“The Pluralistic Hypothesis” is a chapter in a book entitled An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent by John Hick. It concerns a defense of religious pluralism from a secular perspective. John Hick (1922-2012) was a very well-known British philosopher of religion who held controversial views about many theological beliefs. He was subjected to heresy proceedings to the presbytery. He was eventually admitted to the presbyterian church by some persistence after objections from ministers who examined his errant positions on theology, confessions, and tradition. John Hick accepted the influential worldviews of Kant and Schleiermacher to eventually produce disintegration of his earlier formative Christian commitments.
“This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’ There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.” – Acts 4:11-12 NRSV
As one reads Hick’s thoughts about religious pluralism, it becomes clear why there were numerous refutations against his views. His written work is often found as companion books about liberation theology and feminism from currently active authors. Hick came to reject a number of basic doctrines from the apostolic and prophetic witness as given by the authority of Scripture. Rather than place himself under the authority of Scripture and the inner conviction of the Holy Spirit about who God is, he chose to set himself outside of what God has revealed in His Word to align with humanistic approaches to religion. Secular institutions where he studied had a significant bearing upon his withdrawal of exclusive faith in Christ.
There is an unsettling underlying thread through Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis. Rather than approach truth, or “the Real,” to explain divine Reality from the perspective of God (which he says we can’t by faith know), he attempts to set up categories of human-centered reason to engage in idolatry through the acceptance of other religions as having salvific merit. He thoroughly infers that people who do not accept as true the doctrines and traditions of Hinduism, Islam, and Buddism (whether of personae or impersonae divinity), will have no choice to affirm a pluralistic religious experience (i.e., it becomes inevitable). So as to also infer that the same shared God, to who or what he refers, would have no bearing on the matter. Hick’s ruminations are exploratory across religions as an eventual outworking of religious departments among secular universities today.
Once private and public universities and colleges removed the academic discipline of theology and replaced it with “religion” they sought aggregate, or lump together belief systems antithetical to naturalist pursuits. Religion as a term is a secular recasting of the historical meaning of theology from a secular worldview as it has abandoned the pursuit of revelatory spiritual truth. The worldview that cannot comprehend or explain human consciousness and where it comes from attempts to hold itself out and produce speculative thinkers such as Hicks. This is specifically the fruit that is meant to appear among bad trees (Matt 7:18) where the true faith of Christianity eventually becomes diluted, marginalized, and dismissed as illusory.
Hick’s rationale is spiritually vacant as he sets up arbitrary categories of personal subjective thought around the religious beliefs of billions. That is, to somehow converge them and assign commitments with doctrines as having equal or distributed weight while they contradict. Hick’s use of Aquinas, Calvin, and Maimonides as sources to proof-text his rationale on isolated points of support for plurality leaves out the context that these early writers and philosophers spoke within. Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis, taken as a whole, contradicts the body of their work to include many others. Moreover, it is Creator God who insisted, “thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:1-2) and “for you shall not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God (Ex 34:14). God, whom we worship, does not contradict Himself or lie. His Word is true.
People’s religious convictions inform their social, cultural, and political perspectives and preferences. What people highly care about is significantly influenced by what they believe, either through faith or humanistic concern. Even secular people have religious questions about atheism or agnosticism (i.e., everyone is spiritually vested in what they care about).
Everyone has a “religious” commitment. In a loose sense, secular and faith systems’ values bear on social and political matters of interest. Particularly around culture and what rights, liberties, and freedoms exist to live with the power to impose and live as one wants with progressively deepening immorality, destruction of the family, cultural chaos, and perpetual war. Secular worldview categories of subjectivism and relativism are means by which divisions of thought and understanding exist to ply their will through policy and distribution of resources.
In a general sense, subjectivism is a way to limit knowledge to personal or private meaning and experience. While subjective facts are valid, subjectivism as the target of secular reason toward belief systems isolates and attempts to erode absolute truth. It’s a way of thinking that exalts itself against God because it’s a way of thought that says what is supremely good and right can only be ascertained by individual feeling or apprehension.
Relativity is another concept that is valid in a limited sense. However, relativism as a secular theory denies humanity any ability to possess objective truth and universally meaningful knowledge concerning metaphysical realities (i.e., God, Creation, spiritual realm, supernatural incidents, etc.). Relativism is a way for secular humanity and culture to insulate themselves from ultimate truth to escape moral absolutes. Meaning and truth become relative to each culture, person, situation, relationship, and outcome.
Both subjectivism and relativism are subordinate to religious and secular pluralism theory and doctrines. They’re together systems of contradiction against absolute truth, moral certainty, and unwanted political power. To develop and maintain social cohesion and order, religious diplomacy, not interfaith initiatives that give an equal weight of credibility, is, in my view, the most sensible and orderly way to preserve freedom and conviction of absolute truth. While love for God and people is not mutually exclusive from a Christian perspective, secular society doesn’t have the authority or capacity to steer Christianity to keep itself safe from Islam or other harmful religious beliefs. The godless mind is subject to the absolute interests of God.
Isolating the philosophical theory called religious pluralism raises a question. If religious pluralism is one class of meta-religious theories about religious variety, are there other classes? The typical typology of responses to religious variety contrasts pluralism with two other general classes of meta-religious theories called “exclusivism” and “inclusivism.”1
[[[ Religious exclusivism maintains that only one religion is genuine or true; only one faith actually brings a believer into contact with God. For a Christian exclusivist of the strongest sort, God will save only people who hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, know about his death on the cross, and explicitly confess him as Savior. This strong form of exclusivism is also called “restrictivism.” ]]]
Exclusivism comes in various subtypes. First, one sub-form of exclusivism modifies restrictivism by allowing for a few exceptions. One such exception is a provision for the universal salvation of all who die before they reach some cognitive age of accountability. Second, another sub-form of exclusivism asserts that God ensures an opportunity to believe for those who he knows would believe. This uses a middle knowledge view of divine foreknowledge (where God knows what every person would do in every hypothetical situation). God makes sure that the message of salvation gets to every person who would believe if he heard the gospel. God ordains that all who would receive salvation if given the chance actually do get that chance.2 Third, yet another sub-form of exclusivism affirms that all people have an opportunity to hear the gospel, and this could include the chance to receive salvation after death.3
As a midway point between exclusivism and pluralism, some follow religious inclusivism. Inclusivism agrees with exclusivism that only one religion is ultimately true. But it shares with pluralism the conviction that sincere adherents of religions other than the true faith may still come into contact with God, find spiritual life, or achieve the religious goal. So, for example, a person who adopted Muslim inclusivism might say that Islam is actually the only true faith, rooted in the one, valid revelation of the ultimate Reality, Allah. Still, this hypothetical Muslim inclusivist might say, a faithful Jewish follower of the Mosaic law could still receive a heavenly reward, if he is faithful to the dictates of Judaism. For the Muslim inclusivist, Judaism is not the true faith, and yet the faithful Jew who follows Torah may still go to paradise. Paradise is achievable due to such things as the Jewish believer’s religious sincerity or piety, the truth of Islam, and the good will of Allah. For the Christian inclusivist, Christ is the ultimate revelation of God. Salvation is possible for people who explicitly follow other faiths. But this salvation is always from or through Christ.
Inclusivism also admits of sub-divisions. The most important is a distinction between “constitutive inclusivism” and “normative inclusivism.” In both versions of inclusivism, Christian inclusivists agree that a person can be saved without explicit saving knowledge of Jesus. Constitutive inclusivism affirms that Christ’s work is the necessary ground of all salvation, and other religions cannot provide the ontological power for salvation. Anyone who is saved receives salvation only because of the power and atonement of Jesus Christ. Yet someone could fail to accept Jesus Christ, follow a religious path that is in no way Christian, and still receive salvation by following what light she does have. Again, the metaphysical ground of this salvation is always the work of Christ.
A version of constitutive inclusivism called the “implicit faith view” is closest to exclusivism. The Christian version of this view says that a person can be saved if he meets these conditions: he knows nothing of Christ, he rejects the false religion around him, and he follows any valid natural revelation he does have. He implicitly follows Christ by worshiping the Creator. This is the most restricted form of constitutive inclusivism because it holds that anyone who explicitly rejects Christ cannot receive salvation in this way, irrespective of his sincerity. In other words, those who have never heard of Christ, and so never have a chance to reject him explicitly, can trust him implicitly by following whatever light they do have. So, unlike more liberal inclusivists, defenders of an implicit faith view will say that a person who does not explicitly follow Christ can be saved in spite of, but never because of, anything that another faith might offer him. Even though historical accident keeps him from hearing explicitly of Christ, he may receive salvation by rejecting the false religion he sees around him and calling on God. And he is saved solely on the basis of the reality of Christ’s work.4
Normative inclusivism goes well beyond constitutive inclusivism. A Christian defender of normative inclusivism will deny the necessity of Christ’s work for salvation. Instead, Jesus offers one valid religious path among several. Initially, this sounds like a form of pluralism. But it differs slightly. In normative inclusivism, one religion is the “norm.” This one normative religion is the best, the clearest, the least ambiguous path to God. Still, other religions possess validity though to a lesser degree. So the one valid religious path is the first among several valid equals. This norming religion functions as the normative example, the paradigm, by which all paths to God are judged as more or less salvific. But it is not the only path through which people may come to God.
