Graeme Goldsworthy asks how we can know what is true

What follows is a summary of Graeme L. Goldsworthy's essay "'Thus Sayeth the Lord': The Dogmatic Basis of Biblical Theology" printed in the festchrift God Who is Rich in Mercy (Lancer, 1986). I hope to add my own comments after.

Reworking Goldsworthy's Essay

How can human beings know what is really true? False presuppositions produce false results. So any philosophy constructed of human reason, such as the Thomism of Roman Catholicism, cannot help but err. "Thomism along with liberalism and Arminianism establishes human knowledge, reason and logic" as the means by which human beings can know what is real. As Aquinas, following Aristotle, taught, "By what is evident to the senses, man is capable of developing a philosophical framework within which revelation is defined and understood." But natural methods can never describe true reality because the human beings that use them are blind. Human beings not only deny but actively suppress the truth. Therefore, "common humanity and human interests in themselves provide no real common ground for understanding truth."

Certainly believers and unbelievers can and do "work side by side in the sciences, humanities, arts, and politics. But they can never agree on the ultimate meaning" of it all. For most, the measure of truth is the autonomous self. But for a believer--one who has been healed of his or her blindness--there is access to truth; the cornerstone of reality is made available. Yes, for those who can see, truth's measure is Jesus, the God-man, announced by the father and attested by witnesses inspired by the Spirit.

John Calvin, the last of the first wave of Protestant reformers, taught with his fellows that it was the Easter light of the Holy Spirit that opens the eyes of human beings to see the truth embodied in Jesus of Nazareth. And this is no mystic truth, but a historical one. The historical sweep of the Bible and all of history with it makes up the witness by which human beings understand the birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement of the man Jesus. The historical arc of Jesus' incarnation fits historiography into its proper frame. It is a jigsaw set right within the redemptive arc of time that begins in creation and goes on into the everlastingness of the age to come.

Not wishing this to take all day, I asked Gemini to create a summary of the essay. I'm going to paste it below and pick up my commentary after.

LLM Summary: The Core Thesis

Goldsworthy argues that biblical theology is not a neutral or purely descriptive discipline[cite: 124, 130]. Instead, it must be rooted in a Reformed dogmatic framework that recognizes the self-authenticating authority of Jesus Christ and Scripture[cite: 98, 134, 135]. He rejects the notion of "common ground" between believers and unbelievers based on autonomous human reason[cite: 73, 90].

Main Ideas

• Epistemological Reformation: Goldsworthy contrasts the "nature-grace synthesis" of Thomism with the Calvinist view that sin has corrupted human cognition[cite: 33, 44, 71]. He argues for noetic regeneration, where the Holy Spirit enables the believer to accept Scripture as God’s self-authenticating word[cite: 49, 144, 146].
• Rejection of "Common Ground": While believers and unbelievers share the same universe, they interpret reality through fundamentally different presuppositions: the sovereignty of God versus the autonomy of man[cite: 79, 118].
• Christ as the Hermeneutical Center: The Old Testament cannot be fully understood on its own terms or through purely historical evidence[cite: 209, 210]. Only after accepting Christ as Lord can the OT promises be correctly interpreted as speaking of Him[cite: 215, 224].
• The Role of Biblical Theology: Goldsworthy defines biblical theology as being concerned primarily with the dynamics and progression of revelation across redemptive history[cite: 229, 230].

Supporting Ideas

• Scriptural Conflict of Epistemologies: The author uses Jesus' dialogues in the Gospel of John and Paul’s writings in 1 Corinthians to show that belief and unbelief are radical opposites with no rational middle ground[cite: 153, 164, 168].
• Critique of Evangelical Empiricism: Goldsworthy challenges theologians like Clark Pinnock, arguing that historical "evidences" do not validate God’s word; rather, God’s word provides the necessary interpretation for historical events[cite: 242, 273].
• Faith vs. Evidence in the OT: He cites the lives of Abraham, Noah, and Moses to demonstrate that their faith often operated against historical evidence, sustained solely by the authority of God's word[cite: 254, 259, 261].

