facts of nature
     are arranged cannot be determined arbitrarily, but by the nature of
     the facts themselves, so it is with the facts of the Bible. The
     parts of any organic whole have a natural relation which cannot
     with impunity be ignored or changed. The parts of a watch, or of
     any other piece of mechanism, must be normally arranged, or it will
     be in confusion and worthless. All the parts of a plant or animal
     are disposed to answer a given end, and are mutually dependent. We
     cannot put the roots of a tree in the place of the branches, or the
     teeth of an animal in the place of its feet. So the facts of
     science arrange themselves. They are not arranged by the
     naturalist. His business is simply to ascertain what the
     arrangement given in the nature of the facts is. If he mistake, his
     system is false, and to a greater or less degree valueless. The
     same is obviously true with regard to the facts or truths of the
     Bible. They cannot be held in isolation, nor will they admit of any
     and every arrangement the theologian may choose to assign them.
     They bear a natural relation to each other, which cannot be
     overlooked or perverted wthout the facts themselves being
     perverted. If the facts of Scripture are what Augustinians believe
     them to be, then the Augustinian system is the only possible system
     of theology. If those facts be what Romanists or Remonstrants take
     them to be, then their system is the only true one. It is important
     that the theologian should know his place. He is not master of the
     situation. He can no more construct a system of theology to suit
     his fancy than the astronomer can adjust the mechanism of the
     heavens according to his own good pleasure. As the facts of
     astronomy arrange themselves in a certain order, and will admit of
     no other, so it is with the facts of theology. Theology, therefore,
     is the exhibition of the facts of Scripture in their proper order
     and relation, with the principles or general truths involved in the
     facts themselves, and which pervade and harmonize the whole.

     It follows, also, from this view of the subject, that as the Bible
     contains one class of facts or truths which are not elsewhere
     revealed, and another class which, although more clearly made known
     in the Scriptures than anywhere else, are, nevertheless, so far
     revealed in nature as to be deducible therefrom, theology is
     properly distinguished as natural and revealed. The former is
     concerned with the facts of nature so far as they reveal God and
     our relation to him, and the latter with the facts of Scripture.
     This distinction, which, in one view is important, in another, is
     of little consequence, inasmuch as all that nature teaches
     concerning God and our duties, is more fully and more
     authoritatively revealed in his Word.
Received on Wed Jan 19 17:14:32 2005