The Sovereign God Constitutes Us And Gave Us Our Nature

 For You formed 

my inward parts;

You covered me

in my mother's womb.

I will praise You,

for I am fearfully

and wonderfully made,

marvelous are Your works,

and that my soul knows

very well.

Psalm 139:13-14

    In this post-modern culture where truth is individual, that each can and may have their own truth about anything, and no one has the right to deny your truth. This cultural ideology does not answer the question about truth because there is no way under this dispensation or economy of thought that secures a pure definition of truth. How can anyone truly state that they, or you have truth if the definition is so obscure and not able to afford certainty? To say that you have truth is not based upon experience for the base of that supposition, rather it is from a place unknown by conscience, it is derived innately. That ability to become conscious in regards to truth is brought into existence solely by your nature and you have no control over your original nature that was present in you at your birth. You may modify your original nature but the core nature of you does not change although it may relinquish it power by means of a person apprehending and acting upon a new and overriding cultural nature. Therefore, those original truths are intuitive and belong to several departments of the senses, the understanding, and our moral nature. Everything that we perceive as true are derived from intuition and our sense perceptions, they are intuitively understood to be true. 

     An example of the above supposition that our sense perceptions are intuitive, I shall use this fact: when our senses are objectively apprehended in immediacy we have an irresistible conviction of their reality and truth. We may perceive this in error and draw erroneous conclusions from our sensations, but as far as our sensations go, they tell us the truth. Further, drawing an illustration from most people's everyday life; we feel pain in our leg and draw the conclusion that there is something wrong in the leg, but the pain originated from the muscles attached to the spine and radiated to the leg. We have erroneously concluded that the leg had a problem and pain was the result of the problem in the leg, but in reality the problem was much higher in the body; the back. Here is intuitive truth, we know that it is pain. When we see an object we may make wrong conclusions about it's nature, but we know we see it and that what we see is the cause of the sensation which we experience. Why are these intuitions? Because they are immediately perceived as true. This conviction that attends to our sensations does not come by way of instruction, experience, etc., but due to our constitution, our nature. A better question at this point is how was our nature so construed? 

      At first reading the above statements may seem obscure, somewhat understood, yet, hard to grasp, and you may wonder what does this have to do with God, and us? If we are to say and believe that man is without excuse before God we must understand innateness and its relation to God. If we do not have a nature that is innate, then all things are known by such as experience and that experience becomes our teacher. Experience is just that experience as shown above if we are experiencing pain we may draw wrong conclusion about the pain, but how do we know pain? Who taught us that pain is pain, that it hurts. How did the mind come to know, as do even newborns; pain? We say that God exists and we point to objects that seem to reveal God but how did we come to any conclusion by experience that a God may exist? Some will quickly point out that we were taught so we know: a baby is not taught to know certain things and even in that young age cannot articulate what they know; they still know.  Therefore in the next blog I will discuss the intuitions of the intellect, that which is known without the aid of testimony. What has been learned so far is that we have a nature, a nature that is to be found in all human beings, it is there, we did not put it there, we did not in any way apprehend that nature; it came as part of our constitution.

My frame was not hidden

     from You,

when I was made in secret,

    and skillfully wrought in the 

lowest parts of the earth.

Your eyes saw mys substace,

    being yet unformed.

And in Your book they all

    were written,

the days fashioned for me,

     when as yet thee were none 

 of them. 

                       Psalm 139:15-16

We are His Servants

Richard L. Crumb