Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:18:02 GMT

This is the appendix to the paper I presented in my previous entry. My Wisdom Literature professor noted that this is really the most important and valuable part of the entire document since it is an exegetical and linguistic defense of the core tenets of the main body.

This paper assumes to some extent that you have read the previous entry. And like the previous entry, this paper assumes that the reader is already familiar with presuppositionalism.

Appendix: A Defense of the Presuppositionalist Interpretation of Proverbs 1:7

As discussed at length, Proverbs 1:7 is a favorite prooftext of revelational epistemologists, namely presuppositionalists. Of course, such an interpretation assumes that the Hebrew word translated as knowledge, da’at, refers to justified, true belief.[1] In all of my time studying the works of Van Til, Bahnsen, Frame, and Butler, I have never seen a defense of this interpretation. This is perhaps curious, because even a cursory glance at many popular commentaries on Proverbs will reveal that the few who draw epistemological implications from this verse spend little time, if any, discussing these implications. Of course, this may say more about the modern evangelical scholar’s interest in epistemology than anything else.

A few have challenged presuppositionalists in their use of Proverbs 1:7. Therefore, I would like to examine whether da’at refers to justified, true belief against two common arguments.[2]

The first argument states that da’at refers only to “moral knowledge,” which is why some Bible versions may translate da’at as “wisdom” instead of “knowledge.” Consequently, the argument states that Solomon only had practical skill for living in mind and not epistemology when he penned verses like Proverbs 1:7, 1:29, 2:6, and 9:10. The presuppositionalist may respond in several ways.

First, da’at and its root, yāda’, is defined and used epistemologically. In the Old Testament, yāda’ is used 944 times to describe a variety of situations in which a person believes, understands, perceives, recognizes, or discerns something about reality.[3] Concerning da’at, the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament defines it as “knowledge gained in various ways by the senses” and calls it a “general term for knowledge.”[4] Furthermore, da’at is used when describing technical knowledge (1 Kings 7:14), discernment (Ps. 119:66), moral cognition (Gen. 2:9,17), unintentional deeds (Deut. 4:42), and mistaken opinions (Prov. 19:2). God has da’at because nothing is hidden from Him (Ps. 139:1-18), and He teaches da’at to man (Ps. 94:10). In some of these cases, da’at refers to knowledge that is not limited to that of an practical, moral nature. It seems strange that Solomon would use such an epistemologically-rich term if he did not intend to convey an epistemological statement.

The New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis seems less enthusiastic about da’at as an epistemological term, choosing to emphasize its theological dimension (the necessity of da’at in one’s relationship with God).[5] NIDOTTE still discusses da’at as a derivative of yd’ (a different spelling of yāda’), which means to “observe, realize, find out, recognize, perceive, care about, be(come) acquainted with, have sexual relations with, choose, (come to) understand, know, have insight; …”[6] The derivative da’at is specifically defined as “knowledge, ability, knowledge of, insight …”[7] Commenting on the wide range of usage of yd’ in the Old Testament, NIDOTTE says the following.

The meanings of yd’ are difficult to relate to one another. They range from sensory perception to intellectual process to practical skill to careful attention to close relationship to physical intimacy. … It is probable that precision in nuancing is not to be sought in such words in isolation; only the context enables some distinctions to emerge.[8]

As the second response will show, the meaning of da’at does clearly emerge in light of the context. NIDOTTE also makes an interesting point regarding the act of knowing:

In the broadest sense, yd’ means to take various aspects of the world of one’s experience into the self, including the resultant relationship with that which is known. The fundamentally relational character of knowing (over against a narrow intellectual sense) can be discerned, not least in that both God and human beings can be subject and object of the vb.[9]

This actually closely mirrors the “triperspectivalism” of presuppositional apologist John Frame. In The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, Frame spends a great deal of time explaining that knowing is always an act done in relation to God’s word, the creation, and the self. Frame says that “they are so closely related to each other that knowing law, world, and self are all the same process, seen from different ‘perspectives.’”[10] This relational nature of knowing fits nicely with Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10, because knowledge is understood only in light of Yahweh. The Baker Commentary on Proverbs agrees:

