Keith Mathison's Critique of CVT

[MW]

Towards A Reformed Apologetics: A Critique Of The Thought Of Cornelius Van Til By Keith A. Mathison.

This is a review of sorts. It is more like a conversation. Let's call it a conversational review.

In this book Keith Mathison (KM) gives us his analysis of and concerns about the thought of Cornelius Van Til (CVT). He is not a VanTillian. Notwithstanding I think he has written somewhat accurately on some of the core tenets of VanTillian thought. I say “somewhat” and “some” because there are glaring omissions. For example, “paradox!” One would expect it to feature prominently in a discussion about CVT’s methodology. Instead we are told of “ambiguities” in his thought. Another omission is the Clark-Van Til controversy. It rates a few mentions but is summed up as two men talking past each other. These are two giant thinkers; if it sounds like they are talking past each other it is only because they are speaking at a higher philosophical level than most can grasp.

I should state up front that I am not a VanTillian, and yet I agree with the core tenets of his presuppositionalism, excepting paradox. A “VanTillian” is one who systematically follows Van Til. As KM’s Introduction observes there are various schools of thought which claim to follow the teaching of CVT – Reconstructionist, Tri-perspectival, Redemptive-Historical, Covenantal, Systematic Trinitarian, and Analytic. There are likely to be more. I do not maintain a system of ideas that I have derived from CVT. What I hold of his core tenets I hold in common with Reformed Orthodoxy.

The first part of KM’s Critique offers an analysis of some of CVT’s core theological commitments which give structure to his epistemology and apologetical method. The chapter titles tell you what they are – the Triune God, Creation and Revelation, Man’s Fall and God’s Grace, Redemption and the Antithesis, and finally the Apologetical Implications of the Antithesis. I will not enter into details on these points as I found the analysis to be accurate so far as it went. Systematic VanTillians will think otherwise and find fault with the minutiae. I leave that to them.

The strong point of this part is its clear grounding of facts in the decree of God. The decree is exhaustive and it is something only God knows. How do we presume to know what He has decreed? An Arminian has his own view of facts. That view comes out in various ways in classical apologetics. If a Calvinist is to be consistent he must affirm that the facts are hidden from him and he depends on God to reveal what man needs to know.

Then there are the noetic effects of the fall. Let’s be serious about what we believe. The facts reveal God at every point. Fallen man as an interpreter of facts is a perverted judge. Whatever an unbeliever thinks he knows he doesn’t really know. He must become a new creation. He needs to become as a little child to receive the kingdom of God. So where is the common ground? It can only be found in the inconsistency of the unbeliever on the ground of common grace.

Calvinists need to apply these kinds of theological convictions more consistently to the way they think about apologetics. We are not Arminians!

My main focus is on the second half of the book – Considering the Thought of CVT. The author has Biblical, Philosophical, Theological, Historical, and Practical Concerns. I can’t really fault him for his concerns as they are the kinds of things that hinder me from becoming a systematic Van Tillian. But I would like to offer some comments in favour of presuppositionalism.

First, CVT was not an exegete; and yes, that is a defect in his system; but that was not really his department of expertise. Having said that, no one in this intramural discussion would deny that his confessional theology is exegetically defensible. The author has said that VanTillians and non VanTillians alike can meet together in their shared commitment to Reformed confessional theology. It is a defect that Van Til has not exegeted his way through his system, but we should be able to agree on the system itself. Either the Westminster Confession is founded on Scripture or it is not. Its system of doctrine, if true, must be biblical in order to be true.

This happens to be a basic commitment of presuppositionalism. If truth were derived from another source the Scriptures would have to meet the standards required by that other source. How are we going to assess apologetical systems? If we believe that the Spirit speaking in the Scriptures must determine all controversies then the Spirit speaking in the Scriptures must determine this controversy. We are bound to maintain the presuppositional method at least on an intuitive level. It is entailed in a commitment to sola Scriptura. Should we attempt to determine this controversy by an appeal to another source of authority we would overthrow the “sola” of Scripture. I say this as someone who agrees with KM’s assessment of “Tradition I” in his work on sola Scriptura. That view maintains a single source of authority.

This brings us to the philosophical concerns. If exegesis was CVT’s weak point, philosophy was his strength. This chapter includes a quotation from Richard Muller in the introduction. Muller points out that the lack of philosophical structure to complement its doctrines led to orthodoxy’s demise. This means there was something lacking in the philosophical department. If that is the case we should not return to the past to fix the problems which the past has bequeathed to us. We need something more internally consistent with itself. This seems to me to set the stage for CVT’s work in providing a firmer philosophical structure that was consistent with reformed orthodoxy.

According to the author the major fault with CVT’s philosophy is idealist holism. The systematic VanTillians will have a field day with this one so I will leave it to them to tear it apart piece by piece. Suffice to say that the author has already said enough in his analysis to show that this is not CVT’s view. His “idealism,” if it can be called such, is in God Himself. It is transcendent and therefore not a part of human knowledge. Man knows as an image-bearer. It is enough for him that God knows all things. Faith in God, faith seeking understanding from God, meets all the criteria necessary for human knowledge. We are to become as little children to receive the kingdom of God. It is the kingdom of the all-knowing One. The little ones can enter it with the simplest faith.

The theological concerns are weighty. What are we to do with natural theology? We should embrace it in all its glorious limitations. I don’t think the author has understood CVT on this point. The Westminster Symposium on the Infallible Word contains a chapter on the subject. It allows for everything a Reformed Scholastic would want out of natural theology. The point is that it should be used presuppositionally, not as if it provided a neutral account of the facts.

More serious is the concern about CVT’s doctrine of Trinity. His language cannot be justified. God is not one person. If one’s philosophy allows him to use such language it should be clear that his philosophy is no longer being used in the service of theology. However, I would caution being over-zealous with charges since theologians have struggled to explain consciousness in relation to personality. Some room should be provided to navigate the issue. That said, “one person” language is not sound no matter how it is qualified. Words matter!

While we are on the subject of prolegomena, CVT held the fort on incomprehensibility and ectypal theology. Many others abandoned it. This deserves more notice, the more so because it was a concern of the Reformed Scholastics, and this book seems to advocate for the methodology of the Reformed Scholastics. It includes an Appendix from Francis Junius providing a kind of model for Reformed Apologetics. But Junius also taught the incomprehensibility of God with the archetypal-ectypal distinction. I think closer examination would show numerous presuppositional elements within the Reformed Scholastics.

CVT was not a good historical theologian, so all the historical concerns are valid. He even sounds at times like he accepted some of the Calvin v. Calvinist views on scholastic theology. Some of this was latent in the Amsterdam philosophy, which was part of CVT’s inherited tradition. That leads me to wonder what he would say in the light of the good historical theology of the school of Muller. There is no doubt that he regarded the middle ages as a synthesis. Were the Reformed Scholastics always consistent? Probably not. Again, if there are weak points in the system they need to be worked out. Here is a field for fruitful discussion. The ipse dixit of the past is not going to resolve inherent issues.

On to the practical concerns. There is obviously a tendency to recast theology and it is dangerous. Is this inherent in CVT’s apologetics? I doubt it. He seems more systematically in line with traditional reformed theology than others of his era. This was probably owing to Bavinck. Revisionism is everywhere, I am sorry to say. That can’t be blamed on one man. It is in the air of intellectual progress that academics breathe.

More germane is the issue of “Movement VanTillianism.” Here is the real danger. Once someone like CVT embarks on a more consistent philosophy to complement reformed theology he has set a precedent for everyone else. He set in motion a mindset to tinker with things and synthesise them on a systematic level. He also opened the door for “biblical philosophy.” There is no such thing. The Reformed Scholastics thought of theology as sapientia, not scientia – wisdom, not science. It is practical in nature, not speculative. The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requireth of man. It doesn’t teach philosophy per se.

Both old Princeton and old Amsterdam turned theology into a science. CVT stood on their shoulders. The attempt to create a distinct philosophy from Scripture only enables man to impose philosophy on Scripture, which undoes all CVT’s good work. The claim is made that a whole system of thought can be derived from the Bible. We end up with biblicism of various kinds. In the end VanTillianism suffers from perfectionism. This comes from seeking after consistency with itself. In being epistemically self-consistent it breaks free from that simple child-like faith that can trust in the all-knowing God. It can now trust in itself. The truth is, we do not need a “perfect philosophy” this side of glory. We have God to lead us. What we need is the theology of pilgrims, of those who are making their way to glory.

 

[paranymph]

Thank you. I also recently listened to this podcast:

Reassessing Cornelius Van Til (Part 1): Sam Parkison with Keith Mathison - Credo Magazine

Who was Cornelius Van Til, and what is presuppositional apologetics? In this episode of the Credo Podcast, Samuel Parkison interviews Keith Mathison on his new book, Toward a Reformed Apologetics: A Critique of the Thought of Cornelius Van Til. They cover topics such as Van Til's trinitarian...

credomag.com

 

[jwright82]

Towards A Reformed Apologetics: A Critique Of The Thought Of Cornelius Van Til By Keith A. Mathison.

This is a review of sorts. It is more like a conversation. Let's call it a conversational review.

In this book Keith Mathison (KM) gives us his analysis of and concerns about the thought of Cornelius Van Til (CVT). He is not a VanTillian. Notwithstanding I think he has written somewhat accurately on some of the core tenets of VanTillian thought. I say “somewhat” and “some” because there are glaring omissions. For example, “paradox!” One would expect it to feature prominently in a discussion about CVT’s methodology. Instead we are told of “ambiguities” in his thought. Another omission is the Clark-Van Til controversy. It rates a few mentions but is summed up as two men talking past each other. These are two giant thinkers; if it sounds like they are talking past each other it is only because they are speaking at a higher philosophical level than most can grasp.

I should state up front that I am not a VanTillian, and yet I agree with the core tenets of his presuppositionalism, excepting paradox. A “VanTillian” is one who systematically follows Van Til. As KM’s Introduction observes there are various schools of thought which claim to follow the teaching of CVT – Reconstructionist, Tri-perspectival, Redemptive-Historical, Covenantal, Systematic Trinitarian, and Analytic. There are likely to be more. I do not maintain a system of ideas that I have derived from CVT. What I hold of his core tenets I hold in common with Reformed Orthodoxy.

The first part of KM’s Critique offers an analysis of some of CVT’s core theological commitments which give structure to his epistemology and apologetical method. The chapter titles tell you what they are – the Triune God, Creation and Revelation, Man’s Fall and God’s Grace, Redemption and the Antithesis, and finally the Apologetical Implications of the Antithesis. I will not enter into details on these points as I found the analysis to be accurate so far as it went. Systematic VanTillians will think otherwise and find fault with the minutiae. I leave that to them.

The strong point of this part is its clear grounding of facts in the decree of God. The decree is exhaustive and it is something only God knows. How do we presume to know what He has decreed? An Arminian has his own view of facts. That view comes out in various ways in classical apologetics. If a Calvinist is to be consistent he must affirm that the facts are hidden from him and he depends on God to reveal what man needs to know.

Then there are the noetic effects of the fall. Let’s be serious about what we believe. The facts reveal God at every point. Fallen man as an interpreter of facts is a perverted judge. Whatever an unbeliever thinks he knows he doesn’t really know. He must become a new creation. He needs to become as a little child to receive the kingdom of God. So where is the common ground? It can only be found in the inconsistency of the unbeliever on the ground of common grace.

Calvinists need to apply these kinds of theological convictions more consistently to the way they think about apologetics. We are not Arminians!

My main focus is on the second half of the book – Considering the Thought of CVT. The author has Biblical, Philosophical, Theological, Historical, and Practical Concerns. I can’t really fault him for his concerns as they are the kinds of things that hinder me from becoming a systematic Van Tillian. But I would like to offer some comments in favour of presuppositionalism.

First, CVT was not an exegete; and yes, that is a defect in his system; but that was not really his department of expertise. Having said that, no one in this intramural discussion would deny that his confessional theology is exegetically defensible. The author has said that VanTillians and non VanTillians alike can meet together in their shared commitment to Reformed confessional theology. It is a defect that Van Til has not exegeted his way through his system, but we should be able to agree on the system itself. Either the Westminster Confession is founded on Scripture or it is not. Its system of doctrine, if true, must be biblical in order to be true.

