faith for faith

The Gospel is the focal point of all history. It is upon the Gospel and its accomplishment on the Cross of the Lord Jesus that our very history is measured, for, expectedly, when God becomes a man and dwells among men, the world is turned upside down. For the Jews, it was the end of their worship of Yahweh as they knew it, for the very center of their worship, the Temple, was destroyed by God in 70 A.D. to demonstrate emphatically that Christ is the true Temple—the only acceptable means of worship for those who would worship the Father in Spirit and Truth.¹ For the Gentiles, it was the fulfillment of God’s Promise to Abraham: “Through your Offspring shall all the Nations be blessed,” and it was the fulfillment of the prophecy of the psalmist: “Yahweh said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you; ask of me, and I will give the Nations as your heritage, and the ends of the earth as your possession.’”²

Likewise, the Gospel is the focal point of wisdom, for in it God was pleased to reveal himself most fully in his Son, Jesus Christ, who is one with the Father and the very manifestation of the Father in human flesh.³ It is only through the Gospel that we, who were once enemies of God and ignorant of his ways, have access to the Father and to him who is the Author of Wisdom.⁴ Therefore, if we as mere creatures are to obtain any knowledge about God and the supernatural, we must go through Jesus Christ and the Gospel.

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For those of who you who know me well and / or have been keeping up with my blog posts, I have been for the past week, mediating, with great conviction, upon the place of philosophy in theology and particularly on how Christians should utilize philosophy within the spheres of evangelism, apologetics, systematic theology, etc. While I gladly affirm what Arthur Holmes penned over three decades ago, namely, “All truth is God’s truth,” I, apparently opposed to many, think that our endeavors in philosophy should be guarded in the least if not strictly bounded in areas. My reasons for thinking thus are not grounded in a desire for ignorance or in some mystical notion of reality, but it is grounded solely on the biblical declarations of the nature of revelation and capability of men. Therefore, I hope that at the end of this series on Christianity and Philosophy that you will find that it began in the Word of God and that it ended in the Word of God. For I will hold steadfastly and without wavering to this one supposition—though God has revealed himself in his Creation, it is only the Word of God that is perfect and perceivably true—it is only the Word of God that revives the soul, that enlightens the eyes, that makes wise the simple, and that makes hearts to rejoice (cf. Ps. 19:7-11). For this reason, I make my prayer the prayer of psalmist, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, o Yahweh, my Rock and my Redeemer” (Ps. 19:14).

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