Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
Jeremy approaches Bible teaching with a passion for getting the basic doctrines explained so that the individual can understand them and then apply them to circumstances in their life. These basic and important lessons are nestled in a framework of history and progression of revelation from the Bible so the whole of Scripture can be applied to your physical and spiritual life.
Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
NT Framework - Uh what?
One. Many, Logic, Language. Can't we just live our lives and not think about these things? Yes you could, but you would be missing out on so much richness and joy in understanding God and His created order.
More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com
This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).
Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner.
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament Framework. Today a smaller, bite-sized piece from the larger lesson. We hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2:How do you solve this problem? The one is a universal category. I've already mentioned this. It's the question of where do you get a concrete, universal, something that is absolute, so that we can have absolute knowledge, so that the categories aren't always changing and knowledge is always slipping away from us and we're just on the fuzzy edge of it. The many is this particular idea in a category, and I'll give an example. Okay, but in order to think about anything, we have to have a universal category that that particular thing fits into to make sense. We just have to, as you'll see. So where do you get these concrete particulars? Now, example of logic Our dog in our house is a Morkie.
Speaker 2:Now, that sentence states the problem of the one and the many. Our dog is a Morkie. Morkie is a particular kind, it's one of the many in a category, the one, the one category that we call dog. Right, nobody has a problem with this, right? I know nobody thinks about this. That's what I said. You got to think about thinking. Okay, I know nobody, we just talk Our dog's a Morky, okay, but you are bringing in a universal category called dog and a particular in that category called a morky. It could be a Great Dane, whatever. Now, this example shows that we are always involved in this problem. If you don't have categories that have certain characteristics in which you can place a particular thing, then you can't talk, can you? I can say our dog is a morky, but if you don't understand the category dog, you don't know what I'm talking about. If you don't know what certain characteristics are of dogs, we can't talk. The only way I could explain to you what a Morky was is I'd have to say come here, let's go to my house if you understand what I'm saying, and I'll actually show it to you, right? So language is central here. We all do this. Guess what? Nobody knows how we do it. Nobody knows. Nobody in the universe outside of Christianity has ever figured out how we do this. That ought to strike you. We do it All. Right, here's a Morky. Okay, this is a Morky, an 11-pound bark machine. Okay, also known as Morky.
Speaker 2:Now, I've already given characteristics to the dog, haven't I? That's a characteristics of a particular thing inside of a category, now. So, now that you've seen this cute little pup who's probably wanting a treat, I'm gonna use an example from logic, using some more thing dog. If we're gonna form a category. We have to have this thing called language, right? But it also requires logic to do this. And here's the thing in our society and in every society, if language is sloppy, guess what? Our logic will be sloppy, because language and logic are related. If I say this, and this is a sloppy example, but if I say all dogs have four legs, then I go out I see an animal that has four legs. I conclude well, that's a dog, it's got four legs. That's sloppy logic, right? Because there are lots of other kinds of animals that have four legs. Okay. So what I have to do is I have to isolate more categories of dogs to narrow it down, so every time you see a four-legged creature, you don't say dog. Okay. Now this can get dicey, because some, like foxes, have a lot of characteristics of dogs, and so you have to come up with a whole lot of characteristics so you get this category. Another problem in our logic is this the word dog can have more than one meaning in the English language, and so you have to know which meaning I'm using. For example, I could say that person is a dog, meaning they're a sorry person, right? So our words have multiple meanings and these are two different categories, even though they're the same word.
Speaker 2:As a society becomes more and more illiterate okay logic becomes less and less good. It becomes sloppier. That's what we're experiencing now in our culture a decline in literacy, and the result is a decline in logical reasoning, where most things end up becoming just a heated argument between two people's egos. And logic and reasoning has nothing to do with which side wins, it's who can throw more rocks at the other person. In other words, this is saying or signaling illiteracy in society and people not wanting to have reasoned, rational debate or discussion, and they can't do it without becoming heated. They can't control themselves. That's a result of lack of literacy.
Speaker 2:In previous generations, books I've read from the early 1900s, sentences could be almost a page long. Now you might say, well, that's not good. Some English professors may say that's not good, but they know what I'm talking about, right? Some of you kind of thought a little bit of English here and there at the collegiate level, so I know. Now it's more short sentences. You know just ideas. Now how do you solve this problem? The Greeks knew this problem.
Speaker 2:Remember Plato and Aristotle. Remember Plato on the right or left, sorry, left. He's pointing up Aristotle on the right. He's pointing down. What Plato is pointing to when he points up is the need for one universals to over, as categories, over everything. And what Aristotle is doing, pointing down and saying no, no, no, you can't forget the individuals in these categories. So one would be like emphasizing Doug as a category, the other be saying, no, we got more keys, great Danes, colleagues, you know lots of opposites and so forth and so on. That's's what they were emphasizing. Each was emphasizing something different. Okay, one was saying marriage, the other was saying, no, the husband and the wife. You know, it was an emphasis issue. Now, plato knew there had to be these universals, otherwise there's no meaning, can't categorize anything. Okay, it's just basic. In Greek thought, though, and in thought that comes down to our day, there is no concrete universal out there.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas. If you would like to see the visuals that went along with today's sermon, you can find those on Rumble and on YouTube under Spokane Bible Church. That is where Jeremy is the pastor and teacher. We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with Him. If you found this podcast to be useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app, and until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.