(Less) tersely put: omniscience and certainty revisited

by Dan Phillips

In crafting my maiden-voyage post for this series, I had a number of things in mind. Some ended up reading my mind (poor souls) pretty well, while other nascent thoughts were left on the dusty shelves. To save you a click, here it was:

To profess certainty, non-Christians must feign omniscience.


Christians begin with the confession that they (1) do not possess omniscience, but (2) are by grace confidants of the only one who does possess it.


Thus Christians alone not only can be, but are obliged to be, humbly certain.

The first thought touches on what I might call the "Far Side of Neptune" argument.

Just think of all the "scientific" theories in all of human history that have died horrible deaths in the light of new discoveries. The positions were always held with great confidence right up to the moment they had to be abandoned...and sometimes even afterwards. One new fact, or one new set of facts, provoked a paradigm-shift, however eventual and reluctant.

So, how many facts are there, in the universe, total? More than ten? More than a trillion? More than ten decazillion, cubed? Of course, we could never even guess the number — let alone their nature — of all facts.

That being the case, who can say with certitude that one fact, existing only ten miles under the surface of the far side of Neptune, and only within an eight-inch radius, would not change everything we think we know about... any given subject? One can scoff, he can dismiss, he can bluff... but he can't answer that question. He cannot honestly say that he knows for a certainty, one way or the other, that some fact not yet in evidence would not constitute a transformative, revolutionary revelation.

Yet nobody lives with such uncertainties. Nobody speaks exclusively in the subjective mood. We love the indicative, even more than we should.

So we announce that (say) evolution is an undeniable fact, that the world is X-zillion years old, that homosexuality is not a chosen behavior, that the unborn are not human, that this or that is right or wrong. We speak as if from a perspective of not only omniscience, but omnisapience; as if we both possessed and understood all facts... even though neither is true.

Yet someone has to keep pointing out the emperor's illusory garb: unless the speaker has an infinite grasp of both the identity and the meaning/significance of every last fact in the universe, he has no right to speak with certainty.

Yet the unbeliever regularly does so speak. He does not possess omniscience. He merely feigns it. His intent is to cow opposition (and quiet his own conscience [Rom. 1:18ff.]) by a show of bravado. As we have seen, the tactic often works in the short run.

A second idea lurked under the surface: "Thus Christians alone not only can be, but are obliged to be, humbly certain." The Christian, insofar as he actually practices the faith he professes, necessarily affirms the inerrancy of Scripture as the very word of God. In so doing, he claims to possess a revelation from the only one who actually does know and understand absolutely everything that exists, since He is the Creator of absolutely everything that  exists.

Ironically, however, there are those who (A) claim to be Christian, but (B) choose to feign uncertainty on unpopular issues where the Bible is pretty clear.

Return to the subject of homosexuality. The Bible really is univocal on that particular behavior (e.g. Rom. 1:26-28; 1 Cor. 6:9-11). As it is on wifely submission (e.g. Eph. 5:22, 24). Or the exclusivity of Christ and His Gospel (Jn. 14:6; Acts 4:12). Or the reality of eternal conscious torment of the lost in Hell (Matt. 25:41, 46).

These are not murky penumbras, but clear doctrines. Not that a devoted opponent cannot fabricate some murk; it is axiomatic that great distance from the Word necessarily creates greater murkiness (Isa. 8:20). Any clear statement can be smudged... including this one. But the professed believer who adopts a pose of tentativeness on such issues is in the precise-reverse position of the unbeliever who adopts the pose of certitude.

Because (to allude to another terse post that could have been developed further), if God actually has spoken, everything changes.

In sum: the person who denies God's revelation is obliged to speak uncertainly about everything; the person who affirms God's revelation is obliged to speak certainly about some things (Amos 3:8; Acts 4:19-20; 5:29; 1 Cor. 9:16).

The strange thing is that one so often sees the exact reverse.

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Tersely put: omniscience and certainty

by Dan Phillips

To profess certainty, non-Christians must feign omniscience.

Christians begin with the confession that they (1) do not possess omniscience, but (2) are by grace confidants of the only one who does possess it.

Thus Christians alone not only can be, but are obliged to be, humbly certain.

