Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God > Status Update

"Thus in counselling people with problems, we generally seek to ascertain three things: (1) What was the situation (the problem)? (2) How are you responding to it? (3) What does Scripture say? For the Christian these questions are interdependent. The individual and the Scripture are part of the situation, the situation and the Scripture are parts of the person's experience, and an analysis of the situation and person helps to show us what Scripture says (i.e., how it applies in this case). In non-Christian ethics, however, these three factors tend to get separated or totally lost in one another. Kant's ethics makes much of the moral law (and to some extent of the self), but on his theory, the situation makes no significant contribution to the ethical decision. For John Stuart Mill, however, right behavior may be calculated almost entirely on the basis of situational factors. And for Sartre, only the ethical self seeking authenticity deserves any attention. Non-Christian ethics tends to absolutize or to eliminate one factor or another, because it seeks to find some absolute reference point outside God's revelation and because it has no resources for showing how all these factors work together. Scripture, however, tells us that God is in control, is the authority, and is present; therefore the situation, law, and person are part of an organic whole, together revealing God's lordship."

"Theology is the application of God's Word by persons to all areas of life."

"Scripture is language. It has its own rational order, and gives a perfect, normative, rational description and analysis of the facts of redemption. It is not the job of theology, therefore, to supply such a normative description and analysis; that account has been given to theology by revelation. Theology, then, must be a secondary description, a reinterpretation and reproclamation of Scripture, both of its propositional and of its nonpropositional content. Why do we need such a reinterpretation? To meet human needs. The job of theology is to help people understand the Bible better, not to give some sort of abstractly perfect account of the truth as such, regardless of whether anyone understands it or not. Rather, the job of theology is to teach people the truth of God. Although Scripture is clear, for various reasons people fail to understand and use it properly. Theology is justified not merely by its correspondence with the truth-if that were the criterion, theology could do no better than simply to repeat Scripture—but theology is justified by the help it brings to people, by its success in helping people to use the truth."

""Objectivism" continues to be a danger in orthodox Christian circles. It is all too easy for us to imagine that we have a higher task than merely that of helping people. Our pride constantly opposes the servant model. And it is all too easy for us to think of theological formulations as something more than truth-for-people, as a kind of special insight into God himself (which the biblical writers would have written about, had they known as much as we). But no, theology is not "purely objective truth''; as we saw earlier, there is no such thing as purely objective truth, or "brute fact.' Our theologies are not even the best formulation of truth-for-people for all times and places; Scripture is that. Our theologies are merely attempts to help people, generally and in specific times and places, to use Scripture better."

Scripture is not broken, defective, or in need of repair. We are, and Scripture is our remedy.

"Application" therefore is always the goal of theology. What is application? Teaching (Gk. didache, didaskalia). "The use of revelation to meet the spiritual needs of people, to promote godliness and spiritual health."

"We learn the meaning of Scripture as we apply it to situations. Adam learned the meaning of "subdue the earth' as he studied the creation and discovered applications for that command. A person does not understand Scripture, Scripture tells us, unless he can apply it to new situations, to situations not even envisaged in the original text (Matt. 16:3; 22:29; Luke 24:25; John 5:39f.; Rom. 15:4; 2 Tim. 3:16f.; 2 Peter 1:19-21-in context). Scripture says that its whole purpose is to apply the truth to our lives (John 20:31; Rom. 15:4; 2 Tim. 3:16f.). Furthermore, the applications of Scripture are as authoritative as the specific statements of Scripture. In the passages referred to above, Jesus and others held their hearers responsible if they failed to apply Scripture properly. If God says "Thou shall not steal" and I take a doughnut without paying, I cannot excuse myself by saying that Scripture fails to mention doughnuts. Unless applications are as authoritative as the explicit teachings of Scripture (cf. The Westminster Confession of Faith, I, on "good and necessary consequence'), then scriptural authority becomes a dead letter. To be sure, we are fallible in determining the proper applications; but we are also fallible in translating, exegeting, and understanding the explicit statements of Scripture. The distinction between explicit statements and applications will not save us from the effects of our fallibility. Yet we must translate, exegete, and "apply'-not fearfully but confidently-because God's Word is clear and powerful and because God gives it to us for our good."

Frame sees no substantial difference between philosophy and theology. Both ask and deal with the same questions. Perhaps a Christian philosopher will spend more time reading and responding more directly to pagan philosophers.

Frame believes science must always conduct itself under the authority of the biblical text. If a scientific theory (evolution, for example) is shown to directly contradict Scripture, than it must be ruled out from the start.

Frame believes that theology establishes apologetics and never the other way around. We do not argue ourselves to accepting truth on "neutral" ground because there is no such thing as "neutral" ground. Once you have met your ideological opponent "in the middle" by abandoning the authority of God’s Word (regardless of how temporarily you mean to do so), you have made the exact same error Eve made.

"I have argued that the knowledge of God's law, the world, and the self are interdependent and ultimately identical. We understand the law by studying its relations to the world and the self-its 'applications'-so that its meaning and its application are ultimately identical. Thus all knowledge is a knowledge of the law. All knowledge also is a knowledge of the world, since all our knowledge (of God or the world) comes through created media. And all knowledge is of self, because we know all things by means of our own experience and thoughts. The three kinds of knowledge, then, are identical but 'perspectivally' related; they represent the same knowledge, viewed from three different 'angles' or 'perspectives.'"

"We must categorically reject some mysterious, intermediary thing called 'the meaning' that stands between the text and its application. Instead of increasing the objectivity of our knowledge, such an intermediary is a subjective construct that inevitably clouds our understanding of the text itself. That sort of subjectivity is especially evident in the theological con- text. Suppose that there is something called 'the meaning' of Scripture that is distinct from the text and from the applications of Scripture. Where would that meaning come from? In theology, who supplies the meaning? The exegete? The biblical theologian? The systematic theologian? The Christian philosopher? All of those have, at various times, claimed to supply the fundamental meaning of Scripture that all other forms of theology were supposed to seek to apply. But those various claims cancel one another out. No, the objective basis of theology is the text of Scripture, not any product of theological endeavor. Sola scriptura."