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Argument Outline

I. The Presuppositional Roots

• Historical Context: Biblical theology often emerges as a revolt against excessive dogmatism or extreme liberalism[cite: 26, 27].
• The Reformers' Contribution: True biblical theology finds its impetus in the Reformation's attack on the presuppositions of medieval scholastic theology[cite: 29, 30].
• Calvin’s Epistemology: Knowledge of God is innate (sensus deitatis) but suppressed by sin[cite: 44, 75]. Therefore, a "true Christian epistemology" requires the witness of the Holy Spirit to the Word[cite: 34, 47].

II. The Conflict of Two Worldviews

• Sovereignty vs. Autonomy: Every thought assumes either the sovereignty of God or the autonomy of man[cite: 118].
• The Dogmatic Framework: Goldsworthy outlines a five-point summary of the Reformed method, starting with the idea that every datum in the universe is theistic and ending with the need for the Holy Spirit to bring the rebellious reason to faith[cite: 80, 81, 85].
• Noetic Sanctification: The believer must strive for "intellectual and epistemological sanctification," bringing every thought into submission to Christ[cite: 113, 114].

III. Christological Foundation of Biblical Theology

• Failure of Neutrality: Biblical theology can never be "merely descriptive" because the theologian's a prioris always govern the results[cite: 125, 128].
• The Word-Event Relationship: God speaks through a "sinless, saving word" (Christ), who is the perfect divine-human relationship[cite: 220].
• New Testament Priority: The NT establishes the dogmatic basis (Jesus is Lord) through which the OT is interpreted[cite: 216, 331].
• The Final Norm: Christ is the "Alpha point" and "Omega point" of all theological endeavor[cite: 142, 333].

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Comparison of Epistemologies

Feature	Thomism / Empiricism	Reformed Presuppositionalism
Common Ground	Human reason and logic [cite: 72]	None (except the suppressed sensus deitatis) [cite: 90, 92]
Role of Evidence	Historically validates the Bible's truth claims [cite: 242, 245]	Interpreted and given meaning by the Word [cite: 109, 273]
Starting Point	Sensory data and philosophical frameworks [cite: 38, 42]	The self-authenticating Christ [cite: 67, 98]
Effect of Sin	Weakened the "likeness of God" but left the image unscathed [cite: 71]	Radical dislocation of the relationship between God and His image [cite: 70]

List of Reasons for an Old Earth

Here we go and in no particular order.

1. Evidences of natural time esp. geological and astronomical
2. Fitness of natural selection to explain and predict biological changes
3. Evidence of ancient life / fossil evidence
4. Paucity of the challenges
5. The false-friend of ID (really an attempt to resurrect the Argument from Deisgn or the Teleological Argument. These are not explanatory; we see what we want to see. 
6. The "brain weight" including contemporaries like Francis Collins and John Polkinghorne as well as ancients like Augustine
7. Hermeneutics properly practiced: thinking correctly about how to read ancient documents especially according to time and genre
8. The "very good" of God / God as trustworthy
9. The goodness of matter / natural law and its necessity for confessing the incarnation, the benefit of Jesus's sacrifice, and obtaining a real hope for eschatological deliverance
10. The danger of replacing the theology of the cross with a theology of glory
11. The importance of the Book of Nature
12. Animals need to hope as well
13. The danger that bad thinking poses for the health and growth of the church.

Objections that a friend of mine raised: Radiometric dating -- when does it start? Tampering. Mt. St. Helen's rocks. Slow formation of sediment trees. Logs in Mt St. Helens. Ken Ham and his group-basis for evaluations.

Pattern Language: Every Action is Reaction

PATTERN: Every Action is Reaction: 82

An end is governed by its beginning, and creation its creator. No action is an island, but is, in truth, reaction.

And because God is personal--that is, moral--reaction is a moral act. Stones testify to their fitness to the divine will. Times and seasons progress along their established ways. The natural world is borne along, green and flowering, by the progressive action of God's intent.

Human knowing too is reaction. We know in response to that in which we are thrown (Geworfenheit).

Persons alien to God's promise are not alone. Even where violent, dismissive, or agnostic, their acts (reactions) are framed still by the divine actor; God is not far away. "For in him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17.28).

But the Christian has the best response, for their reaction is obedience. And that obedience is not born of force, fear, obligation, or automation. It is born of gratitude; it is born of love reciprocated. It is their appropriate hesed.

