Q23 : How Can Fallen Men Know Truth?

I was was listening to what Alan Watts teaches about eastern philosophies and found this:

“The assumption of Judeo-Christian culture is that man is by nature sinful and therefore can't be trusted. The assumption by ancient Chinese culture is that man in his essential nature is good and therefore has to be trusted because they say to us: ‘If you can't trust your own basic nature - you can't really rely on the idea that you are untrustworthy. Therefore you are hopelessly fouled up.’ ”

According to the Judeo-Christian world-view, how can man reliably know anything if human nature is fundamentally flawed?

A23 : by Tony Garland

Views on human depravity seem to be a basic difference between Christianity and just about every other religion.

Christianity says that man can do nothing to truly please God. This is essentially the reason why Jesus went to the cross—to reconcile man to God, something that man was incapable of doing because his basic nature is depraved.

Other religions say that there are avenues (by man's effort) that man can appease God and earn His respect or acceptance.

The main flaw in the Chinese statement about untrustworthy man being totally confused is that it fails to account for divine revelation as given by God—the Bible. Without special revelation from God in the form of the Scriptures, man would be completely fouled up and unable to determine how to approach God or please him—or even know his place in the universe. But with the objective measure of scripture (which Jesus said could not be broken, John 10:35), we can have an objective measure of where we are and what we need to do.

This is why it is essential as Christians to understand the nature of the Scriptures—that they are inspired and without error.

This is also why secular psychology is essentially a dead end because fallen counselors lacking divine revelation into the nature of man and the wisdom of the Scriptures are unable to render meaningful assistance.