Man created in God's Image

Man has many thoughts and concepts that go through his head each day as he thinks. He has many thoughts and opinions about life. But how is man to know what is true and what is false in knowledge, right and wrong in morality and what the purpose for his existence on earth is. For man to come to any conclusion on his thoughts and opinions there must be a standard that man must judge his thoughts against to distinguish truth from error. This standard can not be his own reason’s. For how could reason be the ultimate judge? When it is our "reasoning" that we are want to judge. Reason is not an ultimate authority but a tool to find true knowledge.

Because man is created in the image of God he has the knowledge of God inherent in him. He has knowledge of the outside world programmed into his mind to understand the external world. Man thinks God’s thoughts on a finite level and is always on a journey to learning more. This is very different than innate ideas that are in idealistic philosophies. The idealist has abstract ideas that do not correspond to the outside world and are not related to a complete unit of truth. For the external world to them is impersonal and meaningless. For the Christian his thoughts are true if they correspond to God’s interpretation of the world. Because God knows every facts relationship to the rest, man can on thinking God’s thoughts (on a finite level) understand how his thoughts can relate to objects in the world and be more than subjective claims. Because he is thinking with a unity of truths, which come from the whole and are based on an eternal interpretation of all things. God’s thinking is what gives unity, meaning, coherence and intelligibility to nature, history, reasoning and morality.

Divine Revelation
The only way that man can know he is thinking right is to judge his thoughts against divine revelation. Nature clearly reveals God’s existence and manifests his attributes throughout it. But it is scripture as a Divine revelation from God that instructs our intellect and desires to true knowledge. True knowledge is ethical and it binds us to use to correctly. It is divine revelation that defines what reality is, how we are to act and what is right and what is wrong. It is divine revelation that places us as a part of reality into a rational relationship with the rest of reality. There is a purpose for us, and object’s function according to a plan and design.