Rene Descartes #3: (Bible Analyis)

Descartes' teachings are being evaluated in relation to the Bible on TheGreatBibleReset.com. The thesis is that adopting God's law is the solution to the threat of World War III. The Mosaic Covenant, which includes principles of restitution, is seen as the foundation of the criminal justice system. The power struggle between the Pope and the king in the 1075 Papal Revolution led to the abandonment of this divine principle. Descartes' approach of relying on human reason and individualism led to conflict and war. His philosophy laid the groundwork for the French Revolution and subsequent weakening of social and political authority. Descartes' belief in reducing reality to its simplest components influenced later scientists like Newton and Darwin. He tried to prove the existence of God, but his version of God was more deistic than biblical. The importance of the Bible as a source of knowledge is emphasized in order to interpret and understand the complex events happening in the world toda Today we are going to evaluate the teaching of Descartes in light of the Bible, which is the infallible word of God. This is TheGreatBibleReset.com, I'm Oliver Woods, and our thesis is that the only remedy to this calamity, the threat of World War III, the judgment that faces us, is a national recommitment to adopt the law of God, which is summarized in Exodus 20-24, the Mosaic Covenant, at the heart of our criminal justice system. For example, if you steal one sheep, you have to pay back two sheep. It lies at the heart of this biblical system of restitutionary justice. It was this divine principle of restitution, being implemented in England by Alfred the Great during the 900s with him and his immediate successors, that was abandoned with the Papal Revolution of 1075, when the Pope wrested the power to appoint the bishops from the civil magistrate or the king. The king, thus dethroned from his royal prerogative over the kingdom of God or Christendom, launched himself into the void, inventing his own law code as he went along. I misspoke, it's law codes, multiplying themselves like tiny, wriggling serpents into the world of men, confusing, controlling, and ultimately condemning, each one growing to a monstrous size and scale such as we find today. This in opposition to God's single law code is so simple that even children were required to a standard of attention for its reading and understand what was read. Amos compared the word of God to a plumb line. It provides the only standard of truth and the only accurate picture of reality. According to Amos 7-8, the mind of man, being fallen, cannot provide such a standard. There is none that understandeth, according to Romans 3-10. Very simple. Therefore, whether or not Descartes proved the existence of God, he did not prove the God of the Bible. Thus, the only antidote to Descartes is the Bible as a source of knowledge. Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him. However, don't simply quote scripture to the skeptic. But give a defense for your hope, according to 1 Peter 3-15. And Proverbs 26-5 says, the verse following, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. In other words, point out that Descartes, being finite, did not examine all the possible contingencies in the universe. So he had no grounds for concluding, he was not being deceived. Likewise, many today are deceived about the identity of the children of Abraham, and permitting that confusion to erupt into calamity. The Bible way leads to peace, because there is really no confusion when we allow the New Testament to interpret the Old. Galatians 3-16 tells us that the promises were spoken to Abraham into his seed. He does not say into seeds, referring to many, but rather to one, into your seed, that is Christ. And thus Jew and Gentile are united in one body in Christ, in unity and love, that he himself might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace. Here is an example of how we depart from the Bible and we end up with confusion and tragedy and death. But the path of Descartes leads to conflict and war. What is objectionable about Descartes' approach from a biblical perspective? And what were the implications of Descartes' approach for subsequent history? Well, the prophet Jeremiah observed that, I know, O Lord, the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. And that is Jeremiah 10-23, and that torpedoes any idea of natural law, of propositional truth being derived from nature. You want to talk about natural revelation? That's one thing, that's great, but not natural law and not natural theology. Moreover, the proverb tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. When Descartes reversed his foundational truth, he looked to the inner recesses of his own mind as the starting point of all knowledge. From Descartes forward, philosophy focused increasingly on man as a reference point in the revelation of God, less and less. It was a reversal of John the Baptist's pronouncement upon the appearance of Christ, where he said, He must increase and I must decrease. That's John the Baptist. In modern man, it is he must decrease and I must increase. Descartes' mathematical