General Philosophy

Man’s fundamental state is ignorance. Humans only rely on what they perceive their senses as telling them. Humans must trust their senses that what they perceive as true by their senses is actually true. Experience is fallible if the senses are fallible since experience relies on the observation of the senses.

 Humans see particulars and categorize and study them as particulars. They are only glimpses of the ideal. The ideal is a perfect, absolute, which cannot exist in a fallen world. Humans only see and observe the particulars, not the ideal. Human knowledge is then extrapolated based on the particulars and by reason as to the properties of the ideal. The knowledge that comes from humans studying and observing the particulars arises from experience in observing the particulars. Therefore, the knowledge of the particulars arises from experience. Reason serves to analyze the raw observations and experience. Through reason, the image of the ideal can be imagined from the particulars.

However, since humans do not know the true properties of the ideal, their reason and analysis of the particulars as they see them is merely theory.  When a new chair is made, it is called a chair because people have called similar things chairs. Therefore, there are properties to a chair that can be found only fully in a chair; nothing else can have all the properties of a chair and not be a chair. The human idea of a chair is based on the ideal of a chair. Humans have artificially defined the properties and the idea of a chair. The ideal of a chair is not observable and consequently cannot serve as a standard for judging true chair-ness. Moreover, humans have defined the properties of a chair and artificially determined the ideal of a chair which serves as a standard for the defining of objects as chairs based on the properties of the standard. Therefore, no absolute truth or ideal can be attained through human reason, rather humans artificially set things in positions where they act and are treated like ideals, although they are simply humans’ perception of the ideal.

Hence, there is no possibility that man can achieve knowledge of God through reason alone. Because man’s natural state is ignorant, and because humans cannot reason the absolute, God must reveal himself to man. God reveals himself to man which allows man to be saved. Without God’s revelation of himself to man, no man can be saved. Thus, the way in which God reveals himself to man is entirely the act of God because of the human inability to reason the absolute. Since because man has no action in God’s revelation, which cannot come about through human reason, revelation from God is not experience nor belief, but revelation leads to faith, which leads to belief, and in turn, knowledge from the experience of belief.