Certainty is a rare thing today.  In fact, in many circles, it is a hopeless cause.  It is nothing more than a fantasy.  In the words of the 19th Century Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche,

“Truth” is an army of mobile metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically and which after long use seem firm canonical, and obligatory to a people.1

In other words, truth is relative.  Truth is only “a sum of human relations.”  Truth is only a “metaphor” that we have invented by ourselves and for ourselves.  You have your truth and I have my truth and over time we randomly decide on a truth that we all like.  There is no real truth outside of any of us.  There are no objective facts; only subjective ones.2

Nietzsche said it more beautifully, but Pontus Pilate echoed the same thing long ago when he asked Jesus, “What is truth?”3  Jesus said, “Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice”4 and Pilate caustically answered “What is truth?”  It is nothing new to be doubting whether truth exists.  Pilate did it long before we ever came along.  Certainty has been an elusive thing for thousands of years.  The skeptical5 spirit is nothing new to the human race.

But what is new is for this skeptical spirit to have such a grip on the church.  It is a relatively6 new thing to have Christians asking the question, “How can I be certain of anything?”  Never before in the history of the church has it been so common for professed followers of Christ to be doubting whether they can know things with confidence.  For an example of this mixture of secular philosophy and modern Christianity, consider the following quotations from two Christian authors.7

Karl Barth:

The pictures in which we view God, the thoughts in which we think Him, the words with which we can define Him, are in themselves unfitted to this object and thus inappropriate to express and affirm the knowledge of Him.8

God is personal, but personal in an incomprehensible way, in so far as the conception of His personality surpasses all our views of personality.9

Brian McLaren:

When we “do theology,” we are clay pots pondering the potter, kids pondering their father, ants discussing the elephant.  At some level of profundity and accuracy, we are bound to be inadequate or incomplete all the time, in almost anything we say or think, considering our human limitations, including language, and God’s infinite greatness.10

For people like us, boxed in little bodies with narrow portals of physical senses which are interpreted by fallible, limited (yet amazing!) little brains, absolute certainty is a luxury we have not been given.11

In other words, when it comes to the study of God, the only thing that we can be sure of is unsurety.  When it comes to “doing theology,” the only thing that we can be certain of is uncertainty.  Philosophers have been saying that for centuries in regards to truth.  Now Christians are saying it in regards to God.  It leads one to cry out with G. K. Chesterton that,

We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table . . . Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced.12

But are Karl Barth and Brian McLaren right?  Is our knowledge of God inadequate and incomplete all the time?  Are our words inappropriate to express a true knowledge of God?  How can I be certain of anything?  More importantly, how can I be certain of the most important things?  Here are five ways to answer that question.

1. The Transcendental Argument.

The transcendental argument says that there are certain laws that everyone adheres to that cannot be explained if God does not exist.13  There are certain rules that we all abide by that have no explanation in an agnostic14 or in an atheistic15 universe.  These laws “transcend” or go beyond us.

For example, every human being uses the laws of logic.  Every human being agrees that something cannot be “A” and “Not A” at the same time.16  A car cannot be a non-car.  A house cannot be a non-house.  A car is either a car or it is not a car.  A house is either a house or it is not a house.  It cannot be a house and something other than a house.  A car cannot be a car and something other than a car.  That is a basic law of logic.

And that is a basic law of logic that is held by everyone all throughout the world.  People in India abide by it as do people in Indiana.  People in Alabama follow this law as do people in Argentina.  People of various religions and non-religions hold to it.  Atheists, theists, and agnostics follow it.  Black people, white people, red people, and yellow people; Spanish-speaking, English-speaking, French-speaking, Chinese-speaking, and Russian-speaking people all obey this law.  Many are not even aware that it is a law.  It is just a part of their basic nature.  It is transcendental.  It goes beyond race, geography, and education and encompasses all of humanity.

Why is that?  Or, better yet, how is that?  How could a law encompass everyone on the planet?  And where did this law come from?  Why is it that everyone in the universe follows this law and other laws of logic?

Atheists and Agnostics do not have an answer to that question.  As one author put it, “How could logic ever be said to have any bearing upon reality in a universe of Chance?”17  If the universe makes no sense, then neither should the people who live in it.  If the universe has no source of truth, then human beings should not be born with the ability to understand truth.