The three-part typology—exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism, along with the various subtypes—is not without difficulties. Though many people use this vocabulary for discussing the relationships among religions, it is subject to several objections. First, some object to a priori typologies in general. Paul Griffiths, for example, pointed out that those who develop general typologies of responses to the world’s religions are often not sufficiently knowledgeable about the religions to categorize them adequately.5 And he rightly warned us to look at how the theological axioms of an interpreter’s religion influence his definitions of the categories.6 But while Griffiths’ point is valid, it is also limited. His argument cuts against analyses developed by people who lack a complete knowledge base. But it should not undermine typologies developed by people who do have the requisite knowledge. It does not point to some in principle difficulty with developing typologies. And the fact that our typologies will always fall short of perfect categorization, with no gray areas between categories, does not mean that typologies are completely useless. The lesson here is that while typologies are useful, their categories should not run roughshod over carefully researched descriptions of the world’s religions. Fair enough.
A second and much more important objection is this: different thinkers use the threefold continuum to answer two entirely different questions. This leads to different accounts of the meaning of the three categories. This is a major problem that causes significant confusion. Take exclusivism, for example. On the one hand, Alvin Plantinga defined ‘exclusivism’ in this manner: “the tenets or some of the tenets of one religion—Christianity, let’s say—are in fact true … [and] … other religious beliefs that are [logically] incompatible with those tenets are false.”7 On the other hand, John Hick used ‘exclusivism’ in this way: “only those who follow the teachings of a particular religion are saved.”8 In the abstract, these two definitions themselves are perfectly in order. Both Plantinga and Hick describe relatively clear meta-religious, philosophical ideas. But they offer very different definitions of ‘exclusivism’ because they tacitly use the threefold typology to answer two conceptually distinct questions. Both of these two questions are attempts to analyze the theology of religions discussion. But the two questions analyze very different aspects of the theology of religions discussion. It is very easy to get them confused.
[…..]
Having sketched a representative way of explaining the concepts of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism (along with some subtypes), I turn to the core issue of prolegomena: What are the implications of these theories for evangelical theology? The fact of religious variety and the rise of varied philosophical interpretations of that fact pose questions that need answers in their own right. This is the issue of religious pluralism per se. But as evangelicals, we are unalterably committed to the uniqueness of Christian revelation. This certainly includes exclusivism and may allow for constitutive inclusivism. [….] Yet commitments to pluralism are pervasive in our postmodern cultural milieu. So that leads to the fundamental question for theological methodology.
[….]
Finally, if we do conclude that evangelical theology is a rationally responsible discipline in this context, then how should we live in a pluralist world? Can evangelicals live as neighbors with adherents of other faiths as well as those who reject all faiths? Gilkey says that the awareness of religious variety requires a new ethic of relationship that includes respectful dialogue, acknowledgment of truth in other perspectives, and a willingness to listen and learn. But does the awareness of religious variety require religious pluralism? In the minds of some contemporary people, exclusivism is incompatible with an ethic of respect and dialogue. This is true both of some pluralists who value respectful dialogue (and therefore reject exclusivism) and of some exclusivists who disavow pluralism (and therefore renounce respectful dialogue).
David K. Clark and John S. Feinberg, To Know and Love God: Method for Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), 320–324.
Clark Citations ___________________________ 1 The standard threefold typology can be traced back to Alan Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1983). Race himself argues for pluralism. But in “John Hick’s Pluralist Philosophy of World Religions” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Marquette University, 1999), Paul Eddy points out that the essence of the threefold typology was implicit in John Hick’s “Copernican Revolution” a decade earlier, for example, in Hick’s God and the Universe of Faiths (London: Macmillan, 1973). 2 William Lane Craig, “Middle Knowledge and Christian Exclusivism,” Sophia 34 (1995): 120–139. 3 This view draws on 1 Peter 3:19–20 4 This is built on A. H. Strong’s suggestions. For discussion, see David K. Clark, “Is Special Revelation Necessary for Salvation?” in Through No Fault of Their Own, ed. 5 Paul Griffiths, “Modalizing the Theology of Religions,” Journal of Religion 73 (1993): 382–389; idem, “Encountering Buddha Theologically,” Theology Today 47 (1990): 39–51; idem, On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation and the Mind-Body Problem (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1986). 6 Idem, “A Properly Christian Approach to Religious Plurality,” Anglican Theological Review 79 (1997): 3–26. 7 Alvin Plantinga, “Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism,” in Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith, ed. Thomas Senor (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), 194. 8 Examples of others who assume a soteriological definition are Anne Hunt, “No Other Name? A Critique of Religious Pluralism,” Pacifica 3 (1990): 45–60; John Sanders, No Other Name: An Investigation into the Destiny of the Unevangelized (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992); and the authors of More Than One Way? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1995).
The State and secular liberalism have an insatiable appetite for power to form policies, crave resources, shape humanistic social values, and largely cater to predatory economies, corporations, and institutions. Churches and religious conventions throughout Christendom have abdicated their responsibility to satisfy people’s common good and well-being through its distancing of political and cultural involvement. Much of it subscribes to the totalitarian inclinations of the State for economic and security reasons having to do with the Churches’ worldview differences and its sense of elsewhere. The world of the Bible, covenant promises, confessions, fellowships, and its subcultures has set the Church apart without question. It hasn’t engaged culture, society, or contributed to its interests in loving people with the Gospel as commensurate with its mission (Matt 28:18-19).
Evangelical organizations, Protestant churches, and Catholic churches have withdrawn from secular public offices and institutions. They make up local boards, municipalities, legislatures, judiciaries, and executive branches of government with very little Christian influence as an internal cultural presence that has a bearing on public policy. The Church is absent to ensure regulatory enforcement against corruption, equitable relief to the poor, and morality-based education. There are pockets of individuals in various locales. Still, people have no concentrated social and political will to ensure they are governed by consent that assures freedom and the necessary fulfillment of God’s requirements to love one another and build His Kingdom. Christianity should be involved in public policy formation and governance at every level, as an effort to install public theology, not to adapt, or to partner for the common good, but to inject a morphology and policy that reflect Godly standards centered around law and order.
Without such efforts, an outcome of privatization of faith with disparate values takes hold. It permits the conditions necessary for socialism to gather momentum with devastating consequences (e.g., holocaust, communist genocide, etc.). The Church itself becomes an empty shell as it does not fulfill its obligation to form the spiritual well-being of people through evangelism and discipleship. All the while, the State begins to carry the theological and transcendent purpose of the Church. Rather than a Kingdom of Priests or the Kingdom of God set within the world to love humanity, it becomes the Kingdom of man to perpetuate selfishness and its appetite for wealth, power, and ideological outcomes. Small and large churches that become corporate business enterprises are structured for-profit or nonprofit endeavors. In the name of separation of church and state, Reinhold Niebuhr championed imbued theological legitimacy to the State and advocated arrangements of public theology for the welfare of people. Inevitably, the church accordingly becomes relegated to activity contradictory to the interests of the State, and it becomes suppressed while members privatize their faith.
As matters become worse and tyranny grows among segments of society, and minorities, the same minorities plea and protest for liberation. They become subjected to oppression, poverty, injustices, and indifference that bring about immeasurable suffering.
It is simply not enough, or acceptable, to form policies and legislation around social, political, or special interests where the State assumes for itself theological rights to govern. There must emerge a unity of the Church adjacent to disparate doctrines about a constitutional model of governance. Reminiscent of Augustine’s The City of God (c.f. Books XX Ch.30 through XXI entire argument), there must become social awareness and imperatives for fulfilling theological mandates within the Church for spiritual liberation. The reason empires or governments are permitted to exist, survive, and prosper is to satisfy the purposes and will of God.
YHWH Himself asks of ancient rulers,
“Vindicate the weak and fatherless. Do justice to the afflicted and destitute. Rescue the weak and needy. Deliver them out of the hand of the wicked. “ -Ps 82:2-4
It is proclaimed that the nations belong to God, who rules over them with the presence of His new covenant Kingdom on the Earth. To restrain evil is one of the functions of the Church, and as our LORD Jesus, Himself decrees to Peter, “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock, I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it“ (Matt 16:18-19). While there is certain to be interpersonal conflict and larger-scale disputes in opposition to the interests of Christ’s Kingdom (Matt 10:34), the Church is meant to prevail as Jesus decreed. Spiritual and worldly forces shall be unable to withstand its work as it reclaims people and spiritually liberates them through the Gospel and sanctification.
It is of urgent necessity that Protestant and Catholic churches make disciples. It is of utmost importance for Christians to become spiritually engaged and integrated into society at large for its sake because of otherwise damning consequences. Forever lost are people without Christ as they seek their interests or the interests of the State as they do their best to survive and make a living with a sense of purpose and meaning. Christians must become spiritual activists at every level, from the bottom-up and top-down. We would eat, sleep, and breathe all things under the Lordship of Christ and His commission to make disciples and teach people all that He has instructed.
The modern political process needs intervention from Christendom. Through a strategy that it executes in unison with doctrines left intact to restrain evil, mitigate structural sin, and ease the unacceptable suffering of people who need the Gospel and lovingkindness. Through the Holy Spirit, we are entrusted to bring people under the Lordship of Christ. We are to hold up a welcome banner of Godliness, truth, justice, mercy, freedom, and love for all people through the exertion of will that reaches into the realm of political, social, and economic domains of interest. Enough is enough; everything must become spiritually, theologically, and politically charged to advance God’s Kingdom and fulfill the great commission.
