Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us?—Psalm 12:4

Introduction

The words of Psalm 12:4 indicate a specific kind of the great sin of idolatry.

There are different kinds of idolatry. The sin of idolatry must not be limited to naming certain beings and elevating them to the status of divinity. Idolatry must not be limited to ascribing to these other beings the virtues that belong to the one true God. It must not be limited to making physical representations of these beings and putting them in temples or other holy places, presenting to them gifts and offerings, and bowing down to worship them instead of the one true God.

Idolatry is also the substitution of man for God. Idolatry is this substitution in two distinct ways that aggravate the sin before God. The first way is common to all idolatry. Rather than giving to God the glory of his sovereignty, attending to his word, and having God as one’s only God according to his word, man determines the god he will worship and serve. Because man must determine rather than God, the god or gods which man chooses to serve will most definitely not be the one true God. In this determination man establishes himself as sovereign, taking God’s place for himself. The second way of substitution is that man gives to himself glory and honors himself as the creator.

As the creator!

With his words man takes the prerogative of the creator. With his tongue man will prevail against the living God, who speaks his word of power and truth. With man’s speech he will make his own world in which God is not sovereign. Man will make his own world in which he is free to do as he pleases. He will make his own world in which he makes himself ruler. He will make his own world in which he freely oppresses and abuses those over whom he claims this power. He considers the works and the fruits of his oppression as accomplishing his own power and glory. He enriches himself in his position and control. He sees the fruit of his labors in the fearful and slavish submission of those whom he oppresses. He has dominance. He has control of his world. He has gained his followers to act after him, to speak after him, and to think after him.

In taking the prerogative of the creator for his own advantage, the idolater takes from God the glory of God’s truth and sovereignty. The idolater sets up his own world by his words in conflict with the truth that belongs to God. The idolater sets up his world that is in conflict with the sovereignty and truth of God that God alone is the creator and ruler of heaven and earth. The idolater sets up himself in conflict with God and also sets up his world in conflict with the world over which God reigns and rules.

And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. (Gen. 11:4)

And Balak said unto him, Come, I pray thee, with me unto another place, from whence thou mayest see them: thou shalt see but the utmost part of them, and shalt not see them all: and curse me them from thence. (Num. 23:13)

6. They helped every one his neighbour; and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage.
7. So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, It is ready for the sodering: and he fastened it with nails, that it should not be moved. (Isa. 41:6–7)

And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws. (Dan. 7:25)

And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? (Rev. 13:4)

This form of idolatry has been a cornerstone of worldly philosophy.

Such idolatry is the philosophy of idealism.

The Philosophy of Idealism

To understand what idealism is, it is helpful to go to one of the chief sources of this philosophy, the philosophy of Plato. The so-called “cave allegory” is given in book 7 of his Republic. The book begins with the following:

And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: —Behold! Human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the first and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.¹

Plato then wrote of one of these human beings being freed from the confines of the cave and finding his way out of the cave. After the painful process of accommodating his senses to the world into which he has emerged, he is able to know and understand the source of the shadows that he has seen in the cave. He also comes to understand that what he thought was real while confined to the cave, the light and the shadows, were only the effects of the reality he did not see before, the reality that was outside the cave.

Plato wrote of two additional movements of this human being who has been freed from the cave. First, this enlightened individual goes back into the cave to try to explain to his former fellow prisoners what he has encountered outside. His fellow prisoners, still stuck in the cave, remain unenlightened. They cannot seriously consider that what they are being told is true. All they know and understand are the light and shadows that they see in front of them.

This freed individual also moves to different and higher levels of reality. He becomes accustomed to the truth that there is more than one level of reality. As he learns to accommodate his senses to these different levels, he is able to reach more of them, until finally he reaches what is ultimate.

This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed—whether rightly or wrongly, God knows. But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.²

In addition to this movement from inside the cave to outside the cave and this movement beyond and upward, there are additional features in the above quotations that figure into idealism as a philosophical tendency. Plato is the human being about whom this allegory centers, not as a philosopher but as the philosopher. The world of knowledge is above the world of sight, and Plato has the ability to access this world of knowledge in order to come back to the world of sight with what he has learned. The world of knowledge is vastly superior to and controls the world of sight. Finally, in this world of knowledge, one is able to find what is unavailable in the world of sight: “the idea of good…inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right.” In short, God is to be ascertained and known in this world of knowledge, and the knowledge of him is to be brought back to the world of sight as ultimate truth.

From the above it becomes clear why so many in Christianity gave Plato a place in the kingdom of God. It also becomes clear why Plato’s teaching was seen to be a basis for the doctrine of common grace. His teaching seems to be exactly the teaching of scripture. Why can’t the God of the holy scriptures be this truth that Plato identified, the truth that is eternal and the truth that is above all? Why could God himself not have revealed this truth to Plato by way of general revelation?

