The world as we know it (this planet earth) was given to us according to our faith. Your eyes and ears and your senses detect the world and interpret it. Of course it "starts" from us; where else can we begin to see and hear from? And what we see and hear and feel affects what we think and believe.
Ah, if you believed in and trusted the Holy Scriptures, then you would have a complete answer to your question. The Renaissance men could not begin to answer it either, so you are not alone at all. The problem with your (and their) view is that you have no answer at all to the problem of unifying the universals with the particulars. It can't be done if you start with man. Leonardo, as brilliant as he was, died a broken man trying. But he couldn't let go either. Man always had to come first.
Under your (and their) view you have no hope of ever answering the eternal questions that give meaning to a man's life, to his very existence. That's because man wasn't around when all that happened. One can NEVER reach eternal truth by starting with finite man.
FK: And it was because of this thinking that they were never able to find unity between God and man.
Mankind never claimed to have all the answers.
I never said anything about ALL the answers. I'm only talking about the most important ones. :)
Our mind simply cannot comprehend beyond a certain point. Finding unity with God would mean we have resolved the mystery of Creation.
No, I believe you make the mistake of assuming that unity only means nothing or EQUALITY. It doesn't. Unity means according to God's purpose. Our knowledge of God cannot be exhaustive, but it can nevertheless be very meaningful. This was beyond the comprehension of Renaissance philosophers because they were so focused on man. When the focus is turned to God, then our place in the universe becomes apparent, and it is good.
No Renaissance man will ever say that mankind created the world.
That's right, they will say what you say, that some unknowable "thing" did it. And, that we can never understand anything about that thing, which we will call "God". Therefore, for answers we must start from what we do know, man. Thus, the cycle of futility begins.
What we know is that all this exists. How some things evolves or resulted is revealed by various methods discovered by mankind, by connecting the dots. It doesn't really explain the ultimate Cause, but only the secondary ones. No one ever claimed to know how it all began.
Reformed and other Bible-believing Christians DO. :) We always have.
Logic tells us that before there was something, there was nothing (but our logic is not necessarily universal!). Science stops at that point, but we (believers) don't. We say God "existed" before existence but we have no explanation for it. Our belief is not objective reality.
If we start with man, you're right, there is no explanation. However, if we start with God then we know that for a thing to exist it must have been ultimately created by something. So, since God is uncreated and is the Creator of all things, that your use of the word "existence" must refer to everything outside of God. He existed before anything (else) existed as humans perceive existence. The person who starts with man says this is made up fantasy because it can't be proved by man's standards. No man was there before existence, therefore there is no witness, therefore it cannot be true, therefore there is no answer.
FK: The OT massacres (carried out righteously by humans) were always IN OBEDIENCE to God according to the scriptures.
Sounds like something straight out of the Koran.
Once again, I could not possibly care less what the Koran does or doesn't say. It doesn't affect what the word of God says. In that word I trust completely.
For the rest if us from the Apostolic side, we will fervently pray for the everyone's souls and hope that God will remember us in His Kingdom.
You can wish for and we will trust in.
Under your (and their) view you have no hope of ever answering the eternal questions that give meaning to a man's life, to his very existence. That's because man wasn't around when all that happened. One can NEVER reach eternal truth by starting with finite man.
AMEN! Beautifully said.
That's one reason I really enjoy Van Til. Through the Scriptures, he kept stepping back farther and farther as he contemplated the sovereignty of God. Yes, creation is by God. Yes, all life is by God. Yes, breathing is by God. Yes, thinking is by God. Yes, believing is by God. Until he came to the realization that everything is by and for and through the eternal Triune God. We think God's thoughts after Him. This life which appears rational and ordered to our temporal minds is so much less than we imagine while the spiritual realm is so much greater than we can ever know.
Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." -- James 4:13-14"Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:
Sometimes it takes a radical discontinuity to really impress us with the precariousness of this earthly life and how much we depend on God for everything. We were in a bad earthquake a few years ago and our house was destroyed. Just before dawn the earth shook and the walls of our home began to collapse onto my family; I thought we were all dead.
