Theological Term of the Week

skepticism
“[T]he view that even if there is objective truth, none of us can know what that truth is.”1 

• Jesus speaks to a skeptic: 

Jesus answered, … For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” …  (John 18:37-38 ESV)

• From What’s Your Worldview?: An Interactive Approach to Life’s Big Questions by James N. Anderson:

At first, Skepticism appears to be a thoroughly humble viewpoint. What could be more humble than saying you don’t know anything? What could be more modest than considering your opinion no better than anyone else’s? In reality, however, Skepticism is remarkable bold—even arrogant—because it makes sweeping claims about the capacity of the human mind that it can’t consistently support. 

In effect, Skeptics want us to believe that they alone have discerned some universal truth about human knowledge. But do they claim to know that? If they do, they’re no being consistently skeptical; specifically, they’re not being skeptical about their own claim to know a universal truth. On the other hand, if they say they don’t know that Skepticism is correct, why should we take their position seriously? By their own profession, their opinions about human knowledge are no better than anyone else’s.

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Linked Together: Bible Study

Two blog posts and one video encouraging you to study the Bible.

Kim Shay: “[T]he best way to get people fired up about the Bible is to get them into the Bible and help them study it well. When we open that book and read and pray over its contents, the Spirit of God speaks to our hearts and nourishes us. The Spirit satisfies our souls and causes us to long for more.”

Lisa Spence: “We long for women to hunger for the Word of God, that hunger fueling a desire for knowledge, that knowledge prompting a greater love for the God of the Word, that love in turn creating a greater hunger, and not just a hunger for our personal knowledge of Him but for others to know Him too.”

Kathy Keller on Reading the Bible Every Day from Crossway on Vimeo.

Heidelberg Catechism

Question 43. What further benefit do we receive from the sacrifice and death of Christ on the cross?

Answer: Through his death, our old man is crucified, put to death and buried with him; (a) so that the corrupt inclinations of the flesh may no longer reign in us; (b) but that we may offer ourselves to him a sacrifice of thanksgiving. (c)

(Scriptural proofs after the fold.)

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