As a beginning, [Proverbs 1:7] claims that there is no knowledge apart from a proper attitude and relationship to Yahweh. Fear of Yahweh is foundational to knowledge, which here functions as a close synonym to wisdom. In this way, the book acknowledges the radically relational and theocentric nature of knowledge/wisdom. This is important especially in the light of the fact that the wisdom literature does not hammer away this idea. Many of the proverbs in the latter part of the book cite experience, observation, or human reason as the grounds for their advice, and this has led some scholars to suppose that wisdom, at least in its early stages, is a “secular” enterprise. However, the present form of the book is thoroughly theological so that even human observation depends on divinity in a foundational way.[11]

Continuing the theme of perspectives, the Handbook on Wisdom Books and Psalms quotes Clifford as saying that Proverbs has an epistemological, ethical, and religious dimension.[12] As with Frame’s triperspectivalism, each dimension must be understood in relation to the other. A proper way of knowing must presuppose a dependence on Yahweh. Furthermore, a proper way of knowing is inherently ethical because it entails how one ought to think. Frame observes the following:

To ask a person to justify a belief is to ask an ethical question. It is to ask what ethical right that person has to believe such and such; it is to ask whether and why we are ethically obligated to believe it. What is the “pressure” we feel to accept a justified belief? … The pressure, I think, can be understood only as a moral pressure, as the pressure of conscience.[13]

Having examined the inter-related perspectives of knowing, we see that Proverbs 1:7 encapsulates them all beautifully. The person who knows is obligated to fear Yahweh. Epistemology, ethics, and theology all intersect at the heart of wisdom. Consequently, to proclaim Yahweh as the beginning of wisdom is to make a statement about how we know, what we ought to know, and who God is. To deny the epistemological component of wisdom, then, is to deny wisdom itself. The critic of presuppositionalism has found himself in the same position as the unbeliever: presupposing the very thing he argues against.

A second and perhaps more lethal response to this first charge involves the context. Proverbs presents a vivid picture of the wise and the fool. As discussed at length, foolishness is an epistemology with devastating and unavoidable implications for how the fool reasons and behaves. Paul explains in Romans 1:22 that the fool’s self-glorifying epistemology leads him to consider himself wise, when in reality he is the exact opposite—a fool, and precisely because his epistemology is so irrational. Likewise, Psalm 14 states that the fool does not believe in God. This unbelief makes him a worker of iniquity—one who is corrupt and does not seek God. The psalmist asks in verse four, “Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge?” In other words, unbiblical epistemologies are irrational and sinful, and this defines what it means to be foolish. Since wisdom is the opposite of foolishness, we can deduce that wisdom entails rationality and righteousness. Rationality requires a sound epistemology, therefore wisdom itself must be an epistemology. Therefore, to say that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom is to say that Yahweh is the foundation of true epistemology.

Perhaps some would grant that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of justified, true belief, but this was not Solomon’s intention when writing Proverbs. But how could Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, write a book about wisdom and foolishness and ignore the epistemological consequences?

Furthermore, Proverbs 1:7 is regarded as the summary of the preamble of Proverbs (Prov. 1:1-7), which makes it a very important verse. The New International Commentary on the Old Testemant calls it the “quintessential expression of the basic spiritual grammar for understanding the book.”[14] If in that one verse the core difference between the wise and fool is described then it no doubt must encompass all of the differences between the wise and the fool. Since the wise and the fool have different epistemologies, Proverbs 1:7 must entail an epistemological dimension. Of course, I would go even further and say that the core difference between the wise and the fool is epistemological, therefore the core verse of Proverbs that explains the core difference between the wise and the fool should be explicitly epistemological.

We see again how epistemology ties in so strongly with ethics. Drawing again upon Frame’s clever observation, we see that epistemology is ethical because biblical epistemology shows us not only what is the right way to think but how men ought to think. After all, the intellectual suicide of the unbeliever stems from an ethical pitfall—namely his rejection of the true knowledge-giver in favor of his own autonomy. Once again, even if the presuppositionalist conceded that da’at is chiefly ethical, epistemological implications are only a short leap away.

A third counter-argument considers Proverbs 1:7 within the context of the topics in the rest of the book: education (22:6, 1:5), counsel (11:14), instruction (12:1), discretion (1:4, 2:11, 5:2), discernment (2:3), understanding (1:2, 2:2), study (15:28), truth (3:3), investigation (25:2), legal defense (25:8-10), certainty (22:21), and perception (1:2, 20:12). Each of these practices or disciplines must correspond to God’s created reality if they are to have any value. Justifying such a correspondence theory of truth, of course, requires a cogent epistemology.

