God is logical; truth is propositional

Truth is propositional. This is a hard one to wrap our minds around, but simple propositional form is the unavoidable way of all coherent thought and action, for both God and men. There is a big move today to say, “No. Truth is relational.” But whatever that is supposed to mean, it never seems to be said in anything but propositional form.

Subject, Object, Copula. “God is good.” This is what communication demands, because, everything is relational. And every truth is thought in the form of a relation between something and something else or something and itself. There just isn’t any other way for things to be. So of course Jesus is logical, because to be illogical is to be confused, or ignorant, or just wrong about something. God, in Christian Theology, is an eternal mind. He thinks. He is personal (in fact, tri-personal). But He is not confused about either what He thinks is true or what He thinks is false or the relationship between the two. He knows that He exists instead of not existing. He knows the difference between Himself and the things He created. He knows what He loves and what He hates and what time of the day it is, and all of these are logical distinctions. Logic is just our little name for the way God thinks. We think the way we do, and think well when we do, because He thinks the way He does, and we are created after His image and likeness.

The implication of this being that that which is irrational, is ungodly. Eastern religions tend to prize irrationality; perfection in thought and rationality are peculiarly Christian ways of understanding the Creator. The irrational, sub-rational, super-rational (or wherever you want to go with it) identify something as being fallen, and dark, and ultimately brutal. There are some philosophies that explain everything in terms of an ultimate Personality with intent, and order, and reasons expressive of the perfections of the Divine nature, and then there are those that reduce everything to an ultimate irrationality, chaos, and mindless accidental causation. Really, these are the only two big philosophies: God, or the void; everything else is details.

God is Good. And because God is good He is also Truth, and truth neither lies nor errs. Logic is not some eternally existing Platonic thing outside of God to which He looks for verification as a principle. Properly, there is no “thing” called logic. Logic is a primary personal attribute that doesn’t exist ‘outside’ of persons at all. What some people derogatorily describe as “mere human reason”, is the imago Dei, the image of God. At worst we should call it Divine reason subsidiarily expressed. We call our Christian ethics the works of God’s good moral will, why not the thoughts that are true the lesser reflections of His Holy intellect? These are really the only ways that we can be like God. To do the good that pleases Him and think His true thoughts after Him: morally and thoughtfully. When the Westminster Shorter Catechism says that we were created in “knowledge and original righteousness”, that’s what it means. In thinking true thoughts and willing true goods. The ability to think true thoughts about God, the self, and the world and to reconcile those thoughts in a true understanding so that we might see the face of God in Jesus Christ demands that our thoughts be reasonable.

If someone wants to disagree they would need to do so without using propositions or without using logic and so without using words, because the use of any word presupposes the identity and meaning of the word used as opposed to an infinite series of other possible meanings. So, no words, no numbers, no images, pictures, symbols, or representations of any kind because all of these presume the laws of identity and non-contradiction. We simply cannot speak, not even to object, without using them.

This in itself tells us things about the Eternal God who raised us from the dust and breathed life into us, bringing forth children from the clay. Logic itself is not something He created, because if it were, He would have had to have not created it before He created it, and that is a logical distinction.

Getting beyond the object-subject distinction is the rage in the halls of philosophical confusion right now. Theo-babble is on the rise. The thinker’s flavor of the week. But the Christian should not allow themselves be confused by these kinds of pious sounding words without intelligible meaning. There is a God, and we are not Him, and that is a logical difference. To fail to reason well is to succeed at reasoning paganly. To begin with true premises and end with false conclusions is the beginning of suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

And since we who know Him long to be like Him, let us think as He thought and do as he did.

Christopher Neiswonger