Will you Serve Yeshua HaMoshiach (Jesus The Christ) and His Gospel, or will you serve Socrates and his?
There is a vast difference between the Humanistic "gospel of Socrates" and the Gospel of Yeshua HaMoshiach (Jesus the Christ). Let us compare them and see.
The Philosophy of Socrates stated that "all men" are born Autonomous. Unregenerate Man has the ability within his own mind using his fallen human reason alone to establish even Divine "objective truth". [1] [2]
SOCRATES AND HIS STUDENT PLATO, ALONG WITH ARISTOTLE REPRESENT THE EPITOME OF "HELLENIZING THOUGHT"
In all these centuries, this is still the best that unregenerate or carnal man has been able to come up with: Greek philosophy and/or thought systems. Their conributions in this area were huge. Although they did seek Absolute Truth, and many of their ideas do possess truth to a greater or lesser extent, they could and can never reach that Absolute, because the origins of their systems ultimately rested on man himself.
Today's flawed Humanistic thinking, both "Secular" and Christian, are loosely based on this same Socratic philosophy: the "gospel of Socrates". They assert or imply that "all men" (even unregenerate men) [3] are born Autonomous, and can establish meaning (even Divine Meaning as in the case of Christian Humanists) using mans' unregenerate Fallen intellect alone using Fallen human reason. This idea has slowly crept into the very fabric of society without so much as a question and has become "perfectly acceptable" in most educational institutions and nearly all denominations of the Assemblies! [4]
G-d does Provide Common Grace to all men. These are abilities that have remained "in the flesh" after the Fall of Adam. They are not "in Innocence", but Fallen. This includes the intellect, the will and human faith as well. These human attributes are present, to a greater or lesser extent, in all of unregenerate mankind. None of them can ultimately Save. Man "suppresses the truth in unrighteousness" (Romans 1:18) in his Fallen state, and attempts to make himself Autonomous just as Socratic, Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy also attempted to do. This is the same "ye shall be as gods" of Genesis 3:5.
EITHER FALLEN MAN PLAYS A PART, OR G-DS' GRACE ACCOMPLISHES ALL THE WORK.
The Humanistic Christian always allots to Fallen man some ability to discern G-ds' Purposes for him while that Fallen man is still unregenerate. For the Christian Humanist, Salvation is not based upon G-ds' Foreordained and Predeterminate Counsel of Election, but upon Chance in a Relativistic Universe. This was reflected in the teaching of Pelagius and today by Arminianism. The acceptance of religious syncretism which leads to Relativism teaches to place their interpretation also UPON Scripture. Persons have usually not been taught the full truth about the philosophy of Socrates that advanced these same principles, but have accepted them outright; most times unknowingly, uncritically, being taught they are "absolute truth".
THE "REST" OF SOCRATES
REINCARNATION
Socrates stated in his work "Meno" that man has gone through numerous "reincarnations", and so his soul already "knows all things". Everything that man learns was already previously known to him because of "past lives". The "knowledge" already exists within mans' autonomous soul, as he has already been "previously given" this knowledge. That is, all men; both regenerate and unregenerate. Regeneration therefore becomes a complete non-issue, for mans' soul already "innately knows all things" as "collective memories" from "past lives". [5]
THE HOLY ONE OF ISRAEL OR SOCRATES' "DAEMON"?
Socrates taught that unregenerate men could develop their "unfallen human faith" to believe in their own "unfallen intellectual" power. That the correct use of "unfallen human reason" was, in fact, "the gods leading us". Socrates called his "god" his "daemon" (where we get the English word "demon"). [6] The New Testament also uses the same Greek word "daemon": never in any good sense, but as "fallen angels" or spirits that were cast out.
MAN IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR SIN
Socrates also taught that "no man knowingly does evil". In his "Protagoras", virtue is not a "skill" but this "knowledge". In his "Meno", knowledge is "a gift of the gods", but man is merely sometimes ignorant of this knowledge and it is not his fault. This would of necessity required "rehabilitation through education", put forward in his "Gorgias". All wrongdoing is the result of man being ignorant. According to Socrates therfore, all men are not totally depraved as the Apostle Paul states in Romans 7, but quite the opposite! Mans' reason, according to Socrates, is still both free and virtuous: "good" even in his unregenerate state. Man, according to Socrates, was truly "Born Free" as Jean Jaques Rousseau later said. The fault does not lie in man, but in education! If man could only be properly educated, then there would be only virtue!
