My family and I watched a lecture last night by Greg Bahnsen. Judging from a reference to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which had just come out, he must have delivered the lecture in 1991. Sadly, Bahnsen died young from medical complications to a surgery at age 47 in 1995, so he is no longer with us, but his taped lectures and written material remains to provoke us to deeper thought and study, especially in the areas of God’s law (theonomy) and presuppositional apologetics.
In his lecture, Bahnsen told a large group of teens who were headed for college that they should expect their professors to either overtly or covertly challenge Biblical teaching and the students’ faith. One of the main tools our enemy uses is the suggestion that honest people should always start thinking and studying from a neutral position. They say we should rid our minds of all presuppositions, get rid of any undergirding principles or thoughts, wipe away anything our parents or preacher might have tried to teach us, and tackle the questions of life from ground zero.
It’s a Trick and a Trap!
This idea of starting at a neutral position sounds right. I have heard Christians say that when you reason with atheists it’s not fair to bring God into the picture until they are convinced God exists, so we must start from where they are and argue from there.
Basically, we are told to put down our shield, take off our helmet, remove our breastplate, and unstrap our sword. Okay—now fight.
They want us to act as if we don’t believe anything and then tackle the hard questions of life, because that’s “fair.”
Bahnsen pointed out that no one does this! Those professors who demand we do that do not do that themselves. They tell us to put down our weapons while they keep theirs pointed at our head, and we are foolish enough to do it!
It’s not only foolish; it’s unbiblical and unfaithful.
“See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in Him, who is the head of all rule and authority” (Colossians 2.8–9).
We are not to put down our faith and try to reason like the world. If we do, we do not have the mind of Christ.
There are two minds at work in this world, and Paul describes them in Ephesians 4.
The Mind of the World Without Christ
“Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity” (Ephesians 41.17–19)
Why would we accept the terms of those we know are darkened in their understanding? They demand we think like them for a little while, but they need to learn to think properly. They cannot think properly apart from Jesus and the Holy Spirit (Romans 8.7). They wander around in their own darkness, the blind leading the blind, everyone tumbling over cliffs.
The Mind of Christ
“But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about Him and were taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4.20–24).
Once you see it you can’t unsee it, right? If you truly are with Christ, you can’t reverse course without completely giving Him up. If I am created in God’s likeness and I’m walking in the Spirit, how can I pretend to be like the world for the sake of trying to “fairly examine” my presuppositions? They want me to abandon my faith and look at it from the outside, and their real plan is to convince me of the foolishness of the cross.
Don’t Lay Down Your Sword
If you have the mind of Christ, you do not doubt the existence of our Good Father, and you are not going to pretend even for a moment that He does not exist, because that’s abject foolishness! It’s against everything true and right and beautiful in God’s created world. How ungrateful of the creature to pretend his Creator isn’t there.
It’s the same form of reasoning our woke friends push on us when they demand we pretend there are more than two sexes or that one sex can transform into the other. They ask that we put down the truth and pretend along with them, hoping we will succumb to their false view of the world.
There is only one true way this world works, one purpose for God’s creation, one plan for life, salvation, and redemption of mankind. All other ideologies and worldviews spin off into outer darkness and will end with weeping and gnashing of teeth.
So don’t pretend. Don’t lay down your sword. Unashamedly wield the Scriptures as the One True God’s direct communication to mankind.