Proverbs 1:7; 9:10; 30:1-5

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Don't Bow to Worldly Wisdom

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The Following excerpt is from "The Key-Note of a Choice Sonnet," a sermon preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle sometime after 1861, first published in early 1880.

f all the philosophers in the world should contradict the Scriptures, so much the worse for the philosophers; their contradiction makes no difference to our faith. Half a grain of God’s word weighs more with us than a thousand tons of words or thoughts of all the modern theologians, philosophers, and scientists that exist on the face of the earth; for God knows more about his own works than they do. They do but think, but the Lord knows.

With regard to truths which philosophers ought not to meddle with, because they have not specially turned their thoughts that way, they are not more qualified to judge than the poorest man in the church of God, nay, nor one-half so much. Inasmuch as the most learned unregenerate men are dead in sin, what do they know about the living things of the children of God? Instead of setting them to judge we will sooner trust our boys and girls that are just converted, for they do know something of divine things, but carnal philosophers know nothing of them.

Do not be staggered, brothers and sisters, but honor God, glorify God, and magnify him by believing great things and unsearchable—past your finding out—which you know to be true because he declares them to be so. Let the ipse dixit of God stand to you in the place of all reason, being indeed the highest and purest reason, for God, the Infallible, speaks what must be true.

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Plain Truth vs. Knowledge Falsely So-Called

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "Forts Demolished and Prisoners Taken," Spurgeon's sermon on 2 Corinthians 10:5, preached Sunday morning, 11 May 1879 at the Met Tab.

lain truth is in this wonderful century of small account; men crave to be mystified by their own cogitations. Many glory in being too intellectual to receive anything as absolute certainty: they are not at all inclined to submit to the authority of a positive revelation. God's word is not accepted by them as final, but they judge it and believe what they like of it.

This is madness. I speak to those who believe in the Scriptures, and I say if, indeed, there be a revelation, it becomes us to be silent before it, and accept it without dispute. The Lord knows what he is better than we can ever know, and if he has been pleased to speak in his Word plainly and solemnly, it is ours to believe what he says, because he says it.

It may be all very well to prove that such and such a revelation of God is consistent with reason, consistent with analogy, consistent with a thousand things; but the spirit which needs such argument is a spirit of rebellion against God. If there be a revelation, every part of it is of authority, and must be believed. Human thought is not the arbiter of truth, but the infallible Word is the end of all strife.

It is not ours to say what the truth must be, or what we think it should be, or what we would like it to be, but reverently to sit down with open ear and willing heart to receive what God has spoken.

If an astronomer were to forbear to examine the stars, and teach an astronomy invented in his own brain, he would be an idiot: and those who treat theology in like fashion are not much better.

"Surely," saith one, "we ought to modify our beliefs by public opinion, and the current of thought."

I say "no" a thousand times. The incorruptible word of God liveth and abideth forever, and is incapable of modification. To modify is to adulterate and nullify it, and render it of none effect, so that it becomes another gospel, and, indeed, no gospel.

The thought of tampering with revealed truth is vicious, and ought not to be tolerated by any Christian for a second. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a thing which is to be moulded according to the fashion of the period: it is "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and for ever."

Whether the Greek philosophy rules or is exploded, whether some more modern theory blazes up or smoulders down, is small concern of ours, for we are set to preach the one unvarying gospel of Jesus Christ, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.

No man was ever led to a saving faith by our meeting him halfway and consenting to his unbelief. No real faith was ever wrought in man by his own thoughts and imaginations; he must receive the gospel as a revelation from God, or he cannot receive it at all.

Faith is a supernatural work wherever it is found, and if we think that we can beget faith in ourselves or others by the use of the fleshly weapons of philosophy we shall certainly be foiled. The Scriptures pressed home by the Holy Ghost are God's power unto salvation, and not men's cogitation's and imaginations.

There is the revealed gospel, reject it at your peril; there is Jehovah's revelation of himself to men, receive it or be lost; this is the ground to go upon if we would speak as the oracles of God. God grant that proud thinkers may come upon this ground and become believers.