But the Bible tells us that God is the ultimate source of truth18 and that He made men in His own image with the ability to grasp truth.19  He gave them the capabilities to know things, deep things, spiritual things, logical things.  Romans 1:18-20 says that men will one day be held accountable to that knowledge.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.  For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

God has made Himself evident to mankind and those who ignore His evidence will one day have to answer to Him and suffer under His wrath.  We will all be held accountable to what God has revealed to us concerning Himself.  We will all be judged by our Maker for how certain or uncertain we were with what He has shown us.

And the transcendental argument helps explain why that is.  It explains why God holds us accountable to the evidence.  It says that men can know the evidence with certainty because God has created men with the ability to know the evidence with certainty.  God has revealed Himself to us.  All of us.  And we can understand and process what He has revealed.  We all know that something cannot be “A” and “Not A” at the same time.  We all live under that law and we will all be judged accordingly.

2. The Principle of Illumination.

Illumination is “The work of the Holy Spirit giving understanding when the Scripture is heard or read.”20  It is the work whereby the Spirit of God helps a person understand the Bible.  To “illuminate” something is to shed light on it; to enlighten it; to make it brighter.21  As a Christian reads the Bible, the Holy Spirit does that with his mind.  The Spirit opens the believer’s mind to the truth that is there in His Word.  He helps him see spiritual things just like a light would help him see physical things.22

First Corinthians 2:14-15 talks about illumination.  It says,

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.  But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.

The phrase “natural man” in verse 14 refers to a man without the Holy Spirit23 or a man without the illumination of the Holy Spirit.  It refers to an unsaved man.  The verse says that an unsaved man will have two responses when it comes to the things of God: (1). He will not accept the things of God.  “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him . . .”  Without the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, a sinner will reject Christ again and again and again because the Gospel message is foolishness to him.24

2). He will not understand the things of God.  “But a natural man does not accept the things of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.”  The word “appraised” could also be translated “examined” or “investigated.”25  A man without the Holy Spirit cannot understand the things of the Holy Spirit because those things are spiritually examined.  A man must use his mind to investigate the things of God but the mind of a lost man is desperately wicked.26  It is depraved.27  So he does not have the ability to look into the things of God and understand them on his own.  He is in the dark about God and he cannot illuminate himself.

But verse 15 goes on to say, “But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.”  The phrase “all things” here does not mean that a saved man can appraise everything correctly but, rather, that he can appraise the really essential things correctly (see vv. 12-13).  He can appraise – examine, investigate – the things of God with success.  He can have certainty when it comes to theology.  As one commentator put it,

For the believer, the Scriptures are a light on his path and a lamp before his feet (Ps. 119:105).  He knows that in God’s light he sees light (Ps. 36:9).  In view of the spiritual person’s anointing with the Holy Spirit, he has a knowledge of the truth (1 John 2:20).  Thus he is able to distinguish truth from error, fact from fiction, and authenticity from pretense.28

When it comes to salvation and the things of God, a spiritual man can know the truth.  He can distinguish fact from fiction, authenticity form pretense.  He can know with certainty because he is not alone in his search for knowledge.  If you are a Christian, the Holy Spirit lives inside you29 and He illumines you so you can understand what He has said in His Word.

3. The Examples in Scripture.

The Bible is full of examples of men who were certain about their theology.  Just read the Law of Moses30 and the Old Testament Prophets31 and you can see that there were spiritual things that they knew without a shadow of a doubt.  Read the words of Jesus in the Gospels.32  Listen to the letters of John33 and Jude34 and Peter35 in the New Testament.  The truth was crystal clear to them.  They did not waver on certain facts.  They did not agree with Brian McLaren that “absolute certainty is a luxury we have not been given.”  They had absolute certainty on the Word that God had spoken.

To draw this out a little more, we can look at the examples of certainty in the writings of the Apostle Paul.36  Paul expressed certainty with the Greek word peitho.  Peitho meant to be convinced, sure, or certain of something.37  In Romans 8:38-39, he uses the word this way,

For I am convinced (peitho) that neither death nor, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul was convinced of the perseverance38 of a Christian.  He was sure that nothing could snatch a child of God out of the hand of God.  Death could not do it.  Angels could not do it.  Things in the present or in the future could not do it.  Height and depth could not do it nor could any other created thing.  Paul was certain that God’s elect will stay God’s elect forever.  It was an established fact to him.

