It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant, one who would not attend his business by candlelight, to plead that he had not bright sunshine

It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant, one who would not attend his business by candlelight, to plead that he had not bright sunshine. The candle, that is set up in us, shines bright enough for our purposes…If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do muchwhat as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.

John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Introduction, 5

Whilst the light of nature does not give us all truth, yet it is sufficient to make to us our duty to others and God.

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Romans. 1.20

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I’m not a Christian, I’m not a Buddha

I’m not a Christian, I’m not a Buddha (sic.), I just believe in God. I think there’s more to life than what we can see.

Ruud Gullit, October 1996 after death of Chelsea Vice-Chairman, Matthew Harding in a helicopter crash.

Many people admit to there being a God but without special revelation this God remains unknown.

Postmodern hypocrisy

Postmoderns denounce the pretence of those who claim to view the world from a transcendent vantage point from which we are able to speak imperiously to and on behalf of all humankind. Postmoderns have replaced this Enlightenment ideal with the belief that all claims to truth — and ultimately even truth itself — are socially conditioned.

Stanley Grenz, A Primer On Postmodernism, p. 38

Postmoderns are right on to decry the hubris of Rationalism. But postmoderns hypocritically won’t apply this to themselves and allow a ‘special case’ for their ‘transcendent vantage point’ from which they claim all truth claims are ‘socially conditioned’ – an implicit claim to omniscience.

We can say only how things currently seem to us from our point of view

There isn’t any pure or quite neutral experience or knowledge of reality. In order to have any experience or knowledge at all, you must have a practical slant, an interest, an angle or a perspective which…makes certain things stand out and become noticeable…There are indefinitely many such perspectives or angles upon the world – and they are all of them historically occasioned, human and contingent…even the most advanced scientific theories are …subject to future revision…We can say only how things currently seem to us from our point of view; we cannot say how they are absolutely.

Don Cupitt, Ant Realist Faith, p.2

Of course, Cupitt’s theory is itself open to ‘future revision’ when it may be seen to be just one perspective that can be as dismissed as the merely ‘historically occasioned, human and contingent’ theory it clearly is. If only he had listened to the One who knows rather more than all of us.