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Worth Dying For

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "A Gospel Worth Dying For," a sermon preached on Sunday Morning, 12 August 1883 at Exeter Hall in London.

e have gospels nowadays which I would not die for, nor recommend anyone of you to live for, inasmuch as they are gospels that will be snuffed out within a few years. It is never worthwhile to die for a doctrine which will itself die out.

I have lived long enough to see half-a-dozen new gospels rise, flourish, and decay. They told me long ago that my old Calvinistic doctrine was far behind the age, and was an exploded thing; and next I heard that evangelical teaching in any form was a thing of the past, to be supplanted by "advanced thought."

I have heard of one improvement upon the old faith and then of another; and the philosophical divines are still improving their theology. They have gone on advancing and advancing, till heaven knows and perhaps hell knows what next they will advance to; but I am sure I do not.

I would not die for any one of all the modern systems. I should like to ask broad church divines whether there is any positive doctrine in the Bible at all; and whether any form of teaching could for a moment be judged worth dying for; and whether the martyrs were not great fools to die for truths which might be valuable to them, but which the advance of thought has cast into disuse. Those men and women who went to Smithfield and were burnt quick to the death for Christ, were they not fools every one of them to die for a set of ideas which "modern thought" has quite exploded?

I do verily think that to our modern divines there is no such thing as fixed truth, or that, if there be, they are not sure of having yet reached it. They have digged, and digged, and digged: look at the dark pits of unbelief, which they have opened; but they have not come to the rock yet. Wait a little longer; they may one of these days find out something solid; but as yet they have only bored through layers of sand.

Yet there used to be a gospel in the world which consisted of facts which Christians never questioned. There was once in the church a gospel which believers hugged to their hearts as if it were their soul's life. There used to be a gospel in the world, which provoked enthusiasm and commanded sacrifice. Tens of thousands have met together to hear this gospel at peril of their lives. Men, to the teeth of tyrants, have proclaimed it, and have suffered the loss of all things, and gone to prison and to death for it, singing psalms all the while.

Is there not such a gospel remaining? Or are we arrived at cloudland, where souls starve on suppositions, and become incapable of confidence or ardor? Are the disciples of Jesus now to be fed upon the froth of "thought" and the wind of imagination, whereon men become heady and high-minded? Nay, rather, will we not return to the substantial meat of infallible revelation, and cry to the Holy Ghost to feed us upon his own inspired word?

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Shameless promotion of Dan

by Frank Turk


I have some things I'm working on this week that are restricting my blogging, so I'm going to use Dan (in a nice way, nothing untoward) to maintain the fill here.

He's got a deceptively-simple yet brilliant post over at his blog from yesterday regarding matters which are "settled" fact -- in spite of the rude evidence that, for so many rudimentary things, "Scientists are baffled!"

Here's the only thing I have to add to that discussion:

The biggest pitfall of the entire discussion is the answer to the question "how do we know" from one epistemology to another.

See: Dan says (rightly) that there's a problem when "Materialists" say that repeatability is a validator of hypotheses -- that being the premise that the universe is consistent in all times and places and circumstances. This is a statement which cannot be validated or (pay attention) invalidated. It's an epistemological hunch.

Or is it? It seems to me that the father of "Materialism" is actually "Theism" -- particularly theistic cosmosology (and in the west where science really took off, Christian theistic cosmology) which says that you can rely on the consistency of the universe because God made it that way, and because God's not a trickster who is trying to fake your test tubes and oscilloscopes out. In that way, "Materialism" has imported a premise it can never prove and never substantiate from a radically different epistemology in order to tell us, among other things, "U R doin it wrong".

That seems all well and good for us theists, yes? We're done here we seem to think when we take off our smart glasses after proving the "Materialist" is just an ungrateful stepchild. But we have the same problem in our own house, if you will excuse me for saying so.

It seems to me that there's a rampant strain of importing materialistic epistemology into our own thinking about, for example, the Bible when such a thing is utterly uncalled for. The first place it shows up is when we start trying to establish "science" to explain how things work in the Bible -- like how you fit all the animals in creation, 2 by 2, in a wooden box. I'm sure that statement alone is enough to derail all blogospheric meta for a week, but I have something else in mind by saying that.

