Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Who is John Armstrong Part II

John Armstrong's position on "propositional truth" is skewed to say the very least.

As a point of departure in examining this very important issue, here is my post in response to Dr. Armstrong's 8/4/07 posting under his entry, "How Important is Propositional Truth?"

I wrote:

"The first paragraph of the last post deserves some further scrutiny.

First: I defy you to identify any meaningful distinction between sentence no. 1 ("I am not denying propositional truth") and sentence no. 2 ("ultimate truth cannot be reduced to propositions").

Certainly, we are talking about "ultimate truth" when we discuss propositions such as, "Jesus is the truth." How could it possibly be otherwise? Are you saying there is some type of truth that can be propositional in nature but that is somehow non-ultimate? And what is your basis for condescendingly referring to "reducing" ultimate truth to propositions?

Second: Your third sentence ("If Christ is the Truth then we cannot reduce truth to statements of logic or propositions") is patently false and unsupportable.

When you say, "If Christ is the Truth," are you denying that He is the Truth as John 14:6 clearly states?

Where is there any Scriptural support for your statement? Certainly any attempt to support this statement would have to, at a minimum, reckon with John 1:1 ("In the beginning was the Word"). This text gives no indication that the author is the least bit reluctant to "reduce" truth to propositional form, even matters of ultimate truth.

Further, any attempt to support your statement scripturally would also need to address passages such as Romans 8:32, Luke 11:13 and many, many others in which logic, propositions and arguments are made time and time again."

There is so very much more to be said in response to these statements and others by Dr. Armstrong . . .

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