I had never experienced that feeling before; it was unlike anything else. Though it lasted for only seconds, it was pure dread. It was black and hopeless and final. And most of all, it was a feeling of fragility. Everything I knew and was supported by and lived through evaporated in an instant. Life became almost brittle at that moment, sucked dry of everything I thought sustained me. Instead, life was about to shatter into a million pieces under the weight of cement and concrete and wood and plaster, and my family and I were about to be extinguished.
It happened so quickly, you didn't even have time to think about God or Christ or faith or predestination or any of the things you think will fortify you in times of trouble. It was almost existential. It was a flash of instantaneous terror with just enough time to understand you were about to die, and everything about us would be finished forever.
By the grace of God, we were alright and we got through it. For months afterward, I could conjure up that dark feeling again by just putting my head in that momentary place of dread. It was a very physical recollection and it was like experiencing the quake all over again. And every time I remembered that moment, I was then overcome with awe that we had survived, and gratitude for our second chance.
I assumed I would always be able to recall that same feeling, but I was wrong. The ability to re-experience that moment faded until now, I can't do it at all. I can intellectually remember the event; but I cannot work up that feeling of death and finality and fragility.
But I've come to realize those 20 seconds of utter helplessness in the face of black death was more "real" than anything I experience on a daily basis. Our physical lives are a shadow-play, ephemeral and fleeting. We live by the will of another. And everything physical surrounding that one monumental fact is a parade of smoke and vapour and illusions and pretense and our own vain strivings.
We live and breath and have our being by and for and through Jesus Christ. We are spiritual beings, temporarily taking up residence on earth.
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." -- 2 Corinthians 4:16-18"For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.
We are certain of this fact by the word of God, confirmed by the Holy Spirit who attests to this "other" reality in our hearts and minds. Therefore, James concludes...
"For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that." -- James 4:15
Or not. It is all of Him.
What's my question, FK?
The problem with your (and their) view is that you have no answer at all to the problem of unifying the universals with the particulars
If I have a problem with a problem, then there is no problem, FK! :) What answer are you talking about? All I said was that we detect the world through our senses and, depending on what we receive is what we see and believe. If you were born in some slum in Rio DeJaneiro your outlook on life and your values would probably be quite different.
Under your (and their) view you have no hope of ever answering the eternal questions that give meaning to a man's life, to his very existence
Some people accept their ignorance and know their limits; others fill the gaps with fantasy and pretend it's real. As far as Orthodoxy is concerned, man's true meaning is to be Christ-like because that's how God created us, in His image and Likeness. But there may very well be no meaning to man's life, and to all this existence. So what! You don't like it? Make one up!
That's because man wasn't around when all that happened. One can NEVER reach eternal truth by starting with finite man
Well, we can tell what happened before we were here. We have learned to connect the dots from the clues left behind and see what caused what even if we don't understand why. I don't think a single Renaissance man would say that the purpose of Renaissance was to (re)define eternal truths.
Kosta: No Renaissance man will ever say that mankind created the world.
FK: That's right, they will say what you say, that some unknowable "thing" did it
Somehting caused all this to exist, and we call it God. The rest is made up with human fancy. That's why we have so many different "Gods" on earth. But there is only one gravity, and everybody believes in it!
And, that we can never understand anything about that thing, which we will call "God"
We can't because it's above our level of comprehension. Claiming we do is to claim that our mind is on the par with God's; it is denying man's own limitations, and as Clint Eastwood says "Man's gotta know his limitations." :)
Therefore, for answers we must start from what we do know, man
Well, honestly, that's a heck of a lot more objective than starting with a burning bush and saying God hides in it! It's also a lot closer to our capacity for understanding than trying to figure out God.
Kosta: It doesn't really explain the ultimate Cause, but only the secondary ones. No one ever claimed to know how it all began.
FK: . :) We always have.
I would have to qualify that with Reformed and other Bible-believing Christians believe they DO