Not surprisingly, Solomon provides the basis for all of the above disciplines almost immediately in Proverbs 1:7. NICOT agrees by pointing out that “beginning” in Proverbs 1:7 refers to temporality rather than quality. The fear of the Lord is not merely the “choice part” of wisdom. Rather, it is necessarily prior to understanding the book of Proverbs:

However, the temporally first step in this case is not on a horizontal axis that can be left behind but on a vertical axis on which all else rests. It denotes both the initium and the principium. What the alphabet is to reading, notes to reading music, and numerals to mathematics, the fear of the Lord is to attaining the revealed knowledge of this book.[15]

Fourth, if we view wisdom, understanding, and knowledge in the book of Proverbs as solely “moral,” 3:19-20 presents an odd picture. In these verses we have non-moral actions being accomplished through the aforementioned trifecta. Would breaking up the depths not require a knowledge of how the depths must be broken up? “Practical skills for living as Yahweh intends” are simply not in view here. My intention here is not to get readers to abandon the moral component of the trifecta but to simply acknowledge a more robust, encompassing definition of the terms.

Fifth, NICOT presents understanding, which is closely tied to knowledge and wisdom (Prov. 9:10) as being “the faculty of the intellectual discernment and interpretation ….”[16] Moreover, “it refers to the faculty of reason and intelligence applied to the content of the sage’s teaching.”[17] Finally, NICOT wisely points to Prov. 3:5 as a refutation of the “autonomous use of the intellect.”[18] Autonomy always leads to intellectual death and therefore knowledge “falsely so-called” (1 Tim. 6:20), which is why we must lean not on our own understanding but on the true knowledge-giver.

The second argument some Christians may present against a presuppositional reading of Proverbs 1:7 involves the “fear of the Lord.” Presuppositionalists argue that all men know God as the authority and therefore are epistemologically subservient to Him. In order to have knowledge at all, all men must fear the Lord, even if they suppress this fear. In many proverbs, however, Solomon seems to present the fear of the Lord as something possessed only by the righteous.[19] For example, to fear the Lord is to hate evil (Prov. 8:13), but fools obviously do not hate evil. Also, Proverbs 1:29 presents the fear of the Lord as something that men choose—not something that all men have through general revelation. How does the presuppositionalist resolve this seemingly crippling contradiction?[20]

The simplest response is that in one sense unbelievers do not fear the Lord and in another sense they do. Unbelievers do suppress the knowledge of God and therefore act as though they do not know God, and even claim that they do not know God, but this does not change the fact that they do know God. The unbeliever is simply lying to himself (and therefore is bearing false witness to the truth and is without excuse). In doing so he appears to reject the fear of the Lord. In other words, he outwardly denies what he must inwardly believe. His fundamental presuppositional commitment is to himself, and yet apart from a presuppositional commitment to his dependence on God he could not operate in this world. Greg Bahnsen once noted that his unbelieving doctor was able to perform a successful heart surgery on him because the Christian worldview is true, not the doctor’s. Of course, principles such as induction, the reliability of the senses, logic, memory, other minds, and so on, are usually taken for granted. Most people do not stop to consider what justification they might have for these transcendentals, and even if they have they cannot articulate a justification apart from scripture.[21] Yet they do know the justification through general revelation: All men know that God provides the transcendentals because all men know that “in Him we live and move and have our being,” (Acts 17:28). All men know that God is the creator and sustainer—and apart from this knowledge of God as the “Greater Transcendental” man could not justify his use of the “Lesser Transcendentals.” In other words, it is not enough to be made in God’s image (and therefore possess rationality). We must actually fear the Lord to have knowledge. We must actually submit to Him.