Category

Metaphysics * Theology

Related Cards

Obedience (19) * Faithfulness (18) * Creation (31) * Time (40) * Choice (45) * Work (77) * Personal Relationship (80) * Wisdom (49) *

Working Notes

It seems to me that I'm trying to shove things clumsily together here. Natural theology; Heidegger's idea of thrownness, which is at least an epistemology--and in my thinking is a way to knowing-in-community thinking rather than individualism; the hesed of covenental fealty and obedience; and even an ontology of a sort with Ekhart. What am I trying to do in this card? I need to either abstract it out further or figure out exactly what it is doing. What problem is it solving? What pattern is it describing? The determinism of this card is all pervasive. Even violent disobedience conforms in result to the divine will.

Make Room for Beauty (Beauty Makes a Man)

Make room for beauty. It is not something we typically do. There are many reasons for this. We all lead busy lives from Tiger cubs on up to the oldest adult. We are distracted. And we are over-advertised. There are too many fireworks, too many explosions. And increasingly it is all simulated.

So I want to address all you men for a moment, whether you are one or are going to be one, and say this: Many voices tell us that manhood has no place for beauty. But is that true? Let's ask a few men:

Listen to Apollo 14 moonwalker Ed Mitchel describing what it is like to see the earth-rise from the moon:

"Suddenly, from behind the rim of the moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth . . . home.

Or let's hear from President Teddy Roosevelt, a soldier and a bullfighter among other things, writing from a ranch in the American southwest:

"Nothing could be more lonely and nothing more beautiful than the view at nightfall across the prairies to these huge hill masses, when the lengthening shadows had at last merged into one and the faint after-glow of the red sunset filled the west."

And in another place he says, "Wild flowers should be enjoyed unplucked where they grow."

And finally, a word from the nineteenth-century Yosemite explorer and naturalist John Miur:

"All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go, to highlands or lowlands, woods or plains, on the sea or land or down among the crystals of waves or high in a balloon in the sky; through all the climates, hot or cold, storms and calms, everywhere and always we are in God's eternal beauty and love."

These men, men who knew risk and hardship, living, working, acting men, are overcome by beauty, and especially the beauty of the natural world.

And with them, I urge you to make room for beauty in your lives. Why?

Because (1) Beauty opens the soul

When we are caught--arrested--by beauty "when lengthening shadows merge into one and a red sunset fills the west," we see things in new ways. Our soul is widened. We suddenly see ourselves, with all of our busy things, as small. We are hushed about ourselves. Humbled.

Simultaneously, we see the horizons of our lives and those of our friends in a new light. Where once was ugliness or hatred or ignorance, we begin to see flowers growing. We approach all in a new way, remembering that "wild flowers should be enjoyed unplucked where they grow."

Why else should we make room for beauty?

Because (2) beauty begets beauty.

You don't go away from beauty unchanged, but altered. Beauty doesn't step into the same man twice. It baptizes our hearts. It leaves our lesser man behind and makes us greater.

It is interesting to me that if you look at any skill or tool or invention that people have made, it grows more beautiful over time. Consider a simple hammer, manufactured and available for a few dollars from a store. We began with flint stones worked and chiseled, but stones nonetheless. Now we have hammers shaped and manufactured from hard-steel and fit for their purpose. It is the smallest example of what is everywhere around us. We take in beauty and we give it back in what we do and make.

Now a final reason we should make room for beauty.

We should make room for beauty because (3) beauty makes room for God.

Again to quote John Miur,

"No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening--still all is Beauty!"

Beauty is not God, but it has often been the doorkeeper to God's house. And if we are honest with ourselves about our hearts and our lives, we crave admittance. The Boy Scout Law and the Scout Oath mention reverence for God for a reason. Could it be because beauty is not unmanly, but, rather, because making room for Beauty--and for God--makes a man.

Could it be because beauty is not unmanly, but, because making room for Beauty--and for God--makes a man.

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Address delivered September 12, 2015, for the Cub Scouts of Pack 125 at Cedars of Lebanon State Park.

Erich Przywara, Analogical Deliverer

I read with excitement First Things magazine's January 27, 2015 article about Erich Przywara's analogia entis today. The article by Stephen Webb is clearly written and includes as solid a description of Przywara's metaphysical insight as I have read. "Przywara," he says, "finds the formula for the analogical foundation of the Catholic Church in the Fourth Lateran Council's 1215 decree that, 'One cannot note any similarity between Creator and creature, however great, without being compelled to note an even greater dissimilarity between them.' . . . The 'ever greater,' for Przywara, signifies an ongoing, never complete, and always expanding process. The analogy of being is not an analogy of inequality, as if God and creation could be compared even if only for the purpose of demonstrating how dissimilar they are. Instead, [it] denotes a dynamic disproportionality, so that whatever characteristics we attribute to God must be continually dis/qualified on the basis of a difference that has no limit or end."

