Written by R.C. Sproul |
Friday, February 18, 2022
The order of the process to destroy doubt is crucial. For example, the miracles of the Bible cannot and were never designed to prove the existence of God. The very possibility of a miracle requires that there first be a God who can empower it. In other words, it is not the Bible that proves the existence of God, it is God who through miracle attests that the Bible is His word. Thus proven, to believe the Bible implicitly is a virtue. To believe it gratuitously is not.

Spiritus sanctus non est skepticus—“The Holy Spirit is not a skeptic.” So Luther rebuked Erasmus of Rotterdam for his expressed disdain for making sure assertions. Luther roared, “The making of assertions is the very mark of the Christian. Take away assertions and you take away Christianity. Away now, with the skeptics!”
Doubt is the hallmark of the skeptic. The skeptic dares to doubt the indubitable. Even demonstrable proof fails to persuade him. The skeptic dwells on Mt. Olympus, far aloof from the struggles of mortals who care to pursue truth.
But doubt has other faces. It is the assailant of the faithful striking fear into the hearts of the hopeful. Like Edith Bunker, doubt nags the soul. It asks “Are you sure?” Then, “Are you sure you’re sure?”
Still doubt can appear as a servant of truth. Indeed it is the champion of truth when it wields its sword against what is properly dubious. It is a citadel against credulity. Authentic doubt has the power to sort out and clarify the difference between the certain and the uncertain, the genuine and the spurious.
Consider Descartes. In his search for certainty, for clear and distinct ideas, he employed the application of a rigorous and systematic doubt process. He endeavored to doubt everything he could possibly doubt. He doubted what he saw with his eyes and heard with his ears. He realized that our senses can and do often deceive us. He doubted authorities, both civil and ecclesiastical, knowing that recognized authorities can be wrong. He would submit to no fides implicitum claimed by any human being or institution. Biographies usually declare that Descartes was a Frenchman but his works reveal that he was surely born in Missouri.
Descartes doubted everything he could possibly doubt until he reached the point where he realized there was one thing he couldn’t doubt. He could not doubt that he was doubting. To doubt that he was doubting was to prove that he was doubting. No doubt about it.
From that premise of indubitable doubt, Descartes appealed to the formal certainty yielded by the laws of immediate inference. Using impeccable deduction he concluded that to be doubting required that he be thinking, since thought is a necessary condition for doubting. From there it was a short step to his famous axiom, cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am.”
At last Descartes arrived at certainty, the assurance of his own personal existence. This was, of course, before Hume attacked causality and Kant argued that the self belongs to the unknowable noumenal realm that requires a “transcendental apperception” (whatever that is) to affirm at all. One wonders how Descartes would have responded to Hume and Kant had he lived long enough to deal with them. I have no doubt that the man of doubt would have prevailed.
There were clearly unstated assumptions lurking beneath the surface of Descartes’ logic. Indeed there was logic itself. To conclude that to doubt doubt is to prove doubt is a conclusion born of logic.
Read More

Written by C.J. Williams |
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
The study of Old Testament types is not an end unto itself. It achieves its purpose, and we receive its benefit, only if the Lord Jesus Christ is exalted as He should be. The purpose of biblical typology may be discerned from two different outlooks—namely, from old covenant and new covenant vantage points. From the former perspective, typology served to breathe life into the promises of God by personifying and illuminating the promise of redemption.

What is typology? In essence, it is the way that God used history to bring His promises to life. God’s plan of redemption, brought to its fullness in the work of Christ, was not carried through history by the words of prophecy alone. Rather, it touched down in the experience of God’s people as particular individuals and events illustrated the promises of God in the covenant of grace. More specifically, the person and work of Jesus Christ was imprinted on the history that led to His incarnation. People and events in Israel’s history offered prophetic glimpses of the coming Savior and His work, reassuring them of the promise of His coming. This makes typology a vital link between the Old and New Testaments, which reassures us today of the continuing power and relevance of the Old Testament as a revelation of Jesus Christ.
The Greek word typos is used variously in the New Testament, usually translated as “form,” “image,” “pattern,” or “example.” In 1 Timothy 4:12, for instance, the Apostle Paul exhorts Timothy to “set the believers an example (typos) in speech, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity.” Some texts, however, use typos as a more precise term to designate elements or patterns in Old Testament history that were designed to foreshadow New Testament realities. Paul refers to Adam as a “type of the one who was to come,” explaining how Adam foreshadowed Christ as a representative of mankind (Rom. 5:14–21). The writer of Hebrews, contrasting the heavenly high-priestly ministry of Jesus with the earthly ministry of human priests, characterized the latter as those “who serve a copy (typos) and shadow of the heavenly things” (Heb. 8:4–5). A type is a foreshadow of something or someone greater, which we call the antitype.
Not every superficial parallel between the Old and New Testaments is an instance of typology, but only those that substantively foreshadow the redemptive work of God through Christ. Other examples include David (Matt. 22:41–45), Jonah and Solomon (Matt. 12:39–42), Moses (Heb. 3:1–6), Melchizedek (Heb. 7:1–19), the tabernacle and its sacrifices (Heb. 9:1–15), and the Temple (John 2:18–22). By a simple metaphor, Paul posits the typology vested in the Paschal Lamb: “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7).
Read More
Related Posts:

