What do demons believe anyway?

"The Puritan writer Thomas Manton in his excellent commentary on the Epistle of James gives a characteristic and significant answer. The paragraph in question discusses James 2:19, 'The devils also believe, and tremble.' 'This instance showeth,' says Manton, 'what faith he disputeth against, namely, such as consisteth in bare speculation and knowledge. . . .Thou believest; that is assentest to this truth; the lowest act of faith is invested with the name of believing.'
Manton's argument here is that since the devils assent and true believers also assent, something other than assent is needed for saving faith. This is a logical blunder. The text says the devils believe in monotheism. Why cannot the difference between the devils and Christians be the different propositions believed, rather than a psychological element in belief? Manton assumes a different psychology is needed. It is better to say a different object of belief is needed.
According to Manton, the devils' psychology is one of bare speculation. However, he does not explain what this is. If it is the so-called faith, discussed on his preceding pages, that produces no works, one cannot object. This so-called faith Manton calls a 'dead faith,' or better a 'false faith,' and therefore not a saving faith at all. Faith without works is dead. Agreed. But if this is not saving faith at all, and is yet called faith and belief, the difference will be found in the object, not in the psychological analysis. The analysis is the same whether a person believes a saving truth, a non-saving truth, or even a falsehood.
Manton makes an attempt to avoid the force of this consideration. 'There is one God,' he continues. 'He instanceth in this proposition, though he doth limit the matter only to this: partly because this was the first article of the creed . . . by it intending also assent to other articles of religion . . . .'
Now, just what devils believe and do not believe, the Bible does not fully explain. The psychology of Satan is something of a puzzle. Apparently Satan really believed that Job would curse God. Like the Arminians he did not believe in the persevereance of the saints. One cannot be certain, but possibly Satan believed the promise he himself made to Eve. Did he not also believe that he might possibly tempt Christ to sin? If he had believed it impossible, why should he have tried three times? There must therefore be a good bit of the Bible that the devils do not believe.
In this difficulty it is best to stay close to the text, and James says only that the devils believe there is one God. The text nowhere says that this proposition stands for all the articles of the creed. It has just now been proved that it does not. If human beings can be monotheists without believing in the atonement, or even in Christ, one might suppose the devils could too. Because Manton adds to the creed of the devils propositions James does not specify, his argument becomes confused. Depending on an hypothesis that has no textual foundation, he fails to escape the objection above: It is illogical to conclude that belief is not assent just because belief in monotheism does not save. The clearer inference is that if belief in monotheism does not save, then one ought to believe something else in addition. Not assent, but monotheism is inadequate." Gordon H. Clark, What is Saving Faith?


John Calvin also says, "When the apostle gives the appellation of faith to a vain notion, widely different from true faith, it is a concession which derogates nothing from the argument; this he shows from the beginning in these words: 'What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works?' He does not say, If any one have faith without works; but If any one boast of having it. He speaks speaks more plainly just after, where he ridicules it by representing it as worse than the knowledge of devils; and lastly, when he calls it dead. But his meaning may be sufficiently understood from the definition he gives: 'Thou believest,' says he, 'that there is one God.' Indeed, if nothing be contained in this creed but a belief of the Divine existence, it is not at all surprising that it is inadequate to justification. And we must not suppose this denial to be derogatory to Christian faith, the nature of which is widely different. For how does true faith justify, but by uniting us to Christ, that, being made one with him, we may participate his righteousness? It does not, therefore, justify us, by attaining a knowledge of God's existence, but by a reliance on the certainty of his mercy." - The Institutes, 3. 17. 11. Pg. 45-46

What is wrong with man is the measure of all things?

In the attack against Heracleitus and Protagoras, Plato says that they ultimately make man the measure of all things. For what appears to me to be cold may appear to you to be warm. Or what appears to me to be big may appear small to you. No one person may or can have the same perception. Perhaps this is the fault with those who trust that we know thinga by our senses. But, if one percieves a different quality in an object than another one does should we say that truth is therefore subjective? Perhaps the fault lies in our senses. How do we know what is truth? Of course the Bible alone is the word of God. God has revealed the Bible to us. God is truth, logic, and eternal. Therefore, the Bible alone is truth. God alone reveals it.

To be Regenerated is to be converted

"Every regenerate person has the Spirit of Christ and is led by Him, is in Christ, has Christ living in him, is a son of God, has the seed of God remaining in him, is a sharer of the kingdom of heaven, has a cleansed heart, is holy, a servant of righteousness, and free from sin." - Johannes Cocceius, The doctrine of the covenant and Testament of God, pg. 331

Life after death

Reading back through the Republic of Plato, with all of his faults and all, one reads in the last bit of segment of life after death. Though, Plato believed that the soul had immortality and that it never dies but rather when a man dies he goes through a sort of judgment in which he is supposed to be reincarnated. Though the question is how does Plato know this, the thought still is that Plato believed in some sort of life after the grave. Today, however, with the schools teaching materialism and Darwinian Evolution in which no longer is man a created being of God made in his image but rather a combination of primordial soup and as a result denying the existence and knowability of a god (if not The God) also deny life after the grave. The result of this grave teaching in our schools and family structure and world system is that morality doesn't depend on God but on man. Morality is a combination of feelings and disposition. One feels like they are a woman rather than a man. One feels like committing acts of rape. The sad thing of this is that it is all done in the name of equality. This hypothetical movement, in which the world attacked the church of brainwashing is now being done at an early time in a childs life. There seems to be no sign of this ending soon either. What needs to happen is a restoration of the family structure and restoration of the truth.