Philippians 1:6 gives another example of Paul’s use of peitho.  It says,

For I am confident (peitho) of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

God will finish what He started.  In regards to the Christian life, if God has called a man to Himself, He will perfect that man.  He will bring him into Heaven.  Paul was convinced of that.  In his words in Romans 8:30, “and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.”  If God has called you, He will make you just and He will glorify you.  If God has made you right with Himself, He will draw you to Himself when you die.  That was a sure thing to the Apostle Paul.

Second Timothy 1:12 provides a third example of this Greek word.  It says,

For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced (peitho) that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.

As Paul is coming to the end of his life, he tells Timothy what he is looking forward to.  He is looking forward to death.  He is looking forward to salvation.  He is looking forward to a reward.  And he is certain he will get it.  Why?  Because “I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.”  God will hold onto the treasure that Paul has stored up in Heaven.39  God is not going to lose it.  Paul’s treasure is safe with Him.  And, as the Apostle was preparing to die, he could relish that thought with confidence.  He was sure of his eternal reward.

And we do not have time to look at the other instances in Paul’s writings where he expressed theological certainty,40 but the point has been made.  Paul was convinced that doctrinal truth was attainable.  He did not compare himself to an ant discussing an elephant and he did not say that his language was inappropriate to affirm a knowledge of God.  Paul was no skeptic.  He boldly proclaimed truth and he relished the thought that he could be sure of Who God was.  That thought even helped him look forward to his own death.

4. The Nature of Epistemology.

Epistemology is “The branch of philosophy that probes knowledge.”41  It is the study of what it means to know something and how we can know it.  It looks at how culture, education, and background affect the pursuit of knowledge.  Epistemology also studies the limitations we have as we strive to know things.

And, within this study of limitations, the argument has arisen that, because we cannot know things entirely, we cannot know them at all.  Because we cannot have a complete knowledge of a subject, we cannot have a thorough knowledge of it or a workable knowledge of it.  In the words of D. A. Carson,

Many postmoderns channel [this] discussion into a manipulative antithesis.  The antithesis is this: Either we human beings can know something absolutely, perfectly, exhaustively . . . or we human beings can at best glimpse some small perspective on something or other . . . precisely because we have no way of knowing what the whole is.42

We either know everything about an object or we know next-to-nothing about an object.  That is the latest fad in epistemology and it is a fad that has crept into the modern church.  This philosophic idea is being reworded today in Christian terms.  As the argument goes, if we are as sinful as the Bible claims, then it is impossible for us to really know God.  If our hearts are full of wicked thoughts and our minds are human and frail, then we can never truly understand an all-knowing God Who never sins.  One book put it this way:

Man is a mess and a mass of sinfulness.  He cannot in any way know God.  Not through reason, not through experience, not through good works, not through mystic immediacy, not through theology, not through history, not even through the historical Jesus.43

Because man is sinful, he is in the dark about God.  He cannot be certain, really certain of anything spiritual, because his sin crowds out everything he does and thinks.

But that is not what the Bible says.44  The Bible says that we can know things thoroughly without knowing them exhaustively.  Even though unbelievers do not have the Holy Spirit illuminating them, they can still understand some things about God and they can still be held accountable to what they understand.  Romans 1:18-20 says that God has made Himself evident to all men and that all men can understand the evidence.  They may not be able to understand everything about the evidence but they can understand enough to be judged by it.

And believers have the Holy Spirit living inside them, making truth understandable to them.  First Corinthians 2:15 says that they can appraise all things because God Himself dwells within them, opening their eyes to see the things of the kingdom of God.45

But not only does this epistemological fallacy go against the teachings of the Bible, it goes against common sense.  Everyone functions as if a workable knowledge of an object is possible.  Everyone understands that they do not have to know everything in order to know something.  Listen to these common sense words from Francis Schaeffer,

The illustration I like to use here concerns the word tea.  Tea is a symbol in our English linguistic symbol system representing a real, identifiable object.  But my wife was born in China and her first experience of the thing which t-e-a represents (in our linguistic symbol system) was in Chinese homes.  There the Chinese taught her something that she remembers to this day, that the way to drink tea is to drink it from a bowl with a mouthful of rice which you pack into one cheek.  In fact, you learn to drink the tea around the rice without touching or disturbing it.  To her, that is all bound up in her word tea.