Another response to the conundrum of unbelievers fearing the Lord invokes common grace. Bahnsen quotes Van Til on this matter as follows:

[The unbeliever] has within him the knowledge of God by virtue of his creation in the image of God. But this idea of God is suppressed by his false principle, in turn, suppressed by the restraining power of God’s common grace … And by the striving of the Spirit … their hostility is curbed in some measure … And as such they can cooperate by virtue of the ethical restrain of common grace.[22]

Though the unbeliever seems to dwell in irreconciliable tension, he does find himself in possession of some knowledge through God’s grace. Furthermore, since all knowledge given to sinful men is an act of grace, we may also deduce from biblical epistemology that faith itself comes through grace alone. The Holy Spirit, therefore, plays the crucial role in restoring one’s epistemology, just as He restores one’s soul. As Bahnsen wisely said, “Christ is not just the way back to the Father, He is the way back to the Father’s world.”[23]

It is worth noting that some commentators recognize the epistemological implications of the fear of the Lord. NICOT states that the “fear of the Lord … is the book’s theological and epistemological foundation.”[24] NICOT also affirms the significance of the fear of the Lord in general revelation in a quote by R.N. Whybray: “[The fear of the Lord refers] to a standard of moral conduct known and accepted by men in general.”[25] Despite knowing this standard, men suppress their fear of the Lord in order to evade His authority.

The Word Biblical Commentary quotes G. von Rad as saying that “Israel attributes to the fear of God … a highly important function in respect to human knowledge. She was … of the opinion that effective knowledge about God is the only thing that puts man into a right relationship with the objects of his perception.”[26] A later excursus on the fear of the Lord provides another illuminating quote by G. von Rad that neatly summarizes many of the points propounded in this paper.

The thesis that all human knowledge comes back to the question about commitment to God is a statement of penetrating perspicacity. It has, of course, been so worn by centuries of Christian teaching that it has to be seen anew in all its provocative pungency. In the most concise phraseology it encompasses a wide range of intellectual content and can itself be understood only as the result of a long process of thought. It contains in a nutshell the whole Israelite theory of knowledge.[27]

In conclusion, we see that the two main charges, although worth answering, fail to nullify Proverbs 1:7 as a prooftext for presuppositionalist epistemology. The first charge seems to stem from an unwarranted prejudice against epistemology, or at least an unfortunate ignorance towards epistemology. Examining the Hebrew as well as the context quickly dismantles the charge. The case is further strengthened in light of Frame and Clifford’s perspectivalist, relational view of knowing. The second charge merely misunderstands presuppositionalism and has already been addressed by Bahnsen and Van Til. Therefore, a “wise” reading of Proverbs will appreciate the seventh verse in its fullest epistemological sense.

[1] “Justified, true belief” is the commonly accepted epistemological definition of knowledge.

[2] I want to very heavily emphasize, however, that Proverbs 1:7 is not the sole prooftext for presuppositionalist epistemology. Indeed, the concept that reverential submission to Yahweh is the beginning of justified, true belief may be easily deduced from Romans 1 and Colossians 2:3, as well as the concept of God’s omniscience and sovereignty. Therefore, presuppositionalist epistemology does not live or die depending on whether the common presuppositionalist interpretation of Proverbs 1:7 is true.

[3] Harris Laird, Gleason Archer and Bruce Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 366.

[4] Ibid.

[5] New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, Volume 2, ed. Willem VanGemeren (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 411.

[6] Ibid., 409.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., 410.

[9] Ibid.

[10] John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1987), 73.

[11] Tremper Longman III, Proverbs (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms,) (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 100-101.

[12] Daniel Estes, Handbook on the Wisdom Books and Psalms (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 221.

[13] John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1987), 109.

[14] Bruce Waltke, The Book of Proverbs Chapters 1-15 (The New International Commentary on the Old Testament,) (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004), 180.

[15] Bruce Waltke, The Book of Proverbs Chapters 1-15 (The New International Commentary on the Old Testament,) (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004), 181.

[16] Ibid., 177.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Bruce Waltke, The Book of Proverbs Chapters 1-15 (The New International Commentary on the Old Testament,) (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004), 181.

[20] A similar criticism is also common to presuppositionalism: how can the unbeliever simultaneously believe in God and not believe in God?

[21] Man needs to have scripture in order to justify his justification for knowledge. Nevertheless, apart from knowing this justification he remains justified in his true beliefs and therefore has knowledge. Therefore, biblical epistemology is overtly externalist.

[22] Greg Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith (Nacogdoches: Covenant Media Press, 2004), 39

[23] A paraphrase of a statement Bahnsen made during an unknown lecture.

[24] Bruce Waltke, The Book of Proverbs Chapters 1-15 (The New International Commentary on the Old Testament,) (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004), 180.

[25] Ibid., 101.

[26] Roland Murphy, Proverbs (Word Biblical Commentary,) (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), 5.

[27] Ibid., 256.

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