That such an influence of Plato’s philosophy carried through to dominate Western thought is clear from the preface to Plato’s Republic by Charles M. Bakewell:

Plato’s own philosophy, if one may hazard a definition in a single sentence, may be said to be a transforming of the Socratic tentative quest for universal definitions in the sphere of conduct into a metaphysical theory of reality, which enabled him to extend the Socratic principle to the interpretation of nature as well as of man, and to bridge the gap between the relativism of the “flowing philosophers,” as he humorously called the Heraclitans, and the absolutism of the Eleatics, for whom the real, as object of reason, must be fixed and eternal.³

“Fixed and eternal.” What so easily can be called God and God’s counsel.

Inroads into Western Thought

There might yet seem to be a very great gap between Plato’s cave allegory and the idolatry identified before. There might seem to be an even greater gap between Plato’s cave allegory and Western philosophy and even Western Christian philosophy, and perhaps a greater gap yet between that allegory and Christian theology. How much time has passed since Plato has come and gone. How much difference there is between Athens and Jerusalem or Athens and Rome or Athens and Leiden or Athens and Grand Rapids.

But there is no gap at all.

The bridging of this gap is not common grace as a doctrine. The bridging of this gap is not the many Christians’ thinking that Plato is in the kingdom of heaven because of his wisdom.

The bridging of this gap is due to a similarity of basis, of method, and of end that deals with the general philosophy of idealism. Idealism takes many different shapes. Its content also may differ widely. But the end is the same: a higher, more fixed and firm reality than what is commonly enjoyed and understood to be the reality of this life, which is apprehended through the physical senses. The method is the same: the use of rational argument with a presupposed basis. The presupposed basis is that there must be a controlling factor on a higher level and that human thought is able to and does penetrate to this higher level through the use of reason, coming to conclusions from premises laid out. That is, just as one argues logically from premises to conclusion, so can one argue from one realm to a higher. Lastly, the basis is the same: human thought and human reason.

The Idolatry of Idealism

Scripture exposes idealism as idolatry.

First, all idealism overturns the clear distinction made by the word of God between the creator and the creature. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (v. 27).

Because of its basis and method, all the “truth” about God that is “discovered” through the thoughts of men depends on those men themselves. The world of knowledge depended on Plato’s ability to think of it and to form arguments about it. Plato did not access “truth” as a human being staggering out of the darkness into the light. Plato made “truth.” He imagined it. Plato’s “world of knowledge” was not more real than the “world of sight.” His world was significantly less real. A general acquaintance with the company of philosophers in Western civilization yields a staggering amount of significant disagreement among them. This disagreement gives the lie to the notion that by their thoughts they were accessing the same realm as Plato’s, let alone one another.

Second, idealism denies the truth of the inspiration of scripture and the necessity of scripture to give the true knowledge of God. “The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet. 1:21). For Plato to be able to argue with his cave allegory to the true and living God for the attainment of fellowship and friendship, scripture must be denied as necessary to salvation; and the name of Jesus Christ must no longer be the only name under heaven given among men, whereby they must be saved (Acts 4:12).

Lastly, and from a strictly logical standpoint, idealism is an ongoing logical fallacy. It is always assuming what needs to be proved and cannot be proved. Idealism assumes that it can argue to what is more real from what is less real. But it can never prove that anything is more real. Nor can idealism prove that its basis is real. It must always be assumed. From another viewpoint, it is impossible to prove that what a man might imagine or think about is more real than the man himself who imagines or thinks it. Though Glaucon could agree with Plato over and over, Plato’s cave allegory does not become more real. Ahab and Jezebel’s institution of Baal worship upon penalty of death did not make Baal real and Jehovah not real. Majority decisions of ecclesiastical assemblies may become settled and binding according to article 31 of the Church Order, but those decisions cannot make scripture and its truth more or less real.

Just as surely as idolatry is the bowing down of man before his gods of wood and stone, so also is man’s worship of his own imagination. Just as vain, just as helpless, and just as much under the wrath of God.

The indictment of idealism as idolatry must be brought to bear on much of what passes for theology even in Reformed circles.

Is idealism being entertained when debate ensues about eternal justification, justification at the cross, or the sinner’s justification by faith in the forum of his conscience? Why is one appealed to over against the other? Upon what ground can one stand to be able to pass judgment on one over against another? To suppose that one is going to be more real or less real than the others?

Is idealism the reason that the authority of scripture alone is forsaken for the authority of men and their thoughts and ideas to prevail? When men try to rationalize and build their theology on their experience and knowledge, they oppose the word of God as the sole basis for all truth; and they carry on the same method as idealism. When leaders in churches take their flocks away from the word of God with their own judgments and determinations, they pit their own imaginations against the word of God.

What about debating which is more real, God’s counsel or time and history? What makes it necessary to choose one over the other? Upon what ground can a man stand in order to pass judgment on one or the other?

Idealism casts its long shadow upon much of Christian thought. Idealism enters into arguments about God’s existence. René Descartes postulated the existence of God on his own, beginning with his famous dictum, “I think, therefore I am.” Idealism enters into theology by arguing to God’s perfections from man’s reflection of them. Idealism enters into much thought about the afterlife: it supposes heaven is a great deal like earth, except that it will be perfect; everything evil will be removed, and what was enjoyed on earth as good will be brought up to an ideal form. Ideal bodies, ideal environment, ideal enjoyments.

To be continued with the consequences of idealism.