But for me tea begins with my mother and me in Germantown, Philadelphia, making tea in a way I would not make it today, with an aluminum tea caddy that you put into the water.  These things mark the word tea to both of us, but do you think for a moment that because we have these different connotations, these different shadows of the word tea, that I cannot say to my wife, “Dear, will you please bring me a pot of tea?” and I do not get a pot of tea? . . .

This is true with language, and we must also realize it is true with knowing.  We do not have to choose between the two extremes, either in language or in epistemology.  We can know truly without knowing exhaustively.  As long as the thing is there, and I am there in correlation with that other thing, I do not have to know it exhaustively.  After all, this does not surprise us because we come down to the fact that nobody knows anything exhaustively except God; nobody.46

Even though Francis Schaeffer and his wife did not have the same cultural backgrounds when it came to the word “tea,” they both knew what “tea” was.  They could communicate the idea to each other.  They had limitations but those limitations were not insurmountable.  The same principle applies to epistemology and the study of God.  We can know God truly even though we do not know Him exhaustively.  We can have an accurate understanding of Him even though we do not have a comprehensive understanding of Him.  We can know facts about Him even though we do not know all the facts.

We can have certainty in this life, even though we do not have absolute certainty.  The only one with absolute, exhaustive certainty is God but He still communicates to the rest of us.  To say this another way, God made our brains and God knows how to communicate to our brains.  As Robert Thomas writes,

[Modern epistemologists’] rationale is that since no human communication is completely unambiguous, the same must be true of God’s attempts at communication with humanity through the Bible.  Such a rationale vastly underestimates God’s ability in conveying His divine revelation to man.47

God knows how to communicate effectively to the creatures that He has made.  He could talk to Abraham in Haran48 just as easily as He could talk to Saul on the road to Damascus,49 even though they lived thousands of years apart, spoke in different languages, and came from cultures that had nothing in common.  He made both of their brains and He knew how to talk to both of their brains and He makes the brains of men and women today in the same manner.

Our limitations do not limit God.  We can have theological certainty because of Who God is.  He is the All-Mighty Maker of heaven and earth Who can express Himself to men in an understandable way.

5. The Loss of Accountability.

At this point, the question should be asked, “Well, if this is the case, then why are Christian scholars so certain about their uncertainty?”  “How can they be so sure that we must be unsure about God?”  “If we have been given logic and illumination and the examples in Scripture and epistemology is about accuracy and not thoroughness, then how can men like Karl Barth and Brian McLaren make such dogmatic statements about the danger of dogmatism?”  “Why are Christians today still asking the question, ‘How can I be certain of anything?’”

The answer has to do with accountability.  The answer has to do with being held responsible for our actions.  Men like Karl Barth and Brian McLaren and many other contemporary thinkers do not believe in the certainty of God’s communication to man because they do not like what God has communicated to man.  They do not want to submit to His laws.  They do not want to follow His guidelines so they just say that those guidelines are unclear.  They pretend they did not hear or understand what He said.  As the thinking goes, if I can prove that God is a poor communicator, then I can disobey Him and not be punished.

It is similar to the response that a child has when his parents confront him over his behavior.  If you are parent, you can relate to this.  “Johnny, why did you push your sister?”  “I don’t know.”  “Johnny, why did you eat those cookies before dinner?”  “I don’t know.”  “Johnny did you hear me tell you not to push your sister and not to eat cookies before dinner?”  “I don’t know.”  Johnny thinks that his ignorance will keep him from punishment.  He thinks that the poor communication of his parents will put him in a place where he can avoid all responsibility.  He can get away with pushing his sister and eating cookies before dinner because he did not understand what his parents told him about those things.  Many professing Christians approach God in the same way today.  They think that they can sin as much as they want to because they do not understand what God is telling them.

But just like a parent, God sees right through the show.  He knows that His Word is clear50 and He will treat us accordingly.51  He will hold us accountable for how we responded to His Word.  Knowing God is not an option in the Bible.  It is a command52 and it is a command because God can be known.  He is not hiding from us.  Read the following verses in the Scriptures and notice how each writer assumes that God’s decrees can be understood.

