Tools of Apologetics 1.17.10
Logic in Humans
With this understanding of God’s mind, the next step is the creation of human beings in God’s image. The non-rational animals were not created in His image; but God breathed His spirit into the earthly form, and Adam became a type of soul superior to the animals. To be precise, one should not speak of the image of God in humans. Humans are not objects in which somewhere, along with other things, God’s image can be found. Humans are the image.
This, of course, does not refer to the human body. The body is an instrument or tool humans use. We ourselves are God’s breath, the spirit God breathed into the clay, the mind, the thinking ego. Therefore, humans are rational in the likeness of God’s rationality. Their minds are structured as Aristotelian logic described it. That is why we believe that spaniels have teeth.
In addition to the well-known verses in chapter one, Genesis 5:1 and 9:6 both repeat the idea. 1 Corinthians 11:7 says, "man … is the image and glory of God". See also Colossians 3:10 and James 3:9. Other verses, not so explicit, nonetheless add to our information. Compare Hebrews 1:3, Hebrews 2:6-8 and Psalm 8. But the conclusive consideration is that throughout the Bible as a whole the rational God gives humans an intelligible message.
It is strange that any people who think they are Christians should deprecate logic. Such people do not, of course, intend to deprecate the mind of God; but they think that logic in humans is sinful, even more sinful than other parts of man’s fallen nature. This, however, makes no sense. The law of contradiction cannot be sinful. Quite the contrary, it is our violations of the law of contradiction that are sinful. Yet the strictures which some devotional writers place on "merely human" logic are amazing. Can such pious stupidity really mean that a syllogism which is valid for us is invalid for God? If two plus two is four in our arithmetic, does God have a different arithmetic in which two and two makes three or perhaps five?
The fact that the Son of God is God’s reason –– for Christ is the wisdom of God as well as the power of God –– plus the fact that the image in humans is so-called "human reason," suffices to show that this so-called "human reason" is not so much human as divine. Of course, Scripture says that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways. But is it good exegesis to say that this means His logic, His arithmetic, His truth are not ours? If this were so, what would the consequences be? It would mean not only that our additions and subtractions are all wrong, but also that all our thoughts –– in history as well as in arithmetic –– are wrong. If for example, we think that David was King of Israel, and God’s thoughts are not ours, then it follows that God does not think David was King of Israel. David in God’s mind was perchance prime minister of Babylon. To avoid this irrationalism, which of course is a denial of the divine image, we must insist that truth is the same for God and humans. Naturally, we may not know the truth about some matters. But if we know anything at all, what we must know must be identical with what God knows. God knows all truth, and unless we know something God knows, our ideas are untrue. It is absolutely essential therefore to insist that there is an area of coincidence between God’s mind and our mind.
Logic and Language
This point brings us to the central issue of language. Language did not develop from, nor was its purpose restricted to, the physical needs of earthly life. God gave Adam a mind to understand the divine law, and He gave him language to enable him to speak to God. From the beginning, language was intended for worship. In the Te Deum, by means of language, and in spite of the fact that it is sung to music, we pay "metaphysical compliments" to God.The debate about the adequacy of language to express the truth of God is a false issue. Words are mere symbols or signs. Any sign would be adequate. The real issue is: Does human beings have the idea to symbolise? If we can think of God, then we can use the sound God, Deus Theos, or Elohim. The word makes no difference and the sign is ipso facto literal and adequate.
The Christian view is that God created Adam as a rational mind. The structure of Adam’s mind was the same as God’s. God thinks that asserting the consequent is a fallacy; and Adam’s mind was formed on the principles of identity and contradiction. This Christian view of God, humans, and language does not fit into any empirical philosophy. It is rather a type of a priori rationalism. Human minds are not initially blank. They are structured. In fact, an unstructured blank is no mind at all. Nor could any such sheet of white paper extract any universal law of logic from finite experience. No universal and necessary proposition can he deduced from sensory observation. Universality and necessity can only be a priori.
This is not to say that all truth can be deduced from logic alone. The seventeenth-century rationalists gave themselves an impossible task. Even if the ontological argument were valid, it is impossible to deduce Cur Deus Homo, the Trinity, or the final resurrection. The axioms to which the a priori forms of logic must be applied are the propositions God revealed to Adam and the later prophets.
Conclusion
Logic is irreplaceable. It is not an arbitrary tautology, a useful framework among others. Various systems of cataloguing books in libraries are possible and several are equally convenient. They are all arbitrary. History can be designated by 800 as easily as by 400. But there is no substitute for the law of contradiction. If dog is the equivalent of not-dog, and if 2 = 3 = 4, not only do zoology and mathematics disappear, Victor Hugo and Johann Wolfgang Goethe also disappear. These two men are particularly appropriate examples, for they are both, especially Goethe, romanticists. Even so, without logic, Goethe could not have attacked the logic of John’s Gospel (I, l224-1237). “Geschrieben steht: ‘Im anfang war das Wort!’ Hier stock ich schon! Wer hilft mir weiter fort? Mir hilft der Geist! Auf einmal seh’ ich Rath und schreib’ getrost: ‘Im Anfang war die Thai!’“
But Goethe can express his rejection of the divine Logos of John 1:1, and express his acceptance of romantic experience, only by using the logic he despises. To repeat, even if it seems wearisome: logic is fixed, universal, necessary and irreplaceable. Irrationality contradicts the Biblical teaching from beginning to end. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not insane. God is a rational being, the architecture of whose mind is logic.
comments
Leave a Reply
Powered by FireStats