Appendix 1 - Is Propositional Revelation Nonsense?

There are two ways to consider the question of propositional revelation and infallibility. The first is through consideration of the presuppositions involved; and the second is through consideration of the detailed problems. This appendix will deal with the first. Until the first is in place, the second cannot be sensibly pursued.

To modern man, and much modem theology, the concept of propositional revelation and of the historic Christian view of infallibility is not so much mistaken as meaningless. It is so in the same way, and for the same basic reasons, that to most modern men and most modern theology the concept of sin and guilt, in any real moral sense, is meaningless. But, of course, one must ask if their presupposition is the proper and adequate one.

The Christian presupposition is that there was a personal beginning to all things - someone has been there and made all the rest. This someone would have to be big enough and this means being infinite. One still has the question of the personal infinite someone always having been there; but if this were the case the other problems would no longer exist. And anyway, everyone has to explain the fact that the universe and he, the individual, exist; and thus something has 'been there'!

Now if this personal infinite someone always having been there is the case, everything else would be limited in contrast to his own enough-ness, or infinite-ness. But just suppose that he made something limited but on his own wave-length - let's say, in his own image - then one would have both an infinite and non-created Personal and a limited created personal. On this presupposition the personality of the limited created personal would be explained, and on this presupposition why could not the non-created Personal communicate to the created personal if he wished? Of course, if the infinite uncreated Personal communicated to the finite created personal, he would not exhaust himself in his communication; but two things are clear here:

1. Even communication between once created person and another is not exhaustive, but that does not mean that for that reason it is not true. Thus the problem of communication from the uncreated Personal to the created personal would not have to be of a qualitatively different order from the communication between one created personal being and another. It would not be exhaustive, but there would not be any more reason because of this for it to be untrue than for the created-person to
created person communication to be untrue, unless the uncreated Personal were a liar or capricious.

2. If the uncreated Personal really cared for the created personal, it could not be thought unexpected for him to tell the created personal things of a propositional nature; otherwise as a finite being the created personal would have numerous things he could not know if he just began with himself as a limited, finite reference point.

In such a case, there is no intrinsic reason why the uncreated Personal could communicate some vaguely true things, but could not communicate propositional truth concerning the world surrounding the created personal - for fun, let's call that science. Or why he could not communicate propositional truth to the created personal concerning the sequence that followed the uncreated Personal making everything he made - let's call that history. There is no reason we could think of why he could not tell these two types of propositional things truly. They would not be exhaustive; but could we think of any reason why they would not be true?

The above is, of course, what the Bible claims for itself in regard to propositional revelation.

If the uncreated Personal wished to give these communications through individual created personalities in such a way that they would write, in their own individual style, etc., the exact things the uncreated Personal wanted them to write in the areas of religious truth and things of the cosmos and history -then by this time it is pretty hard to make an absolute and say that he could not or would not. And this, of course, is the Bible's claim concerning inspiration.

Within this frame-work, why would it be unthinkable that the non-created Personal would communicate with the created personal in verbalized form, if the non-created Personal made the created personal a language communicating being? And we are (even if we would not know why), language communicating beings. There is only one reason to rule out as unthinkable that Jesus gave a propositional communication to Saul in verbalized form in the Hebrew language using normal words and syntax (Acts 2 6: 14), or that God did so to the Jews at Sinai: that is to have accepted the other set of presuppositions - even if, by using religious terminology, one obscures that one has accepted the naturalistic presuppositions. Now one may obscure what one has done in accepting naturalistic presuppositions by using religious terminology and saying
or implying: Jesus (without in this case having any way to know what that really is) gave to Saul some form of a first order, non-contentful experience, in which the words used in the biblical text to express this inexpressible are just words which reflect views of life, history, and the cosmos which were then current. If one does this, however, one is left with a faith which is equivalent to saying, 'I believe ...' without ever finishing, or being able to finish the sentence - or even knowing if a definite or an indefinite article comes next in the sentence.