Deuteronomy 6:1-2,

Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it, so that you and your son and your grandson might fear the Lord your God, to keep all his statutes and His commandments which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged.

John 14:23-24,

Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.  He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.”

First John 3:23-24,

This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.  The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him.  We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.

God is not a poor communicator.  Despite modern philosophy’s and much of modern Christianity’s attempts to prove otherwise, the Lord knows how to talk to His creatures.  And He will hold them accountable for what He has said to them.

Just as a side-note to this, it is interesting that we live in an age of amazing precision and accuracy when it comes to science but amazing vagueness and ambiguity when it comes to theology.  To quote from Robert Thomas again,

One would think that this electronic age would teach greater expectations of precision in handling the Bible . . . One and only one wrong pushbutton on a telephone or one and only one wrong letter in an e-mail address will condemn an effort to reach the desired party.  Certainly the God whose providence provided for the discovery of all the electronic advantages of modern time is familiar with that kind of precision and has provided for such precision in His Word.53

Our age is no different from the ones before it in its ability to grasp theological truth.  It might be unique in some ways but it is not unique when it comes to understanding God.  Solomon said that there is nothing new under the sun.54  The author of Hebrews wrote that the Lord is the same yesterday, today, and forever.55  God could be known with certainty in the past and God can be known with certainty today.  With all of our confidence in electronic equipment, one would think that we could appreciate that.

CONCLUSION

Certainty is attainable today.  It is not a hopeless cause.  It is not a fantasy.  God has given us resources to bring us to a sure conviction of the truth regarding Who He is and what He has done for mankind.  We have the laws of logic.  We have the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit.  We have examples in the Bible.  We know that something can be known truly but not exhaustively.  And we have the frightening reminder that we will be judged for our response to His Word.  We will not stand before God on Judgment Day and say “I didn’t know any better” and be excused for our sins.  The evidence and the ability to understand the evidence has been given to everyone.  May that be a reminder to us to be diligent in our efforts to understand the Scriptures and apply them to our lives.

