<< But the principle can be deduced from Scripture. The Bible teaches that God is infallible, that the Bible is his infallible revelation, that God controls all things, that man is fallible, that man’s sensations and intuitions are fallible, etc., etc. — put them together, and BAM, you have Scripturalism. >>
If this is true, then Cheung should be able to arrange these propositions into a formal logical argument such that the conclusion follows by strict implication from the major and minor premises.
Says Cheung: ”An inference is valid only if you can write it out as a syllogism and show that the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises.”
In addition, how does Cheung know what the Bible teaches? He posits occasionalism as his mechanism. And he claims to deduce occasionalism from Scripture.
Ah, but herein lies a vicious circle. Unless he already knows, apart from Scripture, that Scripture is an object of knowledge, how can he ever know that the Bible is his source of information?
Likewise, unless he already knows that occasionalism is true, how can he ever know that this is the true mechanism which puts his mind in contact with the propositions of Scripture?
You see, for Cheung, Scripture is like a safe. Occasionalism is the combination. But there’s one little snag: the combination is locked away in the safe.
Cheung is telling us that he gets the combination (occasionalism) from the safe. But he can only open the safe if he already has the combination in hand.
How does he know that occasionalism is the correct combination to open the safe if the combination is written on a piece of paper inside the safe?
So this is his dilemma: if he can open the safe without knowing in advance what’s inside, then his knowledge is not limited to what’s inside the safe.
But if he can’t open the safe without knowing in advance what is inside, and if the contents of the safe are his only source of knowledge, then he can’t know anything at all.
So, you see, Cheung is cheating. He is tactically assuming an insider’s knowledge which he, as an outsider, can never enjoy. That's his secret fudge-factor.
<< It is amusing to me that some presuppositionalists have been so passionately arguing against my anti-empiricism that it is as if they are now defending empiricism, and in a manner that often contradicts what they would say when they argue against evidentialism in apologetics. >>
How does Cheung happen to know that his critics are presuppositionalists? Did he deduce this from Scripture?
Indeed, as far as Cheung is concerned, Playboy magazine could supply the incidental occasion for the transmission of Biblical propositions.
ReplyDeleteFor that matter, would it not be more economical, on Cheung's view, to eliminate the Bible altogether? What's the material difference between occasionalism and direct, private revelation?
Cheung's scripturalism reminds me of a quote from Pascal, in Pensees 582.
ReplyDelete"We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from charity is not God, but His image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship; and still less must we love or worship its opposite, namely, falsehood."
Even Calvin notes this recondite concept of our knowledge of God and of ourselves.
"Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone." (Institutes I:1)
Would it be to eastern to say we can know God in ourselves, only if we learn to know know ourselves in God ?
I have to wonder about a man (if he is one) who hides behind an alias and is afraid to put his name to his work, including the many “deep philosophic critiques” he posts on the web. Aside from his near total ignorance of the Scripturalism of Gordon Clark, many of his comments, including the one above, reveal more of an aversion to the truths of Scripture and the Westminister Confession than anything relevant to Scripturalism. Consider the “other propositions” Scum would have us inquire as presumably additional sources of truth and knowledge completely apart from Scripture. The WCF 1.2 states that the Scriptures were “given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life.” I would have thought faith and life pretty much covered everything, but maybe Scum has some additional application? Disbelief and death perhaps? As homework he should be forced to look up all the references from where this doctrine is drawn then explain to the Christian what other sources of knowledge he should consult apart from Scripture for “guidance.” Additionally, God through Isaiah commands us; “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” To the careful reader, Isaiah is of course chastising those who would make similar claims as this particular version of pond scum.
ReplyDeleteOTOH I can see Scum’s appeal when I consider 2Tim 4:3. Van Tilians and like minded dialecticians need all the reassurance they can get.
Sean Gerety