Riverwood Presbyterian Church

Education

The edges of truth

by Peggy Drinkard

My eighth grade son and I have the privilege of participating in a trial run of Patria Institute’s first upper level mathematics course. It is taught by James Nickel, author of MATHEMATICS, IS GOD SILENT? (a book I recommend to anyone, but especially those involved in any aspect of education.) Yesterday’s lecture was on the Pythagorean theorum. As background, Mr. Nickel gave some historical information about Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans (his discipuli). In essense, Pythagoras recognized that the cosmos is full of mathematical “harmonies” (patterns, schemes) but did not acknowledge the One behind the harmonies. There were, at that time, many synagogues in Greece where the Living God was proclaimed, but Pythagoras did not accept this knowledge. The creed of Pythagoras became, “Numbers rule the universe,” and a somewhat mystical brotherhood was created around this creed. Dr. Nickel explained that a tool , numbers, God gave to us for understanding and describing his works, was turned by Pythagoras and his followers into something divine in its own right, and that man does this with many things. For the Greek philosophers, it was reason….for modern man, perhaps science or money or fame or etc. This information was followed by the demonstration of two proofs of the Pythagorean theorum…2 out of over 370 such proofs. (Here Mr. Nickel explained how the many approaches to demonstrating one truth reflected another pattern built into the universe; that of unity and diversity, reflecting the Trinitarian nature of God.) All of this was fascinating study, but I especially appreciated a quote he gave of Bernard Ramm. ” If we do not fear God, we shall forever be at the edge of truth, and to crown our folly, we shall view the edge of truth as the center.” Viewing the edges as the center is a concept I’ve been meditating on since. It relates well to the contents of a Tim Keller sermon as related to me recently, titled “The Girl Nobody Wanted.” The text was the marriage of Jacob to, supposedly, Rachel, but in fact, Leah. In essence the theme was that anything we put as the focus of our lives….that one thing that we think will fulfill all our needs, and look to it as opposed to our Maker for this fulfillment, will always let us down. Jacob had such a driving focus on Rachel, but he awoke to Leah. If I remember correctly, Mr. Keller’s analogy was that when we create these idols, we are always going to “wake up to Leah”. Our idols not only let us down, but create for us many woes and sad consequences we can’t foresee. I’m sure we all know something of this from our own life experiences, (i.e. that plasma TV is going to be outdated by the time we can afford it, ha!) but it was good to hear it all put so succinctly.