What I have in mind is that we do even worse damage to our faith and our ability to receive what the Bible actually says when we import the other key premise of "materialism" -- which is that all ideas and all human understanding improves over time. So when folks who hold to this premise come to the Bible, what has been believed about the text -- demonstrably believed since Paul or Matthew or Micah or Moses wrote it down -- is simply irrelevant, or worse: counterproductive. Today we have to think about these texts in a different way because we are much smarter and, um, evolved than Paul or Matthew or Micah or Moses, if indeed those were their names.

It's completely phony for scientists to purloin the gravitas of their work from the creator and sustainer God by assuming without cause that all things are created and thereafter sustained -- but it's equally phony for those of us who say we believe in the creator and sustainer to believe that somehow what He has already said is subject to the same skepticism we should hold toward the discoveries of those who, on a regular basis, are baffled by what they uncover.

UPDATED: The nearly-peerless Al Mohler tweeted a link to an ardent atheist who, I think, agrees with me -- and reaches the wrong conclusion.

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Confident Believers vs. the Chameleons

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson




The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "Hold Fast Your Shield," a sermon published in 1875.


ome persons appear to think that a state of doubt is the very best which we can possibly reach. They are very wise and highly cultured individuals, and they imagine that by their advanced judgments nothing in the world can be regarded as assuredly true.

Some of the broad church school would seem to believe that no doctrine in the Bible is worth dying for, or worth anybody's losing over and above a halfpenny for. They do not feel sure of any doctrine: it may be true, and there is a good deal to be said for it, but then a good deal may be said on the other side, and you must hold your mind "receptive," and be ready to accept "new truth."

Some Robinson or other said something about new truth, as if there ever could be such a thing, and, under cover of his probably misinterpreted speech, like chameleons, they are always taking their clue from the particular light that falls upon them. They have no light in themselves and no truth which they hold to be vital.

Such people cannot understand this confidence, but the veriest babes in the family of faith know what it means. Here are certain things which God has taught me; I believe them and am sure about them.

"Dogmatical," says one.

Exactly so; call it what you like, but we are bold to confess that there remains no doubt to us after God has spoken. The question is solved by God's word; the doubt is laid to sleep for ever by the witness of the Holy Spirit.

Oh, to know the grand truths of the gospel, and to know them infallibly. For instance, the grand doctrine of the substitutionary sacrifice of the Son of God—to know it and hold it and say, "Let others question and quibble, but I must believe it; it is my only hope, it is all my salvation. I stake my soul upon it: if that be not true then am I lost." And so with regard to all the other grand truths of revelation, the thing is to know them and grasp them firmly. There must be leverage if we would move men, and to have a leverage you must have a fixed point.

There must be certain undoubted truths about which you can sing, "O God, my heart is fixed; my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise "—things which you perceive to be plainly taught in the Scriptures—things brought home by the power of the Holy Spirit.

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Hold Your Banner High

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson






The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "The Church As She Should Be," a sermon based on Song of Solomon 6:4, first published in 1871.



he church of Christ . . . desires not to be associated with other armies, or to be mistaken for them, for it is not of this world, and its weapons and its warfare are far other than those of the nations.

God forbid that followers of Jesus should be mistaken for political partisans or ambitious adventurers. The church unfurls her ensign to the breeze that all may know whose she is and whom she serves. This is of the utmost importance at this present, when crafty men are endeavoring to palm off their inventions.

Every Christian church should know what it believes, and publicly avow what it maintains. It is our duty to make a clear and distinct declaration of our principles, that our members may know to what intent they have come together, and that the world also may know what we mean. Far be it from us to join with the Broad Church cry, and furl the banners upon which our distinctive colors are displaced.

We hear on all sides great outcries against creeds. Are these clamours justifiable? It seems to me that when properly analysed most of the protests are not against creeds, but against truth, for every man who believes anything must have a creed, whether he write it down and print it or no; or if there be a man who believes nothing, or anything, or everything by turns, he is not a fit man to be set up as a model. Attacks are often made against creeds because they are a short, handy form by which the Christian mind gives expression to its belief, and those who hate creeds do so because they find them to be weapons as inconvenient, as bayonets in the hands of British soldiers have been to our enemies. They are weapons so destructive to theology that it protests against them. For this reason let us be slow to part with them. Let us day hold of God's truth with iron grip, and never let it go.