This happens to be a basic commitment of presuppositionalism. If truth were derived from another source the Scriptures would have to meet the standards required by that other source. How are we going to assess apologetical systems? If we believe that the Spirit speaking in the Scriptures must determine all controversies then the Spirit speaking in the Scriptures must determine this controversy. We are bound to maintain the presuppositional method at least on an intuitive level. It is entailed in a commitment to sola Scriptura. Should we attempt to determine this controversy by an appeal to another source of authority we would overthrow the “sola” of Scripture. I say this as someone who agrees with KM’s assessment of “Tradition I” in his work on sola Scriptura. That view maintains a single source of authority.

This brings us to the philosophical concerns. If exegesis was CVT’s weak point, philosophy was his strength. This chapter includes a quotation from Richard Muller in the introduction. Muller points out that the lack of philosophical structure to complement its doctrines led to orthodoxy’s demise. This means there was something lacking in the philosophical department. If that is the case we should not return to the past to fix the problems which the past has bequeathed to us. We need something more internally consistent with itself. This seems to me to set the stage for CVT’s work in providing a firmer philosophical structure that was consistent with reformed orthodoxy.

According to the author the major fault with CVT’s philosophy is idealist holism. The systematic VanTillians will have a field day with this one so I will leave it to them to tear it apart piece by piece. Suffice to say that the author has already said enough in his analysis to show that this is not CVT’s view. His “idealism,” if it can be called such, is in God Himself. It is transcendent and therefore not a part of human knowledge. Man knows as an image-bearer. It is enough for him that God knows all things. Faith in God, faith seeking understanding from God, meets all the criteria necessary for human knowledge. We are to become as little children to receive the kingdom of God. It is the kingdom of the all-knowing One. The little ones can enter it with the simplest faith.

The theological concerns are weighty. What are we to do with natural theology? We should embrace it in all its glorious limitations. I don’t think the author has understood CVT on this point. The Westminster Symposium on the Infallible Word contains a chapter on the subject. It allows for everything a Reformed Scholastic would want out of natural theology. The point is that it should be used presuppositionally, not as if it provided a neutral account of the facts.

More serious is the concern about CVT’s doctrine of Trinity. His language cannot be justified. God is not one person. If one’s philosophy allows him to use such language it should be clear that his philosophy is no longer being used in the service of theology. However, I would caution being over-zealous with charges since theologians have struggled to explain consciousness in relation to personality. Some room should be provided to navigate the issue. That said, “one person” language is not sound no matter how it is qualified. Words matter!

While we are on the subject of prolegomena, CVT held the fort on incomprehensibility and ectypal theology. Many others abandoned it. This deserves more notice, the more so because it was a concern of the Reformed Scholastics, and this book seems to advocate for the methodology of the Reformed Scholastics. It includes an Appendix from Francis Junius providing a kind of model for Reformed Apologetics. But Junius also taught the incomprehensibility of God with the archetypal-ectypal distinction. I think closer examination would show numerous presuppositional elements within the Reformed Scholastics.

CVT was not a good historical theologian, so all the historical concerns are valid. He even sounds at times like he accepted some of the Calvin v. Calvinist views on scholastic theology. Some of this was latent in the Amsterdam philosophy, which was part of CVT’s inherited tradition. That leads me to wonder what he would say in the light of the good historical theology of the school of Muller. There is no doubt that he regarded the middle ages as a synthesis. Were the Reformed Scholastics always consistent? Probably not. Again, if there are weak points in the system they need to be worked out. Here is a field for fruitful discussion. The ipse dixit of the past is not going to resolve inherent issues.

On to the practical concerns. There is obviously a tendency to recast theology and it is dangerous. Is this inherent in CVT’s apologetics? I doubt it. He seems more systematically in line with traditional reformed theology than others of his era. This was probably owing to Bavinck. Revisionism is everywhere, I am sorry to say. That can’t be blamed on one man. It is in the air of intellectual progress that academics breathe.

More germane is the issue of “Movement VanTillianism.” Here is the real danger. Once someone like CVT embarks on a more consistent philosophy to complement reformed theology he has set a precedent for everyone else. He set in motion a mindset to tinker with things and synthesise them on a systematic level. He also opened the door for “biblical philosophy.” There is no such thing. The Reformed Scholastics thought of theology as sapientia, not scientia – wisdom, not science. It is practical in nature, not speculative. The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requireth of man. It doesn’t teach philosophy per se.

Both old Princeton and old Amsterdam turned theology into a science. CVT stood on their shoulders. The attempt to create a distinct philosophy from Scripture only enables man to impose philosophy on Scripture, which undoes all CVT’s good work. The claim is made that a whole system of thought can be derived from the Bible. We end up with biblicism of various kinds. In the end VanTillianism suffers from perfectionism. This comes from seeking after consistency with itself. In being epistemically self-consistent it breaks free from that simple child-like faith that can trust in the all-knowing God. It can now trust in itself. The truth is, we do not need a “perfect philosophy” this side of glory. We have God to lead us. What we need is the theology of pilgrims, of those who are making their way to glory.

Good review. I don't have the book yet, so I can't comment on it.

 

[Knight]

I finished the book Saturday. It was very informative, although I agree with @MW that I was not persuaded away from my [non-Van Tillian] presuppositionalism.

I'd like to try to keep my interest in this post focused on the first question discussed by the men in the recent Van Til Group podcast (link) - with whom I believe Dr. @Keith Mathison has been in contact since then? - the question of whether Van Til taught that "man must know all about all things in order to know anything about anything" (13:47). I'll call this "Mathison's thesis."

The skeptical implications are so obvious, this might sound too ludicrous to believe. But Mathison mentions others who have thought this, and having been introduced to Van Til from an indirect angle - Gordon Clark - it was an inference I too made over 10 years ago. My question now is whether Mathison et al. is and I was right.

Now, how much of Van Til I have read is probably minimal compared to probably everyone else who responds in this thread, but I wish the Van Til Group had responded just a little more thoroughly to Mathison on this point. Their response to one of the quotes (the "Banner article" quote) made sense, but it seems to me there was at least one more critical quote that should have been discussed compared to the ones they actually discussed (pgs. 158-159; 28:47ff.). In particular, this quote from A Survey of Christian Epistemology (one book by Van Til I have read), which was cited at least 3 times in Mathison's book:

Which method fits with a certain system of thought depends upon the idea of knowledge a system has. For the Christian system, knowledge consists in understanding the relation of any fact to God as revealed in Scripture. I know a fact truly to the extent that I understand the exact relation such a fact sustains to the plan of God. It is the plan of God that gives any fact meaning in terms of the plan of God. The whole meaning of any fact is exhausted by its position in and relation to the plan of God. This implies that every fact is related to every other fact. God’s plan is a unit. And it is this unity of the plan of God, founded as it is in the very being of God, that gives the unity that we look for between all the finite facts. If one should maintain that one fact can be fully understood without reference to all other facts, he is as much antitheistic as when he should maintain that one fact can be understood without reference to God.

Like I said, I've read comparatively less by Van Til than many here. It is obvious to anyone who has read Van Til (and Mathison) that Van Til also affirms humans have "knowledge," believers and unbelievers alike (although in different senses). But if "I can't fully understand anything without reference to all other facts," I can't even fully understand that fact - which some might take as problematic. Is this what Van Til means when he says my "knowledge" is only "true" "so far as it goes"? That is, is the truth itself of which we have any knowledge a matter of degrees?

I think a document that is probably not well known could support Mathison's thesis. Attached is a paper written on behalf of the 1940s complainants against Gordon Clark. I have no intention of turning this into a Clark thread. But as this paper was presented before the Presbytery of Philadelphia (of which Van Til and his fellow complainants were members), one must assume it faithfully represents the views of the complainants. The notes in the margins are Clark's. I have translated all of them, but as it regards this thread, they may be ignored. Page 6, first full paragraph (the one with the underlines) in particular is what I find interesting:

In the first place, so far as the reference to implications is concerned, we believe that this misses the real point at issue. One cannot say that man's knowledge of a proposition, if it is really knowledge, must be identical with God's knowledge of that proposition, and then state that they differ because of the implications which every proposition has. The distinction between knowledge of a truth and knowledge of its implications is artificial and atomistic. When God declares a truth with regard to himself, such as that he is eternal, he must be giving a revelation concerning his whole being. And when God gives a revelation concerning the created universe, that revelation must be a revelation about himself in the unity of his being in relationship to the universe. When God reveals the truth that Christ died for his people, that revelation has meaning only if the terms of the proposition (the subject "Christ" and the predication) are understood. The divine mind cannot know that truth at all without knowing its implications and the human mind likewise cannot know it as a bare proposition, apart from an actual understanding of implications. The revelation of it to men brings knowledge of it, but the divine knowledge of it necessarily stands on a different level.

Based on what is said here, Clark has two responses. The first is a thorough response to the paragraph on pg. 6 itself and can be read here. This doesn't explicitly get at the focus of my post. The second response is from his personal notes on The Complaint and related papers (see page 23 here). This does touch on the focus of my post: does the above imply Mathison's thesis? Clark thought it did:

In paper Incomprehensibility p. 6, they say the distinction between knowledge of a truth and knowledge of its implications (i.e. other truths) is artificial and atomistic. Why artificial? All meanings merge. No real or natural distinction.

I do not see anything artificial in distinguishing between 1) David was King and 2) Solomon ordered cedars for the temple. It seems to me that the distinctions between David Solomon and trees are entirely natural distinctions, not artificial. They are related in one system, but they are indeed distinct truths. This has a bearing on the confusion concerning paradoxes and their solution.

It seems to me that the Complainants actually hold, and by their logic ought to hold, that the solution of any paradox requires an exhaustive knowledge of all truth.

Clark, Mathison, others, and I could be wrong. What prevents me from dogmatism is what I said earlier: the skeptical implications are so obvious, it's hard to understand how anyone could accept Mathison's thesis. On the other hand, the number of time Van Til qualifies otherwise radical statements (per Mathison's reading, anyways) makes the hypothesis less fantastical.

There are other documents I think are relevant, but they are not by or on behalf of Van Til per se.

 

[Ploutos]

If the root of Van Til's problem is that he verbally absolutizes the anti-thesis but then practically qualifies that, then it could be a feature (or bug) of his system that he makes sweeping absolute statements that he himself can't absolutize in practice - but then defends the absolutism of those statements. It enables a sort of bait-and-switch, where he can say he's not absolutizing by pointing to his practice, but then criticizes others for not absolutizing.

In other words, with regard to knowledge, he would disavow the type of skepticism that his proposition leads to, but then refuse to change the proposition or acknowledge the link between it and the ensuing skepticism.

 

[Hilasmos]

But if "I can't fully understand anything without reference to all other facts," I can't even fully understand that fact - which some might take as problematic. Is this what Van Til means when he says my "knowledge" is only "true" "so far as it goes"? That is, is the truth itself of which we have any knowledge a matter of degrees?

This is how I’ve come to understand it: “without reference to all other facts” is not saying “without comprehending all relations of all facts comprehensively.” A person does not have to be conscious of all exact relations to make “reference” to the whole - to affirm that a subset of relations is “linked” to the whole. The fringes of my knowledge graph cannot be ungrounded, they can’t ultimately plug into the abyss.

In my opnion, I also think of the “whole” as including checkpoints. For example, for human knowledge, Christ is the hermeneutic principle that holds the entire plan together. Within this plan, certain minimal facts ranging from the beginning to the end have been revealed. So in effect, we’ve been given a finite scaffolding that provides the necessary checkpoints/relations that is the spine of the entire human system of possible knowing. I can interpret any local fact in light of a cosmically distant and “final” fact, to the degree it has been revealed. Providentially, God “guarantees” the minimum viable relations of my local facts to the whole. He interprets them for me so that when I do know all relations (or more), it won’t be that my original interpretation was false or aimed in the wrong direction, just lacked depth. This is, from your quote: "For the Christian system, knowledge consists in understanding the relation of any fact to God as revealed in Scripture."

And, like the RF guys said, when we adopt the unbelieving worldview, man must play the role of both God and man. The system of facts must be related in principle, which means man must not just know all relations, but he must be the ground of them - he must be the relator. This makes the unbeliever both omniscient and lost in skepticism at the same time. This is why, as far as I understand Hegel, the human consciousness is identical with the absolute mind.

 

[Knight]

This is how I’ve come to understand it: “without reference to all other facts” is not saying “without comprehending all relations of all facts comprehensively.” A person does not have to be conscious of all exact relations to make “reference” to the whole - to affirm that a subset of relations is “linked” to the whole. The fringes of my knowledge graph cannot be ungrounded, they can’t ultimately plug into the abyss.

In my opnion, I also think of the “whole” as including checkpoints. For example, for human knowledge, Christ is the hermeneutic principle that holds the entire plan together. Within this plan, certain minimal facts ranging from the beginning to the end have been revealed. So in effect, we’ve been given a finite scaffolding that provides the necessary checkpoints/relations that is the spine of the entire human system of possible knowing. I can interpret any local fact in light of a cosmically distant and “final” fact, to the degree it has been revealed. Providentially, God “guarantees” the minimum viable relations of my local facts to the whole. He interprets them for me so that when I do know all relations (or more), it won’t be that my original interpretation was false or aimed in the wrong direction, just lacked depth. This is, from your quote: "For the Christian system, knowledge consists in understanding the relation of any fact to God as revealed in Scripture."

And, like the RF guys said, when we adopt the unbelieving worldview, man must play the role of both God and man. The system of facts must be related in principle, which means man must not just know all relations, but he must be the ground of them - he must be the relator. This makes the unbeliever both omniscient and lost in skepticism at the same time. This is why, as far as I understand Hegel, the human consciousness is identical with the absolute mind.

I have no qualms with the RF criticism of the unbelieving worldview.

Can you clarify the above bold? It sounds to my untrained ear as if you are suggesting that you can approach omniscience.

Are you attempting to present your own position or Van Til's? Or a mix of both? Take the statement, "The whole meaning of any fact is exhausted by its position in and relation to the plan of God." The meaning of any [single] fact is determined by the "whole." That means we currently don't know "the whole meaning" of anything. Do you agree with this? Did Van Til (for this one, if not, what am I missing)?

 

[Hilasmos]

Can you clarify the above bold? It sounds to my untrained ear as if you are suggesting that you can approach omniscience.

Sorry, that was sloppy. I was trying to clarify with my parenthetical statement “or more” relations. Meaning, whenever I reach a future state of knowledge that has substantively more relations, I don’t think I will look back and say everything I used to know was false. We won’t find that one fact, or set of relations, that reverses everything else we know (like a plot twist at the end of a move, where Bruce Willis has been dead the whole time).

Are you attempting to present your own position or Van Til's? Or a mix of both?

I’m only expressing my interpretation of Van Til and how I’ve reconciled in my mind what he means. It could be his unclarity that makes me think this wrongly, but it seems amenable to me so far.

Take the statement, "The whole meaning of any fact is exhausted by its position in and relation to the plan of God." The meaning of any [single] fact is determined by the "whole." That means we currently don't know "the whole meaning" of anything. Do you agree with this? Did Van Til (for this one, if not, what am I missing)?

The distinction I’m making is that there are two different modes of “whole.” The whole can be represented by every last conceivable node of relation. Or, it could be representative of the beginning, middle, and end nodes. Imagine I plotted the 3 nodes/corners of a triangle, it’s a “whole” object but there could be an infinite number of other relations within it. Within these three nodes every other node is implicitly compressed. God, through scripture, gives us a glimpse into each critical node (from alpha to omega), such that I can interpret any one fact in light of the whole. I’m just always working at a different level of resolution. Hegel’s problem, again only as far as I understand it, is that the meaning of any snapshot of the concrete universal’s development could never be interpreted in light of the telos of the whole movement – it didn’t exist yet. So, the present facts could never be related to a final cause, thus it can never have coherence.

To use an analogy, consider a photomosaic. In one version, imagine the “whole” forms an image of the number 7 (we’ll use this for the idea of completeness). However, I only have access to a subset of tiles that make up this larger 7. I can never see the 7. In one version, these tiles may be made up of random pixelated objects, so if you zoom in there is no relation of the tiles to the complete image. So, you might say I don’t know what anything means without knowing the whole.

I’m suggesting the other way. The “whole” is a 7 but it’s made up of tiles that are also 7s. It is a 7 of 7s. The whole is always present in the parts analogically, replicated, suited for my digestion. So, I agree and disagree: we never know the “whole meaning” in the exhaustive sense, but God always reveals truth as a self-contained system of micro 7s (relative to the human knowledge project at least).

I think this is amenable, at the least, because Van Til in that same quote defines the whole as the facts revealed in scripture.

 

[Hilasmos]

Here's a quote from Tseng in his book on Hegel that I think says what I'm trying to say:

"Vos, like Hegel, explains the notion of “organic progress” with the analogy of plant growth. This progress “is from seed-form to the attainment of full growth; yet we do not say that in the qualitative sense the seed is less perfect than the tree.”⁴² Critically adopting Hegel’s dialectical division of history into different stages, Vos claims that the extent of special revelation given at each stage of redemptive history fulfills the criterion of “soteric sufficiency of the truth.”⁴³

In the “first state” of the “emergence” of special revelation, the limited extent of the truth revealed was already sufficient for our ancestors to attain salvation.⁴⁴ This is because “in the seed-form the minimum of indispensable knowledge was already present.”⁴⁵ In other words, the whole truth of revelation was already contained in the seed in an implicit form.

What Vos means is that revealed truths were not given as dismembered chunks or mechanical parts during the successive stages of history, as if God gave to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob the wheels of a car; to Moses, the frame; to the prophets, the windows; in and through Jesus, the engine; and finally to the apostles, the rest of the parts. The organic nature of revelation means that the truth is given as a whole from the very beginning: the seed is the whole of the plant in implicit form. The accumulation of later revelations was not the addition of mechanical parts, but the growth of one single, organic unity.

As special revelation progresses organically in the history of redemption, it manifests an “increasing multiformity” characteristic of “the development of organic life.”⁴⁶ Here again Vos sounds a lot like Hegel. Recall that Hegel insists that truth is both absolute and multiform, and that seeming contradictions in the progression of the truth are merely apparent."

 

[MW]

CVT was speaking of the system of knowledge. The Christian has the revelation of God in the Bible. God knows all the facts. The pre-requisite is satisfied. The non Christian who reasons autonomously does not have this pre-requisite. For all he knows the next fact he comes across might defeat his whole system. It should be clear that knowing all facts is only a requisite for the "system," not for the "person." It is only requisite for the "person" if he reasons autonomously.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

CVT was speaking of the system of knowledge. The Christian has the revelation of God in the Bible. God knows all the facts. The pre-requisite is satisfied. The non Christian who reasons autonomously does not have this pre-requisite. For all he knows the next fact he comes across might defeat his whole system. It should be clear that knowing all facts is only a requisite for the "system," not for the "person." It is only requisite for the "person" if he reasons autonomously.

It also seems to me that the quotes offered deal with the difference between archetypal and ectypal knowledge. Once this is denied then the issue becomes a matter of propositions, and it seems like Van Til is trying to demonstrate that error.

The Reformed were very much against the Cartesisans, and it seems like they approached truth the same way. I was thinking today that it would have been helpful if older Reformed dogmatic language was in regular use as it appears (to me at least) that Van Til was trying to put new terms to older concepts and expressing them in confusing ways but I haven't completely figured that all out yet.

 

[MW]

It also seems to me that the quotes offered deal with the difference between archetypal and ectypal knowledge. Once this is denied then the issue becomes a matter of propositions, and it seems like Van Til is trying to demonstrate that error.

The Reformed were very much against the Cartesisans, and it seems like they approached truth the same way. I was thinking today that it would have been helpful if older Reformed dogmatic language was in regular use as it appears (to me at least) that Van Til was trying to put new terms to older concepts and expressing them in confusing ways but I haven't completely figured that all out yet.

Yes; it seems to me he should be recognised for reviving the incomprehensibility doctrine that was fundamental to Reformed Scholasticism. The Princetonians all but lost it. Gordon Clark couldn't accept it. This shows that theological discourse was blinded by "a form" of rationalism -- not rationalism per se, but there was some influence from it.

 

[Knight]

Yes; it seems to me he should be recognised for reviving the incomprehensibility doctrine that was fundamental to Reformed Scholasticism. The Princetonians all but lost it. Gordon Clark couldn't accept it. This shows that theological discourse was blinded by "a form" of rationalism -- not rationalism per se, but there was some influence from it.

Perhaps I should PM this - or @MW, you are welcome to PM me a response. What couldn't Clark accept? I've recently been reading through the OPC GA minutes. In what some might say is the final year of the 1940s OPC debate (1948), the OPC's Committee to Study Certain Doctrines put out a report including comments on the doctrine of incomprehensibility. I find nothing that they say was denied by Clark in the first place. This is perhaps why Floyd Hamilton (another member of the committee) didn't write a minority report on this. They define incomprehensibility several times:

Summary. The following summation of conclusions respecting the Reformed theology of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may be presented.

(1) There is not complete uniformity in the use of the word “incomprehensible.” Sometimes it means “immense” and at other times “incomprehensible to the created understanding.”

(2) These two uses of the word are closely related. The latter springs from the former.

(3) The latter sense is, however, the more prevalent and uniform use. In this sense incomprehensibility has relevance and meaning only in reference to the finite intelligence.

(4) In this second sense there are also two distinct meanings, one of which may be rendered by our word “inapprehensible,” the other by “incomprehensible.” In the sense of “inapprehensible” the word is not applied to God without qualification. In Calvin’s works this meaning occurs, and it is applied by him to the secret counsel of God and to the divine essence. The meaning “incomprehensible,” as distinguished from “inapprehensible,” is predicated of God without any qualification.

(5) This meaning “incomprehensible,” as applied to God without qualification, is the prevailing usage. Its import is that we cannot have a complete or “adequate” or exhaustive knowledge of God.

(6) This incapacity resides in our finitude and creaturehood.

(7) It is not simply the divine essence that is “incomprehensible” but also the glory of God as revealed. The mysteries revealed in the Word far transcend the comprehension of our minds.

(8) When incomprehensibility is predicated of God as an attribute one of two things is intended, either “immensity” or “incomprehensibility” (as distinguished from “inapprehensibility”). In either of these senses God is absolutely incomprehensible.

(9) The Larger Catechism predicates incomprehensibility of God apparently in the former sense, the Westminster Confession in the latter. In both there is no qualification, and this attribute is coordinated with other attributes such as omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence.

Formulation of the Doctrine of God’s Incomprehensibility

I. Incomprehensibility is not an attribute essential to the being and knowledge of God; His being and perfection are not incomprehensible to Himself. This attribute has respect only to the relation of God’s being and perfection to created reality. In this sense it is a relative attribute.

II. Incomprehensibility expresses the relation of the being and perfection of God to created rational intelligence and has relevance or meaning only as we contemplate the finite understanding.

III. Though incomprehensibility is, in the sense defined, a relative attribute and though it is only within the sphere of finite intelligence that it has meaning, nevertheless incomprehensibility springs from and rests upon the transcendent uniqueness and distinctness that belong to God in virtue of His own essential being and perfection.

IV. Incomprehensibility does not mean that God is inapprehensible or unknowable. It presupposes, rather, knowledge of God on the part of rational creatures. And this knowledge presupposes creation in the divine image and divine revelation. It is, therefore, only within the sphere of rational intelligence confronted with divine revelation that the incomprehensibility of God has relevance or meaning.

V. Incomprehensibility means that within that sphere of revelation and of rational intelligence finite creatures cannot have a complete, or exhaustive, or comprehensive or “adequate” knowledge of God. We cannot search or find out God to perfection. All-penetrating examination or understanding always completely escapes human capacity.

VI. He is not more or less incomprehensible as He is more or less known. There is always an essential disproportion between the infinite transcendence of the being and perfection of God on the one hand, and the capacity of finite intelligence, on the other. And this transcendence is not simply temporarily beyond the finite grasp; God’s greatness is essentially and eternally unsearchable.

VII. God is incomprehensible not only in His essential being and intradivine relations; He is also incomprehensible in all His perfections, counsels, judgments, ways and works. God is incomprehensible even in His self-revelation. Yet no created thing is incomprehensible. All creaturely knowledge, whether of the creature or of the Creator, is limited. But it is a specific limitation of creaturely knowledge of God which is referred to by the term “incomprehensible.”

VIII. Like all His other perfections, God’s knowledge and understanding are incomprehensible. He knows Himself and all things in a way that is unique and exclusive and with all-penetrating fullness and exhaustiveness that are never predicable of finite knowledge or understanding. The qualities of divinity inhere in His knowledge and understanding so that His knowledge is too high for us and we cannot attain unto it. By revelation and illumination we may truly know God and have communion with Him. Yet our knowledge is always fromthe human level, the level of creaturehood. God’s knowledge is always on the divine level and possesses the divine qualities that can never attach to ours. God is perfect in knowledge and this perfection that covers the whole of His knowledge must be applied to His knowledge of every point, however infinitesimally small may be the point which we consider.

IX. The infinite transcendence of God and His consequent incomprehensibility should always constrain in us the profound sense of mystery, awe and reverence. It is at the highest reaches of our apprehension, understanding and contemplation that we are most deeply, gratefully and adoringly aware of the transcendent and incomprehensible glory of God. It is then that we are most truly conscious that God dwells in light unapproachable and full of glory, and we are constrained to exclaim: “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised: and his greatness is unsearchable” (Ps. 145:3); “Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite” (Ps. 147:5).

2 of the 6 members on this committee were complainants, which makes it more significant when they concede errors in The Complaint regarding this very doctrine. But here I go turning this into a Clark thread... you must stop me before my complete transformation

 

[jwright82]

I finished the book Saturday. It was very informative, although I agree with @MW that I was not persuaded away from my [non-Van Tillian] presuppositionalism.

I'd like to try to keep my interest in this post focused on the first question discussed by the men in the recent Van Til Group podcast (link) - with whom I believe Dr. @Keith Mathison has been in contact since then? - the question of whether Van Til taught that "man must know all about all things in order to know anything about anything" (13:47). I'll call this "Mathison's thesis."

The skeptical implications are so obvious, this might sound too ludicrous to believe. But Mathison mentions others who have thought this, and having been introduced to Van Til from an indirect angle - Gordon Clark - it was an inference I too made over 10 years ago. My question now is whether Mathison et al. is and I was right.

Now, how much of Van Til I have read is probably minimal compared to probably everyone else who responds in this thread, but I wish the Van Til Group had responded just a little more thoroughly to Mathison on this point. Their response to one of the quotes (the "Banner article" quote) made sense, but it seems to me there was at least one more critical quote that should have been discussed compared to the ones they actually discussed (pgs. 158-159; 28:47ff.). In particular, this quote from A Survey of Christian Epistemology (one book by Van Til I have read), which was cited at least 3 times in Mathison's book:



Like I said, I've read comparatively less by Van Til than many here. It is obvious to anyone who has read Van Til (and Mathison) that Van Til also affirms humans have "knowledge," believers and unbelievers alike (although in different senses). But if "I can't fully understand anything without reference to all other facts," I can't even fully understand that fact - which some might take as problematic. Is this what Van Til means when he says my "knowledge" is only "true" "so far as it goes"? That is, is the truth itself of which we have any knowledge a matter of degrees?

I think a document that is probably not well known could support Mathison's thesis. Attached is a paper written on behalf of the 1940s complainants against Gordon Clark. I have no intention of turning this into a Clark thread. But as this paper was presented before the Presbytery of Philadelphia (of which Van Til and his fellow complainants were members), one must assume it faithfully represents the views of the complainants. The notes in the margins are Clark's. I have translated all of them, but as it regards this thread, they may be ignored. Page 6, first full paragraph (the one with the underlines) in particular is what I find interesting:



Based on what is said here, Clark has two responses. The first is a thorough response to the paragraph on pg. 6 itself and can be read here. This doesn't explicitly get at the focus of my post. The second response is from his personal notes on The Complaint and related papers (see page 23 here). This does touch on the focus of my post: does the above imply Mathison's thesis? Clark thought it did:



Clark, Mathison, others, and I could be wrong. What prevents me from dogmatism is what I said earlier: the skeptical implications are so obvious, it's hard to understand how anyone could accept Mathison's thesis. On the other hand, the number of time Van Til qualifies otherwise radical statements (per Mathison's reading, anyways) makes the hypothesis less fantastical.

There are other documents I think are relevant, but they are not by or on behalf of Van Til per se.

If you read his "Christianity And Idealism" book, with his PhD thesis in it, you'll see that he is merely combating Idealism on it's own ground. No one, outside of weird mystics or something, honestly believes that a single person has to know all facts to understand one fact.
That's as ludicrous as saying "Gordon Clark didn't believe you could read your Bible and understand it as your axiomatic set of presuppositions because he denied knowledge from sense perception". Philosophers don't make mistakes like that.
Of course Clark's real opinion is far more complex than that, what do we mean by knowledge and questions like that. So obviously Van Til wasn't saying that but it could be an unintended consequence of his thoughts.
He's making, what I think is, an apologetical move against Idealism by pointing out that they see the need for something or someone to possess that absolute knowledge of the system in all it's relationships. But their correlative conception of "God" can't do that.
But if that's what they want than they have to presuppose the Christian God, who is an absolute personality in himself, not dependent on creation at all. This absolute personality "knows the system and all relationships involved" because he eternally decreed them. That is what they wanted and we have it.
The Christian person has the condescending revelation of the one who knows all the things Idealism wanted their absolute to learn over history. He doesn't need things to work out historically because he already decreed it. Hence the absolute system exists in the mind of God and we have a blueprint for us in the Bible.
So with a biblical worldview we can, as finite fallen sinful creatures, take a condescending revelation from the one who has that knowledge already to interpret everything we come across in experience.
That seems to be the most reasonable way to interpret him here in my opinion, but I'm open to correction. I can't plug it enough how the book I mentioned earlier is to understanding him. I mean I'm reading through the fourth edition of "The Defense Of The Faith" and it's amazing but the previous one really gets at what his initial motivation was that I don't think he lost over time.

 

[MW]

2 of the 6 members on this committee were complainants, which makes it more significant when they concede errors in The Complaint regarding this very doctrine. But here I go turning this into a Clark thread... you must stop me before my complete transformation

I'm happy to discuss it. This is one of the areas where I think KM has missed an opportunity to dig into CVT's thought-world.

I will have to leave it to researchers like yourself to dig into primary sources. My understanding comes from the general narrative of secondary sources, with the whole debate over quantitative/qualitative, univocal/analogical differences. If you have something that challenges the narrative I would be very interested to look into it.

Post automatically merged: Feb 17, 2025

But if that's what they want than they have to presuppose the Christian God, who is an absolute personality in himself, not dependent on creation at all. This absolute personality "knows the system and all relationships involved" because he eternally decreed them. That is what they wanted and we have it.
The Christian person has the condescending revelation of the one who knows all the things Idealism wanted their absolute to learn over history. He doesn't need things to work out historically because he already decreed it. Hence the absolute system exists in the mind of God and we have a blueprint for us in the Bible.
So with a biblical worldview we can, as finite fallen sinful creatures, take a condescending revelation from the one who has that knowledge already to interpret everything we come across in experience.

That is an excellent analysis! Definitely the best way to interpret him.

 

[jwright82]

If the root of Van Til's problem is that he verbally absolutizes the anti-thesis but then practically qualifies that, then it could be a feature (or bug) of his system that he makes sweeping absolute statements that he himself can't absolutize in practice - but then defends the absolutism of those statements. It enables a sort of bait-and-switch, where he can say he's not absolutizing by pointing to his practice, but then criticizes others for not absolutizing.

In other words, with regard to knowledge, he would disavow the type of skepticism that his proposition leads to, but then refuse to change the proposition or acknowledge the link between it and the ensuing skepticism.

I look at more like this, although I think you raise a good point, we know in theory how it works (absolute ethical antithesis, imago dei, and common grace) but practice is where this all plays out. Obviously everyone is different, so different outcomes.
But I can fall into the trap of over glossing the ethical antithesis and practically (with reference to the other two considerations) treat the unbeliever as if that didn't exist (the false honest seeker mentality). That can give into their autonomy and I don't get anywhere.
Van Til, to me, is simply realistic about this and laying out the map as it is for us to develop our apologetical strategies.

 

[jwright82]

I'm happy to discuss it. This is one of the areas where I think KM has missed an opportunity to dig into CVT's thought-world.

I will have to leave it to researchers like yourself to dig into primary sources. My understanding comes from the general narrative of secondary sources, with the whole debate over quantitative/qualitative, univocal/analogical differences. If you have something that challenges the narrative I would be very interested to look into it.

Post automatically merged: Feb 17, 2025

That is an excellent analysis! Definitely the best way to interpret him.

Thanks for the kind words. Yeah in reading, not to get off topic, Van Til's own writings again (especially the two I mentioned in this thread that I hadn't read before) I am firmly convinced that a Vantillian can not be a theological mutualist in their thinking and stay in the fold. Because you lose something so essential to Van Til's thought by assuming a correlative relationship between God and creation that just destroys his uniqueness and his method. But I won't comment on that topic here because I don't derail the thread. But thanks it means a lot.

 

[Knight]

Sorry, that was sloppy. I was trying to clarify with my parenthetical statement “or more” relations. Meaning, whenever I reach a future state of knowledge that has substantively more relations, I don’t think I will look back and say everything I used to know was false. We won’t find that one fact, or set of relations, that reverses everything else we know (like a plot twist at the end of a move, where Bruce Willis has been dead the whole time).


I’m only expressing my interpretation of Van Til and how I’ve reconciled in my mind what he means. It could be his unclarity that makes me think this wrongly, but it seems amenable to me so far.



The distinction I’m making is that there are two different modes of “whole.” The whole can be represented by every last conceivable node of relation. Or, it could be representative of the beginning, middle, and end nodes. Imagine I plotted the 3 nodes/corners of a triangle, it’s a “whole” object but there could be an infinite number of other relations within it. Within these three nodes every other node is implicitly compressed. God, through scripture, gives us a glimpse into each critical node (from alpha to omega), such that I can interpret any one fact in light of the whole. I’m just always working at a different level of resolution. Hegel’s problem, again only as far as I understand it, is that the meaning of any snapshot of the concrete universal’s development could never be interpreted in light of the telos of the whole movement – it didn’t exist yet. So, the present facts could never be related to a final cause, thus it can never have coherence.

To use an analogy, consider a photomosaic. In one version, imagine the “whole” forms an image of the number 7 (we’ll use this for the idea of completeness). However, I only have access to a subset of tiles that make up this larger 7. I can never see the 7. In one version, these tiles may be made up of random pixelated objects, so if you zoom in there is no relation of the tiles to the complete image. So, you might say I don’t know what anything means without knowing the whole.

I’m suggesting the other way. The “whole” is a 7 but it’s made up of tiles that are also 7s. It is a 7 of 7s. The whole is always present in the parts analogically, replicated, suited for my digestion. So, I agree and disagree: we never know the “whole meaning” in the exhaustive sense, but God always reveals truth as a self-contained system of micro 7s (relative to the human knowledge project at least).

I think this is amenable, at the least, because Van Til in that same quote defines the whole as the facts revealed in scripture.

Thank you for mentioning Tseng. I'd never heard of him before, and his work looks fascinating.

Your way of thinking is imaginative (that is a compliment) - I had wondered why I don't recollect you, but I see you haven't posted in more than a dozen years. I hope you post more! But I honestly don't know if we are going to be talking past each other here.

For the purposes of this thread, I'm strictly interested in what Van Til thought and taught. I don't find two modes of "whole"-ness being taught in A Survey of Christian Epistemology, let alone that quote. If that how you've reconciled things in your mind, that's another thing.

Even if, as Mathison argues, British Idealists exerted propositional influence on Van Til, much of what Van Til says is still true. It would be easy to leave things at @MW's post #10 and pack it up. On the other hand, there is value, I think, in questioning whether Van Til taught Mathison's thesis.

Before we quickly dismiss Mathison's thesis (or rush to defend it!) in this thread, I have presented two quotes as evidence for one side of the case, the side that would initially seem implausible for reasons I mentioned in post 2 and @jwright82 just reiterated in post 14. But really, the only thing that's going to convince me to positively disaffirm Mathison's thesis is exactly what the Van Til Group did with select quotes on their podcast: can someone through the context of said quotes and explain why they don't affirm what it seems I have prima facie justification for thinking, viz. that Van Til accepts Mathison's thesis?

I'm happy to discuss it. This is one of the areas where I think KM has missed an opportunity to dig into CVT's thought-world.

I will have to leave it to researchers like yourself to dig into primary sources. My understanding comes from the general narrative of secondary sources, with the whole debate over quantitative/qualitative, univocal/analogical differences. If you have something that challenges the narrative I would be very interested to look into it.

You might find helpful some of Clark's comments on John Murray's 1946 Minority Report to the committee elect by the 12th GA of the OPC (link, pg. 38ff.) to consider the doctrinal portion of the complaint:

It seems to me necessary to call attention to certain paragraphs of the minority report.

P. 36 The interrogation was directed so pointedly to the incomprehensibility of the sum total of God’s glory and perfections.

To my mind this is not precisely the case. And the Com. Also seems not to agree with the minority alleged fact. Cf. Report p. 11, § One must remember that the transcript reports an exam. Of a few points left over from a previous six or eight hour exam. And the main question was epistemology, or knowledge, not God’s Being in general. Had I been asked the definite question, Can man fully and exhaustively under[stand] the Being and attributes of God, I should have said simply No. If this question was asked in the main examination, I doubtless said no. The fact that the extra July exam was not conducted with this as the main question is virtually acknowledged in the minority report just below: P. 36 § 4...

Note also the significance of the Tr. 15, 12. The questioner is asking if man can know God apart from revelation. And my answer is that our knowledge of God, in the strict sense of knowledge, is mediated by propositions. Thus I deny that we can know God apart from revelation, and at the same time I assert that our knowledge is always finite. This does not directly envisage the sum total of God’s Being and Glory, but the answer I give presupposes the incomprehensibility that the minority report finds lacking. At the same time, however, I also try to make clear, though obviously I failed, but I tried to make clear that the finite proposition is a knowledge of the infinite God. To this end I used an illustration that seemed to confuse more than enlighten. The illustration is: propositions relating to infinite series, or to infinite space, are in themselves finite, but their object is infinite. Of course an infinite series is a poor illustration of an infinite God, and this was seized upon and the point of the comparison neglected.

Perhaps the most definite question relating to the sum total of God’s Being and Glory is found in Tr. 33, 8.

Now note my answer, so perfectly understood by the Committee. Note that I say there is only one verse in Scripture that seems to allow man full comprehension of God. I admitted then and confess now that I have no satisfactory exegesis of that verse. It remains a puzzle – a paradox, if you will. But note also that I do not allow my confusion on that verse to overbalance the remainder of Scriptural teaching. It seems to me therefore that in the context of the July exam and in response to that one specific question, the doctrine of the incomprehensibility is satisfactorily expressed. Naturally it is not a comprehensive statement of incomprehensibility., but it seems satisfactory in its context.

See also his personal notes on The Complaint (link, pg. 29ff.), which again picks up on Murray's minority report:

The Complaint says I take no account of God’s infinity but the truth shows I do. I do – and add more particular reason. God is infinite in several ways; man is finite in several ways. Now, which of these phases of finitude prevents man from exhaustively knowing God. And my reply is: not because man is finite in space; not because man is finite strength; but because man’s mental constitution is finite by reason of its temporality.

When I say infinity is not a sufficient reason, it is distressing to be understood as saying it is not a necessary reason. And when I say temporality is the particular finitude of man that prevents him from knowing God exhaustively; it is remarkable that I am reported to have said infinitude is not involved at all.

The majority report sees all this with perfect clarity.

 

[MW]

You might find helpful some of Clark's comments on John Murray's 1946 Minority Report to the committee elect by the 12th GA of the OPC (link, pg. 38ff.) to consider the doctrinal portion of the complaint:

Fascinating! Clark says, "At the same time, however, I also try to make clear, though obviously I failed, but I tried to make clear that the finite proposition is a knowledge of the infinite God." I am not sure how he could succeed to make that clear. Does it have something to do with his peculiar theory of propositional knowledge? At any rate, I don't know that anyone would accept that "God" is a set of propositions. So it seems impossible to equate "finite propositions" with "knowledge of the infinite God."

 

[jwright82]

Thank you for mentioning Tseng. I'd never heard of him before, and his work looks fascinating.

Your way of thinking is imaginative (that is a compliment) - I had wondered why I don't recollect you, but I see you haven't posted in more than a dozen years. I hope you post more! But I honestly don't know if we are going to be talking past each other here.

For the purposes of this thread, I'm strictly interested in what Van Til thought and taught. I don't find two modes of "whole"-ness being taught in A Survey of Christian Epistemology, let alone that quote. If that how you've reconciled things in your mind, that's another thing.

Even if, as Mathison argues, British Idealists exerted propositional influence on Van Til, much of what Van Til says is still true. It would be easy to leave things at @MW's post #10 and pack it up. On the other hand, there is value, I think, in questioning whether Van Til taught Mathison's thesis.

Before we quickly dismiss Mathison's thesis (or rush to defend it!) in this thread, I have presented two quotes as evidence for one side of the case, the side that would initially seem implausible for reasons I mentioned in post 2 and @jwright82 just reiterated in post 14. But really, the only thing that's going to convince me to positively disaffirm Mathison's thesis is exactly what the Van Til Group did with select quotes on their podcast: can someone through the context of said quotes and explain why they don't affirm what it seems I have prima facie justification for thinking, viz. that Van Til accepts Mathison's thesis?



You might find helpful some of Clark's comments on John Murray's 1946 Minority Report to the committee elect by the 12th GA of the OPC (link, pg. 38ff.) to consider the doctrinal portion of the complaint:



See also his personal notes on The Complaint (link, pg. 29ff.), which again picks up on Murray's minority report:

Do you agree with my analysis or are there parts you disagree with? I was fair to both Clark and Van Til from quite frankly ludicrous readings of highly educated men, with stellar careers. I'm still not sure where you stand, so I'm proceeding as if we both admit such readings are obviously false.
Since you didn't really specify then I don't know how to respond.

 

[Hilasmos]

Your way of thinking is imaginative (that is a compliment) - I had wondered why I don't recollect you, but I see you haven't posted in more than a dozen years. I hope you post more! But I honestly don't know if we are going to be talking past each other here.

For the purposes of this thread, I'm strictly interested in what Van Til thought and taught. I don't find two modes of "whole"-ness being taught in A Survey of Christian Epistemology, let alone that quote. If that how you've reconciled things in your mind, that's another thing.

Haha, yeah, it's been a long time.

I could certainly be wrong, but in my view that just is what he means, at least in my attempt to show and not merely tell. The term "modes" of wholeness may be an odd way of putting it, but I see it as the same principle between God's absolute rationality and our analogical derivative knowledge of it. The first line in your SCE quote says: "For the Christian system, knowledge consists in understanding the relation of any fact to God as revealed in Scripture."

I'm not sure how else to interpret this other than to say that Van Til has in mind a particular "system" or interpretative "whole" that scripture provides - this is the derivative revealed "plan of God" that all facts must be related to in order to be intelligible. A canon (which is a form of wholeness). If you prefer, no fact can be understood apart from interpreting it in light of creation (arche), fall, redemption (eschatology) as revealed in scripture. This could be the three nodes of my theological triangulation model - a revealed and derived "whole" - the canon or covenantal boundaries of the ethics of human interpretation. If you study some fact in light of creation, but not the fall, you will understand it wrongly. If you know it only in terms of the fall but not in light of creation and redemption, you will have wild incoherence. To re-quote from Vos, it's the "system" of the "minimum of indispensable knowledge" as revealed in special revelation.

"Christians believe in two levels of existence, the level of God's existence as self-contained and the level of man's existence as derived from the level of God's existence. For this reason, Christian must also believe in two levels of knowledge, the level of God's knowledge, which is absolutely comprehensive and self-contained, and the level of man's knowledge, which is not comprehensive but is derivative and reinterpretive" (IST, 33).

In other words, we are analogically replicating God's comprehensive knowledge at a revelatory and finite scale. God's revelation just is the "whole" by which humanity must relate every fact to know anything at all.

 

[Knight]

Fascinating! Clark says, "At the same time, however, I also try to make clear, though obviously I failed, but I tried to make clear that the finite proposition is a knowledge of the infinite God." I am not sure how he could succeed to make that clear. Does it have something to do with his peculiar theory of propositional knowledge? At any rate, I don't know that anyone would accept that "God" is a set of propositions. So it seems impossible to equate "finite propositions" with "knowledge of the infinite God."

The original scan of the transcript of Clark's examination to which Clark refers is here. It is not easily searchable, however, and it has a few obvious errors (e.g. "premise of the intellect" should be "primacy of the intellect" per a 1943 article Clark wrote that many think triggered the whole controversy, misspelled names). So I've tried (and failed, as I review it now) to sufficiently clean up the transcript here. The following are the times when "finite" is mentioned:

BY REVEREND KUSCHKE: Q Dr. Clark, is it true that God is Infinite?

A Infinite in the sense that there is nothing outside of him that bounds him or limits him in any way. He is not in the old Greek sense, Infinite, but He is Infinite in the sense that nothing outside of him limits him in any way.

Q Does God have infinite knowledge of His own being?

A Yes. his knowledge is not limited by anything outside of him.

Q Is this true, that the finite mind can know God as He reveals Himself in finite things and finite ideas?

A Yes.

Q Can the infinite mind know God apart from revelations also?

A You include under "Infinite" - individual propositions, that God reveals?

Q To me, yes.

A I say yes to that, if that is what you mean.

Q To me a proposition is something in itself, finite.

A Then, I agree with that.

Q Will the infinite mind be able to know God directly in His wisdom, apart form God's revelation of Himself, in the finite?

A By “Infinite" you mean - proposition? No, I think only through propositions.

Q And, is the finite mind limited by the finite?

A Yes, we know by propositions, -- by means of propositions and that is the only way we do know.

Q And, can the finite mind penetrate ever beyond the range of the finite into the infinite?

A Well,· the proposition referred to infinite action such as algebraic and arithmetic theories - it is a finite proposition, but infinity is one of the terms of it. You can sum up an infinite series, you have an infinite number of terms in the proposition.

BY MR. KUIPER...

Q You would say the human intellect is finite?

A Yes.

Q You would also say subsequently, that the human mind can never comprehend God?

A Not for that reason, a finite man can know him in finite things.

Q Can it comprehend anything that is infinite?

A Certainly. One-half plus one one-half, plus one-quarter, plus one-sixteenth, that is an infinite series which is very easily comprehended.

...

Q Would you say just for that reason, because God is infinite and man is finite, for that reason, man cannot comprehend God?

A I don’t think that is sufficient reason. We do not know God because -- that is, we do not know every attribute or proposition of God because we are temporal --

Q Would you call God an infinite item?

A Well, I object to the word, "item" but it is hard to use a word when you want to include God and other things at the same time. I was trying to include a word as empty of meaning us possible. "Object" -- if you wish, that would do.

Q Would you say that man would never comprehend God or would you say that man cannot comprehend God, or, would you say both?

A Oh, both - they seem to me to mean the same thing.

BY MR. WElMERS: Q You have said Dr. Clark, that our knowledge must necessarily be confined to propositions. Would you say that God Clark apart from His Creation, let us say, in His knowledge of Himself, is also confined in his knowledge, the propositions which of themselves are necessarily finite, according to your own words?

A You are trying to get me to define intuition, or intuitive knowledge. Now, Mr. Andrews made a certain description of it which is satisfactory to me in ordinary conversations, but, to make a definition, there is no possibility of mistaking such a tremendous job, I am not prepared for that question at all.

I think the mathematical illustrations were intended to be analogies of his point. I'll also say that Clark is just as capable of bad communication as the complainants were, especially during the stress of a 4+ hour exam. If you read that 1948 committee report (the Appendix here, which I should have linked earlier), the report takes The Complaint and The Answer to task in numerous respects.

Regarding your second bold statement, Clark did not accept that idea his whole or even most of his life. One dimension of my research will be to make clear in what ways Clark's views changed over time. It happens on multiple doctrines (necessitarianism, Nestorianism, occasionalism). In this case - whether persons are propositions - we see Clark's view from a 1954 article (link):

Although there seems to be little use in speculating about the degree of Pilate's philosophic profundity when he asked, "What is truth?" a Christian does well to consider Christ's prior statement, "I am the truth," together with other Scriptural passages that might throw light on the nature of truth. Since Protestants, in contradistinction to Romanists, reject a literalism in the words, "This is my body," and since other phrases of Christ, e.g. "I am the door," are obviously figurative, one must not immediately assume that "I am the truth," is true literally or that the nature of truth is 'personal' and therefore nonpropositional and non-logical. At least other views should be considered; and here three theories will be briefly examined...

On this third view the objective truth of a proposition is not affected by sin. Sin and its guilt attaches to persons, not propositions.

A 1957 article (link):

As was said before, the Bible is literally true, but not every sentence in it is true literally. Christ said, “I am the door”; but he did not mean that he was made of wood. Christ also said, “This is my body.” Romanists think he spoke literally; Presbyterians take the sentence figuratively. Similarly the statement, “I am...the truth,” must be taken to mean, I am the source of truth; I am the wisdom and Logos of God; truths are established by my authority.

1960 (link):

Like other words, truth too can be used figuratively, be metonomy, in which the effect is substituted for the cause. Thus when Christ says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” the word truth is just as figuratively as the word life. As Christ is the cause of life, so is he the cause of truth.

Etc. His views on this verse obviously and unfortunately changed by 1980 (link), but it wasn't relevant to the 1940s debate.

Do you agree with my analysis or are there parts you disagree with? I was fair to both Clark and Van Til from quite frankly ludicrous readings of highly educated men, with stellar careers. I'm still not sure where you stand, so I'm proceeding as if we both admit such readings are obviously false.
Since you didn't really specify then I don't know how to respond.

While you gave an interpretation of Van Til, it didn't really engage the texts I cited, so as far as my interest goes, there isn't much for me to say. I understand your point that some of what Van Til affirms (e.g. divine immutability) entails other things (e.g. a denial of correlativity). But I'm not interested in talking about implications of certain of Van Til's beliefs. As I said in my first post, I'm interested in talking about what Van Til actually thought and taught in what I cited. Saying from the start that he couldn't have meant what Mathison says Van Til means is not going to be really persuasive to me (or Mathison).

"Philosophers don't make mistakes like that" - but they do. Clark made some ludicrous statements, especially at the end of his life.

Haha, yeah, it's been a long time.

I could certainly be wrong, but in my view that just is what he means, at least in my attempt to show and not merely tell. The term "modes" of wholeness may be an odd way of putting it, but I see it as the same principle between God's absolute rationality and our analogical derivative knowledge of it. The first line in your SCE quote says: "For the Christian system, knowledge consists in understanding the relation of any fact to God as revealed in Scripture."

I'm not sure how else to interpret this other than to say that Van Til has in mind a particular "system" or interpretative "whole" that scripture provides - this is the derivative revealed "plan of God" that all facts must be related to in order to be intelligible. A canon (which is a form of wholeness). If you prefer, no fact can be understood apart from interpreting it in light of creation (arche), fall, redemption (eschatology) as revealed in scripture. This could be the three nodes of my theological triangulation model - a revealed and derived "whole" - the canon or covenantal boundaries of the ethics of human interpretation. If you study some fact in light of creation, but not the fall, you will understand it wrongly. If you know it only in terms of the fall but not in light of creation and redemption, you will have wild incoherence. To re-quote from Vos, it's the "system" of the "minimum of indispensable knowledge" as revealed in special revelation.



In other words, we are analogically replicating God's comprehensive knowledge at a revelatory and finite scale. God's revelation just is the "whole" by which humanity must relate every fact to know anything at all.

Going back through your posts, I think I'm better understanding what you mean. You would argue "without reference to all other facts" does not mean "without reference to all other facts [individually]" but rather "without reference to all other facts [as a whole]," e.g. the nodular system of God-interpreted facts. You would say we don't have to have in mind "the infinite number of relations within" the triangle for reference to be made to them. Is that right?

"...no fact can be understood apart from interpreting it in light of creation (arche), fall, redemption (eschatology) as revealed in scripture."

What about facts about God? I'm not saying your analogy can't be adjusted to account for these. Instead of a triangle, though, you might need a box (if you would include an extra node); or if you'd like to keep the number of nodes at three, you could probably label them "Triune God," "Creation," and "Eschatology," since fall/redemption is a subset anyways.

Returning to the quote we have been discussing, what of this:

I know a fact truly to the extent that I understand the exact relation such a fact sustains to the plan of God. It is the plan of God that gives any fact meaning in terms of the plan of God. The whole meaning of any fact is exhausted by its position in and relation to the plan of God.

How is Van Til defining "fact"? In the same book, he writes:

We tend so easily to think of Christianity as a series of intellectual propositions only. But the intellectual element cannot be separated from the factual element. Redemption is a mighty fact that addresses itself to the whole of the human personality. Accordingly, it is impossible to speak of the intellect per se, without taking into consideration whether it is the intellect of a regenerated person or of anon-regenerated person. The human intellect, wherever it appears, appears either as an aspect of a Christian personality, or as an aspect of a non-Christian personality.

So "facts" and "propositions" are, for Van Til, different. Is Van Til referring to objectively distinct existences of created things and events to which propositions correspond (or something like that)?

I'm interested in your thoughts on the second quote from my first post as well. In particular, do you agree it is impossible to know a single proposition apart from its implications? This may turn on a definition of "knowledge." For example, if the kind of knowledge being talked about in this context were dispositional rather than occurrent, I might be more open to persuasion. That's not the case, but it illustrates my point about definitions.

However you define knowledge, one's suggesting that one needs to know implications of any proposition in order to know that proposition seems to beg the question: don't I then need to know the implications of those implications ad infinitum (Mathison's thesis)?

Your quote of Vos seems to suggest a terminal point in this "process." If that's right, when is that and how does one know he can stop?

 

[Hilasmos]

the question of whether Van Til taught that "man must know all about all things in order to know anything about anything" (13:47). I'll call this "Mathison's thesis."

But really, the only thing that's going to convince me to positively disaffirm Mathison's thesis is exactly what the Van Til Group did with select quotes on their podcast: can someone through the context of said quotes and explain why they don't affirm what it seems I have prima facie justification for thinking, viz. that Van Til accepts Mathison's thesis?

To address this, I’m currently at the point where I think I can affirm both that Van Til did teach this but that simply stating that he did is not evidence of negative propositional influence. In other words,, simply affirming…look, he said that line, that line is crazy…isn’t an argument in itself. And on another respect, I'm not sure VT ever explicitly explained what he meant by this or provided details (James Anderson makes the same observation that he did not, here). Thus, I'm not sure that stacking proof texts that he did or did not say this will mean a lot, we will have to interpret it "in light of the whole"? That’s where I’m at.

As such, I've interpreted this one line trope as a statement of his views on the problem of the one and the many and the rational-irrational dialectic. The meaning of it then requires one to exposit those themes, which is thematic of everything he wrote. The other reason I don’t have a problem with this statement is that it just seems to be true “by the impossibility of the contrary.” To say it’s false I have to assume the same level of absolutization I’m trying to deny. This thesis just is a foil to all human thinking, because human thinking is finite thinking. We intrinsically know this thesis as true because we are always self-conscious of our finitude; and the fall was actually, for the first time, when someone denied the validity of this foil (Christian Apologetics, 33-34).

As pertains to this being a necessary logical foil, I’m going to quote a Catholic philosopher (to make matters worse!).

…that I claim knowledge about things in a delimited area, but make no judgment one way or the other regarding anything outside the limits…is to allow oneself judgment on one side of a boundary and at the same time to suspend judgment on the other side [which] is to claim – again, in an a priori way … – that what lies on the other side does not in any significant sense bear on my understanding of the matter or matters lying on this side…. Plato describes the tendency of experts in a particular craft to presume expertise about the whole. If we penetrate below the surface, however, we see that this is not a (mere) moral critique about the way some people happen to act. Instead, there is a logical necessity here: to claim expertise about a part is already – and precisely insofar as it is a claim of expertise concerning the part – to presume regarding the meaning of the whole whole.

For example, one might isolate economics from politics as a closed system in itself, which is evidently misleading insofar as the “agents” of economic transactions are living members of the communities whose choices inevitably reflect in a significant way the nature and structure of those communities. Perhaps less obviously, but with analogous implications, one might also separate politics from philosophical anthropology, anthropology from metaphysics, or metaphysics from theology. The problem will be there whenever one isolates a part from the whole in a way that excludes the relevance of the meaning of the whole to the meaning of the part, which is to say that one fails to approach the part as part, i.e., as related to what is greater than it, and so one (presumptuously) makes it an absolute in itself. To avoid this presumption, one might first seek to attenuate one’s insistence on knowledge within the delimited sphere in light of one’s ignorance of the larger whole, which would seem to acknowledge at least in principle the significance of that whole. But in fact this is a retreat into what we showed above to be the greatest possible presumption, namely, the universal suspension of
judgment. The only way to avoid the dilemma is in fact to achieve actual knowledge about the whole” (Schindler, Catholicity of Reason, 25-26).

As long as scientists stick to the "how," it is said, and do not presume to answer the question "why," then science poses in principle no threat to philosophy or religion. But we wish to suggest, by contrast, that the only way finally to avoid scientific reductionism is to recover within science a more self-conscious sense that one is not studying only a part, but rather the whole, even if it is in a particular respect. In other words, the problem is not that certain scientists fail to adhere to the modesty that defines the scientific project; the problem lies in the modesty itself. Scientific reasoning will have humility only to the extent that it understands itself (once again) as a philosophy. In more technical language, we might say that reason is always inevitably "of being." Scientific reasoning, to be truly a mode of reasoning, would thus be of being, but in a particular respect: being qua that which changes in a quantifiable manner ( or however one might need to specify in the particular context). If it “pretends” to be only the study of quantifiable motion qua quantifiable motion, it in fact identifies being with this particular respect, which is to say that it makes its object an unconditional absolute in itself, and so indifferent to anything outside of itself. The moment reason admits that it is philosophical, which means acknowledges it is a particular way of accounting for the whole, then it opens up from within to dialogue with the other accounts of the whole, because it is now responsible to that whole; it becomes "vulnerable" to the truth of the whole in a way that its self-proclaimed "modesty" precisely protected it from ever being. Ironically, the more one insists on modesty in science, the more "impenetrable" one makes it, i.e., the more one makes it an absolute in itself and so unable to be integrated into a larger whole. To set any absolute limit not only keeps reason from exceeding a boundary, it necessarily also keeps anything else from getting in (p. 28).

 

[jwright82]

The original scan of the transcript of Clark's examination to which Clark refers is here. It is not easily searchable, however, and it has a few obvious errors (e.g. "premise of the intellect" should be "primacy of the intellect" per a 1943 article Clark wrote that many think triggered the whole controversy, misspelled names). So I've tried (and failed, as I review it now) to sufficiently clean up the transcript here. The following are the times when "finite" is mentioned:







I think the mathematical illustrations were intended to be analogies of his point. I'll also say that Clark is just as capable of bad communication as the complainants were, especially during the stress of a 4+ hour exam. If you read that 1948 committee report (the Appendix here, which I should have linked earlier), the report takes The Complaint and The Answer to task in numerous respects.

Regarding your second bold statement, Clark did not accept that idea his whole or even most of his life. One dimension of my research will be to make clear in what ways Clark's views changed over time. It happens on multiple doctrines (necessitarianism, Nestorianism, occasionalism). In this case - whether persons are propositions - we see Clark's view from a 1954 article (link):



A 1957 article (link):



1960 (link):



Etc. His views on this verse obviously and unfortunately changed by 1980 (link), but it wasn't relevant to the 1940s debate.



While you gave an interpretation of Van Til, it didn't really engage the texts I cited, so as far as my interest goes, there isn't much for me to say. I understand your point that some of what Van Til affirms (e.g. divine immutability) entails other things (e.g. a denial of correlativity). But I'm not interested in talking about implications of certain of Van Til's beliefs. As I said in my first post, I'm interested in talking about what Van Til actually thought and taught in what I cited. Saying from the start that he couldn't have meant what Mathison says Van Til means is not going to be really persuasive to me (or Mathison).

"Philosophers don't make mistakes like that" - but they do. Clark made some ludicrous statements, especially at the end of his life.


Going back through your posts, I think I'm better understanding what you mean. You would argue "without reference to all other facts" does not mean "without reference to all other facts [individually]" but rather "without reference to all other facts [as a whole]," e.g. the nodular system of God-interpreted facts. You would say we don't have to have in mind "the infinite number of relations within" the triangle for reference to be made to them. Is that right?

"...no fact can be understood apart from interpreting it in light of creation (arche), fall, redemption (eschatology) as revealed in scripture."

What about facts about God? I'm not saying your analogy can't be adjusted to account for these. Instead of a triangle, though, you might need a box (if you would include an extra node); or if you'd like to keep the number of nodes at three, you could probably label them "Triune God," "Creation," and "Eschatology," since fall/redemption is a subset anyways.

Returning to the quote we have been discussing, what of this:



How is Van Til defining "fact"? In the same book, he writes:



So "facts" and "propositions" are, for Van Til, different. Is Van Til referring to objectively distinct existences of created things and events to which propositions correspond (or something like that)?

I'm interested in your thoughts on the second quote from my first post as well. In particular, do you agree it is impossible to know a single proposition apart from its implications? This may turn on a definition of "knowledge." For example, if the kind of knowledge being talked about in this context were dispositional rather than occurrent, I might be more open to persuasion. That's not the case, but it illustrates my point about definitions.

However you define knowledge, one's suggesting that one needs to know implications of any proposition in order to know that proposition seems to beg the question: don't I then need to know the implications of those implications ad infinitum (Mathison's thesis)?

Your quote of Vos seems to suggest a terminal point in this "process." If that's right, when is that and how does one know he can stop?

Ok so it seems you want, what I would describe, a quote discussion. By that I mean you and he produce quotes and I produce other quotes and on and on it goes.
Without a context for the quotes then it seems you shouldn't be able to defend Clark on whether or not he can read his Bible or not. We both know I could produce quotes to "prove" he couldn't but without the context of his entire thought they would be meaningless. But if that's what you want then fine.

 

[Hilasmos]

Going back through your posts, I think I'm better understanding what you mean. You would argue "without reference to all other facts" does not mean "without reference to all other facts [individually]" but rather "without reference to all other facts [as a whole]," e.g. the nodular system of God-interpreted facts. You would say we don't have to have in mind "the infinite number of relations within" the triangle for reference to be made to them. Is that right?

"...no fact can be understood apart from interpreting it in light of creation (arche), fall, redemption (eschatology) as revealed in scripture."

What about facts about God? I'm not saying your analogy can't be adjusted to account for these. Instead of a triangle, though, you might need a box (if you would include an extra node); or if you'd like to keep the number of nodes at three, you could probably label them "Triune God," "Creation," and "Eschatology," since fall/redemption is a subset anyways.

Yes, I certainly cannot provide the right map itself, just illustrations. However, knowledge graphs are infinitely flexible because every node is perichoretically entwined with every other node. If my my bottom left node were creation, the first fact about that fact is that it presupposes a "creator." So in a sense, all the facts about God, creation, and their relations are compressed within that one node. I cannot think of creation without thinking creator the same time, but I start with creation because I only know God as "creator" (as revealed), not an abstract deity. Another way I think of it is that nodes are not simply propositions that entail other propositions in a linear fashion. They are universals that indwell particulars, and vice versa. And one "one/many" composite can be zoomed out to be itself a "one" that will be a many for another larger universal. So on and so forth. This is how I imagine "exhaustive relations", I just have a lot less nodes in the relations I know, but I have an "analogically replicated" scaffolding provided by scripture

How is Van Til defining "fact"? In the same book, he writes:

The last thing VT does, in my reading, is define his terms It seems that facts are "not brute" and they are "created." Not sure if someone else has a better definition. I generally read him in the vernacular as meaning events, objects, or even relations. Whatever that is which a "proposition" is predicating.

I'm interested in your thoughts on the second quote from my first post as well. In particular, do you agree it is impossible to know a single proposition apart from its implications? This may turn on a definition of "knowledge." For example, if the kind of knowledge being talked about in this context were dispositional rather than occurrent, I might be more open to persuasion. That's not the case, but it illustrates my point about definitions.

However you define knowledge, one's suggesting that one needs to know implications of any proposition in order to know that proposition seems to beg the question: don't I then need to know the implications of those implications ad infinitum (Mathison's thesis)?

Your quote of Vos seems to suggest a terminal point in this "process." If that's right, when is that and how does one know he can stop?

I do think it's "impossible" to know a single proposition without its implications, because in the act of knowing the implications are indwelling that one proposition. There's no such thing as knowing an isolated proposition. "The cat is on the mat" is a "one" represented by a compressed "many" of other concepts/implications, etc.. I think this is what Van Til means by his cow analogy. The word cat just is "animal + pet + agility + arrogant + predator+ "evolutionary history of large cats". When I know something I know a finite set of relations. That's quite hard to articulate though. Another analogy I think of in terms of occurrent and dispositional: something like reading a book is down right mystical. When I read something on page 50 and I understand it in "relation" to the previous 50 pages...and I know I do...but I can't consciously repeat a single phrase from what I previously read. That's beyond my comprehension.

C.S. Lewis gave this example, that I discovered on my own when just thinking about syllogisms: "To see fully that A implies B does (once you have seen it) involve the admission that the assertion of A and the assertion of B are at the bottom in the same assertion." Depending on your resolution, all reasoning is begging the question

Your quote of Vos seems to suggest a terminal point in this "process." If that's right, when is that and how does one know he can stop?

I suppose you could view this from an externalist perspective. It's a fact of providence, including my knowledge that I have access to a "plan of God" sufficient for the covenant I'm in. However, the point isn't so much how do I know when to stop, it's rather if I didn't already believe I had sufficient revelation to "stop," I'd undermine my own intelligibility. I always have to trust that God has revealed himself sufficiently. I think it's okay to be a fallibilist as long as it's grounded in God's infallibility.

 

[jwright82]

The original scan of the transcript of Clark's examination to which Clark refers is here. It is not easily searchable, however, and it has a few obvious errors (e.g. "premise of the intellect" should be "primacy of the intellect" per a 1943 article Clark wrote that many think triggered the whole controversy, misspelled names). So I've tried (and failed, as I review it now) to sufficiently clean up the transcript here. The following are the times when "finite" is mentioned:







I think the mathematical illustrations were intended to be analogies of his point. I'll also say that Clark is just as capable of bad communication as the complainants were, especially during the stress of a 4+ hour exam. If you read that 1948 committee report (the Appendix here, which I should have linked earlier), the report takes The Complaint and The Answer to task in numerous respects.

Regarding your second bold statement, Clark did not accept that idea his whole or even most of his life. One dimension of my research will be to make clear in what ways Clark's views changed over time. It happens on multiple doctrines (necessitarianism, Nestorianism, occasionalism). In this case - whether persons are propositions - we see Clark's view from a 1954 article (link):



A 1957 article (link):



1960 (link):



Etc. His views on this verse obviously and unfortunately changed by 1980 (link), but it wasn't relevant to the 1940s debate.



While you gave an interpretation of Van Til, it didn't really engage the texts I cited, so as far as my interest goes, there isn't much for me to say. I understand your point that some of what Van Til affirms (e.g. divine immutability) entails other things (e.g. a denial of correlativity). But I'm not interested in talking about implications of certain of Van Til's beliefs. As I said in my first post, I'm interested in talking about what Van Til actually thought and taught in what I cited. Saying from the start that he couldn't have meant what Mathison says Van Til means is not going to be really persuasive to me (or Mathison).

"Philosophers don't make mistakes like that" - but they do. Clark made some ludicrous statements, especially at the end of his life.


Going back through your posts, I think I'm better understanding what you mean. You would argue "without reference to all other facts" does not mean "without reference to all other facts [individually]" but rather "without reference to all other facts [as a whole]," e.g. the nodular system of God-interpreted facts. You would say we don't have to have in mind "the infinite number of relations within" the triangle for reference to be made to them. Is that right?

"...no fact can be understood apart from interpreting it in light of creation (arche), fall, redemption (eschatology) as revealed in scripture."

What about facts about God? I'm not saying your analogy can't be adjusted to account for these. Instead of a triangle, though, you might need a box (if you would include an extra node); or if you'd like to keep the number of nodes at three, you could probably label them "Triune God," "Creation," and "Eschatology," since fall/redemption is a subset anyways.

Returning to the quote we have been discussing, what of this:



How is Van Til defining "fact"? In the same book, he writes:



So "facts" and "propositions" are, for Van Til, different. Is Van Til referring to objectively distinct existences of created things and events to which propositions correspond (or something like that)?

I'm interested in your thoughts on the second quote from my first post as well. In particular, do you agree it is impossible to know a single proposition apart from its implications? This may turn on a definition of "knowledge." For example, if the kind of knowledge being talked about in this context were dispositional rather than occurrent, I might be more open to persuasion. That's not the case, but it illustrates my point about definitions.

However you define knowledge, one's suggesting that one needs to know implications of any proposition in order to know that proposition seems to beg the question: don't I then need to know the implications of those implications ad infinitum (Mathison's thesis)?

Your quote of Vos seems to suggest a terminal point in this "process." If that's right, when is that and how does one know he can stop?

The texts you cited, especially the bolded sections, prove my point they don't contradict them. So what exactly is your argument? That Van Til, like Clark apparently, believed and taught something he rejects countless times in writing? I'm unclear what your point is. I was reading through both books I mentioned last night and my analysis is firmly what Van Til taught in writing.
My major point is this if Van Til made such a basic mistake as saying "man must omniscient knowledge to know one fact" then Clark believed he couldn't read his Bible to have his axiomatic system of truth. Clearly neither man is guilty of that.
So either we have the same standard for both or it's special pleading. "The Defense Of The Faith" fourth edition page 36, when discussing the doctrine of man and the fall he says this: "The result for man was that he made for himself a false ideal of knowledge. Man made for himself the ideal of absolute comprehension (omniscient knowledge) in knowledge". The note on the bottom of the page is exactly what I'm saying (note 24).
He goes on "this he could never have done if he had continued to recognize he was a creature. It is totally inconsistent with the idea of creatureliness that man should strive for comprehensive knowledge (omniscient knowledge)."
So I could on but I think that proves the analysis I gave on that. His thesis I mentioned earlier proves the analysis as well and is online for free ill cite it for everyone.

Post automatically merged: Feb 18, 2025

For the record any other quotes you make to anyone else I don't really pay attention to because I'm more focused on what you're saying to me. If there are any you'd like me to respond to point them out please, thanks in advance.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

I highly recommend Scott Hatch's recent book Van Til and the Foundation for Christian Ethics.
A relevant portion describes how Van Til was responding to both Pragmatism and Idealism not only in his printed works but in his class syllabi at WTS when he taught Ethics over several decades:

This history sets the background for Van Til’s critique, which is not limited to just one or even a handful of idealist thinkers but makes root criticisms of the tradition writ large, concentrating especially on the apogee reached under British and American idealists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the quotes at the beginning of this chapter high-light, Van Til throughout his works wholeheartedly affirmed the con-nection between epistemology and metaphysics/ontology, but his critique was not a matter of simply picking a side between these thinkers. Given that he was familiar with the vector of idealism and aware of Moore’s and Russell’s criticism from a couple of decades earlier, a deeper critique was needed. For Van Til, that critique fundamentally hinged on challenging the basic Enlightenment effort to put an abstract absolute in the place of God as the basis for reasoning.

In his doctoral dissertation, Van Til said his goal was not “to prove Christian theism but only try to show that we can find no meaning in our human experience unless there be a self-sufficient God to give it meaning.” 25 He set up some parameters for the discussion by noting three things: first, philosophical explanations should not do violence to our experience; second, any conclusion that reduces our experience to chaos is irrational; and third, it is unrealistic to expect that for a philosophical argument to be accepted, it must completely rationalize all human experience. The focal point for Van Til’s attack against idealism was its apriorism and the implications that has for metaphysics and ethics.

In both his 1927 dissertation and his 1930 article “God and the Absolute,” Van Til used his discussion of pragmatism to fashion an argument against idealism to subsequently neutralize the idealist argument against historical Christian theism. The fundamental issue at stake is whether a priori intel-lectual commitments rule out discussing metaphysics because of bias, as the pragmatists asserted. The pragmatist argument against theism was that the latter’s a priori precommitment to the Absolute is spun out without a basis in fact and has no practical or scientific value; therefore, there is no valid basis for discussing metaphysics. Van Til points out, however, that that con-clusion can only be based on pragmatism’s own a priori commitments. If pragmatism is only going where the facts will lead, then the possibility of the Absolute cannot be ruled out beforehand, especially since experience leads us toward some notion of an absolute. Thus, pragmatism has its own metaphysics even if it does not want to admit that. Moreover, by claiming to eschew aprioristic principles, pragmatism tries to avoid deterministic conclusions and therefore has total freedom to go wherever the facts take it. Again, Van Til points out that the notion of such freedom itself is pre-mised on a priori assumptions; in any event, total voluntarism devolves into chaos, thus doing violence to human experience and violating one of his basic parameters. So, the choice between apriorism and voluntarism is a false dichotomy. Given these failures, discussion of metaphysics and of an absolute therefore cannot be ruled out. In describing this, Van Til showed that the real issue is not whether one makes metaphysical assumptions in-stead of just being open to the facts. Rather, both idealism and pragmatism make metaphysical assumptions of some sort, and the real issue is in deter-mining what kind of metaphysical assumptions one is ultimately making.

In applying this line of reasoning to idealism, Van Til first provided a description of the position held by theism. He posited that “all that we can see or experience moves and changes. Yet in our natures there is the urge to rationality and system.” 26 Human experience thereby presupposes some notion of an absolute, which Christian theism would describe as God.

Moreover, if the Absolute is indeed the Absolute, then that would need to be the source of our ability to reason: “The notion of a self-sufficient God thus becomes a determining factor in all our thinking.” 27 In acknowledging that, Van Til also noted this does not mean that the Absolute necessarily explains all things to people. Thus, “we can never expect to explain all the difficulties involved in the conception of the relation of God to the world.” 28 This, too, is consonant with our experience. All said, in describing God as the Absolute in this way, Van Til consciously reasoned on pragmatic grounds, drawing conclusions derivable only from sense experience, lest he be vul-nerable to the pragmatist’s charge against idealism that it reasons from an a priori basis, which does violence to human experience.

Having established that discussion of metaphysics is admissible and Christian theism can be justified on grounds that are not aprioristic, Van Til then directly contrasted the theistic position with idealism, which he assessed was based on a priori reasoning. In defining what he saw as ideal-ism’s a priori, Van Til is, however, not entirely precise. This is probably be-cause he tried to deal with the tradition as a generalized whole and, therefore, faced both the challenge of development within the tradition and the am-biguities in the thinking of various idealist thinkers. Early on, he refers to idealism’s “analysis of judgment”—a claim that through idealism alone people can know the nature of reality. Given the flow of his subsequent thought, he probably assumed idealism’s a priori logic included the episte-mological distinction Kant makes between the phenomenal and the nou-menal; the emergence of the notion of the Absolute as an explanation to bridge the gap between our knowledge and our construction of reality; the dynamically defined understanding of reality which began with Fichte and Schelling; and the teleological development of the idea of the Absolute under Hegel. Reinforcing this notion, Van Til engaged extensively with later idealist thinkers like F. H. Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet (1848–1923), whom he saw as being in continuity with and embodying the development of the idealist tradition from Kant onwards.

This understanding of idealism’s a priori laid the groundwork for Van Til’s criticisms. Epistemologically, the move by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel to define reality in dynamic terms necessitated a theoretical ability to define all relationships between all objects, which in effect meant that the only way one could come to any certainty of knowledge was through omniscience.

Van Til saw this was clearly unrealistic and contradicted one of his key pa-rameters—namely that for a philosophical idea to be accepted it should not claim to absolutely rationalize all human experience since that was claiming too much. Along these lines, he observed that logical difficulties are typically not all resolved in human existence. In Christian theism when such diffi-culties are encountered, they can be placed within the context of a self-conscious, self-sufficient God who has not revealed all things. Thus, for the Christian, there is still coherence in understanding reality. For the idealist, however, there is no higher mind to appeal to in idealism’s understanding of the Absolute. Man and idealism’s “God” are thus on the same level against the backdrop of a universe governed by chance, both being correlative as-pects of a greater reality. Thus, what cannot be explained is increasingly moved into the category of the unknowable, and coherence breaks down to the detriment of meaning.

This leads to another criticism Van Til had of the Absolute in idealism—that is, the Absolute is not really absolute. Indeed, idealism’s a priori has a fundamental problem in defining what the Absolute really is given the di-chotomy in the epistemology posited by Kant and the shift toward a dia-lectical conception of reality by philosophers after Kant. This made “the Absolute” a malleable term. Van Til observed that “idealism coils up under-neath an ambiguity in the term Absolute. According to its most funda-mental meaning the Absolute for Idealism is identical with the whole of Reality.” 29 At the same time, he also noted that idealists will speak of the Absolute in personal terms, but their logic does not provide any basis for referring to the Absolute in that way. The continuing effort from Hegel through Bosanquet to subsume all differences of concepts and existence into higher and higher levels of abstraction to find unity among diversity shifted idealist focus from trying to somehow define “the Absolute” to speaking about “the Beyond.” The Absolute thus went from the theoretically knowable to the increasingly unknowable and subsequently devolved into acosmism (i.e., a denial of the reality of the universe), mysticism, and/or pantheism. Moreover, because the Absolute is epistemologically discerned through the dynamic and dialectical reasoning of men, Van Til pointed out that there is a sense in which the Absolute is therefore dependent on men, which only reinforced the view that idealism’s Absolute is not absolute.

While Van Til refuted pragmatism’s effort to apply the a priori argument to theism, he agreed with the pragmatists in the notion that idealism em-bodied a logic that unfolded in an abstract manner, unconnected to experience. In fact, Van Til would go further in his criticism to say that the rigid, aprior-istic logic of idealism positively did violence to human experience. He pointed out that idealism saw the Absolute as progressively incorporating all opposites and thus reduces people to simply logical propositions to be reconciled within the Absolute. Over time, idealism’s understanding of the Absolute morphed from belief that the Absolute is being realized in the outworking of history to history itself defining the Absolute. As a result, the universe is only defined by change and pluralism with no unity. This makes any meaning impossible, which Van Til sees as morally catastrophic. An absolute that is open-ended, undefined, unrevealed, changeable, and thus, ultimately, unknowable cannot adequately explain how it is that a diversity of things has any ultimate philosophical unity—and therefore meaning—and it cannot possibly provide a standard for the moral consciousness.30 Van Til observed that the finite moral consciousness thus becomes the arbiter on every question of morality. It could not well be otherwise. Autonomy is the very definite impli-cation of the creativity view of thought. If human thought is essentially creative it can allow for no heteronomy of any sort. Even though law be conceived of as absolute, this absoluteness is not really absolute. Laws are ideals and as such subject to transformation. The developing moral consciousness transforms them. Man is on this basis responsible to self, not to God. It is also important to note how completely Idealism has discarded God in its philosophy of religion. Many an idealist would perhaps agree that the validity of our own knowledge has its source in the Absolute and would still not hesitate to proclaim with Kant the complete autonomy of the moral consciousness.31

It is for these reasons that Van Til saw idealism as arriving at the same destination as pragmatism (i.e., moral relativism) albeit through a dif-ferent pathway. It is important at this juncture to remember exactly what Van Til was trying to prove in his argumentation: there can be no meaning in human experience without God. As such, he needed to show two things: Christian theism can give human experience meaning and is the only thing that can do so. To the first end, he established Christian theism in this context by way of a transcendental argument, working backward from experience to the nec-essary conditions that would produce that experience. He adopted this ap-proach to avoid reducing God to an a priori principle since he assumes that God is the personal God of Christianity, not some hypothetical God. Throughout his argumentation, he established that in a Christian theistic understanding, the context in which man is situated is determined by a per-sonal being establishing personal ends and personal means toward those ends. Because God is both ultimate and personal, man’s actions against this backdrop have meaning and moral significance. For Van Til to close his case he needed to show that competing theories cannot establish that meaning and signifi-cance. Pragmatism rules out metaphysics on an a priori basis and assumes that the universe is ultimate; therefore, it cannot supply meaning to human expe-rience. Idealism, through a circuitous path, assumes an absolute, that is neither personal nor absolute and that works within the context of a chance universe. Thus, idealism’s absolute also undercuts the possibility of meaning in human experience. Since in Van Til’s day pragmatism and idealism covered the spectrum of the dominant intellectual philosophies of the time and were shown to be unable to provide meaning, only Christian theism still stands.

Van Til engaged philosophical thinkers up until the early 1920s, but with nearly a century between then and now, the question remains whether his argument is still relevant. The short answer is yes. Pragmatism and idealism faded in significance within analytic philosophy by the mid-twentieth century, but Christopher Hookway notes that pragmatism has made something of a comeback in recent decades thanks to postmodernist philosophers like Richard Rorty (1931–2007).32 Guyer and Horstmann also observe that while idealism has not been replaced with a competing philosophy, the metaphysical and epistemological questions it grappled with have largely been ignored rather than dismissed.33 Van Til himself saw continuing relevance to the ar-gument, which persisted through the final, published version of his Christian

Theistic Ethics syllabus in 1970.34 He viewed philosophical, moral, and religious thought as intertwined, especially regarding how one understands the moral consciousness, with religious and moral commitments typically preceding theoretical and philosophical justifications. Moreover, Christian and non-Christian commitments are mutually exclusive: at their most basic level, the non-Christian will seek self-autonomy, which will lead to moral chaos, while the Christian will be compelled to acknowledge the autonomy of God.35 In Van Til’s view, the root issue has been a fundamental inability of philosophy to explain the phenomenon of unity amidst change and of relating universals to particulars. This inability extends back to the very origins of philosophy itself. It is probably for this reason that Van Til added a nearly one-hundred-page part 2 to the published version of his Christian Theistic Ethics syllabus in 1970. Part 2 provides a detailed description of how non-Christian pre-com-mitments to intellectual and moral autonomy played out in the history of secular philosophy with an emphasis on the correlation between Kant’s ethics in the modern period and Socrates’ in antiquity. By connecting Kant’s ethics to that of Socrates, Van Til connected the idealist-pragmatist problem he addressed in his dissertation and in his 1930 article “God and the Absolute” to the history of philosophy more broadly. Part 2 was absent from all the ver-sions of the ethics syllabus during the years Van Til taught ethics, but its in-clusion in the final version of the syllabus updates and extends his argument.

The continuing relevance of Van Til’s argument can also be seen in the fact that he effectively anticipates a question that Glenn Tinder, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, would later pose in his own 1989 article in The Atlantic, “Can We Be Good Without God?” 36 Tinder did not think so, and while Van Til passed away before Tinder’s article was published, Van Til’s argument provides a definitive no to that question. For Van Til, only an absolute, self-sufficient God can provide a basis for ethics. More importantly, Van Til supplies strong reasoning why we cannot be good without God and why moral relativism exists.

His explanation on the latter point can be compared to MacIntyre’s, discussed in chapter 1, but differs in a couple of important respects. Van Til would agree with MacIntyre about the lack of a telos among Enlightenment thinkers, but he would disagree that the root of the problem was simply that. Given his engagement with the evolution of idealist philosophy, Van Til would single out the underlying causes of relativism—man’s continual pursuit of moral and intellectual autonomy and the inability of secular phi-losophy to resolve the issue of unity and diversity. Thus, MacIntyre’s solution of simply going back to Aristotle would not work since that does not ad-dress either of these underlying issues. MacIntyre essentially is reverting to a realist position in the idealist-realist debate, but Van Til recognized that debate is not resolvable as traditionally framed. The epistemological issues inevitably lead to subjectivism unless one can find a truly objective ground that is outside of man altogether. The only thing that would eliminate sub-jectivity and bring objectivity to the matter would be to shift the foundation to a revelatory one grounded in the absolute God of biblical Christianity. Only this would provide a stable foundation for the rest of ethics. In the next chapter, we will look at how Van Til begins to build an ethical framework on that foundation.

24 Ibid., 86–87.

25 Van Til, “God and the Absolute,” Unpublished Manuscripts.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 Van Til, “God and the Absolute,” in Christianity and Idealism, 31.

32 Hookway, “Pragmatism,”

33 Guyer and Horstmann, “Idealism,” 95–97. 34 Van Til, CTE70, 18–20.

35 Ibid., preface and 157–158.

36 Glenn Tinder, “Can We Be Good Without God?” The Atlantic (December 1989), accessed September 3, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1989/12/can-we-be-good-with-out-god/306721/.

 

[jwright82]

https://presupp101.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/van-til-god-and-the-absolute.pdf

I hope this works.

 

[jwright82]

I highly recommend Scott Hatch's recent book Van Til and the Foundation for Christian Ethics.
A relevant portion describes how Van Til was responding to both Pragmatism and Idealism not only in his printed works but in his class syllabi at WTS when he taught Ethics over several decades:

Thanks Rich, that was very interesting and a good reason to get that book.

 

[MW]

So I've tried (and failed, as I review it now) to sufficiently clean up the transcript here.

Thanks for this. I will need some time to take a deep dive into it, which I probably won't have until Monday.

I feel for Clark having to undergo such an exam, but somehow I think he might have been up for it, unlike many others.

Post automatically merged: Feb 18, 2025

I highly recommend Scott Hatch's recent book Van Til and the Foundation for Christian Ethics.
A relevant portion describes how Van Til was responding to both Pragmatism and Idealism not only in his printed works but in his class syllabi at WTS when he taught Ethics over several decades:

In a way presuppositional ethics is more fundamental, and CVT's epistemology is more ethical than anything else. His books on Ethics and Religion tend to be overshadowed by his other writings, but they are highly useful; and I think readers would have more sympathy if they started here.