This is not to advocate theocratic forms of governance. Instead, it is to model constitutional accountability and a framework portable to geographies and people groups even at local levels to build environments or fields of harvest to accomplish the objectives we are given by the mission of Christ and His people. The Kingdom of God is not a domain of societies within an unachievable utopian setting on Earth. For example, secular initiatives to elevate “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” in an attempt to satisfy Social Marxist objectives (social justice) would bring about a significant removal of freedoms, loss of life on an enormous scale, and reduced access to people for Kingdom objectives. Moreover, Jesus informs us that the poor will always be with us (Matt 26:11). From an eschatological perspective, there will be “wars and rumors of wars” (Matt 24:6), “famine” (Luke 21:11), and other ongoing catastrophes until He returns. It is one thing to build Christendom by church planting. Still, it is quite another to form governance and authoritative responsibility around people under the mission of God.
Without attachment to world values, Christians must become politically active, speak up, go to church, share their faith, live their lives of faith in public, and live out loud lives of service and worship. Enough is enough with the privatization of faith and the fear of being seen as a devoted believer in Jesus as LORD and King.
The following are chapter notes in the form of questions and answers that cover the subject matter of the book, “To Know and Love God.” The book is a monograph from David Clark and it is about the theological methodology of evangelicalism. It was published in 2003 by Crossway Books (Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois).
Chapter One: Concepts of Theology
1. What was the historical task of the church as it relates to theology?
Justin Martyr (c. 100–c. 164) sought to articulate the content of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the context of a particular culture. Historically, this was the task of systematic theology (Clark, 33). That is, to relate to others the gospel and the meaning of faith in Christ.
2. Does philosophy and reason have a relationship with theology?
Philosophy and human reason are subordinate to theology. Philosophy is merely a tool to demonstrate the fundamental truths of theology. Theology goes beyond the bounds of philosophy (Clark, 38). Human reason is the lesser of all faculties of understanding due to its limitations and the presence of sin. Aquinas’ (1225–1274) view was that faith and reason reinforced theology as some doctrines were out of reach by reason alone. Reason and faith provided the means to observe, set categories, conclude, and trust by acceptance revealed truth.
3. What were the differences in theology between Schleiermacher and Barth?
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) rooted theology in religious experience (Clark, 43). He was the father of liberal theology, who formed a new model of theology around people’s religious experience. He cut God off as the object of theology to emphasize what humanity experienced about Him.
Karl Barth (1886–1968) viewed theology as dogmatics entirely independent of human modes of thought. He viewed theology as the science of dogma.
4. What were conservative theologians concerned about by reasoning during the modern era.
Martin Luther (1483–1546) viewed the subject of theology as man, guilty of sin and condemned, while God is the redeemer of mankind as sinners (Clark, 40) and “Whatever is asked or discussed in theology outside this subject, is error and poison.” Like Luther, John Calvin (1509–1564) held a biblical orientation toward theology and theistic metaphysics. Luther and Calvin distrusted human reason and saw the purpose of theology as salvation.
Through the Word, the Holy Spirit reveals theological truth to those who seek God to glorify Him and follow His instructions to include the spread of the gospel, holy living, and the search for wisdom, among other pursuits. Luther and Calvin, in this sense, had an undeveloped utilitarian view of theology as there are numerous doctrines formed by revelation through the Holy Spirit by the patriarchs, apostles, and prophets (i.e., scripture).
5. What is meant by contextual and kerygmatic poles of theology?
The poles are polarities in which liberal and conservative ideas of narrative thought are either synergistic through liberal reason and human experience or strictly authoritarian by the Word-centered standards of theological and gospel truth that exist from inspired scripture (Clark, 52). The gospel message supported by theology must be given and made relevant to all peoples along the liberal, moderate, and conservative spectrum. At each polarity, or both poles. The gospel is made clear and not necessarily in strict adherence to all doctrines as a matter of theological truth and coherence.
Chapter Two: Scripture and the Principle of Authority
1. What is moral and veracious authority? What is the difference between them?
They’re both forms of authoritarianism. One concerns truth (veracious authority), and the other concerns morality (moral authority).
Veracious authority refers to communicative truth to a viewer or listener from a communicator. Because of who the communicator is, the recipient is justified or rational to accept a message as true or valid.
Moral authority refers to an asserted position or status in leadership that opposes and fights moral evil and therefore exerts power or the capacity to apply it.
2. Describe ontological ground of biblical authority and epistemic acceptance.
The ontological ground of theology originates from God, who we know, and not from us who do the knowing (Clark, 182). Imbued knowing comes from objective reality by grace and revealed truth by the Spirit’s inspiration from scripture (Clark, 65). God is the authority by which acceptance of what He reveals is made certain upon epistemic and ontological grounds.
3. What is intentional fallacy?
The intentional fallacy is the false belief that a reader can get into the author’s mind to reveal private mental acts aside from what was written. The inference of written text doesn’t correlate to what is in the mind of the author. Unexpressed inwards thoughts of an author don’t correspond to meaning inaccessible to a reader (Clark, 70).
The illocutionary force of what the Spirit conveys through biblical authors gives meaning to what is authoritative, accepted, and actionable. The witness of the Holy Spirit to the meaning and force of scripture is what gives it authority as God’s Word (Clark, 83).
4. What objections can be put up against the appeal to authority?
First, “a commitment to theological authority usually deteriorates into authoritarianism” (Clark, 75). This objection is not valid because Scripture itself subverts religious authoritarianism (Clark, 77). Second, some argue a circularity in theological methodology and it cannot provide warrant for its assertions (Clark, 79). This objection is invalid because warrant is found in the affirmation of the life of the Church, the self-witness of the Holy Spirit, and sola scriptura. Objections to the appeal to authority are not subjugated to the critical method because its assertions and evidence are not defeated by outside claims against reliable biblical witnesses (Clark, 80).
5. Do theological propositions have value beyond the text of Scripture?
We are to use the Bible for spiritual formation and worship. However, it is of value to appreciate theological propositions from among those who place themselves under biblical authority (Clark, 236). Not necessarily to accept or adopt those propositions, but to appreciate them for purposes of research or discovery. Such sources, such as early documents, sayings, or the pseudepigrapha, must not keep us from the Bible itself (Clark, 96). This is of utmost necessity because the Bible itself is authoritative.
Chapter Three: Theology in Cultural Context
1. To what extent is current evangelical theology contextualized?
Poverty relief, language and traditions, biblical instruction within the framework of national heritage, and limited tolerance of worldview are examples of how theological principles are conveyed and transferred to people groups of various interests and backgrounds. Specifically, a contextualized theology produces doctrines of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Together, they integrate in a relevant, tolerant, and supportive way toward Kingdom interests and the gospel. Across ethnicities, races, generations, cultures, and time.
2. In what way is contextualized theology a positive thing?
Contextualized theology is included within the imperative to make disciples of all nations. It’s scriptural theology to infer biblical and kingdom principles as they become situated within existing conditions of different well-established contexts. Such as language, customs, traditions, resources, social environments, and values as people become transformed as citizens of yet another Kingdom.
Occupants of where they dwell or reside physically, but they undergo a worldview transformation toward a new and growing Kingdom. From revelation, it’s a resolute perspective (I’m aware of the dangers of perspectivalism, Clark ch.4) that prevails to accept core doctrines and biblical or theological principles that by necessity unify in truth. Every bit of it framed in a cultural context absent hostilities by ideology and ”social justice” endeavors that would seek to destroy the family, the church, and Western civilization. Particularly in support of objectives around attempts to force acceptance of gender identities, sexual orientation, feminism, and Islamic Jihad (i.e., Sharia law) as a matter of evil self-interest. Tolerance is one thing, but acceptance and support of those objectives are quite another.
3. How should this contextualization be accomplished if it is an appropriate goal?
A transcultural approach toward contextualized theology can be appropriate depending upon the target culture. As necessary to bring the gospel and discipleship to the nations and their cultures, our obligation to fulfill Christ’s imperatives becomes satisfied. As appropriately suitable, according to biblical standards, existing cultures must not be reshaped or lost, provided they’re within biblically specified forms of new covenant ethics and morality.
By successive approximation and iteration, harmful contradictions come into a fuller interpretive dissolution from newly learned core beliefs (orthodoxy) and toward daily living (orthopraxy) within existing traditions, lifestyles, and cultural structures without losing heritage or traditions. A relativism of truth according to culture is not acceptable. As founded upon absolute biblical truth, it is essential to incorporate contextualized theology concurrently within friendships, general education, vocational instruction, poverty relief, shared resources, and collaborative efforts.
4. What are the issues with multiculturalism and in what ways should it be rejected?
An acceptance of multiculturalism is desirable to a limited extent. At the same time, it is imperative and more than necessary in support of Kingdom objectives.
A one-world homogenous praxis of cultural accommodation is an antithesis to multiculturalism. The temporary suspension of personal culture is also an antithesis to multiculturalism. However, Christ-centered theological contextualization across cultures must prevail as God is pleased with diversity and variety. A synergistic growth in Kingdom development founded upon biblical truth and justice is expected and necessary according to standards of Christendom (such as evangelicalism).