After all, there is a Protestantism still worth contending for; there is a Calvinism still worth proclaiming, and a gospel worth dying for. There is a Christianity distinctive and distinguished from Ritualism, Rationalism, and Legalism, and let us make it known that we believe in it. Up with your banners, soldiers of the cross! This is not the time to be frightened by the cries against conscientious convictions, which are nowadays nicknamed sectarianism and bigotry. Believe in your hearts what you profess to believe; proclaim openly and zealously what you know to be the truth. Be not ashamed to say such-and-such things are true, and let men draw the inference that the opposite is false.

Whatever the doctrines of the gospel may be to the rest of mankind, let them be your glory and boast. Display your banners, and let those banners be such as the church of old carried. Unfurl the old primitive standard, the all-victorious standard of the cross of Christ. In very deed and truth—in hoc signo vinces ["in this sign you will conquer"]—the atonement is the conquering truth. Let others believe as they may, or deny as they will, for you the truth as it is in Jesus is the one thing that has won your heart and made you a soldier of the cross.

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Can You Be Humble and Certain at the Same Time?

by Phil Johnson

I was re-reading a couple of our comment-threads recently and decided to cobble together (and slightly re-edit) some of my own comments to make the following post. It deals with a timely topic I've been thinking about this week, and I didn't want these thoughts to stay buried in an old comment-thread. I originally wrote these remarks in response to someone who complained that I don't change my mind enough, and I don't concede enough to people who disagree with me in our comment-threads.

his blog is not a place where we just think out loud. The stuff we write about tends to focus on a few (mostly important) issues we have thought a lot about and studied with some degree of care—mostly things we're pretty passionate about. Our opinions on such matters do tend to be fixed enough that it would take a lot more to change our minds than the musings of some fresh-faced high-school graduate who is just reacting in the comments section of our blog to an issue he has never before devoted 20 seconds thought to untangling.

But we're not dogmatic about everything. On many theological questions, you could barely even get me to offer an opinion. For example, if you asked me for a thorough account of how the Holy Spirit's ministry in the New Covenant differs from His role under the Old Covenant, I'd let someone else answer the question. Although it's a question that interests me, I haven't really studied it in careful detail, and I'm not going to be dogmatic. I have no interest in most debates about eschatalogical timelines, and even though I'm a committed Calvinist you'd have a hard time provoking an argument with me about the extent of the atonement.

In other words, my dogmatism and feistiness are limited to relatively few issues—mostly essential gospel truths and a few lesser truths with very serious ramifications. Of course those are the same things I tend to blog about most. If you're looking for a blog where ambivalence, uncertainty, backpeddling, and indecision are valued more highly than clarity and firm beliefs, there are plenty of blogs like that out there. It's a very popular thing to be wobbly nowadays. But that's not authentic humility. Search the Scriptures and see for yourself. I can't think of a single verse in the Bible that equates humility with vacillations of the heart and mind. In fact, before you can be truly humble you must at least be certain of your own fallenness and guilt.

I know people who undergo seismic paradigm-shifts in their thinking every three years or so, like clockwork. When their friends don't follow every wind of change, they tend to get really upset. In fact, the blogosphere sometimes seems dominated by people like that. They celebrate their own doubts and then blog nonstop about the recalcitrance of Reformed opinion. It's not that they have different convictions; they simply hate all conviction. They are cocksure in their own uncertainty.

Who is more "arrogant"? Someone who refuses to compromise even when popular thinking shifts against him, or the guy who never really settles on any truth and yet constantly argues about everything anyway—not because he himself has stumbled on something he is certain about, but merely because his contempt for other people's strong convictions is the way he justifies his waffling in his own mind?

The issues of uncertainty-as-humility and pathological paradigm-shifting have come up at our blog (and in the comments) many times over the years. I could name several fairly well-known quasi-evangelical pundits who think constantly renouncing whatever they themselves said just last year is the very essence of "humility." There are even whole blogs devoted to this notion, suggesting that everyone's "spiritual journey" ought to be filled with hairpin twists and turns (contra Colossians 1:23; Ephesians 4:14, and a host of other passages that urge us to be steadfast in the faith).