As society and the global church reaps in the coming decades the egalitarian fruit it has sown, the reality of its shortcomings will prove painful for many. Therefore, it is important that Christian parents teach their children, through godly instruction and through godly example, what Christian marriage is and what the ethos of the Christian home is to be. 

God has composed a melody for the Christian home—a sweet, pleasant, and satisfying tune, composed in such a way as to draw attention to its harmonies. God wrote the parts to this melody when he created humanity male and female, and through his Word he conducts his music in Christian homes today. God has graciously designed each household member with the desires, capacities, and opportunities needed to contribute to the choir. To join in the singing is fitting, right, and beautiful.
God’s melody for how the Christian home is to operate has in recent decades been called complementarianism. At the heart of complementarian theology has been the claim that men and women have equal and value dignity, but distinct roles in the church and home. Rooted in creation, however, the complementary vision of men and women also includes the claim that God has designed each gender with innate physical, psychological, and spiritual constitutions that are different from and yet complementary to one another. Like the various vocal parts in an acapella choir (bass, tenor, alto, etc.) coming together in one harmonious note, men and women have complementary parts to play in the melody of God’s design for the home. If one tries to imitate the sounds of the other, the harmony is ruined, and the song becomes discordant and jarring.
The complementary contributions of both men and women of the home are practically beneficial for everyone. And they create a harmony that non-complementary singing cannot replicate. Specifically, when men take godly initiative and when women are joyfully home-focused, the Christian home experiences practical benefits in ways that egalitarian home structures will never fully experience. Or, leaning again into the analogy, are men suited to sing soprano, or women bass? The musical discord resulting from egalitarianism role-swapping simply cannot practically compete with the beautifully sounding harmony of God’s complementary design.
The Deep Notes of Masculine Initiative
In the dissonant cultural imagination of modern Western society, masculine initiative-taking has seemingly hit an all-time low. From fewer men being the primary breadwinner than ever in American history to a successful dating platform where women make “the first move” to an outright rejection of men entirely by a growing movement in South Korea, today male initiative is neither widely celebrated nor expected. But God’s complementarian melody woos men to exercise masculine leadership for the benefit of the whole family. In this section, I want to highlight how the New Testament expects men to be the leaders of their families and show how this leadership may be expressed in two practical ways.
The New Testament expects men to lead their families. This is assumed when wives are called to follow their husbands’ leadership (Eph. 5:22–24, Col. 3:18; Titus 2:4–5; 1 Pet. 3:1–6), and it is also shown by the position of authority that husbands and fathers have in the household codes of Ephesians 5:22–6:9 and Colossians 3:18–4:1.[1] In Ephesians 5:22–33 particularly, the wife is called to submit to her husband’s leadership just as the church submits to Christ’s leadership. Those who would deny that men have a leadership role in their family must also deny that Christ exercises a leadership role in his relationship to the church.
But beyond the husband and wife relationship, men also have a unique responsibility in parenting. In Ephesians 6:1 children are to “obey their parents,” but just three verses later fathers specifically are commanded to discipline and instruct their children. Colossians 3:21 has the same interplay: children are commanded “obey your parents in everything,” and then in the next verse Paul particularly hones in and commands, “Fathers, do not provoke your children” (Col. 3:22). This is not to say that women will never discipline or instruct their children, but rather that fathers have a primary responsibility to do so, as Hebrews 12:7–10 also assumes (“For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?”). Now that we’ve established the biblical basis for male leadership in the home, let’s address the specifics of how this leadership is expressed in in taking initiative in the family’s spiritual life and in disciplinary matters.
First, a Christian man benefits his family by initiating in their spiritual lives in a variety of prudential ways. he considers how to be of greatest spiritual good to each of them. As leader, the husband keeps his pulse on each individual family member’s spiritual condition and needs. He initiates regular conversations about God’s Word and how it intersects with life (Deut. 6:4–8). He ensures that his family worships their God together regularly (Eph. 6:4; Psa. 78:5–7), and especially in the gathered congregation (Heb. 10:25). He guards his home from evil influences that would seek to turn his family away from Christ (Gen. 2:15). When there is no clear leader responsible for gathering the family, curating content, and leading conversation, a version of the Bystander Effect[2] occurs and family worship does not happen. Christian men see the tendency towards this reality and take action to preserve this important family rhythm.
Read More
Related Posts: