jwright82
Puritan Board Professor
I think, for myself, anyone wanting to grapple with Van Til's method and thought ought to begin with his PhD dissertation "God And The Absolute" because it really lays out his motives and goals in his career.
I've already posted it in other threads so I probably won't here but I think I'll start with an overview and then get into the meat of the dissertation. Essentially, historically speaking, Idealism was a very big picture "god's eye view" type of thinking.
It essentially saw all particulars of reality involved in each other to such a degree as being basically one thing (unity). So the age old problem of unity and diversity (one and the many problem) is already in view here, to some degree. The Absolute is essentially "god" who is so connected, in an almost extreme pantheistic way, so as to be correlative to man and creation. That is both the Creator and the creature are on metaphysical, epistemological, and moral equal ground.
That makes a third thing greater than God, let me explain. We both must appeal to the same standard of whatever. That's what a correlation theology gets you, if God is so far up there we need to drag him down here so we can be on the same ground as him, to supposedly understand him. He may be greater in all ways to me but the comparison puts us on equal ground (more on that later, maybe) with him.
That is because both god and man are on a mission of self-discovery of what "Absolute knowledge" is we're in this together. Even though the Absolute is greater than us it's like we're just kids playing on a playground and he's the older kid (no difference except quantity of being, knowledge, morality, etc).
Now there is variety to Idealism but his analysis of Pragmatism is that essentially it's the same god. Pragmatism was a reaction to the Idealism prevalent of the day, I won't get into the overlap but that's an interesting study.
It (Pragmatism) rejected the totalizing view of Idealism and focused on the individual and their perspective. So they critiqued Idealism for that. So their theories of everything were from an individual point of view (Existentialism did the same thing, along with Analytical Philosophy).
But for them, like Idealism, god was finite and only in a correlative relationship with man and creation. Here I think he's right, at least on William James (who he quotes in the dissertation).
He doesn't get into the famous theory of truth or anything but only the big picture reality they posit. I'll try to make my analysis concise for space.
So that's his thesis, even though they were critical of one another they posit the same God. Only the Theist (I take him to mean Reformed here only because that's what he later settled on, I'll defend that claim if anyone asks) can rightly interpret the world we experience.
I'll post about the sections right now just to break it up.
I've already posted it in other threads so I probably won't here but I think I'll start with an overview and then get into the meat of the dissertation. Essentially, historically speaking, Idealism was a very big picture "god's eye view" type of thinking.
It essentially saw all particulars of reality involved in each other to such a degree as being basically one thing (unity). So the age old problem of unity and diversity (one and the many problem) is already in view here, to some degree. The Absolute is essentially "god" who is so connected, in an almost extreme pantheistic way, so as to be correlative to man and creation. That is both the Creator and the creature are on metaphysical, epistemological, and moral equal ground.
That makes a third thing greater than God, let me explain. We both must appeal to the same standard of whatever. That's what a correlation theology gets you, if God is so far up there we need to drag him down here so we can be on the same ground as him, to supposedly understand him. He may be greater in all ways to me but the comparison puts us on equal ground (more on that later, maybe) with him.
That is because both god and man are on a mission of self-discovery of what "Absolute knowledge" is we're in this together. Even though the Absolute is greater than us it's like we're just kids playing on a playground and he's the older kid (no difference except quantity of being, knowledge, morality, etc).
Now there is variety to Idealism but his analysis of Pragmatism is that essentially it's the same god. Pragmatism was a reaction to the Idealism prevalent of the day, I won't get into the overlap but that's an interesting study.
It (Pragmatism) rejected the totalizing view of Idealism and focused on the individual and their perspective. So they critiqued Idealism for that. So their theories of everything were from an individual point of view (Existentialism did the same thing, along with Analytical Philosophy).
But for them, like Idealism, god was finite and only in a correlative relationship with man and creation. Here I think he's right, at least on William James (who he quotes in the dissertation).
He doesn't get into the famous theory of truth or anything but only the big picture reality they posit. I'll try to make my analysis concise for space.
So that's his thesis, even though they were critical of one another they posit the same God. Only the Theist (I take him to mean Reformed here only because that's what he later settled on, I'll defend that claim if anyone asks) can rightly interpret the world we experience.
I'll post about the sections right now just to break it up.
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