TITLE: Is Man Is the Measure
of all Things?
• TEXT: Psalm 8, Romans 3:10-23
• THEME: Man’s greatness can only be
found in the greatness of God’s grace.
Dallas Willard
"There are four great questions every
human being must adopt an answer for in
order to live."
Dallas Willard
"There are four great questions every
human being must adopt an answer for in
order to live."
– What is real?
Dallas Willard
"There are four great questions every
human being must adopt an answer for in
order to live."
– What is real?
– Who has the good life?
Dallas Willard
"There are four great questions every
human being must adopt an answer for in
order to live."
– What is real?
– Who has the good life?
– Who is a good person?
Dallas Willard
"There are four great questions every
human being must adopt an answer for in
order to live."
– What is real?
– Who has the good life?
– Who is a good person?
– How do you become a genuinely good
person?
What is the true nature of
man?
I.
A Secular Humanist View
of Man
A. Humanism Defined:
A Humanist is someone who is interested
in the intellectual and academic disciplines
called humanities- so called because they
deal with human nature in its fullness, the
non-rational side of man as well as the
rational. These have typically included
literature, history, the fine-arts, philosophy
and sometimes theology
I.
A Secular Humanist View
of Man
B. Secular Humanism Defined:
It is the addition of the word “secular”
where the contrast begins and is to
the Christian an oxymoron. The word
“secular comes from the Latin word
“saeculum” which means time or age.
To call something secular is to call it
time bound, a creature of history with
no vision of eternity.
Humanist Manifesto I and II
Principles in Conflict
• The universe is self-existing and not
created HMI
Humanist Manifesto I and II
Principles in Conflict
• The universe is self-existing and not created
HMI
• There are no eternal values or outside
enforcer of values. The only morality is that
which emerges from human experience. HMI
Humanist Manifesto I and II
Principles in Conflict
• The universe is self-existing and not
created HMI
• There are no eternal values or outside
enforcer of values. The only morality is
that which emerges from human
experience. HMI
• Man has only the here and now. HMI
Humanist Manifesto I and II
Principles in Conflict
• The universe is self-existing and not created
HMI
• There are no eternal values or outside
enforcer of values. The only morality is that
which emerges from human experience. HMI
• Man has only the here and now. HMI
• Man alone can fulfill his own dreams and
pursue his own achievements apart from the
involvement of a supreme being. HMI
Humanist Manifesto I and II
Principles in Conflict
• In some cases it is possible to believe
in a God abstractly as long as you do
not act or think as if he exists. HMI
Humanist Manifesto I and II
Principles in Conflict
• In some cases it is possible to believe
in a God abstractly as long as you do
not act or think as if he exists. HMI
• Traditional dogmatic or authoritarian
religions that place revelation, God,
ritual or creed about human need or
experience do a disservice to the
human species. HMII
Humanist Manifesto I and II
Principles in Conflict
• We can discover no divine purpose for
the human species. No deity can or will
save us- we must save ourselves. HMII
Humanist Manifesto I and II
Principles in Conflict
• We can discover no divine purpose for
the human species. No deity can or will
save us- we must save ourselves. HMII
• Traditional religions are sexuality
repressive and do damage to mans
psyche. HMII
Key promoters of Secular
humanism.
Francois Arouet (Voltaire)
Philosopher
Karl Marx
Economist
Tolstoy
General
Lenin
President
Sigmund Freud
Psychologist
Friedrich Nietzsche
Philosopher
Key promoters of Secular
humanism.
Adolph Hitler
Jean-Paul Sartre
Philosopher
Francis Crick
Scientist
Albert Ellis/Kinsey
Sexologists
Guttmacher/Sanger
Key promoters of Secular
humanism.
Betty Freidan
Author
Isaac Asimov
Author
B.F. Skinner
Psychiatrist
Carl Rogers
Psychiatrist
John Dewey
Philosopher
C. Secular Humanisms View
of Christianity
C. Secular Humanisms View
of Christianity
1. Hostile
Bill O’Rielly Interviewing
Bill Maher.
Voltaire
“This is what fools have written, what
imbeciles comment, what rogues teach,
and what you children are made to
learn by heart. And the scholar who is
filled with indignation and is irritated by
the most abominable absurdities that
have ever disgraced human nature, is
called, “blasphemer!””
Paul Kurtz
“Humanism cannot in any fair sense of
the word apply to one who still believes
in God as the source and creator of the
universe… (Humanism) is squarely in
opposition to the movements which
seek to impose an orthodoxy of belief
and morality.”
Karl Marx
• “Religion is the opiate of the people.”
Charles Darwin
“I can hardly see how anyone ought to
wish Christianity to be true
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Christianity should not be beautiful or
embellished; it has waged deadly war
against this higher type of man (the
perfected man of secular humanism) …
Christianity has sided with all that is
weak and base with al its failures.”
C. Secular Humanisms View
of Christianity
1. Hostile
2. Responsible for history evils
What is the true nature of
man?
II. Problems with Secular
Humanism (Romans 3:10-23)
A. Shift from focus on God and Heaven
to Earth and Man. .
– Hitchcock, “Genuine human progress and
fulfillment must be based on the
recognition that man is dependent on
God.”
II. Problems with Secular
Humanism (Romans 3:10-23)
A. Shift from focus on God and Heaven
to Earth and Man.
