08122015InvestigatingAndDefendingTheGospels#1DonRuhl
Investigating and Defending the Gospels #1
Do Not Be a Know-It-All
Don Ruhl • Savage Street, Grants Pass, Oregon • August 5, In the year of our Lord, 2015
- What is a presupposition?
- Something we assume to be true before we investigate.
- Does everyone have presuppositions?
- How do presuppositions affect us?
- They affect how we see the world around us.
- Therefore, we want to be as objective as possible.
- What is objectivity?
- However, our presuppositions can get in the way.
- We all have ways of thinking of which we may not be aware.
- For example, during my first mission trip to Russia in 1993,
- I told myself that I was not going to be an American over there.
- I was not going to convert them to Americanism.
- Yet, as we talk with the interpreters especially,
- I discovered that shedding my Americanism
- was not as easy as I thought it would be.
- I had formed ways of thinking in my 36 years at the time,
- of which I was unaware.
- It took self-discipline to be only a Christian and
- only to speak of Christianity.
- My point is not about our being Americans, but
- there are things about us
- of which we are unaware.
- Therefore, let us look at the Gospels as open-minded as possible.
- Understand Our Culture
- Our culture puts the highest premium on science.
- Why do we value science so highly?
- Think of what it has done.
- Our culture believes
- that science will solve or explain every mystery of life,
- believing that everything has a natural explanation and
- not a supernatural explanation.
- That is their presupposition.
- Our culture believes
- that science is the only true determiner of truth.
- This philosophy is naturalism or scientism.
- They even place this above historical documentation.
- Therefore, they reject the accounts of the Gospel writers.
- This leads them to reject any supernatural explanation.
- One evolutionary biologist and geneticist, Richard Lewontin, said,
“Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
- People conclude that God does not exist or that Jesus never existed, because
- they have pre-determined that belief.
- Therefore, when they examine the evidence,
- they do not find what they say will persuade them that Jesus existed.
- They conclude He did not.
- They began their investigation with their conclusion.
- How do we deal with this kind of thinking?
- First, we have to acknowledge in ourselves that we have presuppositions.
- Second, we need to see that he who denies such is either naive or lying.
- Third, understand that everyone wants to believe he is objective.
- Fourth, we can still discover the truth even with our presuppositions.
- We expect juries to operate this way.
- Can’t evolutionists and creationists do the same?
- Fifth, we have to understand that they believe miracles cannot happen.
- They believe that everything has operated in the past as it does now.
- If there is a God,
- He created everything,
- Jesus is His Son, and
- the miracles Jesus did are small
- in comparison to the first sentence of the Bible,
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1.1).
- For a God who can do such things,
- is turning water to wine or
- raising the dead all that big of a deal?
- Sixth, acknowledge that natural laws do exist and explain many things.
- Our culture puts the highest premium on science.
- Therefore, let us not be know-it-alls, but
- let us keep our minds open.
- Our approach might open up the hearts of others,
15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; 16 having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed (1Pe 3.15–16).
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