As I read it, what Przywara has done is to locate a basis for speaking philosophically about God outside of metaphor. Instead of metaphor, which I identify (perhaps incorrectly) here with the approach of natural theology (in that metaphor compares without discrimination), Przywara chooses analogy as his metaphysical foundation because, as a kind of argumentation (rather than a figure of speech) it is careful to discriminate.

Okay. So let me try and make some sense of what I'm babbling about here. The point is pretty esoteric. It has to do with theological language and the general problem of talking about God at all. I won't elaborate on that now. Nevertheless, the question is whether metaphor is a suitable device for talking about God. Listen, we can't name God and godself directly. There is no one-to-one relationship that would make our language even closely suitable. So god talk has to be rhetorical in nature. It has to be a function of moving from the known to the unknown. And this relationship is not going to be explicit, but implicit, so simile is out and metaphor is in. Unfortunately, metaphor is still not up to the job. And this is where I need to define metaphor more clearly.

A metaphor is a figure of speech in which an implied, implicit, or even a hidden comparison is made between two different things that are poles apart from each other but nevertheless have one or more characteristics in common. In other words, a resemblance of two contradictory or different objects is made based on some common characteristics. Its comparison is implicit or hidden, not explicit as in a simile. We speak, write, and think in metaphors.

A metaphor works by taking a primary subject and applying it to a secondary subject, with the primary likened to the secondary. A metaphor suggests some point of comparison between primary and secondary subjects, so that the primary subject is seen differently in a new light (e.g. my heart is an open book). Thanks to the metaphor, our understanding of the primary subject (called the tenor) is enriched and expanded in some way by the second (the vehicle). And, again, this is accomplished by bringing to light some hidden connection between them, even a hiddenness that is superficial or vague. Yes, sometimes the connection between primary and secondary is very hard to work out. But this is done on purpose in that audiences find pleasure in the working out of the the thing.

Theologically speaking, then, the problem is the relationship between primary and secondary. Theologically, the primary is always God, because God is what theologians are about, and the secondary is always nature, whether phusis, the natural world, or anthropos, the human world. Is there a direct one-to-one here, even if hidden? Can I say something like "God's wisdom is far higher than human wisdom" and mean the same thing by wisdom? Is it the same word for the same thing, different only in degree, or the same word for different things? And if the latter, how do I talk about this?

Przywara says I can talk about this using analogy. By using analogy, we commit comparison but it is an open sin. We know that there is a gulf between the two; that wisdom is the same word for two incomparable things. Nevertheless, analogy allows us to confess the truth and boldly commit the error--a kind of rheotorical simul iustis et peccator.

Now why an analogy can do this, I am not sure. Technically, an analogy is an argument whereas simile and metaphor are rhetorical figures of speech. All three are involved in comparison, but the latter are short, equative moves, whereas the former is a longer worked-out system of connections. Because analogies are built logically and by means of argumentation, anything that is not connected is openly unconnected. Therefore, analogy always leaves open the door of dissimilarity. Metaphors are not interested in leaving that door open. Metaphors gesture at truth through some connection but do not simultaneously work to remind the reader that primary and secondary subjects are as different as they are similar.

So because analogy is more transparent in scope, it provides a clearer foundation for theological discourse. At least I think this is what is being said.

I need to do more reading of this in historical dogmatics, and particularly in Aquinas. Przywara is in dialogue with Aquinas on this, and a quick Google search suggests this thing called "Thomas Aquinas's doctrine of analogy."

the goodness of a creature is different from the goodness of God insofar as the divine goodness is universal and good in itself whereas created goodnesses are particular and good only by reference to something else (secundum aliquid). We see the divine goodness or truth in particular good or true things in the same way we see an exemplar in something derived from the exemplar. This example asserts something important of the participation of creatures in God: the form of “good,” “true,” “being,” etc. which creatures receive from God is not the same as God. For God is being, good, etc. per essentiam, whereas creatures only possess these forms per participationem by reference to God.

