Paul's Passing Thoughts

The Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Either/Or Hermeneutic

Before we move on, more should be said about the Shawnee Hills sermon. The mechanics of that message lays an important foundation for understanding. The mechanics of the message used Plato’s two worlds as a hermeneutic, or method of interpretation. In essence, this is the serpent’s “knowledge of good and evil.” The serpent stated to Eve that to know was to know good and evil. Opposites become a hermeneutic. We discussed this concept in chapter three. Reality is defined by the difference in two things. One may take note that this idea is stated in the very first sentence of the Calvin Institutes (1.1.1.), and the rest of the Institutes are predicated on that foundational theses. This is ontological dualism.

For the purpose of preventing confusion, we should focus on the target outcome of those who use such constructs: to install a mortal mediator between man and God. In service to that, Plato’s two worlds are basically the knowledge of good and evil. It’s the knowledge of the shadow world versus the world of the true, good, and beautiful. Consequently, this ontological dualism is sometimes referred to as the either/or hermeneutic. EVERYTHING is either this, or that, and there is NO in-between. This is a consistent element seen in the teachings of Reformed theology, and Calvinism in particular. Why? Because EVERYTHING is categorized as being in league with either the visible, or the invisible. Heaven, or earth. The worldly, or heavenly. Good, or evil. There is no in-between; it’s one or the other. Heaven can have nothing in common with earth.

In the Shawnee message, the aforementioned CU professor started with the concept of wisdom. He began by splitting wisdom into wisdom/knowledge. He then proceeded to use Scripture to make the case that all true wisdom is preceded by knowledge and defined that as “fear (reverence) of the Lord.” Therefore, there is only one kind of wisdom: heavenly, or wisdom from above. And, this “wisdom” is not based on the empirical, but on “reverence.” The word “wisdom” was split into wisdom/knowledge to make the case for one legitimate “wisdom.”

He then split the word “idea” into moral/ethical. He admits in the message that these words are “normally” thought of as “synonymous.” He then proceeded to correct that notion and categorize the two words. Moral was associated with the individual, and ethical was associated with the group. So effectively, he separated ideas into two categories. Since there is only ONE wisdom, either individual “moral” ideas are from above, or ethical ideas are from above. One is of the world by default.

Which category should moralism, the pursuant of the individual, belong? He defines that by associating the five senses with individual preference, and the pursuit of pleasure, and avoidance of pain which obviously does not always benefit the group. He also associated “personal piety” with the individual and labeled it “worldly.” Though he said personal piety was a good thing, he also said that it was only good if predicated on what’s best for the group: “If it’s only half, it’s not the whole thing. It becomes worldly.” This means that personal piety is defined by what’s best for the group. As a short digression, it should be stated that no philosophy has contributed more to the mass graves of human history than that ideology.

This is further articulated in the message by the division of the word, “justice” into fairness/justice. Fairness is associated with the individual, and therefore worldly, and justice is associated with the group. This is Plato’s very definition of justice.

In addition, he associated “worldly wisdom” with “practical” wisdom that benefits worldly endeavors. There is a working wisdom for the shadow world that is practical, but doesn’t necessarily benefit the group. The following chart shows the progression of thought in the message:

In this method of interpretation, there cannot be various interpretations of words that are morally neutral from the perspective of heaven and earth. There is no melding of the spiritual and the material. A decision cannot benefit the individual and the group. A decision cannot be fair and just. A decision cannot be practical and ethical. A judgment cannot be fair and just. You cannot be self-sufficient and trusting of God—it’s either one or the other.

You cannot have a personal vision as well as a group vision. What heaven considers good cannot be good in the material world. Nothing in the material world can be considered good by heaven. Man cannot know good. He cannot know truth. He can only obey Plato’s philosopher kings or pursue the vision of the good supplied by Reformed elders. This is exactly why New Calvinist churches are fraught with strange ministry titles like, pastor over spiritual vision etc.

The knowledge of good and evil is to know that the material is evil and the invisible is good. Simply stated, it allows no word in heaven to mean the same thing that it does on earth. Justice in heaven isn’t the same as it is on earth; on earth, it’s “farness” for the individual. Only the group, a heavenly concept, can display justice in its unity around a truth brought down from heaven by mortal mediators. They are “masters of sentences” and other such medieval terms. They must rightly divide words according to their proper correlation to the good and the evil. They must rightly divide words that point the producers to the vision of the good.

As one New Calvinist stated: words not rightly interpreted and used will make a person “empty.” Reformed elders must teach the congregants to not use words, “emptily.”[49] He suggested in the sermon that there are four meanings to the word “will” when pertaining to the will of God. The concern was with Romans 12:2 which states plainly that Christians can know the will of God through a process. We can’t have that. The technique is the same: divide the word “will” (in this case x 4), and assign the redefinitions to their appropriate relationship to good and evil. Assuredly, the final equation will always be a reminder that man is incompetent to interpret the world of shadows in which he lives.