Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’m going to be continuing our look at the presuppositional approach tonight by going to the beginning, that is, the book of Genesis. Can we find that the writer did affirm truth outside of an explicit knowledge of God or not?
To begin with, let’s start with some moral truths. The only command we know of given to Adam and Eve is to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Other than that, they are given quite free reign. The question has often been asked how it is that they would know that they ought to obey God. However, the Genesis account indicates a unique relationship between Adam and God in that God walked in the garden and Adam was not too surprised to see Him, only ashamed that he was naked before God, and that God brought the animals to Adam to see what he would name them. It is likely that Adam did understand where he came from as a creation of God to some extent, though this does not make him a master theologian.
His children meanwhile are knowledgeable of sin somehow and what they ought do and ought not do. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long before murder enters into the picture. Note in the passage as well that Cain fears justice from other people. We can spend so much time answering the question of Cain’s wife that we miss the concept of justice.
The preaching of Noah is much much later. However, we are only told of Noah’s preaching and no miracles. The world is to understand that they are doing wrong. This is an important point in that without the aid of Scripture which did not exist at the time, people were to know moral truths. This is something I plan to look at in much more detail when we get to Exodus.
There is similar activity taking place with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. God tells Abraham that the outcry against the towns is great. Why did judgment come to these towns? Because they ought to have known better. They would root this knowledge in the power of reason. Now there is no denial that God’s existence explains the ontological source of the moral truths, but how one knows the moral truths is different. One can know moral truths without holding to a theistic worldview.
Whether an atheist is being consistent or not is a different question, though it is an important one. However, that one cannot explain necessarily how they know certain truths does not mean that those truths cannot still count as knowledge. Few people overall are philosophers who will ever sit down and examine truth this way. Ask the average person on the street when he was born and he’ll tell you. Ask him how he knows and he could point to testimony of parents and/or birth certificates. Ask him how he knows those are reliable and he’ll give something else. At one point, unless he just walks off out of irritation he’ll say “I just know!”
There are some who start philosophy in a position of denial saying they don’t know anything. This seems problematic at the start for how can we say that we know that we don’t know anything? How could such a claim be backed unless one had an argument and one thought that that argument was valid. Of course. some philosophers have still used a similar method. Descartes decided to start with only believing whatever could not be doubted at all. Descartes’s claim of “I think, therefore I am” has been called into question. Why should the fact that he thinks lead to his ontological existence?
Descartes had started with a method. Why not start with a truth instead? We look at what we know and then ask “How is it that I know this thing that I know?” This was the method of the medievals and I believe it’s the method most of us would use. It doesn’t mean we accept all things blindly. We can question ourselves on some knowledge claims and should, but there are things that we do just know.
Why is this important? Because in Genesis, judgment is assumed to be understood to be deserved. Even if one does not know the God who is doing the judging, one is to know that they are doing something wrong and they are living in violation of a moral law. For theism, Abraham was called out and it is unlikely he had such a theistic knowledge that he was able to speak about the Trinity at that point.
Why bring this up? For the ancients, knowledge was possible. This was even without at times having access to direct revelation of God, such as Scripture, since it did not exist. One could appeal to reason in this case, and there is nothing wrong with that! God created reason and meant it to be a mechanism for finding truth. The problem is not reason but reasoners. Of course, I agree with the presuppositionalists in saying the problem of man is moral largely, but that does not mean I agree with the way they get to the truth.
We shall continue tomorrow.
Support Deeper Waters on Patreon!
