Terminal knowledge of the truth

1Ti 2:4 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

2Ti 3:7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

When I listen to liberal Christians and atheists and academic Reformed Christians they all have one thing in common: an inability - or outright refusal - to come to a terminal point regarding knowledge of the truth.

They want to babble vainly day in and day out. They don't value the basics, and the basic are everything regarding the faith. It's like, for them, the basics are something to brush aside so that one can then get to the most 'interesting' aspects of the faith, which turn out to always be their own notions and demands and word games put on endless show.

This is why I often write down a short, balanced list of simple, plain books that for me sum up the faith. A list like this:

Holy Bible, AV1611
Human Nature in its Fourfold State - Boston
Pilgrim's Progress - Bunyan
Manual of Christian Doctrine - Berkhof

This list is balanced in this way: Obviously it includes the Word of God; then a history of redemption (the Boston work), a systematic theology (Berkhof), and an imaginative work that gives visual doctrine (Bunyan), which also is a work on spiritual warfare.

I didn't include Calvin simply because he is dogmatic on the subjects of so-called 'sacraments' and church polity, something the Word of God is not dogmatic on and hence *intentionally not dogmatic on* (dogmatic in the sense of presenting a clear, one approach fits all eras of the history of redemption or all stages of individual Christian development). The devil loves those two subjects. It gives his ministers a wedge to enter churches and keep Christians in the darkness and bondage of the *fear and reverence of man* (i.e. they exalt ritual and man over the Word and the Spirit).

The Boston work is free of those two subjects, even if Boston wasn't himself; and the Berkhof volume is interestingly not dogmatic on the subjects. He is more so in his large Systematic Theology. But it doesn't matter what these people think, the Bible is not dogmatic on the two subjects, and that's all that matters.

The hatred of any notion (which is all they can have) of *regeneration* is also something shared by liberal Christians, atheists, and academic Reformed Christians.

I actually consider all Christians to be 'liberal' if they don't hold to Federal Theology (five solas, doctrines of grace, classical Covenant of Redemption, Works, and Grace theology) and the received Word of God rather than the constructed Word of God (actually word of man) liberal scholars have made the norm to an unsuspecting world. I.e., if you're liberal on the Word of God it doesn't matter if you hold to the five solas and doctrines of grace: you are a liberal. You have yet to humble yourself to the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. You are unbroken. You are telling God that He and His Word need you more than you need God and His Word.

With these simple, plain works you will be mocked as 'unwashed' and 'uneducated' and not 'sophisticated', but you will have a terminal degree of knowledge and understanding of the faith.

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Postscript: I'd also put a word in for The Pearl of Christian Comfort by Dathenus, a 16th century work on law and gospel that is simple and plain and on-the-mark on that important and often difficult subject.