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[Hide] (1.2MB, 1181x1424) I think it's important for us to start thinking about worldview. Let me begin by stating what the Christian worldview is: that all things whatsoever, whether they be the privacy of our internal monologues or clusters of galaxies billions of lightyears away, were made by and for an ancient Jewish peasant, who still lives to this day having risen from the dead, and whom is your rightful King to whom you owe absolute unquestioning obedience. Given how radical this message is you should not be surprised-indeed, should anticipate- to encounter nothing but hatred and death from those currently in open insurrection against said King.
False systems of thought are not mere philosophical mistakes but acts of rebellion against the God they know and hate. Since Jesus made the rock, and owns the rock, any attempt to explain the rock without taking Him into account will fail and constitutes an attack on the crown property rights of Jesus. His sin is foolishness, and he sins foolishly by raising up his lofty opinions against the knowledge of God. And we obey our King when we take every thought captive to Him, both our own and those of the rebel guy in a dress that's ranting about how monkeys are his ancestors.
At the advanced age of 10, having been raised by an espoused atheist father and a nominal Roman Catholic mother, I developed a most Cartesian fascination with proof of my own existence and the establishment of certainty. I always engaged with these philosophical ruminations (and everything else) on the presupposition that I could autonomously discern the truth through my own rational power. As I have walked with Christ however, I have become somewhat less enfranchised with philosophy. Rev. Greg Bahnsen obviously, from his lectures and written works, considered his status as a PhD philosopher a point of pride. I consider it a point of pride that I have realized all the questions asked by the philosopher are really the same as those asked by the theologian, just with different starting points, methods and conclusions, and therefore philosophy just means pagan theology. I am also a philosopher, and while I may not be a Platonist or Aristotelian, my school of philosophy is also named after its founder and archetype, it's called Christianity. On that account I find the title of reverend worthy of infinitely more esteem than the title of doctor.
When the unbeliever engages with anything from science to softball he does so from an opposing system of thought which denies the Lordship of Christ. When he considers the possibility that Jesus *might* be Lord, he takes it for granted that he is an autonomous sack of randomly assorted fizzing chemicals in a chance universe that does not care about him, and that the arbitrary games other bags of mindless neurotransmitters made up a really long time ago will be sufficient to settle the absolute truth of the question. There can be no neutral ground between us, we know only an antithesis till the Lord returns.
It is not a coincidence that unbelievers have discerned every copy of Matthew is really a copy of Mark that some guy attached his own opinions to, which in turn is really a similarly edited copy of something called Q (aptly named, given that guy's gonna need to snap his fingers in order for anyone to ever find the thing), it is because he approaches the text with the "knowledge" there is no God, God has not spoken, God has no purposes etc. and therefore he is looking at a book of mythology by clueless sand people who were really making it all up as they went along, and in different ways. He is not merely prejudiced against the Christian religion (though undoubtedly he's that too), nor is he particularly motivated by an explicit desire to vindicate his secularism; he is operating on his worldview.
Let's be clear, that while the unbeliever is very insistent that God have nothing to do with it and makes a very sincere effort to banish God from his thoughts and therefore get absolutely nothing right about the rock, he nevertheless has the misfortune that this God lives in his mind (for He is not far from any one of us) and the name of Jesus is written on his thoughts in addition to the rock. Consequently he unfortunately does manage to get some things correct most of the time; he is only a nominal atheist.
It is precisely because of this borrowed capital from the God of truth in spite of his espoused presuppositions he is able to know anything, and that we are able to preach the gospel to him; stepping past his unbelieving pretenses to appeal directly to the image of God within, imploring that which knows God to be reconciled to Him. When he disagrees we must, with gentleness and reverence, destroy the very ground he stands on and accept nothing short of unconditional surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We must absolutely never embrace his demand for mythical neutrality (which he will make constantly and unwittingly) and leave God out of the picture in anything from science to softball for to do so is to become a fool like him. As Cornelius Van Til put it "The bible has absolute authority on everything of which it speaks, and it speaks about everything", or as Tertullian put it, "What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?"