Within a multicultural framework, some societies or social movements can seek to impose ideologies upon evangelicalism that inhibit or destroy its effectiveness and drain resources better directed elsewhere. Multiculturalism should be a component of an overall strategy that does not exclude hostile ideologies but instead carries a reasonable probability of reaching its Kingdom objectives. Other features of that strategy should include existing political, defense, economic, and lifestyle influences as a collaborative effort with what God is doing on the world stage. Perhaps by attrition among some cultures less tolerant, by a measured effort elsewhere as likely successful, and where the return on multicultural activity is closer to the optimum.
Chapter Four: Diverse Perspectives and Theological Knowledge
1. What is meant by incommensurability? What is the difference between “strict” and “soft” incommensurability?
Clark states that Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996), an American philosopher, coined the term ‘Incommensurability’ to explain the notion of conceptual schemes or noetic structures that are closed off from each other, where there is no rational choice of the truest or best paradigm possible between them.
Hard (strict) incommensurability is where there is absolutely no contact between paradigms. Soft incommensurability, while still strict, is the claim that we cannot “evaluate two paradigms relative to each other by translating them into a third perspective without remainder or equivocation” (Clark, 137).
Further, Clark disputes the rationale concerning the differences as follows:
“If strict incommensurability were true, then each discipline would be utterly unique, and communication across disciplinary boundaries would be impossible. But such communication is possible. So, the various disciplinary horizons are not closed to each other but are instead open to each other. Disciplinary horizons or perspectives are not so unique as to be locked into their own ghettos of meaning.” (Clark, 184).
There is also a caveat of note:
On one interpretation, incommensurability, even in Kuhn himself, does not entail that the meanings of different paradigms are cut off from each other. Rather, incommensurability means that different paradigms focus on different problems and use different standards in solving those problems. In this understanding, we can translate the meanings from one paradigm into the terms of another paradigm. See the discussion in Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 85.
Clark rejected the viability of strong incommensurability while supporting a weaker version of it (Clark, 152). He argues that we must distinguish between the stricter and softer versions of incommensurability.
2. What is the difference between modernism and postmodernism? What do they have in common?
Modernism is the gospel of the Enlightenment as it views the human individual as liberated from external authority with autonomous reason who can discover absolute truth. Implementation of modernism, through rational planning, emphasizes standardization and science, leading to social progress (Clark, 141). Postmodernism differs from modernism in that “worldviews, macroperspectives, and explanatory grids” do not rest upon universal human Reason. It rejects absolute truth.
Postmodernism values a plurality of perspectives, myths, cultures, and narratives. It is different from modernism as it distrusts universal Reason. Modernism affirms “individualism, anthropocentrism, patriarchy, mechanization, economism, consumerism, nationalism, and militarism.” Postmodernism rejects the dehumanizing power of modernity (Clark, 141).
Both modernism and postmodernism idolize freedom and individualism.
3. What is perspectivalism? Should evangelicals accept perspectivalism?
The heart of perspectivalism is the recognition that there are differences in the noetic structures of different people. More specifically, the nature of those differences gets at the heart of perspectivalism. Given, “the truth value of every belief is entirely relative to or completely dependent on a particular conceptual scheme, noetic structure, or web of belief” many accept this assertion as true. Different people have different versions of beliefs to hold true depending upon paradigm or worldview (Clark, 135). To say there is no truly rational choice between macroperspectives is possible is the heart of perspectivalism.
Evangelical theology cannot adopt comprehensive perspectivalism (Clark, 147). It should not be embraced but be kept at a distance with limited use and merit. While amended perspectivalism doesn’t confine Christian theology to its own intellectual prison, it is implausible overall. As relativism is closely related to perspectivalism, they are inconsistent at best and self-referentially incoherent at worst (i.e., all knowledge is relative to perspectives, worldviews, or paradigms).
4. What is foundationalism? Should evangelicals accept foundationalism?
Source-foundationalism, distinct from belief-foundationalism, is contrary to individual beliefs, as it is viewed as a collection of major sources of genuine knowledge (Clark, 153). It is a holistic methodology or a complex historical truth source.
Evangelicals should embrace soft foundationalism as it is a form of belief-foundationalism, and it accepts what is true about perspectivalism. It rationalizes effective epistemic practice leading to warranted belief, and “soft foundationalism allows evangelical theology to develop knowledge from its own perspective” (Clark, 162). In contrast, belief-foundationalism is where individual beliefs are anchored as foundational.
By comparison, evangelicals should not embrace pragmatism or coherentism for various reasons that undermine evangelical theology. It must not embrace source-foundationalism that is of an Enlightenment period mentality that hungers for a source of perfect knowledge (Clark, 153).
Chapter Five: Unity in the Theological Disciplines
1. How would you distinguish the theological disciplines?
a. Historical Theology
Historical theology concentrates more closely on themes and theories across various historical periods (Clark, 169). It is a form of systematic theology immersed in the cultures of different periods during covenantal periods.
b. Biblical Theology
Biblical theology is any biblically grounded theology that rightly expresses biblical teaching or is correctly rooted in Scripture. Biblical theology is narrower in focus than biblical studies. It is faithful to Scripture. It recognizes the importance of literary and semantic theories around various genres of biblical languages. Biblical theology stresses the theological content of the biblical corpora as its subject matter. Unlike systematic theology, biblical theology limits itself to biblical materials, tracks the bible story, and organizes itself around a historical and chronological pattern (Clark, 170).
c. Philosophical Theology
Philosophical theology originates from Friedrich Schleiermacher, a protestant liberal theologian of the 19th century. It is an examination of theology built out of materials and thought outside of biblical data. It includes natural theology or data, which is derived from natural revelation or observation. An example of natural theology would consist of Thomas Aquinas’s five philosophical arguments for God’s existence (i.e., the Five Ways) as philosophical theology.
d. Practical Theology
Interpretation and application of theology arrive at practical theology (Clark, 190). A subset of systematic theology applies what Scripture says about communicating the gospel (Frame, ST, 1127; Frame, DKG, 214). Practical theology involves activity, practice, concerns, and disciplines for the unity, scholarship, and life of the church.
e. Systematic Theology
Barth defined systematic theology as a mode or method of human thought. His horrific experiences with socialism, and liberal theology initiated by Schleiermacher, reinforced his view that theology connected to the Word of God must be viewed as Church Dogmatics that originate from divine and supernatural revelation. Barth viewed Systematic Theology as the science of dogma.
It is an approach to the Bible that seeks to bring scriptural themes into a self-coherent whole from strict adherence to the authorial intent of biblical authors. Systematic theology is distinct from biblical theology, which comes from theological themes within individual books of the Bible (across both the Old and New testaments). The scope of systematic theology is wider to include biblical studies, church history, philosophy, and pastoral application.
2. How do evangelicals find unity in the theological disciplines?
Develop theoretical models of reason and a solid strategy to develop a unity of perspectives based upon truth from Scripture and what the biblical authors intended. The integration of different perspectives will resolve questions of unity in a comprehensive way bring into harmony issues surrounding interpretation. There can be no compromise of truth as that would be a betrayal of Christ, but a pursuit of unity upon a foundation of Scripture is a necessary bedrock.
As commensurate interests are understood around non-critical doctrines, there is plenty of room for the minor variability of tradition. However, core doctrines that arise from biblical truth must be adopted as the basis of meaningful and sustainable theological disciplines. It is unacceptable to rest upon a lowest common denominator approach to the theological disciplines.
3. How do liberals find unity in the theological disciplines?
For liberalism, the traditional view of the unity of theology, rooted in a realist conception of God’s revelation in the authoritative Word of God, is simply not an option (Clark, 179). Schleiermacher, a 20th-century liberal pioneer at Union Theological Seminary, proposed two solutions to the “problems” of status, legitimacy, and unity of theology and the intellectual pressures of the Enlightenment. More specifically, concerning personal and spiritual concerns of Christians. Liberal theologians reject all authority-based methods, and they seek unity from elsewhere.
The first solution proposed was that Schleiermacher introduced the “clerical paradigm” where pastors serve ordinary believers’ needs through legitimate scholarly enterprise. The second was an “essence of Christianity” motif as it is grounded in religious experience. Both approaches to the problems of liberals are a rejection of authority (i.e., the authority of Scripture or doctrines). He advocated for a shift away from biblical authority to that of intellectual independence. From a liberal viewpoint, it is impossible to find a unity of the various theological sciences by looking to the unity of divine truth. Liberals reject the evangelical answer—the movement from knowledge of God’s revelation to the practical application of that knowledge (Clark, 181).
Chapter Six: Theology in the Academic World
1. What are the values of academic institutions? Are these values consistent with Christian theology?
Dominant values of the modern university do not allow Christians to accept theological ideas as relevant to scholarship. Academic institutions of higher learning value a neutral approach where the discovery of knowledge demands that the knower be uncommitted to the object of investigation. This is the DNA of public universities. They require a knower to set aside whatever is accepted on the basis of authority and to operate according to principles of critical reason.
