Classical logic represents the Truth of God and Sound Reason is the foundation of the Christian faith. Reason comprises a sequence of logical steps based, in this case, on Scripture, personal experience and the great traditions of the church.
Some basic principles of logic can be found in the “Logical Preliminaries” portion of Christian Handbook of Reason and Insight for Scientists and Technologists. In this Section, we examine the Direct Method for proving that a conditional proposition is, in fact, true. Such a proposition is represented by if P then Q, where the thesis P and the thesis Q are each of the form (α is β). Also, true can be represented by 1 and false can be represented by 0.
The Truth Table for a conditional proposition is given by:
P Q if P then Q
1 1 1
1 0 0
0 1 1
0 0 1
Notice a conditional proposition is true unless P is true and Q is false. Therefore, if we postulate that P is true and demonstrate that Q is true whenever P is true, then the second row of the truth table will never be reality and we can say that if P then Q is always a true statement.
Consider the following example:
P = God cannot identify a single false teaching in Old Testament autographs
Q = Old Testament autographs were inspired by God.
The truth of P can be postulated based on the word of God the Son. During His incarnation, Jesus claimed to be inspired by the Holy Spirit (Luke 3:22; 4:1; 4:18) and to teach only what He learned from His Father (John 8:28; 14:24). In other words, the teachings of Jesus are the teachings of God. Jesus taught that the high purity manuscripts, to which he had access, were infallible and inerrant (Mat 5:18; 21:42; 22:29; Luke 24:44; John 5:39).
The assertion that Q is true whenever P is true is based on the fact that the 39 Old Testament books were written over a period of approximately 1000 years by at least 40 different authors. In the absence of divine inspiration, at least one author would have made at least one mistake. Not a single false teaching was identified by God the Son.
