The Biblical Triune God Alone Meets The Preconditions For Human Intelligibility

What do we mean by 'preconditions for human intelligibility'?

Preconditions would be the conditions needed beforehand to make something work. For example, the preconditions for a tornado would be certain weather factors. Otherwise, the tornado would never form.

Human intelligiblity is the making sense of the human experience. For example, explaining why we observe what we do would be an element of that.

When the two above definitions are put together, it comes out to be something like the following question. What previously existing conditions are neccessary to make sense of the human experience? Furthermore, what worldview/philosophy does not reduce the human experience to nonsense or what we typically call abusrdity?

Believe it or not, this has been the age old question. How do we ground knowledge, being (that we really exist), and ethics ? There are two fundamental approaches to this. Man can either start from himself and rely on his best speculation, or he can turn to Divine Revelation.

The former always ends in absurdity because man must be omniscient to know that he really exists first and foremost. However, because he is not omniscient, he cannot break through the wall that separates himself from the world as it really is (noumenal) and what he thinks he observes (phenomenal). This is known as Kant's Wall after the philosopher Immanual Kant. It is not as though what he observes is inherently wrong, it is just that starting from himself, he cannot ultimately justify any piece of knowledge as reliable.

Man finds himself in a dilemma, and this is espeically evident in the realm of ethics and law. For example, one man believes that murder is evil, while another states that he gains pleasure from inflicting harm upon another human being. Starting from man, neither person is able to justify his own position nor refute the other person's ethical stance. Moral relativism is then the fruit of this philosophic worldview, and this creates immediate disaster. 'Do what is right in your own eyes according to your own reason' becomes a real problem when you are the victim of rape, murder, etc. Starting from himself to establish a foundation for being, knowledge, and ethics always results in a worldview that self-destructs.

The latter position from Divine Revelation gives man the needed basis for being, knowledge, and ethics because it comes from a Divine Omniscient Source that is the fountainhead for all of the above Who then tramits this information to man via an intelligible means of communication (ie it is not in some incomprehensible code). However, there are a number of texts that are reported as being Divine Revelation, and they tend to stand in contradistinction from one another. Which one is correct, if any?

The two central competitors tend to be The Bible (Old and New Testaments as understood in traditional orthodoxy--excluding cults) and the Koran. This is extremely important because if neither are correct, then man is hopeless without any ability to even know that he exists and that this is not all just one big illusion at best. Even moreso, man has no purpose, no basis for knowledge, and certainly no basis for law or hope of a conscious afterlife.

In order to evaluate any worldview, it is best to look at its presuppositions and see how it espouses not to make nonsense of human intelligibility (See Greg Bahnsen). Besides textual errancy issues with the Koran (like its misrepresenation of how Christians have framed the Trinity--see Dr. James White for further on this at alpha omega ministries), the Koran denies justice because it allows for sinful humanity to enter heaven without an infinite eternal substitionary atonement. When justice is denied in this arena, then God is no longer just and anarchy immediately erupts leading the worldview to absurdity. On the contrary, within the Biblical Worldiview, just is not denied and anarchy does not erupt because of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ Who is God the Son the Second Person of the Trinity.

The ultimate presupposition that sets Christianity apart from everything else is that one must presuppose a world where the Biblical Triune God exists to then argue against it. For example, in order to argue against the Biblical God, one must presuppose a universe that He has created in which human intelligibility exists. Otherwise, knowledge is only an illusion at best, and even that statment is but an illusion, ad infinitum. In that, Christianity is proven because one could not prove anything otherwise. This is called the Transcendental Arugument.

Therefore, apart from Divine Revelation as transmitted in the Bible, man would have no basis for being, knowledge, and ethics. However, God in Christ as revealed in the Bible not only gives us the preconditions for human intelligibility, but the Scripture also explains why we observe what we observe in the world around us. In our sin, we rebel against God as revealed in the Bible because in it we see that God requires repentance and submission. Our rejection of the Bible does not negate its truthfulness, inspiration, inerrancy, authority, and sufficiency, but it does magnify our rebellion. Man would rather indulge in moral relativism or chase after a false representation of the One True God therby accepting all of the devastating consequences it produces than submit to Him who is Holy, Holy, Holy! Sin therefore is truly shown to be utterly sinful! Amen!