discoveries reinforced his philosophical speculations. Descartes' mathematical or scientific approach could be reduced to two basic principles. First, he resolved to reduce his subject to a principle that is so self-evident it could not be doubted. And then second, in proceeding stepwise from this simple truth, he determined to add nothing that was not likewise indubitable. This approach would empower mankind to gradually gain dominion over nature through technology and reap its bounty. This was a model of science as a secular messiah after the pattern of Francis Bacon. He did use this approach to invent analytical geometry and employed it thereafter in his quest for the cogito in the philosophical realm. Descartes unwittingly led the way to the French Revolution, which erupted over 100 years after his death. Although he would have been horrified by the suggestion, Descartes triggered the philosophical process that led ultimately to the French Revolution. In science, Descartes sought to reduce all things to their simplest components, to atoms, and trace their development from there. This led to his individualized approach to philosophy and ultimately to an atomized social philosophy, which emphasized the individual above the state. And the result was a gradual weakening of social political authority in France and the popular feeling that the individual was being oppressed by societal institutions, existing institutions. And hence, we have the opening words of Rousseau's Social Contract, Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in change. The irony was that in tearing apart the fabric of society, the individual was left naked before the raw power of the state and the reign of terror. So Descartes' expectations that his philosophy would bolster his Roman Catholic faith were utterly disappointed. And this is always the case when man attempts to establish the authority of God or the Bible on any other basis than a self-attesting authority of the revelation of God. That's exactly what we see in the world around us today, in Ukraine, in Israel, and everywhere else. When we present evidence to bolster the authority of the Bible, we inadvertently elevate the evidence and undermine the authority of that very thing we're seeking to establish, the Bible. Moreover, Descartes overlooked the fact that man is totally depraved, that is, corrupted by original sin in every aspect of his being, including his mind. Thus, the human mind, tainted as it is by sin, cannot provide the ultimate reference point for knowledge. And this was Descartes' fundamental mistake at the beginning of his first meditation, when he said, Reason now leads me to think. That's the problem. All defense of the Christian faith must proceed from the presupposition of the impossibility of the contrary. In other words, apart from the Christian worldview, there is no possibility of law, of logic, or of life itself. The unbeliever must borrow from the biblical worldview in order to argue against the biblical worldview. And so, Descartes also paved the way for later scientists such as Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. Descartes, determined to reduce reality to its simplest components and work forward from that starting point. Darwin, of course, built on this foundation to articulate his theory of evolution, in which all of life supposedly evolves from the simplest to the more complex life forms via natural selection. I resolve to commence, therefore, with the examination of the simplest objects, he wrote. But Descartes was a rationalist, not an empiricist. Francis Bacon, a contemporary who preceded him by a few years, laid the empirical foundations of modern science. Both were heralds of science as the harbinger of the good life. Their contributions coalesced in the scientific revolution ignited and illuminated by Sir Isaac Newton later in the 17th century. So where did God fit in Descartes' scientific paradigm? Well, in Descartes' scientific paradigm, God is an axiom to be proved rather than a necessary first principle. A personality, a first principle. Having first established his own existence, Descartes went on to prove the existence of God with an aberration of Anselm's ontological argument. At that point, Descartes chose Christianity for purely pragmatic reasons. Expediency seemed to dictate that I should regulate my practice conformably to the opinions of those with whom I should have to live, he said. Descartes studied science, the material world, and philosophy, the mental world, two realms of existence that are inexplicably bound together. How is it, for example, that the mind is able to control the body? Well, God was necessary in Cartesian science to provide this linkage, but this was not the God of the Bible, and later generations found him unnecessary, even him unnecessary. Rather, it was akin to the deistic God who performed the necessary creative function, then stepped aside for man and nature to run the show. So don't be led astray like Descartes. Request your free copy of Keys to the Classics at greatbiblereset.com so you and your children can easily interpret the complex events unfolding all around us and threatening our very existence.