These values are not consistent with Christian theology as it seeks to maintain intellectual integrity within any academic setting. Theological disciplines need to both perform critically and also recognize biblical authority. As theology departments left academic institutions, universities replaced them with religious studies where scholars are not permitted to endorse any faith stemming from their discipline. Christian scholars and academics within the various disciplines of theology cannot separate their pursuit of truth, research, and discovery from revelation. The whole human is not merely natural and physical, but natural, physical, and spiritual.
2. What caused the move in contemporary universities away from theology and toward the study of religions?
Universities began to change the object of study from theology to “religious studies.” To detach any commitment of its professors, students, or scholars from a profession of faith, or commitment to revelatory truth from the authority of Scripture, academic institutions isolated themselves. They narrowed their efforts to critical methods situated upon human reason alone.
From the perspective of universities, Christian theology was lumped together with all other religions as a single homogenous whole (together with Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and others). A single monolithic view of religions from liberal academics developed a view that Christian theology is fatally flawed because it cannot achieve the essential requirement of all scholarly work: freedom from all presuppositions.
Consequently, from a pluralistic perspective, universities embraced religion as the object of their study rather than God as the source of creation, natural order, physics, phenomena, hard sciences, and the like.
Theology is absent from public and secularized universities. Theology exists only in church-related universities, divinity schools, or seminaries. This institutional separation clearly reflects the common prejudices about these two areas of study and their relative value or validity (Clark, 203).
“According to George Marsden, the dearth of evangelicals in the secular university scene resulted as much from an evangelical exodus as from a secularist coup (Marsden, “The Collapse of American Evangelical Academia,” in Faith and Rationality, ed. Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff [Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983], 219–264).1
3 What are the values of academic institutions? Are these values consistent with Christian theology?
Evangelicals follow a Barthian approach to Christian faith and living from a sociological standpoint, not theological to a significant extent. As evangelical subculture produced a range of social institutions like seminaries, colleges, denominations, hospitals, charities, media enterprises, magazines, and publishing houses, evangelical theologies functioned within this social context with some exceptions.
As academic institutions influenced churches and their members, the shift from divinity in academic achievement to scholarship began to pervade even Christian institutions. According to academic values, these scholars became detached as objective research was sought and conducted—which explains the dominant education of pastors. Seminaries and their members became insular and less connected to fellow believers in the church. Consequently, theological work from Christian academic institutions rendered its scholars and graduates irrelevant to parish life. The skills around the research associated with theological studies did not comport well with pastors’ performance and weekly duties. Thus, a push to develop professional pastors emerged to develop skills for practical ministry to serve the church.
_______________________________ 1 David K. Clark and John S. Feinberg, To Know and Love God: Method for Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), 203.
Chapter Seven: The Spiritual Purpose of Theology
1. Should orthodoxy be bounded-set orthodoxy or centered-set orthodoxy?
Christians who are anchored to biblical truth must hold to theological principles that are defined within bounded-set orthodoxy. Centered-set thinking and contextualization are useful models for purposes of outreach and missional functions. The rationale to operate a church from a centered-set model to suit cultural preferences and expectations represents a serious risk to error, heresy, and harm to people.
2. How does Clark make distinctions in theology as science and as wisdom?
Clark identifies the theology of science as scientia and the theology of Godly wisdom of sapientia. The distinction between these two forms of theology is critical. Scientia is limited where it informs the intellect about what beliefs and people are legitimately Christian and validate an orthodox position. Scientia plays a key role in determining if what a person believes is authentically Christian and orthodox.
Sapientia is the ultimate function of theology. Scientia serves sapientia as it informs believers what is true and accurate about theology to live out what God has revealed through scripture as aided by the Holy Spirit. The purpose of theology is to know God. Theology’s purpose as sapientia is conforming individual believers by the power of the Spirit to the image of Christ.
3. What should be the necessary relationship between theology as science and as wisdom?
Clark expresses the integration of theology as both science and wisdom through phases or moments (Clark, 232). There are five moments listed in sequential order as follows:
a. Engagement Through various means, a person encounters through a variety of media. By people, circumstances, analysis, hardships, scripture, and other means through language and experience, a person engages God as truth becomes revealed for further interest.
b. Discovery Imaginative thinking at an applicable scope is originated to form a working theoretical or conceptual model that comes from the creativity of a theologian. Biblical theology (revelatory witness) is conceptualized into a larger perspective from the creative imagination to theologically understand how biblical observations, theories, or doctrines emerge in a concrete or abstract way.
c. Testing Testing is taken together with discovery as they work together to form meaningful conceptual models that are validated through a methodology to originate theological proofs. As scientists, or theologians who apply scientia, originate hypotheses, they turn to test and experimentation. This is to prove theories, models, and predictions or demonstrate them as false or invalid. Data is canonically sound from scripture as a primary source, but secondary means include history, tradition, literary work, or science that have less weight. Divine revelation has the sole authority over any other area of contribution that might add weight to test theological concepts.
d. Integration This is the most important and crucial stage of processing a Christian’s relationship between theology as science and wisdom. At integration, scientia moves into the domain of sapientia. This is where theology moves beyond cognitive information to personal transformation as this phase of truth processing goes from intellectual to personal.
Just because someone is knowledgeable about theology or skilled in ministry, that doesn’t mean a religious professional is mature or growing in Christ. Without integration of truth, and only engagement, discovery, testing, a person is only accumulating knowledge. The intended outcome of scientia is to fulfill sapientia through the fulfillment of what to do in response. Theology is to change lives for the good through relationships and the transformation of people into Christlikeness. This fulfills theology’s proper role as sapientia.
e. Communication The fifth phase of working with truth involves all forms of ministry service and leadership. From both abstract (precision) and concrete (power) theology (Clark, 242), the proper outcome is to express by word and action God, His will, and His ways. Where Christians love people and communities through communication as it uses theological truth to influence affections, decisions, and character (Clark, 243).
Chapter Eight: Theology and the Sciences
1. Does science threaten theology? If so, how?
Clark points out that the Scopes monkey trial has significantly influenced society to the detriment of Christian credibility and intellectual standing (Clark, 265). Not just concerning the sciences, but overall, as there is within secularism a stigma often attached to simple people of faith. Historically, and now, fundamentalism is further stigmatized because of its ridiculous conduct. There is an ocean of people on the Internet and in public life who are making assertions about theological and scientific concepts and principles they are not qualified to make.
Furthermore, with figures such as Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), who fought creationism through his aggressive advocacy of evolution, or from people in academia who produced scientific theories proven through scientific and empirical methodology, society has come to accept presuppositionalism, methodological naturalism, and rationalism from the scientific community. Between faith and reason, reason prevails in society to produce naturalistic and material thinking and benefits to humanity, such as in medicine, quantum physics, engineering, technology, biochemistry, etc.
According to the modernist view, science has won the culture over theology when it comes to rationality (Clark, 263). Science doesn’t threaten theology. Science and theology performed correctly complement one another. Theology, and biblical interpretation in error by translation issues, inferior literary analysis, false historical assumptions, church traditions, and many other limited capabilities of religious leaders, the laity, and individuals who think Scripture describes scientific facts are mistaken. The Bible isn’t a scientific text. It’s a text of literary, historical, and theological truth. It doesn’t contradict science, but science is antagonistic to those who use Scripture and make unfounded assertions without data or a necessary background to suit personal opinions or interests. People of faith who do not have a well-developed capability of quantitative, qualitative, and capacity for analytical reason with the disciplines often really have very little to contribute.
2. In what ways can science and theology relate? Which is best and why?
The Clark text presents two major subsections under “The Rise of Science and Its Challenge to Theology.” These are with respect to how science challenges theology. To his words, “So how should we conceptualize the relation of science to theology?”
a. Science as a Rational Idea b. Science as Cultural Authority
From an objectively neutral perspective, “Science as a Rational Idea” is the best between these two approaches. Because observations, experiments, discoveries, and the scientific method take a dispassionate matter-of-fact objective approach to science. Large because there is no room for cultural and religious subjectivity. Including the world of theology among a wide range of academics, seminarians, theologians, and laymen, which is too often an unstable Wild West of meaning and coherent thought.
Scientists, engineers, and technologists who accept biblical truth can participate in scientific endeavors. While having a theologically centered rationale and worldview, but not to the extent that irrationality or incoherent thought is disruptive, harmful, or in betrayal of truth. God created logic, induction, deduction, and abduction for His purposes.
Clark goes on further to make comparisons using categories of the relationship between science and theology. Terms are given for these categories as follows:
a. Conflict b. Compartmentalism c. Complementarity
Among these, complementarity is best. There are various reasons to conclude that this approach is most suitable or productive. Within the various fields of science and theology, dedicated areas of focus are more attuned to the realities that exist to describe functions, properties, behaviors, and the like. Separately, there are more limited outcomes and benefits of understanding and application, but together they yield a synergy that produces a fuller cognitive use and thinking of a subject.
3. What are the positive and negative aspects of methodological naturalism?
Positive: Methodological naturalism is a legitimate assumption for the large majority of research programs (Clark, 280).
Negative: Methodological naturalism rules out all allusions to spiritual forces (Clark, 280).
4. From an evangelical perspective, what relationship should science and theology have?
Theistic science should be the context or framework by which science and theology relate. Science, as a human discipline of method and reason is incapable of overriding the authority of the Bible nor is it permitted to for its own purposes. While science is always subordinate to theology, it can supersede interpretation while scripture remains the authority of truth.
