Logic an Attribute of God

Introduction

All men are mortal

Pilate is a man

Therefore Pilate is mortal

John 18:37–38 KJV 1900

Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.

Pilate’s words of What is truth still resonate with us. Especially in our day and age where there are so many claims of truth floating around. How do we truly know which truth is the truth?

This is the question we have been grappling with in our miniseries on truth for as we have discovered it is multifaceted. We have discovered that truth involves apologetics meaning that it must stand up to scrutiny. Indeed we have started with the premise that God is truth and have looked at the truth of that statement. We have also looked at that the bible is the word of God and therefore it also is the truth and we have looked at the reasons why we believe this.

We have been primarily focused on Prov 22:20-21

Proverbs 22:20–21 KJV 1900

Have not I written to thee excellent things In counsels and knowledge, That I might make thee know the certainty of the words of truth; That thou mightest answer the words of truth to them that send unto thee?

This morning however we need to step back a bit to the very beginning and look at understanding which is tied up in truth. We won’t be looking at the entirety of understanding as that is too big of a subject to fit into a small sermon so we will be just looking at an aspect of understanding. As such then we will be going back to the very beginning of proverbs for our text this morning

Proverbs 1:1–6 KJV 1900

The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel; To know wisdom and instruction; To perceive the words of understanding; To receive the instruction of wisdom, Justice, and judgment, and equity; To give subtilty to the simple, To the young man knowledge and discretion. A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; And a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels: To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; The words of the wise, and their dark sayings.

If you remember way back to our very first discussion on Proverbs we looked at the fact that the whole purpose of Proverbs was to give us in short little sayings wisdom, knowledge and instruction which is stated here in our verses. Additionally we discussed the fact that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge according to verse 7 but later Solomon says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom so that by knowing who the Lord is which we can only know through the revelation of the Holy Spirit and through the study of God’s attributes which as you know we have spent the last couple of years looking into. Therefore it can be inferred that knowledge and wisdom are interchangeable.

Is this true? Are knowledge and wisdom interchangeable? How do we find out if they are or if they are not. It is likely that you are sitting there thinking that no they don’t quite sound the same to me. There has to be a difference of some sort. The question then asked is How do you know that. What makes you say that they are dissimilar especially when the bible uses both words to describe the fear of the Lord. The answer to this is that there are rules by which things are figured out; rules by which truth is discovered. The laws that govern by which truth is discovered is called Logic. This is only a working beginning of the definition of what Logic is nor have we yet discovered where it came from.

Before we look at the definition of Logic and where it came from we need to go back to our text and answer whether wisdom and knowledge are in fact the same thing or are they merely similar. Really what needs to be done is that we need to include 2 more words into the mix since our text mentions them and that is understanding and instruction. The question then arises are they also used interchangeably with each other. Based on what the text is saying it would seem so since the terms are jumbled here there and everywhere throughout the text with one word defining or describing another word but then later the first word is used to describe the second to the point where it seems that they are being used interchangeably. However if you look at each word in its individual context you will find that each of the words have a slightly different meaning yet they are all connected. We won’t go into all of the definitions of each of the context as time does not permit us to do so but we will at least look at a definition of each of the words.

We will start with instruction. Within the meaning of instruction is the concept of discipline. Not only if you do it wrong it’s ouch time but also the idea of disciplining yourself to learn. Sort of like repeating things over and over until you get it right. Kind of like an actor says his lines over and over again til he has them memorized. Or a better example would be memorizing scriptures. You repeat it over and over again until you have it memorized. This is the idea behind instruction, learning by rote and recitation.

Next is knowledge. Knowledge is the concrete stuff inside your head though what exactly knowledge is has been debated by philosophers for ages. There is a certainty to it beyond just what thinking is. This brings us to what is called epistemology which is how do you know that you know. There are also different types of knowledge one of which is called a priory knowledge which means that this knowledge his hardwired into everybody’s brain right from the get go. It is the very building blocks upon which all other knowledge is built.

Following that we have understanding which is the collection of concepts and information that a person knows which as we see we have a connection back to knowledge.

Finally we have wisdom which includes the aforementioned knowledge and understanding but it also includes the concept of discernment. Wisdom understands the difference between right and not quite right as well as wrong, good and not quite good as well as bad.

-Logic is a set of rules that govern the soundness and validity of an argument.

If you break God’s commands you will be punished

Israel broke God’s commands, They were punished

-view logic as cold calculating but not necessarily so. the reasoning is but what may be reasoned may include emotion.

If you break my bones then I will cry. you broke my bones. I cried

1 cor 2