Let me quote at length here from the Summa Theologica q13a5:

whatever is predicated of various things under the same name but not in the same sense, is predicated equivocally. But no name belongs to God in the same sense that it belongs to creatures; for instance, wisdom in creatures is a quality, but not in God. Now a different genus changes an essence, since the genus is part of the definition; and the same applies to other things. Therefore whatever is said of God and of creatures is predicated equivocally.

Further, God is more distant from creatures than any creatures are from each other. But the distance of some creatures makes any univocal predication of them impossible, as in the case of those things which are not in the same genus. Therefore much less can anything be predicated univocally of God and creatures; and so only equivocal predication can be applied to them.

I answer that, univocal predication is impossible between God and creatures. The reason of this is that every effect which is not an adequate result of the power of the efficient cause, receives the similitude of the agent not in its full degree, but in a measure that falls short, so that what is divided and multiplied in the effects resides in the agent simply, and in the same manner; as for example the sun by exercise of its one power produces manifold and various forms in all inferior things. In the same way, as said in the preceding article, all perfections existing in creatures divided and multiplied, pre-exist in God unitedly. Thus when any term expressing perfection is applied to a creature, it signifies that perfection distinct in idea from other perfections; as, for instance, by the term "wise" applied to man, we signify some perfection distinct from a man's essence, and distinct from his power and existence, and from all similar things; whereas when we apply to it God, we do not mean to signify anything distinct from His essence, or power, or existence. Thus also this term "wise" applied to man in some degree circumscribes and comprehends the thing signified; whereas this is not the case when it is applied to God; but it leaves the thing signified as incomprehended, and as exceeding the signification of the name. Hence it is evident that this term "wise" is not applied in the same way to God and to man. The same rule applies to other terms. Hence no name is predicated univocally of God and of creatures.

"You are removing God from the everyday!"

Here is the point of resistance: "What you are saying removes God from the everyday!" This is the resistance constantly offered against my turn toward radical sola scriptura, this is the real sticking point against all my talk of psychologism and serendipity and revelation and God-breathed and authority and law and gospel and stuff. And, I must admit, there is an element of truth in this. The direction I'm facing does remove "God" from the everyday moment, in a manner of speaking.

Now, this is not to say it secularizes everything, it doesn't. There is no doubt that God upholds and orders all things (Genesis/Ephesians/Colossians passim). What it does remove is the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. It denies every request to look for God in things (en se). It “limits” our knowledge of God, or , if you will, our places of finding God, to Word and Sacrament directly and creation (natural theology) indirectly, but in this latter only in a derivative sense. To explain.

Where natural theology is concerned, it denies that we can begin with the observable world and go on to say anything properly about God. This would be the analogia entis with which Barth beat Catholicism about the ears. Underneath this practice is the Roman Catholic assertion that God does not destroy but perfects nature. Instead, the position to which I am turning begins with Word and Sacrament and only then goes on to say anything about the world which correspond to these things – for example, as a good sermon illustration would do, or in the way we give thanks or that we do good works.

Thus, this is to assert a difference between God and the world. This is to assert the need for special revelation. This is to assert that God redeems the world not as much by perfecting its nature but by killing it and bringing it back to life again. In short, the direction I am looking is, as closely as I can tell, fundamentally Reformational, and fundamentally a "theology of the cross" where any attempt to say anything about God apart from the cross was denounced by Luther as a theology of glory, sure to be an assertion of man and sure to be an eruption of law and an eradication of grace.

This is only a radical move when one considers the evangelical folk-religion Christianity represented by the revivalist/pietist tradition. Indeed, it is because I have begun calling that tradition into question that I’m beginning to wonder whether or not what I'm actually doing is setting off toward another expression of Protestantism entirely; one found in a denomination which discovers it origins closer to the magisterial rather than the radical Reformation. But, of course, one which does not loose the very deposit of faith which has set me off in such an unknown direction. Yes, this is scary, but it is also exciting, in that I am quite sure that by following as best as I can in the direction of the elevation of Scripture, I am discovering a better and more accurate way of understanding Jesus himself, as he is for me, as I am for him, and as this relationship is discovered in the trinitarian economy of God’s saving and redeeming work in the world.

hermeneutics; sola scriptura; canon; natural theology; analogia entis; theology of the cross.