On the Reality of Circles and Squares

(Thoughts about God on a Rainy Day)

by Lee Edward Enochs"

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge" (Psalm 19:1-2).

On a particular dreadful and rainy day my thoughts were about God and I wondered...Why is a circle a circle and a square a square?

Why is an apple not an orange or a banana a pear?

Why does gravity pull an apple down and not up?

Why does a dog drink from a bowl and not a cup?

Why do fish swim upward and not backward in a lake?

Why is Martha in prison and not on TV baking a cake?

Is it because her entire media empire is a fake?

Do we know the shape of objects from the womb?

Or do we learn their identity from observing a room?

Why do poor kids in the hood steal cars and get shot?

While equally bad rich kids in the suburbs do not?

Is reality inherent or through experience observed?

This is what has my mind particularly perturbed...Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Kant, Hume and Hegelphilosophers have all tried to solve this puzzle,

Are things a priori knowable without appeal to particular experience?

Like Descartes, do we "think therefore I am?" or like Popeye the Sailor Man, is it "I am that I am?"
Or are things a posteriori comprehended throughexperience in the process of reasoning from facts orparticulars to general principles or from effects to causes; inductive; empirical?

John Locke(1632-1704) , the British Philosopher said that the mind is "tabula rasa" or a "blank slate", before it receives the impressions gained from experience. In his "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1690), the culmination of twenty years of reflection on the origins of human knowledge. According to Locke, what we know is always properly understood as the relation between ideas, and he devoted much of the Essay to an extended argument that all of our ideas—simple or complex—are ultimately derived from experience.

However, in counter distinction to Locke the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), argued that there are some things known epistemologically through a priori knowledge or experience.In the realm of Christian apologetics there are some apologists such as Aquinas, Tenant, Butler and Montgomery, that borrow from the thought of Locke and say that Christianity is "known to be true" by individuals by sense experience and probability.

They say that the historical and philosophical evidence for the existence of God and the veracity of the Christian faith is probably true based on the empirical evidence.on the other hand there are "revelational" apologists in Church history like Calvin, Van Til and Bahnsen that argue that the Bible teaches in Romans 1:18-32 that all people inherently know God in their hearts and minds through conscience and creation, but they suppress the truth of God's existence due to the depravity of their sin.

This inherent knowledge of God is deemed the "sensus divinitatis" or divine sense.

However, there are some apologists of the Christian faith that argue that Christianity is known to be true exclusively on the basis of subjective experience and that empirical evidence is unnecessary in determining whether or not Christianity is true.So which is it? Do we know that Christianity is true based on empirical evidence, "sensus divinitatis", or subjective experience?I tend to believe in the "sensus divinitatis" view, but then again, I could be wrong.

I can see where it is possible that all three views, can be simultaneously true at once and that we know that Christianity is true through a variety of means, through the historical evidence such as the resurrection of Jesus Christ and His fulfilled prophecies (1 Corinthians 15:1-11), the knowledge of God that is within us all (Psalm 19, Romans 1:18-32 and Romans 2).I also believe that Christianity is known to be true through the inward witness of the Holy Spirit (John 14:26, 15:26, 16:13, Romans 8:9, Galatians 4:6, 1 John 5:10).The reason why I have included poetic discussion regarding the shapes of apples and things is that I believe that without the existence of the God of Christianity as the precondition of all rational thought, reality itself would be rendered nonsensical.

Why then is a circle a circle and a square a square?And why is an apple not an orange or a banana a pear?I believe it is because God made them that way...

"The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." (Psalm 14:1)

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” (John 3:16-21)