By Every Word
The Foundation’s name, “by every word,” is taken from Jesus’ response to Satan’s temptation in the wilderness to turn stones into bread. Jesus countered the temptation by saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’” (Matt.4:4). Jesus was certainly not exaggerating.
Dr. Francis Schaeffer produced a ten-part video series attempting to answer the question, “How Should We Then Live?” This author, however, is not convinced that Dr. Schaeffer adequately answered his own question, though Jesus’ words quoted above, provide a succinct answer to the question, namely, “by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
In order to appreciate the weight of this answer, it is necessary to understand how we know anything and how we can be sure that what we know is true. The philosophical term for this knowledge quest is ‘epistemology.’
In his series, Dr. Schaeffer showed different philosophers throughout history explaining how and why knowledge was possible. Yet, as Dr. Schaeffer so tellingly pointed out, each philosopher that came along was unconvinced by the explanations of the previous philosopher/s.
What we see in the world is that even those people who might never have consciously thought about how they are able to know something are, nevertheless, functioning with an assumed theory of knowledge.
Everyone believes that they know how the human race and the world came into being. All people assume that their “knowledge” about these origins is correct, however, how can they be sure that what they think they know, is really true? Essentially, there are only two ways to answer the origins questions and both of these answers presuppose a supreme authority.
One group presupposes that the human mind is the supreme authority and the other group presupposes that God’s word, preserved as Scripture, is the supreme authority. Both of these groups, by the way, embrace their positions by faith.
Those who presuppose that their mind is the supreme (or ultimate) authority, do so without any investigation or proof demonstrating that their mind is capable of serving in this capacity. They “just know” that whatever seems possible or impossible to them is an established fact and they judge all things accordingly.
To such people, it is their mind that determines whether anything revealed in Scripture is possible or not, i.e., the God of Scripture, Christ, miracles, morality, creation, who man is, sin, etc. If man’s mind finds fault with something revealed in Scripture, since man’s mind is the supreme authority, it necessarily corrects Scripture.
However, how does such a position account for the existence of the mind? For example, how in a world that came into being by chance and continues to evolve by chance, is it even possible to trust an immaterial pulse that we call “the mind”? How does such a mind determine possibility or morality and are these determinations universal? How does one person know if the next person’s mind functions in the same way his does? In reality, what we see are people, by faith, holding onto their mind’s presumed abilities. And even though these presumed abilities are unsupported by the real-life observations and experiences of their own finite and faulty minds, nevertheless, they defend the legitimacy of attributing supreme authority to their minds.
The other group sees the mind as a tool and not as a standard. A tool given by the Creator to the creature so that he can understand reality in the light of what God has revealed it to be in Scripture. God’s word in Scripture is the supreme (or ultimate) authority for everything that it speaks about and this is embraced by faith. This group knows God as the Creator of all things and themselves as His creatures and therefore, they see themselves as dependent upon His revealed truth in order to truly know anything. The creature forever remains dependent upon the Creator for everything, knowing that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” (Prov.1:7).
The only way to truly know who we are, who God is, what reality is, how to define good and evil and “how should we then live,” is by bringing our thinking about everything into line with “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
Either man’s mind or God’s mind will be chosen by people to serve as their supreme authority; only one of these, however, leads to true knowledge about all things, while the other one makes true knowledge impossible.
Only God can define good and evil and so it is to the Scriptures that we are to turn when determining our ethics in every aspect of our existence. The Foundation’s stated goal is the advancement of applied Christian ethics—ethics that are defined and applied in complete dependence upon every word that God has preserved as Scripture. All of our thinking and acting is to be directed “by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”