Truth and Logic in East and West
Biblical Christians cannot embrace Eastern philosophy and religion and still be true to the biblical witness. While there might be some helpful teachings here and there, the overall scheme of things is in direct contrast to what Christianity teaches, including the belief that there is absolute truth, and there are falsehoods that stand against these truths. There are real spiritual and theological and moral opposites, not just two sides of the same coin.
Before I became a Christian I spent a fair amount of time looking into Eastern philosophy and theology. I read many of the key works, and tried to get my head around Eastern thought. But then I became a Christian and I very quickly gave up on that worldview and way of thinking.
But of course I still have encounters with folks who embrace Eastern thought – be they Westerners like me who have looked into it, or those from the East itself. When it comes to discussing Christianity with them, it often boils down to a debate between how Westerners and Easterners think.
The common claim is that the West is rationalistic and logical while the East does not embrace this way of thought. Logic, we are told, is simply a Western concept, and things like the law of non-contradiction are fine in the West, but have no application for those in the East.
But is this actually the case? Are there two radically different ways of thinking and viewing the world, and never the twain shall meet? No, is my short answer. And to tease this out further, let me mention a comment that came in to a social media post I had done. I had been discussing a common debate found in Christian theology. And with my morning Bible reading spurring me on, I had said this:
Hundreds of biblical passages speak to the fact that God is fully sovereign and in control. Hundreds of biblical passages speak to the fact that people are responsible for the choices that they make. How these two truths cohere will remain a mystery this side of heaven. But a number of times both truths are fully affirmed in a single verse, such as Mark 14:21: “For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.”
Since this can be such a hot potato topic with so many getting all hot and bothered theologically, I added a comment saying that those who want to start WWIII over this are advised to take it elsewhere. After all, with entire libraries devoted to these issues, we will just not get very far arguing in tiny Facebook comment boxes.
Well, things were going pretty good with folks seeming to respect my wishes. But then someone came along from unexpected quarters. I had expected an ornery Calvinist or a grumpy Arminian to write in, but it did not occur to me that I would get into a debate with an Easterner – in this case an Asian Christian friend. She sent in this comment:
“It’s a problem because western intellectual history is based on Aristotle’s non-contradiction theory. The Eastern mind has no problems accepting contradictions. In fact that ability is a sign of intelligence. However, in the west, it’s considered illogical. BTW the Bible is essentially an Eastern book.”
I thanked her and gave her a brief response, but assured her that a much longer piece would be needed to give this topic due justice. So what follows is an expanded version of what I had said to her. It was not entirely clear if she was saying that this is how Eastern folks tend to think (which is certainly the case), or whether she was saying that she as a Christian believed this as well. This then is my response.
God is a God of truth. And truth implies that there can be the absence or antithesis of truth – that is, falsehood. Lies and truth are not two sides of the same coin, of yin and yang. They are in fact polar opposites. God does not lie nor can he lie. And falsehood and truth can never cohere or live together in some sort of peaceful harmony.
Moreover, the laws of logic, including the law of non-contradiction, are NOT theories invented by Aristotle. He, along with others, may have helped to ‘discover’ and codify these laws (for which we can all be grateful), but he did not create them. In the same way Isaac Newton did not create the law of gravity; he simply discovered it.
The laws of logic have to do with the nature of truth, and our God is a perfectly true God, so he too is logical, and he does not contradict or repudiate himself. So these basic truths of thought and rationality are rooted in the very nature of God. They exist in God and he has revealed these truths to us. That God cannot lie or contradict himself is consistent with who he is. He is a God of truth, and we too are created to live this way – to live in truth and to confront falsehood.
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When You do not Dare to Go Alone
Your Savior who is your elder brother, will come to meet you at just the right time. In his hand will be the lantern of all the precious promises he has made, and this will be the lamp to your feet and the light to your path. He will lead you through the dark night and into the brightest day. He will accompany you to the place where your family awaits you and longs to see you, the place where a great supper has been laid out for you, the place where God himself is ready to welcome you home.
I was once told the story of a child who had been invited to spend a sunny summer day playing with his friends. He lived in a rural area and it took him a good bit of time to make the trek. But the child made his way toward his friends as they made their way toward him and eventually they came upon one another halfway. Soon they were climbing trees and jumping creeks and skipping rocks and generally having the time of their lives.
Around dusk, the boy realized he should begin his return journey. But just as he was about to say his farewells, one of the other lads began to tell a story. The child, once drawn in, couldn’t force himself away. He sat in rapt attention as the story progressed, as the action waxed and waned, as the hero faced peril and emerged victorious.
By the time the story was complete, the sun had dipped behind the distant horizon. Now the boy gazed into the gathering darkness and realized he was afraid to set out by himself. He asked his friends to come with him, but they all needed to return in the opposite direction. As the boy dawdled and tried to work up his courage, the sun’s last rays disappeared from the sky. He fretted about his family, wondering if they were concerned about what had become of him.