B. No meaning or purpose beyond this
life.
II. Problems with Secular
Humanism (Romans 3:10-23)
A. Shift from focus on God and Heaven
to Earth and Man.
B. No meaning or purpose beyond this
life.
Pascal, “Science (and secular humanism)
might become anti-humanistic, by
reducing man to a mere speck in the
universe.
II. Problems with Secular
Humanism (Romans 3:10-23)
A. Shift from focus on God and Heaven
to Earth and Man.
B. No meaning or purpose beyond this
life.
C. Diminishes the sinfulness of man
II. Problems with Secular
Humanism (Romans 3:10-23)
A. Shift from focus on God and Heaven
to Earth and Man.
B. No meaning or purpose beyond this
life.
C. Diminishes the sinfulness of man
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and
come short of the glory of God.”
II. Problems with Secular
Humanism (Romans 3:10-23)
A. Shift from focus on God and Heaven
to Earth and Man.
B. No meaning or purpose beyond this
life.
C. Diminishes the sinfulness of man
D. Condemns Christianity while ignoring
the evil its own history
II. Problems with Secular
Humanism (Romans 3:10-23)
D. Condemns Christianity while ignoring
the evil its own history.
•
Voltaire and Lafayette
•
Marx, Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin
•
Hitler
•
Mao Tse Tung
•
Khmer Rouge
II. Problems with Secular
Humanism (Romans 3:10-23)
A. Shift from focus on God and Heaven to
Earth and Man.
B. No meaning or purpose beyond this life.
C. Diminishes the sinfulness of man
D. Condemns Christianity while ignoring the
evil its own history
E. Secular Humanism is a betrayal true
humanism.
What is the true nature of
man?
III. A Biblical View of Man:
Psalm 8
Man is created a little lower than “elohim.”
A. Man bears God’s Image:
Genesis 1:26 says “let us make man in our own image”
III. A Biblical View of Man:
Psalm 8
A. Man bears God’s Image:
B. Man is the apex of God’s creation:
III. A Biblical View of Man:
Psalm 8
A. Man bears God’s Image:
B. Man is the apex of God’s creation:
Man is by nature sinful, self centered and prone to
deception. God values man so much he has made
the supreme sacrifice to redeem him.
III. A Biblical View of Man:
Psalm 8
A. Man bears God’s Image:
B. Man is the apex of God’s creation:
C. Man is by nature sinful, self centered
and prone to deception
III. A Biblical View of Man:
Psalm 8
A. Man bears God’s Image:
B. Man is the apex of God’s creation:
C. Man is by nature sinful, self centered
and prone to deception
D. God values man so much he has made
the supreme sacrifice to redeem him.
Peter Hitchens
Rogier van der Weyden
The Last Judgment
Peter Hitchens, Rogier van
der Weyden
• “…I peered at the naked figures fleeing
toward the pit of hell...These people did
not appear remote or from the ancient
past; they were my own generation…
They were me and the people I knew… I
had absolutely no doubt that I was
among the damned, if there were any
damned.”
Four great questions
worldview questions
1. What is real? Christianity says that
God is real. He is truth and he is the
sources of all truth. Jesus said, “I am
the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one
comes to the Father except through
me. We cannot understand what is real
unless we start with God.
Four great questions
worldview questions
2. Who has the good life? For the
Christian the good life is found by
growing and living in union with God in
a mutually loving relationship.
Four great questions
worldview questions
3. Who is a good person? A person is
declared good and righteous when he
places his faith and trust in Jesus
Christ. It says, “Abraham believed God
and it was credited to him as
righteousness.”
Four great questions
worldview questions
4. How do you become a genuinely good
person? Romans 8 says we become
good by living under the law of the
Spirit of God.
Peter Hitchens
“And in all my experiences in life, I have
seldom seen a more powerful argument
for the fallen nature of man, and his
inability to achieve perfection, than
those countries in which man sets
himself up to replace God with the
state” pg. 152.
Philosopher A.N. Wilson
• When I took part in the procession last
Sunday and heard the Gospel being chanted,
I assented to it with complete simplicity. My
own return to faith has surprised no one
more than myself. Why did I return to it?
Partially, perhaps it is no more than the
confidence I have gained with age. Rather
than being cowed by them, I relish the notion
that, by asserting a belief in the risen Christ, I
am defying all the liberal clever-clogs on the
block. …
Philosopher A.N. Wilson
But there is more to it than that. My belief
has come about in large measure
because of the lives and examples of
people I have known—not the famous,
not saints, but friends and relations
who have lived, and faced death, in the
light of the Resurrection story, or in the
quiet acceptance that they have a
future after they die. …
Philosopher A.N. Wilson
Sadly, [the secularists] have all but accepted
that only stupid people actually believe in
Christianity, and that the few intelligent
people left in the churches are there only for
the music or believe it all in some symbolic
or contorted way which, when examined,
turns out not to be belief after all. As a matter
of fact, I am sure the opposite is the case and
that materialist atheism is not merely an arid
creed, but totally irrational.
Philosopher A.N. Wilson
Materialist atheism says we are just a
collection of chemicals. It has no
answer whatsoever to the question of
how we should be capable of love or
heroism or poetry if we are simply
animated pieces of meat. The
Resurrection, which proclaims that
matter and spirit are mysteriously
conjoined, is the ultimate key to who
we are.