Paul's Passing Thoughts

Absolute truth is therefore impossible in the shadow world. We often hear people say that all lies have an element of truth and no truth is pure truth. This comes from the roots of Platonist Western thought. And frankly, Calvin harps on that notion throughout his Institutes, especially in 3.14.9-11. What we perceive in this world is a shadow of some pure form that is not accessible to the commoners. Even those who have access to the invisible cannot bring about a pure manifestation in this life—they simply strive through study and reason to bring the best wisdom to bear on this life. Nobody contends that the Philosopher kings run a perfect show, but it is our best life now—if we obey the philosopher kings and, “lean not on our own understanding” which is mostly worldly, shadowy wisdom. But the Bible NEVER speaks about truth in those terms. It’s true or not true, period. Later, we will conclude this chapter with a comparison between Platonist metaphysics and Biblical metaphysics. Suffice to say for now that a word spoken by God means what He intends it to mean. God doesn’t have communication issues.

A prime example of what we are discussing is a sermon delivered at Shawnee Baptist church in Xenia, Ohio on August 19^th, 2012. During the visit, it became obvious to this author that the church was in the process of being taken over by those of the New Calvinist mindset. The sermon was delivered by a professor of New Testament theology from Cedarville University, a conservative Christian college. He was also a member at Shawnee during that time. The subject was decision making, and what kind of worldview yields proper decisions. Only two possible worldviews were presented, the vision of the good, and the vision of the worldly good. “Wisdom” was presented as coming forth from “knowledge” which is always based on “fear of the Lord.” “Wisdom” always has a “goal,” and each vision, when pursued, produces a certain outcome. The professor then defined the vision of the worldly good as,

…worldly wisdom is sensual or natural. Depending on your translation, the word will be a little bit different there. And I used the word “sensual” here to kind of underscore the idea that it’s tied to the senses. Normally, when we think of sensual, we think of sexual pleasure or something like that; that’s not what James means. All he’s saying is that it’s sort of tied to the senses or to pursuing certain ends. Most of the time it would be things like pursuing pleasure as a good and avoiding pain. Those seem kind of good. I like pleasure. I like to avoid pain. That seems to be kind of natural to us. Hence, it’s natural. Those kind of end up being the goals. You can put them up there.

The professor defined worldly wisdom as being defined via the senses, and therefore resulting in the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. This Platonist approach is problematic because of its strict dichotomy between the material world and the invisible world with one being good and the other being evil. The professor then linked the five senses, and the concerns thereof, to individualism:

Because worldly wisdom is self-oriented, the source of worldly wisdom is autonomy and sovereignty. It’s the exact same thing. And so James says the source of worldly wisdom is always in the end going to be demonic in this regard.

Now this is abnormal. This is an abnormal condition for us. God did not create us to be sovereign, independent beings. He did not create us to declare our independence of him, and He always wanted us to be dependent on him. So this condition of autonomy is one that, if we acknowledge that we’re abnormal, then we have to acknowledge why we’re abnormal. And that would bring us back to God. Well, the world doesn’t wanna do that. So what will the world do? The world is gonna try and make this a normal, self-focused vision of what’s good and try to normalize it, try to make it sound like this is the only really true vision of how things should be.

So what happens? We have things like, oh I don’t know. Autonomy starts to become things like independence and self-sufficiency. Those sound sort of virtuous kind of ideas. Selfishness becomes ambition and goal-orientation.

The Cedarville University professor then linked collectivism to the vision of the good. Prior to that, he made a division of meaning between “fairness” and “justice,” and “moral” ideas and “ethical” ideas. He linked fairness and moralism to individualism, and linked justice and ethics to collectivism. In philosophy, this is known as dualism, or ontological dualism. Everything is interpreted within the context of a dual realty; e.g., Plato’s two worlds. This method of epistemology will often define a word in its material world context and its invisible world context. This is done by using synonyms and treating them as antonyms. The professor did this several times in the sermon we are presently discussing. In the final analysis, individualism was equated with the worldly, and collectivism was equated with the vision of the good. All “godly” decisions benefit “the group.” This is Platonism to a “T.”

The problem becomes the following; for example, words and concepts like “justice” are divided and do not pertain to the individual:

Now I want you to think about the vision of the good that is out there for a minute. What does our society, what does our world try to tell us? If you think about it, there are competing messages that we get. For example, fairness is more important than justice in our society. And fairness is, “I need to get mine. It needs to be me.” Justice related more toward what’s good for the community.

And in New Calvinist circles, what is “fairness”? Fairness is, “Everybody deserves hell.” Therefore, there is NO “justice” for an individual. Individual fairness and justice are mutually exclusive. Fairness is of the world, justice is good. This worldview is not just a little common in the universities across the world that are educating our future pastors, and this should answer the why? question regarding the church’s blind eye to spiritual abuse unequivocally. If justice for the individual will harm the group, all bets are off.

Moreover, the question of absolute truth now comes full circle. If heaven’s definition of justice is not our exact definition of justice because this world is a shadowy manifestation of Plato’s true forms, and there is a little bit of untruth in truth and truth in untruth, then pure justice is impossible anyway, and besides, “Everyone shares some guilt in this situation.” How many times have we heard that jingle? It’s not exactly a catalyst for justice on any wise. It should also answer the question of why victims are often blamed, again, unequivocally. Sir Karl Raimund Popper, generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science in the 20th century, laid the blame for tyranny in Western culture at the feet of Plato’s collectivism. The church should not think there is an exception because Calvin dressed collectivism in Bible verses.