The Logos Papers #59 The Logos Foundation – An Outline for The Logos Paideia

PAPER NO. 59

THE LOGOS FOUNDATION

An Outline for The Logos Paideia

The Gospel of the Kingdom
1. Repent (of root/original sin) for the kingdom is at hand.
2. The kingdom of God is the City of God, the Church—the People of God, obeying God’s law in all of life/culture.
3. The City of God has foundations (twelve) and walls and gates, to attain to the fullness of God in redemption vs. the City of Man/the World without God/Satan’s kingdom of Darkness.
4. The promise of the kingdom is from the beginning: man, the image of God, is to have dominion—rule to make God known, to fill the earth with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9).
5. The hope of the promise, now through Christ in the place of Adam, is still assured in the Sabbath. There will be rest when the work of dominion is completed.
Summary I: The Foundation is from three sources
1. General revelation is objectively clear to all by reason.
2. Special revelation (Scripture) is clear, in light of general revelation.
3. Historic Christianity is the work of the Holy Spirit leading the Church into all Truth (John 16:13).
4. The Church is to make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded (Matthew 28:19-20). Foundation is first principles.
5. The old foundation learned by tradition (Colossians 2:8) must be replaced. The new cannot be added to the old without harm of loss (Luke 5:37-38).
Summary II: The Moral Law is given to all in human nature (Deuteronomy 30:11-14; Romans 2:14-15), then in Scripture by the Ten Commandments. The Law is applied in precepts, statutes and ordinances and understood by meditation on the Law day and night.
1. God, as creator, is the determiner of good and evil (theonomy vs. autonomy).
2. True worship of God who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in all his attributes is opposed to all idolatry (gods created in one’s own image as finite, temporal, and changeable).
3. Integrity vs. hypocrisy—self-deception and self-justification in not seeking God.
4. Sabbath: only by completing the work of dominion (moral and then natural) can mankind achieve rest.
5. Authority, in all institutions, is rational not personal, based on insight, not might.
6. Man is the image of God: to affirm man’s rationality is to affirm human dignity.
7. True love in marriage (fidelity) is opposed to spiritual and physical infidelity.
8. Lasting value is by the use of talent in pursuit of the good vs. all forms of stealing.
9. Truth (the whole truth and nothing but the truth) is necessary and sufficient for justice.
10. Contentment (vs. all forms of discontent) is found only in pursuit of the good.
Summary III: from foundation to maturity, fruitfulness, unity, and fullness
1. Common ground requires reason, integrity, critical thinking and clarity.
2. There must be something eternal since there can be no being from non-being.
3. It is clear that only some is eternal and that therefore God the creator exists.
4. By special creation all of life is created each after its own kind, not by evolution.
5. In the solution to the problem of evil, natural evil (the curse) is due to moral evil.
6. Scripture is necessary since natural evil is a redemptive call back from moral evil.
7. Only Genesis, and what builds on clear general revelation, qualify as Scripture.
8. Christ has come, in the place of Adam, according to the promise in Scripture.
9. The creeds of Historic Christianity are by the work of the Holy Spirit (John 16:13).
10. Complete the work: take captive all unbelief in modernity and in post-modernity.
Common Ground (CG) is the set of epistemological conditions necessary for thought and discourse.
1. Reason, as the laws of thought, is the test for meaning. There are no square-circles, no a that is non-a. If a law of thought is violated there can be no meaning. Reason is the self-attesting light of nature in all men made in the image of God. It is the light of the Logos, the Word of God in all men. The darkness of unbelief cannot overcome it or withstand it (John 1:1-5).
2. Integrity is the concern for consistency, both logical and existential vs. lack of consistency in incoherence/absurdity/nihilism. The self-deception and self-justification of hypocrisy require increasing natural evil to confront one’s own moral evil in not seeing what is clear.
3. Critical Thinking consistently applied as a test for meaning to unexamined assumptions, is Rational Presuppositionalism (RP). If there is agreement on what is more basic there can/will be agreement on what is less basic. RP stands in contrast to empiricism/literalism and to non-cognitive mystical allegoricalism.
4. The Principle of Clarity (PC) affirms that some things are clear; the basic things are clear; the basic things about God and man and good and evil are clear to reason, so that unbelief is without excuse (Romans 1:20). Clarity is the cornerstone of the foundation.
The foundation is given in Scripture, first in narrative form, in Genesis 1–3, then in theological form derived from all of Scripture, particularly Hebrews 6:1-2.
1. The biblical worldview of creation–fall–redemption (Genesis 1–3) is understood only by diligently seeking, using good and necessary consequences, in a step-by-step process, beginning with the context of clear general revelation, as opposed to literalism and allegoricalism.
2. The foundation in theological form is summed in the seven pillars of the faith, by using good and necessary consequences to grasp assumptions and implications: clarity and inexcusability, sin and death, curse and promise, repentance and faith, justification and sanctification, baptism and calling, and resurrection and reward.
3. Contextualism is Rational Presuppositionalism applied to hermeneutics. It begins with the full clarity of general revelation, then with the biblical worldview of creation–fall–redemption, then with the unfolding history of redemption, then with the form of the book in that history, then with context of the chapter, then grammar of the sentence and word.
4. The Word of God in its fullness (the Logos) comes to man in several ways: in all men as reason, as general revelation in creation, as Scripture in redemptive history, in person in the incarnation, in creeds in Church history, by regeneration in each believer, and by sanctification as each grows in faith (John’s gospel—all).
The Historic Christian Faith is by the work of the Holy Spirit leading the Church into all truth (John 16:13). In response to challenges to the faith, the pastor-teachers, meeting in councils, after much discussion, come to agreement, summed up in creeds, delivered to all the churches for the unity of the faith. This is the holy, catholic, and apostolic faith by which doctrine and life must be examined. Councils may err and are subject to Scripture.
1. The Council of Jerusalem (ca. 50 AD) addressed (Judaic) literalism (recurrent in the Church) regarding the sacraments (here, circumcision).
2. The Apostles’ Creed (ca. 180) addressed the worldview of Greek dualism (evil is from the body) and by implication its gnosticism and mystical otherworldliness (vs. the earth filled with the knowledge of God).
3. Nicea (325) addressed the unity of diversity in the triune Godhead, and by implication in human nature.
4. Carthage (ca. 385) settled the canon of Scripture for the New Testament. The Jews preserved the Old Testament pure and entire.
5. Chalcedon (ca. 450) declared that two whole natures, divine and human, were united in Christ without conversion, composition or confusion).
6. Orange (ca. 550) affirmed the sovereignty of grace in the salvation of man against all degrees of Pelagianism, correcting false views of free will.
7. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1648) summed up six prior creeds of the Reformation as well as six in prior Church history in the context of the doxological focus of God’s work of creation and providence.
8. The challenges of modernity (1650–1950) of naturalism and secularism (against Greek dualism in the Church’s theology), and post-modernity (1950 to the present) of skepticism and pluralism (against fideism and pietism in the Church’s doctrine and life) require answers from yet another Church council. The Church must rebuild from the cornerstone of clarity.