The following is a podcast episode from Rev. Matt Marino on "how to not throw the 'right ideas matter' baby out with the Kantian bathwater" when discussing the concept of worldview. Thought this would be a good place to share it for those who take interest in this topic and possibly generate edifying feedback.
Wow, thanks for sharing. Um, as far my thoughts on it. I tried to follow the major points he's saying because he bounces off of loaded thought after loaded thought with no explanation. Without delving into anyone of them. In fairness to him, I never heard of him before so I plan to look him up but I'm limiting myself to the video you provided, he's giving an overview of sorts so details are not in the wheelhouse.
His two criticisms of Van Til seem to be basically the point of contact from a worldview perspective with the unbeliever, you have your WV and I have mine how do we communicate? As well as a viewing the structure of his argument from within a classical framework. That second point can be very long to get into, so I'll try to keep it short because there's more to be said on the rest of the video.
The point of contact problem is resolved by pointing out that we have, according to Van Til, three points of contact with the unbeliever.
1. We are all made in God's image and cannot help but interacting with creation from that image.
2. Since it's God's creation we are dealing with that's also a point of contact. We're all thinking and interacting with the same stuff.
3. Yes sin has totally corrupted our nature but in his grace he institutes his common grace so that we don't get as bad as we would.
All three points are, in my opinion, are sufficient ground for point of contact with the unbeliever. The second point is a refusal of some classical thinkers to step outside the whole method of argumentation issue. Classical thinkers can, at some times, limit the method to either inductive or deductive methods. So some of them see "well within my framework you're either making one or the other, Van Til is clearly (from my perspective) making a deductive argument and his first premise is the existence of God".
But that first premise is the whole issue being argued for. So it's either a contested premise and/or vicious circular reasoning. But Van Til's method is transcendental in nature, completely outside the classical dichotomy of argumentation, so the criticism is irrelevant.
The only other issue I'll briefly as possible deal with is the Postmodern issue (there's way more that I can get into but I won't at this point). I agree with his and Nash's point of Kant being the great-great-great-grandfather of Postmodernism.
But if we take the implied point of WV's being hermetically sealed off from each other and the world than how does one explain Michael Foucault? He took the time to study the actual reality of various institutions of power (I think he would prefer history of sorts but that's actual history of real things) and then philosophize about the use of power in those actual real things?
It seems he's letting his, I suppose, classical thinking to influence his viewpoint here. I am reminded of when I first started to study Postmodernism, and I wasn't a Vantillian, and I have book after book of various Evangelicals about how we must defend a classical philosophy of whatever to combat the likes of Richard Rorty (it seems none of them read his later writings because they always quote from the earlier and more controversial writings).
After coming to grips with Van Til I questioned the wisdom of, literally their implied ideas, tying the truth or survival of Christianity to a pagan philosophy like Rationalism (not very common) or common sense realism. The cremes de creme was Foundationalism (there's different varieties of this not all are bad).
So that I'm not guilty of jumping over loaded statements let me unpack my comment on classical philosophy. WV'S are very individualistic in nature and the double threat of no point of contact and/or relativism is a genuine but overblown concern.
The classical approach had already solved this problem, this response is to the title of the video and his weaving of criticisms of Van Til and Postmodernism , because we simply lay out the most general features of humanity and solve the knowledge problem.
There's both truth and error in this approach in that yes we know that we all use the same stuff to learn, commonality, but we're also individuals with our own histories. The problem with some classical thinkers is an overemphasized view of commonality at the expense of the individual.
There's countless examples of this in history but it all boils down to the same thing. Also, probably because of relativism, we must be critical of WV thinking for this reason but we go back to an old idea that may not hold as much water as we thought. It was criticized after all.
But that's my as simple as possible take on this video. I plan to look him up to see what his general thoughts are.
