Anonymous Apologist

Knowledge of God is disputed today more than at any other time in history. The current philosophical climate is such that if one claims a priori[i] knowledge of anything which relates to the nature of God, one is treated with suspicion and one is treated as irrational. This dilemma in epistemology[ii] began long ago, but we will begin our discussion with the enlightenment philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

Kant divided human knowledge between the noumenal and the phenoumenal. The noumenal is that which exists independently outside of human perception, and the phenoumenal which is that world which appears to our human consciences.[iii] The bonus of this distinction was the appeal to common universals that could be known and examined in a purely rational way without the contradicting antinomies that prevail in most philosophical/ theological discourse. The negative part of this distinction is that it severs any ontological connection between human language and the divine reality. Put another way, any statements that refer to God, do not actually have any substance.

You see what Kant did was he divided faith and reason, so that the realm of reason was the realm of the material phenoumenal world, and the realm of faith was that of the noumenal unknowable world.[iv] Therefore all statements about faith become relative. All faith became separate from reason, because all faith concerned the noumenal unknowable realm and all science and other enterprises of that kind ruled the phenoumenal (material) world. Theologians who once debated and sought after the truth about God, descended into moribund nonsense, no longer having to argue their beliefs in ways that obeyed the laws of reason, causing theologies to occur in Christianity that contradict its teachings so profoundly that they can no longer even remotely be called Christian theologies.

Let us describe the implications of what happened more simply. If I tell you that when water is heated to 100 degrees centigrade, it will boil and turn to steam, you will say, yes that is correct. If we then asked each other why this is so, we would declare that our experience of this has proved it to be fact. This then is a classic example of an experiment performed upon water to see what happens when it is heated, an experiment performed on the material world that has been examined and proved to be a fact. On the contrary if I were to say to you that if you were to heat water to 50 degrees centigrade it would boil and turn to steam, you would say, no this is not true. If I were to ask you why, you would say that you have tested this out and that it has proved fallacy. But if this were a theological conversation you would answer very differently. Let us discuss the kettle again, but imagine that the kettle is some sort of deity that demands our worship. If I were to say to you that my kettle god is happy when he is boild to 100 degrees centigrade and produces steam in accordance with how happy he is, you would say, that is true for you but for me my kettle god is happy when I boil her to 50 degrees centigrade. The reason we would discuss the realm of religion and the realm of science differently is solely because of Immanuel Kant.

Prior to Kant, Christians spoke of their God as if He were there. As If his words were real and absolutely comprehendible. This is not to say that there is no mystery in God. God being who He is means we as small little human beings will never understand Him in his sovereignty. However that is very different from the belief that we cannot know anything about God. We used to believe that we could know God, and make rational statements about Him, but today after Kant, Christians have bought into the false philosophies of this world, and lost their faith in God, and in the scriptures. Today people have faith separate from reason. Therefore their god can be muslim, hindu, buddhist and Christian all at once, because their god has no reason, he is irrational and therefore can be more than one thing at once, even if those two things are contradictory. Their god can be both loving and non loving, personal and non personal. The difference between this god and the Christian God is that our God can be known.

The truth is that we can know God, we can know him and we can know that he loves us and accepts us because his son Jesus Christ died for our sins. God came into the world, where we touched him and heard him and killed him. Our God came into the phenoumenal and therefore obliterates any divide between the phenoumenal and the noumenal for those who trust in Christ.as their Lord and saviour. We therefore can know our God and trust in Him. He speaks to us in his word and what He says we can be sure is true. I repeat Our God is a rational God, he is beyond all our reasons, we will never be able to put him into a box, but that doesn’t mean he is irrational. Our God can be known, He is a God not of chaos, but a God who brings order out of chaos. Our God can be known, therefore get to know him today. Our God is there, really there. This is a fact as much as it is a fact when one boils a kettle to 100 degrees centigrade the water inside will turn to steam.

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[i] Objective knowledge gained separate from experience
[ii] The science of knowing
[iii] See Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
[iv] Hegel who followed Kant in the philosophical line, took his position further declaring that whenever a thesis is presented and its antithesis presented, what results is a synthesis [relativism].