All of this only leads to the following conclusion, which is the hallmark of todays' Humanistic Ideal:
"There is only one remedy for the ills of thought, and that is more thought. If thought, in its first inroads, leads, as it always does, to skepticism and denial, the only course is, not to suppress thought, but to found faith upon it." [7] [8]
Whatever is arrived at as a conclusion by Fallen human reason, Fallen "human faith" BELIEVES in it! This is where lawless Humanistic man has become truly "a law unto himself" and his unregenerate autonomous conclusions become automatically self-validated! This is the "I'm O.K., You're O.K." type of reasoning.
That this philosophy should continue to be believed and taught while having been not only refuted by the Apostle Paul two centuries age, but also now by Postmodernism , is truly amazing, is it not?
That its' total defeat is recorded in the New Testament, and is no longer mentioned in the "ivy-covered hallowed halls of academe" is then truly suppressing the truth in unrighteousness!
THIS DOCTRINE HAD A RESURGENCE IN PELAGIANISM IN THE 5TH CENTURY A.D. AND WAS JUDGED HERESY AT THAT TIME.
THE WITNESS TO "MODERN SCIENCE"
"Are we then to fail to witness for G-d in the field of science? It is only because the unbeliever has never been confronted with the full implication of Christianity for the field of science that he tolerates us in his presence still? And are we to have a theory of Common Grace that prohibits us from setting forth the witness of G-d before all men everywhere? Is not the Christ to be set forth in His cosmic significance by us after all? Is it not true that there could be no science if the world and all that is therein is controlled by Chance? Is it not true that the non-Christian does his work by the Common Grace of G-d? A theory of Common Grace based on the natural theology is destructive of all Grace, Common or Special.
"Surely the witness to the G-d of the Scriptures must be presented everywhere. It must be, to be sure. presented with wisdom and with tact. But it must be presented. It is not presented, however, if we grant that G-d the Holy Spirit in a general testimony to all men approves of interpretations of this world or of aspects of this world which ignore Him and set Him at naught.
"The non-Christian scientists must be told that he is dealing with facts that belong to G-d. He must be told this, not merely in the interest of religion in the narrower sense of the term. He must be told this in the interest of science too, and of culture in general. He must be told that there would be no facts distinguishable from one another unless G-d had made them and made them thus. He must be told that no hypothesis would have any relevance or bearing on these same facts, except for the Providence of G-d. He must be told that his own mind, with its principles of order, depends upon his being made in the image of G-d. And then he must be told that if it were not for G-ds' Common Grace he would go the full length of the principle of evil within him. He would finish iniquity and produce only war. His very acts of courtesy and kindness, his deeds of generosity, all his moral good is not to be explained in terms of himself and the goodness of his nature, but from G-ds' enabling him to do all of these things in spite of his sinful nature. 'Will you not then Repent in order to serve and worship the Creator more than the creature?'" Van Til, "Common Grace and Witness-Bearing," in Torch and Trumpet (Dec. 1954 - Jan. 1955).
And so we ask the question once more: Will you Serve Yeshua HaMoshiach (Jesus the Christ) and His Gospel, or Socrates and his?
PEOPLE OF G-D MINISTRIES
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FOOTNOTES
It opened the door for fallen Humanistic man to bring forth a culture and educational systems completely based on Humanism!
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If Socrates be regarded as the highest product of the "Greek spirit", this only points up the striking character of Pauls' words:
'Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? hath G-d not made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing that in the Wisdom of G-d the world through its' wisdom knew not G-d, it was G-ds' Good Pleasure through the foolishness of preaching to Save them that Believe.' (I Corinthians 1:20,21)
"....The ideal or perfect man of Greece is the perfect covenant-breaker; the ideal man of Scripture is the perfect covenant-keeper." Cornelius Van Til. Christian Theistic Ethics. p. 219.
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