Just as two people who speak different languages cannot communicate meaningfully without sharing a common language, so two people who interpret the world differently cannot communicate meaningfully, even when they share the same language. They will use the same words and idioms, and employ the same semantic structures, sometimes even speaking with the same accent, but they will inevitably talk past each other. The Christian sees the world around him differently from the way he saw it before his conversion. He can never see things the same way again. The Christian and the unbeliever may stand on the same planet, but they live worlds apart. The Holy Spirit has enlightened the eyes of the believer, regenerated him, illuminated his understanding regarding spiritual things, and the believer has welcomed the truth once hid from his eyes. The unbeliever remains in darkness. Inevitably the words a believer uses will carry for him a meaning different from the meaning the same words carry for the unbeliever. If this concept sounds strange, don't stop reading here. It sounded strange to me when I first heard it, too.
I would like to spend the next few paragraphs explaining the meaning of this difference rather than proving it. If it were my goal to prove it, I would show what the Scriptures teach about the noetic effects of sin, the total depravity of the natural man, and the role of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and illumination. Scores of Bible texts teach these truths. Instead, I want to give an explanation--not a proof--of my position by considering how we use words like "safety" and "probability."
When a Christian uses the word "safe" in a Christian sense, he does not use it the same way as the unbeliever. I do not mean that they use the word in two different senses, with two definitions. Everyone is used to using words with more than one meaning. Although two parties may misunderstand each other for a while, eventually they will recognize their misunderstanding stems from a common vocabulary with divergent meanings. The word safety takes on different meanings in the working world today. It can refer to practices which, over time, have proven to lead to few accidents and injuries. It can also mean adhering to a code of practice intended to promote safety, whether or not it actually does. Many OSHA and DOT regulations--safety regulations--fall into this category. If I fail to copy down the serial number of one piece of paperwork on another piece of paperwork at my job, I will be cited for a safety violation. As someone at my work says, "There's safety, and then there's SAFETY." For the believer and the unbeliever, the failure in communication does not arise from a common vocabulary with multiple meanings, but from the fact that the two people live in different worlds of understanding. It is as if a man were talking on the phone from somewher on earth to an alien in another galaxy. One of them might learn the other's language, but he could never understand the other's world.
Let us say that a boy walks across the ice of a lake only recently frozen in early winter. He reaches the other side without having fallen through the dangerously thin ice. The unbeliever can say that he reached the other side safely, or that it was unsafe to do what he did. In this example, "safe" and "unsafe" reflect different definitions of safety. The act was both safe and unsafe (although the boy's mother will remind him repeatedly how unsafe his excursion was). Now let us change the circumsatnces of the boy's adventure. Let us say that he is a true believer, regenerated by the Holy Spirit, a member of the household of God. Let us also say that this time the ice split open under his feet and he plunged suddenly into an icy grave. Who would say that the boy was kept safe? Only the Christian could say that he was kept safe by the loving hand of God, who called him home.
The believer sees a world that a perfect, holy, wise, loving, and just God controls, a God to whom words like "likelihood" and "probability" have no meaning. With Him, all is certain, known, and absolute. The unbeliever can say that an act was safe only after the fact, when he can see in retrospect that no injury was done; or when he sees that an act usually does not result in harm. To God, there is no retrospection; He knows all events equally well before they occur as after. To God it is also nonsense that an act is safe because of its likely outcome. He knows the outcome with certainty. Probability has no meaning for the Lord.
I am afraid I have left too many loose ends untied in this essay, but I have run out of time. Perhaps I can continue my train of thought in a future blogpost.
Safety is of the Lord.
Next blog: Review of The Grand Design of God by C. A. Patrides
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Book Review
God and Man in Time, by Earle E. Cairns
My quest for a Christian philosophy of history has led me to a book written by the author of the well-known church history textbook, Christianity Through the Centuries. Cairns wrote this little book after his retirement from the classroom in 1977 after 34 years of teaching.
He divides the book into three parts, history as science, history as philosophy, and history as art. In the first part he discusses the historian's materials and methods. The second part, devoted to the philosophy of history is by far the most important of the three. He begins with a survey of historians from ancient Egypt to modern America and their philosophies, or at least their purposes for writing. After this survey, he proceeds with four chapters which compare the various philosophies of history. Part three, the briefest, deals with the art of history writing.
