# Van Til: Psychology of Religion



## RamistThomist (Oct 12, 2017)

Van Til is hard to read to begin with. This book is harder than most, but not necessarily because it is by Van Til. It is because it is about the psychology of religion, particularly an analysis of what secularists have to say about religion. Granted, it is probably out of date, but that is because secular psychology of religion manuals are already out of date by their printing.

Thesis: Covenant-breaking man isolates self-consciousness from God and calls that the object of religion. And Van Til takes that apart. Secular accounts fail because they reduce man to chance and atoms, and so place him against a meaningless void. But in such a void everything is random and in flux. Even subjects and predicates can't latch on together.

Throughout the book Van Til gives us a fine survey of the biblical teaching of man as created imago dei. He writes: “The Christian concept of hermeneutics is based first of all upon the creation idea, that is, upon the conviction that there are not merely one but two levels of existence, and that man must be interpreted in terms of God. In the second place, the Christian concept of interpretation is based upon the epistemology involved in the notion of two levels of existence, tht is, that man’s interpretation must always be reinterpretation" (53).

And again:

“The universals and particulars of this world can never exist in independence from one another” (58). They are equally ultimate and correlative of one another. Creation means universals and particulars cannot exist apart from one another.

The Epistemology of Revelation

“To know truly man’s thought must be receptively reconstructive of the revelation of God in Christ” (60).

Not Cartesian

We do not exalt one faculty above any other, for man is equally prophet, priest, and king (67).

Evolution: when the borderlines between man and beast, and beast and lesser forms are erased, we have a sea of Irrationalism.

Body and Soul

Body and soul came into existence together (68).

Man as Analogical Personality

Every activity of man is derivative of God (73). We do not argue for man’s “responsibility” in the abstract. Modern psychology places man’s responsibility against the backdrop of an impersonal void. “Man before God is the only alternative to man in the void” (73).

In the garden man’s God-concept and self-concept were simultaneous. Hence, the distinction between subjective and objective, as it is usually employed, would be false in such a case. Man’s idea about God would be a correct replica of God’s idea about God, and [so forth]” (83).


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