1. “On Truth and Life in an Extra-Moral Sense,” in The Viking Portable Nietzsche, trans. and ed. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin, 1968) 46-47. [↩]
2. Revolutions in Worldview: Understanding the flow of Western Thought, ed. by Andrew Hoeffecker (Philipsburg, N.J.: P & R Publishing, 2007) 375.  This is known as the theory of relativity or relativism.  Relativism is “The view that there is no absolute or objective truth but only truth for the individual.” [↩]
3. Jn 18:38. [↩]
4. Jn 18:37. [↩]
5. Antony Flew, A Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed. (New York: Gramercy Books, 1979) 314.  Skepticism refers to “the philosophical attitude that maintains that sure knowledge of how things really are may be sought, but cannot be found.” [↩]
6. Pun intended. [↩]
7. The following quotations are borrowed with permission from Shaun Lewis’ unpublished M. Div. thesis entitled “A Pauline Response to the Erosion of Certainty in the Emerging Church” (April, 2007).  This thesis is available upon request, just email justthesimpletruth@yahoo.com for a copy. [↩]
8. The Doctrine of God, trans. by: T. H. L Parker, W. B. Johnston, Harold Knight, J. L. M. Haire, vol. 2/1 in Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh, Scotland: T. & T. Clark, 1957; reprint, 2000), 188. [↩]
9. The Knowledge and the Service of God According to the Teaching of the Reformation, trans. by: J. L. M. Haire and Ian Henderson (London: Hodder and Stoughton Publishers, 1938), 31. [↩]
10. The Church on the Other Side: Doing Ministry in the Postmodern Matrix (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000) 65. [↩]
11. Finding Faith: A Search for What Makes Sense (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006) 60. [↩]
12. Orthodoxy (San Francisco, Cal.: Ignatius Press, 1995 ed.) 37. [↩]
13. John Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God (Philipsburg, N.J.: P & R Publishing, 1994) 70-71.  John Frame defines the transcendental argument this way, “Without God there is no meaning; therefore God exists . . . God exists, in other words, because without him it would not be possible to reason, to think, or even to attach a predicate to a subject . . . God is the source of all meaning.”  The transcendental argument is the primary argument used in what is today known as presupoositional apologetics. [↩]
14. Thomas C. Oden, Systematic Theology, Volume One (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2006) 87.  Agnosticism “denies that anyone could know God even if God  existed.” [↩]
15. Ibid., 87.   Atheism “denies that God exists.” [↩]
16. Louis P. Pojman, Philosophy: The Quest for Truth (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) 40.  This logical principle is called the principle of consistency.  In this book, Pojman describes it negatively as the fallacy of inconsistency. [↩]
17. Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Philipsburg, N. J.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1967 ed.) 169. [↩]
18. Ps 31:5; Is 65:16; Jn 14:6; 17:17. [↩]
19. This is seen in all the commandments in Scripture to know and understand truth.  For example, see Josh 24:14; Jn 3:21; 2 Tim 2:15; 1 jn 4:6. [↩]
20. Millard J. Erickson, The Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2001) 96. [↩]
21. Webster’s New World Dictionary, ed. Michael Agnes (New York: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2003) 321.  Literally, to illuminate something means “to give light to; light up.”  Symbolically, to illuminate something means “to make clear; to explain; to inform.” [↩]
22. For more information about illumination, see our FAQ “What is Illumination.” [↩]
23. Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians in The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987) 116. [↩]
24. 1 Cor 1:18; Rom 8:7-8. [↩]
25. Joseph H. Thayer, Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996) 39.  The word is anakrino. It means “to hold an investigation; to interrogate, examine, the accused or the witness.” [↩]
26. Jer 17:9; Rom 3:9-18, 23. [↩]
27. Erickson, 49.  Depravity or Total Depravity is “The idea that sinfulness affects the whole of one’s nature and colors all that one does; it does not necessarily mean that one is as sinful as one can possibly be.” [↩]
28. Simon J. Kistemaker, Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians in New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007 ed.) 92-93. [↩]
29. Rom 8:9-11; 1 Cor 3:16; Eph 2:22. [↩]
30. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. [↩]
31. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. [↩]
32. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John [↩]
33. 1, 2, 3 John. [↩]
34. Jude [↩]
35. 1, 2 Peter. [↩]
36. The following list of Bible verses and some of the research is borrowed with permission from  Shaun Lewis’ unpublished M. Div. thesis entitled “A Pauline Response to the Erosion of Certainty in the Emerging Church” (April, 2007).  This thesis is available upon request, just email justthesimpletruth@yahoo.com for a copy. [↩]
37. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., ed. by Frederick W. Danker (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2000) 792. [↩]
38. Erickson, 152.  Perseverance is “The teaching that those who are genuine believers will endure in the faith to the end.” [↩]
39. Matt 6:20. [↩]
40. See Rom 2:19; 14:14; 15:14; 2 Cor 10:7; Phil 1:25; 2 Tim 1:5. [↩]
41. Revolutions in Worldview, 365. [↩]
42. Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005) 104. [↩]
43. Nel F. S. Ferre’s Searchlights on Contemporary Theology, quoted from http://www.religion-online.org/showbook.asp?title=516 as of 4/6/11. [↩]
44. For more information about what the Bible says about knowing God, see “The Knowability of God” in Issue 2 of /jtst/. [↩]
45. Jn 3:3-8. [↩]
46. The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer, Volume One (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1985) 333. [↩]
47. “The Rationality, Meaningfulness, and Precision of Scripture” in The Master’s Seminary Journal (Fall 2004) 197. [↩]
48. Gen 11:31-12:3. [↩]
49. Acts 9:1-6. [↩]
50. Ps 19:7-11; Lk 16:19-31.  For more information on the clarity of the Bible, see our FAQ, “How Do We Interpret the Bible?” [↩]
51. God will judge sinners in Hell for their disobedience to His Word.  Revelation 21:8 describes the fate of those who have refused to believe, murdered, performed immoral acts, committed idolatry, and lied.  “But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” [↩]
52. See Deut 4:39; 7:9; Ps 100:3; Acts 2:36; 4:10; 28:28. [↩]
53. The Master’s Seminary Journal, 186. [↩]
54. Ecc 1:9. [↩]
55. Heb 13:8. [↩]