“Our goal is to explore how human reasoning depends on God,” states the Introduction to Redeeming Reason: A God Centered Approach, by Vern Poythress (Crossway, 2023). In 157 pages, the author builds his case that human reasoning is a reflection of the relationships within the Trinity. Although not a theology book, it relies on insights about God, and although not a Bible exegesis, it uses inductive references to scripture. Primarily, the author uses sequential steps of logic to form a path—paved with discourses on analogy—to link the thinking processes of man to the nature of the Godhead. It is a daunting journey.
Vern Poythress holds a PhD in mathematics from Harvard and a ThD from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. The bio on the back of the book further states that he is a professor of theology at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, earned a total of six degrees, and “is the author of numerous books and articles on biblical interpretation, language, and science.” In fact, Dr. Poythress has seventeen books published through Crossway alone, and other works published through Zondervan and the Presbyterian and Reformed publishing houses. His list of scholarly articles is extraordinary. This is a uniquely impressive academic and literary resume.
Redeeming Reason lays out in chapter one that “strictly speaking, God redeems people not ideas.” However, the redeemed are to renew their mind, per Romans 12:2, and thereby obtain a renewed ability to reason. The author states that a renewal of reason involves the proper use of analogy. The rest of the book discusses the origin and use of analogy. So, it behooves the reader to be familiar with the definition of analogy right from the start. The author quotes the definition from Merriam-Webster: “a comparison of two otherwise unlike things based on resemblance of a particular aspect,” and, “resemblance in some particularities between things otherwise unlike: Similarity.”
The author begins the discussion of analogy by underlining that, per Hebrew 1:3, the Son is the exact image of God. Their relationship within the godhead is the archetype of imaging or reflection. From Genesis, we know that Man is made in the image of God but whereas the Son is the exact image, Adam is a derivative image. At this point, the text introduces the concept of analogy.
“Let us describe the relation between God and man as a relation of analogy. God and man are not identical. But Adam is made in the image of God in a way that is analogous to the eternal Son being in the image of God.”
The author is clear to point out that analogy involves both similarities and differences. Hence, man is made in the image of God but every attribute of man—power, rationality, speech, etc.—is derivative and different from God. The author is careful to explain that the Son is fully God, even though distinct in personhood from the Father, and that man is not divine even though made in God’s image.
The author broadens the use of analogy by referring to the doctrine of the simplicity of God, that is, that God is “indecomposable.” His attributes are not separable but “interpenetrate” reflecting the mutual indwelling of the persons of the Trinity. The author writes,
“This interpenetration must extend to all features about God, including the presence of analogy. . . .Since all truth has its archetype in God’s knowledge, truth is interpreted by analogy.”
Later in the book, the author has a succinct analysis of the nature of God in light of the concept of simplicity. The author states,
“The doctrine of the Trinity can be explained using two key terms: essence and person. In God there is one essence and three persons. So the word essence functions to designate what belongs to the oneness of God. The word person functions to designate what belongs to the multiplicity or threeness in God. That is appropriate. Both words have mystery in them. They do not actually separate between the oneness and the threeness. That is impossible, because God is inseparable, as the principle of simplicity affirms.”
Beginning in Part III, the author explains the use of analogies in various kinds of reasoning including deductive, inductive, and abductive. He spends several pages discussing the subset of deductive reason known as syllogisms, in which a conclusion is drawn from two propositions that each share a term with the conclusion. He then explains how predictive and scientific models are actually analogistic in their methods. The author reiterates his connection of analogies to the Trinity as follows,
“What is the point of observing the presence of analogies? All the analogies go back to God and depend on God. Human reasoning is imitative of God. . . .Analogies trace back to the trinitarian character of God.”
The author again broadens the view of analogies by explaining the concept of loose analogies as used in the poetry of Isaiah 1:8. Loose analogies provide “only limited and more tentative conclusions.” However, despite cultural pressure that considers scientific models and “tight deductions” as the most powerful and important “man cannot cope with life without dealing with larger meanings.” The author notes that it is significant that the Bible contains poetry: God provided mankind with poetic scripture so that we could deal with the “loose” analogies that life on earth entails.
In the chapter on context, the author assigns aspects of analogy to the three persons of the Trinity. The author states that,
“God, especially in the person of the Father, is the archetype for similarities found in the analogies that we use. God the Son is preeminently the archetype for the differences found in an analogy. God the Spirit is preeminently the archetype for the context, which guides and qualifies the nature of the analogy. . . . similarities, differences, and contexts are inseparable in the derivative, ectypal instances of analogy that we explore in human reasoning.”
This is one of the more difficult concepts of this work because the assignments are not traits of the persons of the Godhead derived from scripture. Instead, the author has developed this construction to forward his thesis that analogy is the core of human reasoning.
Indeed, this is a central thesis of the book: human reasoning reflects the Trinity. Reason is made of analogies and the Trinity is the archetype of analogy. The author states that “when we are using analogies, we are imitating God.”
In the final section of Redeeming Reason, the author explores the concept of perspective and its connection to analogy. As was done previously for aspects of analogy, the author ties three aspects of perspective—person, theme, and context—to the three persons of the Trinity.
It follows from the archetype of the Trinity that human knowledge of God has a “perspectival structure.” The “person” aspect of this perspective is the individual believer seeking knowledge, the “theme” aspect is the object of the knowledge, that is, the Father. The “context” aspect is the Son who reveals the Father. The author uses Matthew 11:27 to highlight the understanding of these three aspects of perspective: “No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” A believer knows the Father through the Son.
In his conclusion, the author states, in part, that “Human knowledge cannot extend into an ideal realm with a direct divine vision, which [would] dispense with analogies.” Therefore, all human reasoning is necessarily analogical reason. The author concludes that this reality should keep us humble, but “at the same time, we should rejoice in the genuine knowledge of God that he gives us through Christ the Son (Matt. 11:27).”
This brief review only touches the larger issues of Redeeming Reason. Hopefully, it provides a fair overview of the learned author’s discussion of human reasoning and his theory for its derivation. The work contains many useful insights. However, the writer struggled with the reduction of human thinking to analogy and the Godhead to an archetype of analogy. To use the author’s terminology, this is only one perspective on a vast field of other viewpoints.
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