Further, if the non-created Personal placed the communication he gave man in a book of history, why would it then be unlikely that the non-created Personal would communicate truly concerning the space-time history in that book? How strange that if the non-created Personal is not a liar or capricious, he should give 'religious truth' in a book in which the whole structural framework, implicitly and explicitly, is historical, and yet that history be false or confused. Surely, except on the preconceived presupposition that that book can only be 'man feeling upward' within the framework of the uniformity of natural causes, such an idea would be peculiar beyond measure. This is especially so, as the book itself gives no indication of two levels; it gives no indication of a 'religious truth' out of contact with the history in the book; it many times appeals to the history as open to verification as a proof of the truth of what is given; and it gives no indication of the enveloping space-time history being only so much error conditioned encrustation.

Why could not the non-created Personal teach the created personal truly on that level of knowledge which is the basis of so much of that which we know on the created personal level: namely, one who knows telling one who does not know, not exhaustively yet truly? Surely this is how we have our knowledge from other created personal sources. Further, why could not the non-created Personal also tell about himself truly (though not exhaustively) - unless we have already accepted the presupposition that that which is the 'non-created' must be the 'philosophic other'. If we begin with a non-created Personal creating man in his own image, what rules out the statement of the Westminster Larger Catechism that God made known to us, through the Scripture, what God is? Is there any reason why the non-created Personal could not so tell us truly about himself, though not exhaustively?

By this stage two things should be obvious: first that from the presupposition that all things started from mass or energy, the idea of either revelation or infallibility is unthinkable; and second that from the presupposition of a personal beginning, it is not unthinkable or nonsense at all. The reasonableness of the matter thus rests totally on which way one begins, that is on which presupposition one adopts at the outset.

If one starts with the impersonal everything, then the question naturally has nothing to do with even the possibility of an uncreated Personal communicating to a created personal; that, from that premise, is nonsense. Yet if one does begin with this non personal everything, there is a question that now really shouts, and that is: is not man to man communication also equally nonsense?

With this presupposition no one has discovered a way to find meaning either -in man's speaking to man or in man's hearing, except through an act of faith against their whole basic presuppositional structure. Worse yet, for those who hold this other presupposition, the little men (I and the others) are not content to think that they do not speak meaningfully; and everything in experience convinces us that the others hear truly, though not exhaustively.

By this time, is this not something like a Francis Bacon painting? One must scream, but the whole situation is a lostness and a damnation, including the scream.

Well now, in the light of this total confusion to which the other presupposition (the impersonal + time + chance) leads us, the presupposition of a personal beginning is worth another very careful look. If everything did begin with that uncreated Personal beginning, then neither communication from the created personal to the created personal, nor from the non-created Personal to the created personal is unthinkable, for any reason I have ever heard or read. Nor is it even intrinsically unlikely.

The importance of all this is that most people today (including some who still call themselves evangelical) who have given up the historical and biblical concept of revelation and infallibility have not done so because of the consideration of detailed problems objectively approached, but because they have accepted, in analysed fashion or blindly, the other set of presuppositions. Often they have done this by means of injection without realizing what has happened to them. Of course, on this other set of presuppositions the communication of a Personal to personal is absurd. But so is the communication of the little personals to the other little personals.

But there we go again ...

Having accepted the other presupposition against the evidence of true, though not exhaustive man-to-man communication, I wonder what would make them listen? It is strange to communicate truly the concept that one rejects the concept of a non-created Personal 'being there', when there is no way then to know the how, why, or what of
communication with my own kind. And the strangeness continues then to say that it is unreasonable per se to consider the fact of the non-created Personal being there, when that would explain the how, why, and what of the communication 1 do have with my own kind!

Having come to this point we can now start on the second part, the consideration of the detailed problems; but the historic view of the Bible and of the Church about revelation and infallibility no longer is per se nonsense; and even most of the detailed problems look very different once the nonsense connotation is dealt with.

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