There should be an advocacy for dialog where both science and theology are able to communicate in an effort to attain open integration between the two. Theological claims and scientific models and naturally described realities are not in contradiction to one another when considering proper perspectives (Clark, 284). Various frames of reference on reality to get at unified truth is achievable in a post-modern world that is skeptical of both theology and science.
Christian theology explains why science matters. It doesn’t resort to a God-of-the-Gaps rationale, where “the absence of plausible naturalistic rationale of some phenomenon is always sufficient to conclude a that a particular natural event does not itself suggest, let along prove, the presence of personal agency” (Clark, 289). It is never acceptable for Christians to rely upon a God-of-the-gaps rationale to explain scientific reason or uncertainty. Any lack of scientific evidence is not explained by God-of-the-gaps.
Chapter Nine: Theology and Philosophy
1. Are there senses in which philosophy or human reason can aid theology?
A warning to beware of philosophy (Col 2:8; cf. Eph 5:6, Col 2:23, 1 Tim 6:20), or philosophical systems (sophos philos).
“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.”– Col 2:8 NASB
BDAG: φιλοσοφία, ας, ἡ (Pla., Isocr. et al.; 4 Macc; EpArist 256; Philo; Jos., C. Ap. 1, 54, Ant. 18, 11 al.) —“philosophy, in our lit. only in one pass. and in a pejorative sense, w. κενὴ ἀπάτη, of erroneous teaching Col 2:8 (perhaps in an unfavorable sense also in the Herm. wr. Κόρη Κόσμου in Stob. I p. 407 W.=494, 7 Sc.=Κόρη Κόσμου 68 [vol. IV p. 22, 9 Nock-Festugière]. In 4 Macc 5:11 the tyrant Antiochus terms the Hebrews’ religion a φλύαρος φιλοσοφία).” 1
Students and scholars make use of philosophy in at least two ways. Both “philosophical theology” and “philosophy of religion” are together the study or disciplines of religious belief and life to include psychological, sociological, historical, or literary approaches. To use Clark’s words, “They focus on the meaning of and the truth states of religious beliefs” (Clark, 297). Philosophy is an instrument of thought or method of human reason to help understand or recognize the plausibility of religious beliefs and their truth claims. Clark further develops three senses of reason by the strict expression of the word with respect to divine revelation.
a. Autonomous Reason Intrinsic reasonableness is set as a critical stance against authority for prescribed autonomous judgment, critical reflection, and skepticism.
b. Knowledge Capacity Inherent ability to derive and produce knowledge. Simply the ability to think. “It is the divinely created capacity to understand God’s revelation both in the Bible and in the world” (Clark, 299).
c. Noetic Equipment God-given inferential equipping that each person is endowed by or hardwired to recognize by reason God’s revelation.
2. How do presuppositions operate within a Christian worldview?
Presuppositions that stem from modernist sensibilities do not comport well with a biblical worldview. Inductivism is a traditional, erroneous, and implausible philosophy of the scientific method. It seeks to develop scientific theories and neutrally observe a domain or states to infer laws from examined cases—hence, inductive reasoning—to objectively discover the observed’s sole naturally “true” theory.
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a neo-Calvinist theologian who established Reformed Churches who reasoned that inductivism is insufficiently aware of the controlling influence of presuppositionalism.
Van Til’s perspective informs us that a brute fact is a mute fact. This contradicts the inductive science view, where uninterpreted facts do not lead straight to authentic knowledge. Presuppositions are embedded into perspectives as knowing shares nothing or has no common ground between people with different worldviews. Clark further writes that the Christian worldview is the correct worldview centered on God and His revelation within Scripture.
Clark outlines the meaning of presuppositionalism as a belief as it correlates to a system of thought (Clark, 309) where knowledge is assumed true without justification or a process to give its explicit and true meaning.
3. Are there different worldviews and can they be warranted?
Different worldviews exist, but aside from Scripture, they’re unwarranted. The Bahnsen paper Clark references (pg. 309), “Inductivism, Inerrancy, and Presuppositionalism,”2 makes it clear that presuppositionless impartiality and neutral reasoning are impossible because Scripture informs us that all men know God, even if suppressing the truth (Rom 1). There are two philosophic outlooks, one according to worldly tradition and the other to Christ (Col 2). There is a knowledge that is erroneous to the faith (1 Tim 6), and that genuine knowledge is based on repentant faith (2 Tim 2). In contrast, some people (unbelievers) are enemies of God as they are hostile in their minds (Rom 8:7) while others (believers) are renewed in knowledge (Col 3:10).
Clark further stipulates that no one comes to warranted belief by simply observing facts because facts will always depend upon perspective.
The enemies of God are unable, who suppress the knowledge of the truth by an adopted presuppositional worldview stemming from the perspective of the world cannot be subject to God’s Word (Rom 8). They see it as utterly foolish and view it with contempt (1 Cor 1), while people who subject themselves to God’s Word take every thought to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor 10). Further, in the words of Bahnsen, “Presuppositionless neutrality is both impossible (epistemologically) and disobedient (morally): Christ says that a man is either with him or against him (Matt 12:30), for “no man can serve two masters” (6:24). Our every thought (even apologetical reasoning about inerrancy) must be made captive to Christ’s all-encompassing Lordship” (2 Cor 10:5; 1 Pet 3:15; Matt 22:37).
_______________________________ 1 William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1059. 2 Greg L. Bahnsen, “Inductivism, Inerrancy, and Presuppositionalism,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 20 (1977): 300.
Chapter Ten: Christian Theology and the World Religions
1. How are the differences between descriptive and normative pluralism described?
Pluralism can be viewed as a sociological force as it is descriptive of various religions that exist within a region or population. By comparison, pluralism as a normative or prescriptive idea is an interpretation of religious diversity where all its expressions lead to God. The notion that all religions are true faiths that ultimately lead to God. It’s a theory that all methods and beliefs are on different paths to the same outcome.
2. How does the author make distinctions between altheic and soteriological issues?
Clark refers to Alvin Plantinga’s alethic question about the truth of religious doctrines. And whether religious teachings in question actually exist. “Alethic” is from the Greek aletheia, meaning “truth.”
By contrast, John Hick places interest upon the extent to which each religion actually experiences salvation or liberation. These are soteriological questions that ask questions and definitions concerning actual salvific merit and if they all are separate paths to God. “Soteriological” is from the Greek soteria, meaning “deliverance,” or “salvation.”
3. How does the author make distinctions between altheic and metaphysical realism in religion?
Metaphysical realism is a sub-category of alethic realism as alethic realists are certain that metaphysical reality exists. The distinction with the alethic realist concerns the doctrines that describe and point to ultimate spiritual existence.
Metaphysical realism corresponds to the view that an actual spiritual Reality exists independent of human thought and speech. There is a spiritual realm to affect religious or spiritual experience where such experience is caused by a mind-independent Reality external to thought or reason.
4. How does the author make arguments against realist pluralism and and nonrealist pluralism?
Clark presents two approaches to Realist and Nonrealist approaches to pluralism. He frames his discourse about pluralism, realism, and evangelical theology around John Hick (Realist) and Gordon Kaufman (Nonrealist). Both individuals support pluralism, which is untenable from an evangelical theology perspective, but Hick connects pluralism to metaphysical realism, and Kaufman makes the connection with metaphysical nonrealism.
With extended prose and tedious detail, Clark makes an intricately elaborate and lengthy effort to disassemble the views of both Hick and Kaufman. With various nested and interwoven thoughts, Clark precisely drills into numerous objections to the conceptual arguments against Hick as antithetical to fundamental theological truth. Namely, his Kantian theological agnosticism and alethic nonrealism (Clark, 333; (e), (f)). Attempting to make coherent sense of Hick’s views, Clark elaborates on his background to make connections between Schleiermacher, Kant, and others to form errant thinking about theological truth. That is a preference for an individual’s personal religious experience. Without reference to the Holy Spirit’s work, revelation through Scripture and His presence per se is therefore speculative and subjective to Hick without weight.
Within the Clark text, both Hick and Kaufman fail to accept the contradictory nature of the doctrinal claims of the major world religions. Their claims of salvific truth are opposed to one another. Each has its peculiarities where personal religious experiences are significantly different in terms of what is involved in setting about the right path toward God. As an impersonal or personal God among the numerous religions would have expectations toward Him in a Real way, those expectations would not be self-contradictory as implicit by Hick’s and Kaufman’s pluralism.
The further discourse about noumenon (Reality as it is in itself) and phenomenon (Reality as it is for us) again redirect interests and requirements of what is involved in a salvific or liberating return to God as centered upon the person. Not the true God of a metaphysical realism grounded in an explicitly inclusive set of circumstances, conditions, or epistemologically and biblically coherent worldviews. Schleiermacher is written all over the thinking of Hick and Kaufman.
As Clark more explicitly turns his attention to Kaufman’s nonrealism position. He outlines Kaufman’s position that humanity cannot experience God directly. Moreover, Kaufman states expressly that God and theology are constructs of human imagination. In contrast, it is only by human terms or referential understanding or comprehension that God exists. As if there is an obligation from somewhere or all religions to derive the Creator on human terms, not by what is posited as pluralistic nonrealism. In other words, religious people all desire to imagine a Being that isn’t real. Kaufman advocated ultimate humanity, where theology and thus pluralistic thought, through all forms of God and religious belief, were in service of a greater or better mankind or humanization.