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The End of the World in Malachi
The final book of Old Testament prophesy prepares the covenant people for the blistering reality that most of them will be treated as chaff, violently removed from the root, set ablaze as a withered shrub, and punished for their unfaithfulness to the law of Moses (4:4) and their hardened hearts towards the prophets (4:5). Some will be saved if they repent, as we see in the New Testament. But, most of the Jews will have the fury of God poured out upon them in a sudden and horrifying display of God’s power and purity.
Eschatological Turkey Shootin
As a boy, some of my fondest memories came when my grandfather and I would steal away from the house, with a couple of 20 gauge shotguns in his rusted-out old Ford pickup truck, and go down to the turkey shoot at the nearby moose lodge. In those days, a “turkey shoot” was not about traipsing through the North Carolina woods to nab a herd of unsuspecting foul, but to gather around a fire with a group of like-minded southern boys, all shooting competitively at paper targets lined up methodically in the distance. The reward for cutting out the cross-hair in a particular round was a corresponding cut of delectable meat. In fact, some of the best bacon I’ve ever tasted came from winning one of the many turkey shoots that I have been a part of.
Although my weapon of choice – a modest Remington 1100 with a standard choke, was not all that much to look at – it consistently delivered a tight pattern of buck shots through the paper target before me and netted me plenty of victories. Even while all the competitors’ targets contained hundreds of small holes, the winner simply needed one strategically placed hole, right in the very center, to cut out the crosshairs and win the round. This reminds me of the current debacle that we are facing in eschatology.
These days, there are hundreds of stray positions spread out across the riddled canvas of modern end times studies. And yet, no matter how many holes there are in our thinking, almost none of them have brought us nearer to the Biblical center and to the point of Christ’s amazing victory. My aim in this series, is to narrow our focus onto the heart of the matter, focusing on (what I believe to be) the single buckshot of Biblical truth, that will open up this field of study for us and help us understand everything the Bible has to say on the matter. When we do that, eschatology will bring us hope, peace, and great joy as we await our savior’s return. Think about it this way, if a single buckshot at the center of a paper target will gain a man the most joyful and bacon-infused victory, how much more will a single concept, aimed right at the center of Biblical eschatology, not only expose us to the kind of victory and Kingdom that Jesus has purchased for us, but will make us leap like calves! But, let us not get ahead of ourselves.
The Buckshot of Biblical Eschatology
That concept, which we spoke about last time, is that there are two kinds of “second comings” described in the Bible. There is a past tense, spiritual and covenantal, non-bodily coming of Jesus, when He raises up the Romans to rain down judgment upon apostate Jerusalem in AD 70. And there is the future tense, physical, and bodily coming of Jesus at the end of human history, where He will come and separate all people according to their election and will deliver the saints to the never-ending Kingdom of heaven. One coming has already happened to national Israel. One coming will happen in the future to spiritual Israel (Gal. 6:16). And, knowing the difference between these two events could be the difference between eschatological defeat or victory, confusion or clarity, despair or abiding delight.
So, with that in mind, my goal over the next several weeks will be to focus on the judgment coming of Christ against Jerusalem in AD 70 (The first kind of “coming” in the Bible). In doing that, I want to show you all of the various passages that deal with that harrowing event, expose their meaning in proper Biblical context, and to extricate them forever from the stranglehold of dogmatic eschatological futurism and put them firmly back in their place as fulfilled prophetic events. Then, after we have spent several weeks looking at the past, we will do well to end this series on eschatology by looking at the grand and glorious future Christ has won for us.
The Judgment of Christ in Malachi
In our modern Bibles, the last book of the Old Testament section is called Malachi (which in Hebrew means “My messenger”).
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The Whole Christian Life Every Sunday
In this brief service, we have the whole Christian life neatly summed up. And as we progress through such a service, we trust that the downcast are lifted up and encouraged, that the apathetic are stirred and challenged, that the weary are fed and revived. We trust that they can take what they have experienced on Sunday morning and imitate it through the week as they live the Christian life—they, too, can pray and read and learn and sing and serve. On Sunday we give believers what they need not just on Sunday but on every other day as well.
A well-planned worship service is a tremendous blessing to those who participate in it. A well-planned service is not necessarily one in which the projector never flickers and the microphones never buzz, or one in which the transitions are smooth and the sermon doesn’t go long. Rather, a well-planned service is one whose elements have been carefully planned to fulfill God’s purposes for the public gatherings of his church.
How, then, do we plan our services? What elements should a service have? There are many ways to answer the question, but at minimum, the service needs to have singing, praying, Scripture-reading, and preaching. On a regular basis, if not every week, it should also have the Lord’s Supper. Each of these elements is demanded or displayed in the New Testament.
But I want to look at it from another angle that I believe can be helpful in planning our services. It’s unfortunate but realistic to assume that many people come to church on Sunday having given little thought to their faith the previous week. Many people worship on Sunday, then get busy living their lives and neglect the disciplines of the Christian life. They mean to pray, but don’t discipline themselves to actually pray; they intend to read the Bible, but allow laziness or the tyranny of the urgent to keep them away. Then a new Sunday approaches and they come to church feeling weak and needy and probably a little bit guilty.
Such people are genuine believers, but immature ones or ones who are going through those tough periods of spiritual stagnation.
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