I know already that someone will reply to this post by pretending I've said it's always wrong to change your mind. For the record, that's not even close. What I am saying is that people who are prone to undergo regular seismic worldview-level paradigm-shifts every other year or so probably shouldn't fancy themselves fit teachers or be chronically argumentative until they have stood firm in an opinion for at least five years or thereabouts.

Once more: Scripture never commends people for the "humility" of claiming they're not sure what's true and what's false, or that it's impossible to clearly understand what God's Word actually means. The Bible never encourages us to remain unanchored about what we believe and celebrate our doubts—especially while we're functioning as teachers of others. Jesus referred to that as the blind leading the blind, and He indicated that it's a Really Bad Thing.

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The Evil of Uncertain Preaching

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson




The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "A Sermon for the Time Present," preached at the height of the Down-Grade Controvery, on 30 October 1887.




he brilliance of the gospel light is dimmed by error. The clearness of the testimony is spoiled when doubtful voices are scattered among the people, and those who ought to preach the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, are telling out for doctrines the imaginations of men, and the inventions of the age.

Instead of revelation, we have philosophy, falsely so-called; instead of divine infallibility, we have surmises and larger hopes. The gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, is taught as the production of progress, a growth, a thing to be amended and corrected year by year. It is an ill day, both for the church and the world, when the trumpet does not give a certain sound; for who shall prepare himself for the battle?

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Settled Certainty

by Phil Johnson



f our postmodern friends are correct and all certainty is arrogance, wouldn't personal assurance of one's own salvation be just about the ultimate conceit?

Many post-evangelicals avoid that uncomfortable question by backing into some form of universalism—because, you know, the only way it doesn't seem arrogant to be certain I'm saved is if I'm pretty sure everyone is ultimately going to be saved.

Others avoid the issue altogether because, after all, that's a doctrinal conundrum and post-evangelicals aren't really into doctrine.

Of course, the correct answer to the question is succinctly distilled a familiar statement the apostle Paul made in a context where he was encouraging Timothy not to be timid. "I am not ashamed," Paul wrote; "for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day" (2 Timothy 1:12).

I love that statement. It is an absolute manifesto of settled certainty—with a note of holy triumph that, frankly, I find contagious. And I hope you do, too.

Certitude. It probably wasn't popular in Paul's time, either. But frankly it's never been more out of vogue than it is today. The fashionable thing today is to question everything. The visible church is overrun with bad preachers and weak-willed people who are convinced that the very epitome of humility is never to state anything with too much conviction.

Everything nowadays is supposed to be carefully qualified with lots of ambiguous expressions and weasel-words like "perhaps," or "possibly," or "It seems to me . . . " or "maybe." Everything (including the gospel itself) gets prefaced with, "I could be wrong, but to the best of my knowledge this seems reasonable—although I know other people see it differently, so I don't want to be dogmatic."

Doubt has been canonized as a virtue and renamed "epistemological humility"—as if doubting what God says could be excused by labeling it "humility."

Personal assurance is an inevitable casualty of that value system.

Paul's statement of assurance is deliberately of the opposite style: "I know," he says, and then he strengthens it even more by a second expression of firm conviction: "I am convinced." He emphatically eliminates every hint of doubt or uncertainty.

Notice: Paul is not the least bit concerned about how that might sound to someone who holds a different opinion. He doesn't preface it with any apology for his "tone." He doesn't soften it in case someone who is more timid or less certain than Paul might think he sounds arrogant. He doesn't qualify it with a lot of self-effacing disclaimers about how he might be wrong because he is, after all, merely human and therefore incapable of fully comprehending everything perfectly. There's nothing like that anywhere in Paul's epistles. Why?

Because Paul really was that certain. And he wanted Timothy to have a the same kind of settled assurance—absolute conviction; a bold heart that refused to waver from the truth.

The further implication is that you and I are supposed to have the same kind of assurance. Certainty is not something to be ashamed of—no matter how loudly the voices of postmodern skepticism squeal.

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