UNDERSTANDING THE TIMES
The Newsletter of Contend for the Faith, Inc

1 Chronicles 12:32

AUGUST 2001

Oh Canada! Doors Opened At Home and Away

Christian businessman in Canada named Ron Van Brenk. For full details on the conference you can check out this website or call Ron at (519) 264-9587.

I will be presenting workshops on two topics. “The Bible Under Fire” will answer the claims of critics and demonstrate the reliability of the Scriptures. “The Roman Catholic Church Under Fire” will compare official teachings of Catholicism with biblical doctrine.

Please pray for me as I prepare these messages with a special emphasis on reaching unbelievers, and please pray that the conference will be successful in drawing hundreds of people (both Christians and non-Christians) who will better understand Christianity as a result.

Also for 10 weeks this Fall I will be teaching a class at Calvary Church on Wednesday evenings called Love Your God With All Your Mind. The class will start on Sept. 12 and will continue through Nov. 14. The class is free and open to everyone. Here is the class description:

"Atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell claimed “Most Christians would rather die than think – in fact, they do.” Unfortunately his statement is found to be true too often in the evangelical church today. But Jesus said that the first and greatest commandment is to love God with all of our being – including our minds."

Join us for this class in which we will examine the place of the mind in the Christian life. We will study why and how we should develop our thinking for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith and principles in our culture. While a flabby mind is no badge of spiritual honor, learning to think biblically will demonstrate our love for God and help us to live wisely and well.

Please pray for me as I prepare for this series of classes.

PRAYER AND PRAISES

We are praising God for answering our prayer for a new scanner for the ministry. Someone donated one a few days after the request was made known. Thank you to all who prayed for us in this.

Please continue to pray for the provision of a projector to be used with a laptop computer for presentations. We would love to be able to get a new one, but if anyone knows of a good used projector for sale please contact us.

Please pray especially for the young woman we told you about in our last newsletter who is pregnant and hopes to see her Mormon boyfriend become a believer. Pray for her to be able to stand by her convictions that she cannot marry this man until and unless he renounces Mormonism and comes to Christ. Pray for him that the blindness will be taken away and he will see the errors of Mormonism and the truth of the Gospel.

Please pray for Mike, the Jehovah’s Witness in Texas, whose sister Annette wants to see him saved by grace. Their mother died unexpectedly, so pray for God’s comfort as well.

CONTENDING FOR THE FAITH

UNDERSTANDING HOW TO THINK: Part Two

In our last newsletter we discussed the biblical view of truth and the nature of truth. In this issue we will see how the definition of truth and the laws of logic will assist us in engaging in the debates concerning the issues of our day.

WHAT IS TRUTH?

Pilate asked this question of Jesus in John 18:38. Although Pilate was probably not asking it because he really wanted the answer, it is nevertheless a good question and one for which there is a good response.

Truth is simply that which corresponds to reality. A true statement connects with the reality or facts it describes. In the simplest terms, truth is telling it like it is. When someone makes a claim that accurately represents or reflects reality, that is a true statement. False statements fail to correspond to or reflect the way things really are.

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 b.c.) was one of the greatest thinkers who ever lived. He is responsible for codifying (not creating) the laws of logic which are the fundamental laws of all rational thought. Everyone uses these laws every day even though many have never heard of them.

There are three basic laws of logic:

The law of noncontradiction (A is not non-A)

The law of identity (A is A)

The law of excluded middle (either A or non-A)

The first law means that a thing is not other than itself. I am Dave Johnson and not anyone nor anything else in the universe. The second law means that a thing is what it is. The third law means that a thing, a person, or a proposition is either one thing or another but not both.

NONCONTRADICTION EXPLAINED

A good working definition of the law of noncontradiction is this: nothing can both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. That is, a proposition or statement cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same sense.

For example, if I say “Deborah is my wife” this is a true statement, but prior to September 9, 1995, it would have been a false statement. The opposite statement, “Deborah is not my wife,” was true until our wedding day but it is false today. But at no time could both of these contradictory statements be true in the same sense. She either is my wife or she is not.

Let’s suppose a teacher speaks about one of her students and says, “Mike is in class but he is not really here.” Is this statement totally illogical? Well, if the teacher means that her student is physically present but his mind is somewhere else, this statement does not violate the law of noncontradiction because she is speaking about two different aspects of her student (body and mind).

What if a Christian says, “I am righteous and I am unrighteous.” Is he contradicting himself? If the Christian, as with the last example, is referring to two different things, he is not making a contradictory statement. All Christians are righteous positionally because when one trusts in Christ for his salvation he trades his sinful position for the righteousness of God which is imputed to him (2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 4; Phil. 3:8-9). At the same time Christians have not attained sinless perfection as long as they are here on earth, so we are unrighteous practically because we continue to sin (Rom. 3:23; 1 John 1:8). Therefore Martin Luther could refer to Christians as “righteous sinners” without contradicting himself.

NOT JUST A GOOD IDEA

One of my professors at seminary had a sign on his door that read, “Noncontradiction: Not Just a Good Idea, It’s the Law.” It is crucial to have an understanding of the law of noncontradiction because there are those who say that contradictions within religious or philosophical thinking are acceptable and believable. They will defend an illogical system because they say it is only “western logic” that dismisses contradictions while “eastern logic” embraces them.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that a Hindu will use the law of noncontradiction in order to attempt to refute it. He says, “Eastern logic is true, western logic is false.” Either western logic is true or eastern logic is true, but they cannot both be true and the Hindu knows it. If one must use the law he is arguing against in order to disprove it, he defeats his own argument.

In the next newsletter we will see how the laws of logic can be used to defeat many of the arguments brought against Christianity and biblical principles.

Jude 3,
Dave

Posted under the Newsletter category on: Wednesday, August 1st, 2001 at 9:41 pm
(7 years, 5 months ago)
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