Cairns rightly recognizes the difficulty of categorizing philosophies of history. Dissatisfied with the traditional division into linear and cyclical philosophies, as well as with other divisions (naturalistic/humanistic/idealistic, degeneration/progress/providence; prideful man/frustrated men/redeemed man; and physical/metaphysical/theological), he suggests the categories of optimistic philosophies, pessimistic philosophies, and pessimistic-optimistic philosophies, the last group including evangelical Christians. This division seems to work well, but is confused by the way Cairns first divides historians into those who adhere to a philosophy of history, and those who adhere to a school of history. Schools of history tend to be positivistic, expecting to achieve a measure of certainty about past events. Philosophies of history by acknowledging the subjective nature of the sources and of the historian, relinquish the hope of certainty about the past. As it turns out, he categorizes the proponents of schools of history by their philosophies of history. I found his terminology confusing.
I found only one fault with Cairns' own position. He is too optimistic about the ability of the Christian historian's ability to graft into his work the findings of secular historians. He clearly recognizes the importance of the historian's worldview to his interpretation of his data, but somehow fails to point out the real cause for the difference between the secular historian and the Christian. The mind of the unbeliever is blinded. He cannot know the truth. He cannot see the world a God sees it. His problem is not just that he uses a faulty interpretive grid, but that he does not even possess the spiritual sense to understand the data correctly (I use "spiritual sense" here in the same sense as Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, part 1, chap. 4). Every event since creation has some relationship to the Creator. Anyone who does not know the creator, anyone who is spiritually at war with Him, cannot, will not understand those events correctly. Nevertheless, Cairns's position on the ability of the unbelieving historian to handle his material rightly is the usual evangelical position.
One of the chief values of this little book for me is its annotated bibliography at the end of each chapter. I will find myself coming again and again for new reading material.
My quest for a Christian philosophy of history has led me to a book written by the author of the well-known church history textbook, Christianity Through the Centuries. Cairns wrote this little book after his retirement from the classroom in 1977 after 34 years of teaching.
He divides the book into three parts, history as science, history as philosophy, and history as art. In the first part he discusses the historian's materials and methods. The second part, devoted to the philosophy of history is by far the most important of the three. He begins with a survey of historians from ancient Egypt to modern America and their philosophies, or at least their purposes for writing. After this survey, he proceeds with four chapters which compare the various philosophies of history. Part three, the briefest, deals with the art of history writing.
Cairns rightly recognizes the difficulty of categorizing philosophies of history. Dissatisfied with the traditional division into linear and cyclical philosophies, as well as with other divisions (naturalistic/humanistic/idealistic, degeneration/progress/providence; prideful man/frustrated men/redeemed man; and physical/metaphysical/theological), he suggests the categories of optimistic philosophies, pessimistic philosophies, and pessimistic-optimistic philosophies, the last group including evangelical Christians. This division seems to work well, but is confused by the way Cairns first divides historians into those who adhere to a philosophy of history, and those who adhere to a school of history. Schools of history tend to be positivistic, expecting to achieve a measure of certainty about past events. Philosophies of history by acknowledging the subjective nature of the sources and of the historian, relinquish the hope of certainty about the past. As it turns out, he categorizes the proponents of schools of history by their philosophies of history. I found his terminology confusing.
I found only one fault with Cairns' own position. He is too optimistic about the ability of the Christian historian's ability to graft into his work the findings of secular historians. He clearly recognizes the importance of the historian's worldview to his interpretation of his data, but somehow fails to point out the real cause for the difference between the secular historian and the Christian. The mind of the unbeliever is blinded. He cannot know the truth. He cannot see the world a God sees it. His problem is not just that he uses a faulty interpretive grid, but that he does not even possess the spiritual sense to understand the data correctly (I use "spiritual sense" here in the same sense as Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, part 1, chap. 4). Every event since creation has some relationship to the Creator. Anyone who does not know the creator, anyone who is spiritually at war with Him, cannot, will not understand those events correctly. Nevertheless, Cairns's position on the ability of the unbelieving historian to handle his material rightly is the usual evangelical position.
One of the chief values of this little book for me is its annotated bibliography at the end of each chapter. I will find myself coming again and again for new reading material.
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