Logic -- Is it Biblical?

I hope you each had a wonderful Christmas celebrations with your friends and families. It’s Dec 27 as I write this and my wife and daughter are out shopping and the rest of the family has gone on to visit their in-laws. I’ve got Beethoven symphonies on in the living room and it makes for a quiet day to think and write.

With the rise of post modernism, there is a tendency to question and challenge the principles of logic that was foundational to the Enlightenment and modernity. Western logic is now looked upon with suspicion and competing forms of thinking are thought to be of equal value no matter how illogical they might appear to be. It’s as though there was no logical thought before Western Civilization invented it.

As Christians we need to be careful about what we accept in the name of progress. I say this because the Bible is full of logic which, if we didn’t know better, seems to come right out of modern western thinking. For example, as I’ve been reading the Old Testament, I have noticed God’s comments about the illogical nature of idolatry.

In Psalm 135:15ff for example, “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak; eyes they have, but do not see; they have ears, but the do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them are like them; so is everyone who trusts in them.”

Isaiah 44 tells the incident of those who take a log and out of half of it make an idol and use the other half for fire wood to warm themselves. God says in verse 19, “No one considers in his heart, nor is there knowledge nor understanding to say, ‘I have burned half of it in the fire, yes, I have also baked bread on its coals; I have roasted meat and eaten it; and shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?’”

In the chapter in Hosea that I’ve been studying, God alludes to the same illogical practice when He says in 4:12, “My people inquire of a piece of wood, and their walking staff gives them oracles.”

God clearly sets out propositional truth in Scripture. That is, He makes statements which He claims are true and for which their opposites are false. This is all very difficult for the post-modern mind. Let’s not fall prey to its influences, but let’s stand for truth vs. error and right vs. wrong. That’s the way God’s Word assumes things to be and that’s the way we need to understand it.