5. How can Christians be exclusivists and still tolerant?
While Clark writes that, according to contemporary sensibilities, religious tolerance requires the adoption of pluralism (Clark, 349), there are a couple of ways in which authentic Christians are “tolerant.”
a. Among Christians, there is an expectation of openness toward others with whom one disagrees. It is possible to tolerate a naturalist perspective, but more importantly, as followers of Christ, Christians are expected to abide by His instructions to love even enemies. Not by ignoring another person as a position of tolerance, but by loving others actively regardless.
b. It isn’t always plausible to agree with those who have a naturalistic perspective contrary to Christian views. However, it is necessary to accept each person’s right to defend their views with respect in spite of any disagreement over belief or behavior.
Chapter Eleven: Reality, Truth, and Language
1. How would you describe truth?
The Clark text covers a lot of ground around the question of truth and its definition. On the one hand, he calls it “factual certainty” (pg. 373). On the other, he elaborates, “Truth is constituted by correspondence of linguistic utterances to mind-independent states of affairs: around the topic of correspondence theory (pg. 381).
More explicitly, Jesus said that He is the Truth (Jn 14:6), and by extension, all that He says and does is truth. When Pilate asked, “what is truth?” Jesus answered to generations who He is, what He has done, and what He is doing as a matter of reference that serves as an anchor. The absolute certainty of meaning, physical being, and alethic metaphysical reality has substantive concrete and abstract definition to the Creator God where truth and wisdom belongs.
2. What is the nature of truth-bearers? What kinds of things can be true?
Truth-bearers accept truth value as propositions and statements. They also accept and embrace personal truth as associated with the identity of persons (e.g., Christ).
Propositions, abbreviated propositions, statements, opposite truth values, mood, tone, and mind-independent reality from language or linguistic expressions are what things that can be true, and states of being that can be true from absolute revealed meaning and condition, or historical and cultural contexts. Truth is absolute and not relative to social or individual preferences or historical and cultural contexts.
3. Describe the differences between correspondence theory of truth and coherentist and pragmatic theories.
a. Correspondence Theory of Truth: This is the embodiment of core intuition “according to which the word ‘true’ modifies utterances that adequately connect to and depict aspects of a mind-independent world” (Clark, 363). It is a way of saying that the truth of statements or propositions matches the actual world.
There are conditions of metaphysical and justification propositions that exist and point to alternatives among philosophers to advocate coherentist and pragmatic theories. Clear ideas that correspond to reality define truth, and it answers metaphysical realism.
b. Coherentist Theory of Truth As one stated alternative to correspondence theory, it can be considered a denial of correspondence theory. It is the practical application of propositions that justifies and accounts for the definition of truth. This is not a theory of truth but a theory of warrant or justification (Clark, 366). This, as a theory of truth, is false.
c. Pragmatic Theory of Truth: As another stated alternative to correspondence theory, it attempts to redefine truth in terms of its usefulness. It is a theory that attempts to advocate metaphysical nonrealism by inference. It is a way to view the distinctions as true or useful. What is useful can be true, but not everything true is useful. It doesn’t capture intuition or instincts about the nature or properties of truth.
4. How does the hermeneutics of suspicion and finitude of post-structuralists and deconstructionists challenge truth claims?
Deconstruction involves hermeneutics of suspicion and finitude to disintegrate truth as having authoritative meaning and absolute value. Deconstructionists claim there is no such thing as reality itself, only interpretations of reality. They believe or think that certainty is not possible. They also think that binary classifications and categories such as part/whole, inside/outside, good/evil, nature/nurture, male/female, true/false do not capture objective reality.
Clark informs his readers that “deconstructive postmodernism overcomes the modern worldview through an anti-worldview. It denies the elements necessary to any worldview, including concepts like God, self, and truth” (Clark, 373). While poststructuralism is a weaker form of deconstruction, they both reject the Enlightenment’s views of neutral objectivity, absolute certainty, and straightforward answers. Deconstruction abhors truth, and it seeks to dismantle objective and authoritative reality from the roots of linguistics.
Neither of these strategies’ challenges to truth claims is valid because they rely upon definitions from language to achieve an order of understanding. They borrow on the purpose of intended meaning to achieve their objectives. They’re self-refuting, or self-referentially incoherent.
Chapter Twelve: Theological Language and Spiritual Life
1. Distinguish univocity, equivocity and analogy in religious language.
Clark opts for limited univocity, but he recognizes the need for Analogy and its use in Scripture. While he makes distinctions about the univocal and literal use of language, he elaborates upon numerous examples where both are applied and true during the use of language. While Clark agrees with Aquinas that equivocity leads to agnosticism, he also supports the assertion that Analogy has its suitable theological place up to a point. Clark is concerned about Aquinas’ Analogy of proper proportionality because of how words function as modes of being, action, thought, or language. Clark wrote that Analogy, according to Aristotle, is a form of equivocity (Clark, 390). More specifically, there are ambiguities about what we can understand about God. Theology, on its own, does not help us understand or know God.
Clark makes it clear that the difference between the meaning of terms between God and the creature is the distinction between univocal and analogical predication. The literal or univocal sense is the default meaning to us as a one-way frame of reference. So, the function of analogy isn’t to inform but to place restraints upon the proper use of language when it comes to “theistic systematic assumptions.”
Clark’s use of the term “infinity,” when set alongside transcendence, and corporeality, presupposes the presence of time, as God exists or operates within it without beginning or end. Such a distinction seems to reveal confusion about what transcendence is. Where time is a created construct of God outside of time or within it as He so chooses or intends. In Clark’s view, attribution in this univocal sense isn’t as helpful, but I overall agree with his position about the univocal use of language to understand and know God. Especially when it comes to the use of Scripture and God’s self-witness about what we can know about Him in a way that corresponds to what we can grasp or accept by alethic and metaphysical realism.
2. What values and distinctions of speech-act theory are referenced to the language of the Bible?
Types of spoken language, or utterances, and the use of words to express or describe something is different than what it is to do something by perlocutionary or illocutionary force. They’re together spiritually formative, so long as the objects of their intended use are actual. So, it is okay, and expected, within modern people and churches, to express worship, praise, instruction, exhortation, rebuke, encouragement, and so forth that comports with the language of the Bible. Figurative, metaphorical, and literal meanings that contribute to the working of sapientia in our lives are suitable to the extent precision or more descriptive, or reasoned accuracy is warranted.
There is explanatory value in expressions in the types and distinctions of speech-act theory as propositions and statements carry collaborative, informative, and cursory forms of meaning among creatures to accomplish what both the Creator and creatures want to relate and share experiences. Fellowship, shared witness, prayer, worship, instruction, with words conveyed to form communicative acts shape what people and their Creator say, hear, and do.
Therefore, language is intended to accomplish something. Verbal utterances do something other than merely informing people about sense and reference, according to scientia. It serves the purpose of sapientia to worship the triune God and transform Christian character (Clark, 417).
Conclusion
Clark offers numerous point-by-point instructions, admonishments, and areas of guidance as he brings his book to completion. Taken together, they serve as a formulaic way of executing a strategy toward developing a theologically well-grounded sapiential Church. He touches upon personal, interpersonal, and social relationships that extend to individual disciplines, visionary thinking, polemical engagement, rigorous theological discipline, relationships, biblical social justice, and outreach. His final words were about the essential and compelling urgency to know and love the true and living God.
From 2021, approaching two decades ago, Clark’s book To Know and Love God was published. While it dates back to a different time of evangelical thought and discourse, the methods and principles around theology still hold and are relevant today. By surveying the range of chapters that comprise the book, the reader sees a common thread where the author forms layers of sequential content. The material within the book isn’t organized as a mosaic of theoretically practical methods around the study of theology. It is written cohesively to bring predicated order and rationale to the study and application of theological methods and principles.
While the text is highly concentrated with the theological and philosophical subject matter, it carefully crafts a coherent message. Not just at the most granular level but structurally as well. The chapters, book sections, and subsections are interwoven and complementary to one another to reinforce and provide a full-bodied depth. The book’s organization is well thought out as it is apparent that the author wanted to offer God and His people the best of his work. The book is very technical, but it communicates to the reader personally with relatable stories and content to instill confidence and retention.
The book begins with general concepts around the topic of theology along with some of its history and key figures during its development in the 20th-century. The forms of study and discipline about theology are covered with substantial attention to detail to include key influential figures from traditional and liberal or socialist backgrounds. Themes and concerns among historical theologians toward the modern era were at length explained to give a greater sense of context about the reading ahead. The tension between a God-centered theological approach and anthropocentrism began as an outright situation to grasp, and it remained a constant subtext through the remainder of the book.
As Clark continues through more rudimentary principles to set a baseline, it was necessary to cover essential matters around the authority of scripture, culture, and a diversity of perspectives. The author relies heavily on philosophy, historical rationale, and contemporary issues to assert what theological propositions to value and hold in support of evangelicalism. He cites numerous academic and scholarly sources to support his conclusions and offer reinforced thoughts concerning premise after premise that gave order and clarity about where he guided the reader. Clark did not just give the details about perspectives from academic individuals, theologians, and philosophers. He reached into the nuts and bolts of theoretical approaches to the subject matter.
To match the depth of the book, Clark covered a wide span of topics about theological methodology as well. Along with the various epistemological and ontological concerns about interpretation and belief, the numerous forms of theological disciplines were presented for a reader to understand their place and unity as a body of material. Set adjacent to each other, the sciences, philosophy, and theology within the academic, secular, and religious worlds were illuminated to bring out the purpose, justification, and necessity of Christian belief. Not for apologetic reasons, per se. Rather to think well about Christian theology while people seek to live lives of loving and knowing God with their entire being.
In an effort to contrast Christianity to other world religions, Clark establishes the philosophical ground for new and existing theologians to understand and engage in discourse within the postmodern world. Specifically, contentious issues around pluralism, realism, subjectivism, exclusivism, inclusivism, and metaphysical epistemologies were compared and navigated to render sensible theological approaches to develop an “alethic truth” around a physical and spiritual realism that has a soteriological effect on humanity.
At the core of the text is the spiritual purpose of theology. This is the most substantive area of the entire book (chapter 7). The relationship between science and religion is explained in crucial detail as scientia and sapientia. The reader is given a step-by-step walkthrough of moments or phases of forming, applying, and communicating theological facts and principles to live transformed lives with others before God. Clark makes it abundantly clear that theology as purely an academic endeavor doesn’t reach its intended purpose or potential without internalizing what the theological method does (i.e., engagement, discovery, testing, integration, communication). The text does an exceptional job of explaining what theology is about and why it is of utmost necessity to live by what it produces within people.
Just as the text is titled and captioned, this is a book about knowing and loving God. It gets into significant technical and reasoned depth about what that specifically looks like. It is an important and necessary book to undergo and support continuing theological coursework.
Structured Method of Scriptural Engagement in Biblical Doctrine, Truth & Theology
As a sequence of increasing levels of study, there are four tiers of learning development and theological understanding. For many decades, this model has existed to support a linear path of Bible students, pastors, theologians, and many in ministry. To serve as an outline and a way to learn each area of study. To be a resource to others and help the Church grow in the knowledge of Christ.
With this model of learning Biblical Studies, we move our way up as an approach to our advancement and more in-depth knowledge of theology. In contrast, we can arrive at correct conclusions without bad habits or wasted time. While we put effort and time into each subject area of interest, we expect to yield fruit or arrive at new levels to build upon.
These areas are segmented and partitioned to indicate what thinking and issues require our attention to defend or rely upon. To take a stand for the truth of God’s word, we will need a structured method of understanding and study.
Level 1 | Foundations
There is a hierarchy of subject matter relevant to topics of Biblical studies. Taken together, they are a group of subjects that serve as a foundation for further research concerning Scripture and associated issues. As a student advances further upward along with the four-level model, the supremacy of Scripture remains of utmost and pressing interest as it is the revered word of the LORD. This model is an ordered way of studying, understanding, and applying matters about God, His Church, His Word, and numerous additional doctrines.
Biblical Languages
Scripture is written in the languages of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. From word definitions to grammar, punctuation, and phrases or sentences and their relationships to one another. The meaning of conjunctive terms gets attention as well. The organization of paragraphs, chapters, and books are areas of interest and analysis.
The functional activity and operation of literary context rely upon the language in use throughout an entire book or genre. Theoretical components of constructed meaning, such as verbs, nouns, adverbs, and adjectives, have a significant role in the use of biblical languages.
Bible Backgrounds
Background details concerning culture, geography, mannerisms, culture, etc. This area is the who, what, where, when, and why of Scripture. This area of study helps us to seek what was occurring at the time of events in Scripture. To recognize and study the purpose and rationale of why a book was written to coincide with proclaimed truth among their various authors. This is a support area of background for students to articulate what it is we believe and why. Examples include cultural factors, traditions, mannerisms, lifestyle, and so forth.
Hermeneutics
These are the principles of studying Scripture. To recognize and understand theoretical hermeneutics or how and why we know the rules of Scripture. Or separately to follow theological hermeneutics in how we understand connections between the text of Scripture, their applications, and how we draw inferences. Sound hermeneutics then include word studies, paragraph studies, to affect an overall theological framework.
So hermeneutics pertains to how we study scripture to form theological principles. Without unnecessary allegories, spiritualization, or logical fallacies while adhering to authorial intent by Scriptural genre.
Level 2 | Exegesis
The application of the three disciplines of biblical languages, biblical backgrounds, and hermeneutics together contribute to the study and practice of exegesis. This is the study of authorial intent within Scripture, where we see passages connect and allude to other passages. Connections that interface with Scripture can span vast areas of text. The scope of Scripture scales across themes and ideas that support one another in relevant and intentional ways between Old and New Testaments, or among covenants throughout history.
Biblical commentaries are often helpful with the practice of exegesis with the foundation of languages, backgrounds, and hermeneutical methods to support research or outcome-based learning.
More technically, this is the study of Scripture in original languages with a good hermeneutic with associated background information.
Level 3 | Biblical Theology
Biblical theology is the connectivity that extends from the discipline and practice of exegesis and further advances to an area of Biblical Theology as a third level of interest. This is an area of chronological study along a timeline of redemptive history. More specifically, as the events and truths of Scripture are traced over time. From the Patriarchs and covenants within both the Old and New Testaments to subjects or concerns beyond that. Biblical theology shows the progress of revelation and what God is doing at a given time from Genesis to Revelation.
Biblical theology informs our worldview, and it gives us the significance of our efforts. It is a theology that allows us to apply Scripture as God intends. Through Biblical Theology, the text of Scripture gives us specifics about how we ought to live. It pertains to the details. This is the depth of Scripture.
Level 4 | Systematic Theology
Chains or groupings of text come together into the larger or macro-level subject matter. As categories of Scripture, we see them as individual ideas that develop into details and interrelate with an over-arching message. This form of theology can include areas such as historical theology or counseling.
This is a systematic effort to go through the entire Bible and define what it teaches us about a topic or doctrine in an exhaustive way. This is the breadth of Scripture. The large topics of Scripture are covered as major doctrines such as the Word of God, Doctrine of God, Doctrine of Man, Doctrines of Christ and the Holy Spirit, Doctrine of Redemption, Doctrine of the Church, and Doctrine of the Future. These together are an expression of what the Bible says as a whole. Biblical Theology gives us the parts to assemble an overall and composite Systematic Theology concerning the whole counsel of God.
A method of ordered thought more suitable toward study, inquiry, and objections concerning Scriptural truth follows the four-tiered model of biblical studies introduced. Whereas biblical languages, bible backgrounds, and hermeneutics together support competent exegesis. Initially, as two levels of effort to understand Scripture in its original, literary, and historical context. From our exegetical efforts, we bring together interconnected text as a biblical theology to further build reasoned conclusions and assertions about what God’s word reveals. Combined texts and concepts demonstrated within Scripture then become assembled to form a systematic theology concerning various doctrines that emerge with a foundational and ordered method of support.
Active use of this model involves matching the right discipline with the questions that arise from concerns in life, or from people that have an interest in a subject area. So questions that become posed often get applied to another area in an approach to respond in a coherent way that fully satisfies questions with answers directly applicable to the matter at hand. In so doing, we maximize the likelihood of interpersonal confidence in the reliability of truth derived from the biblical text, biblical theology, and historical theology as originated from God’s revealed and inspired truth (2 Timothy 3:16).
For people who seek answers or challenge us for specific and reliable reasons for truth, it is not enough to rest upon a platitude that says, “the bible says it, and that settles it.” To borrow on the authority of God’s word in an opaque way doesn’t address the specifics in a detailed and articulate manner. Normally, this effort places our attention upon the level one category of biblical, historical, cultural, and interpretive understanding. While the authority of God’s word is unquestionably true and final, that does not necessarily get to questions of interest and resolve them. It is even better to get a clear understanding of what is otherwise left to confusion, exploitation, or personal economic gain.
As questions, concerns, or objections arise and become addressed, the Biblical Studies model here provides a way to step through each suitable and relevant area that matches our interests. It just isn’t responsive to make an end-run toward conclusions in the realm of systematic theology, or elsewhere. If along the way matching what we understand among biblical languages, biblical backgrounds, hermeneutics, and proper exegetical interpretation, there is a misunderstanding, confusion, or disagreement, then the overall view of the whole Bible comes into view in terms of the doctrine of inerrancy. Until finally, there is acceptance of the truth or willful rejection of God’s word and what it proclaims in terms of authorial intent.
As we match the right subject matter with pertinent questions, we assertively balance advocacy with inquiry to walk through an issue. To build a case in such a way where there is no room for misunderstanding and continued skepticism or Biblical illiteracy. So fluency in Biblical disciplines provides the certainty and confidence necessary for us to articulate the correct responses in areas that come about. Not as through successive approximation across Scripture, but by process of elimination among adjacent disciplines or categories of thought and persuasion. Applying effective use of this model provides a way to quickly get to the root of questions and beneath them to disprove presuppositions and together arrive at correct reasoning and truth.
It is one thing to enlighten people and bring them to recognize the truth. It is quite another that it should be accepted. Either way, we look to a principle as written by the Apostle Paul, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor 10:5). Hopefully and prayerfully, people who are laden by the influence of culture and its darkness, become receptive, take courage and set aside selfish interests contrary to their well-being.
