I am always edified when I read Van Til. I am also always challenged to conform my thinking to the Holy Scriptures and the Reformed faith. But I am not often surprised. That is a testament to the consistency of…
A Theological Account of Logic
Nathaniel Gray Sutanto speaks to us about his paper “Two Theological Accounts of Logic: Theistic Conceptual Realism and a Reformed Archetype-Ectype Model,” published in the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Theologians and Christian philosophers have long debated the nature of logic…
God After God: Jenson After Barth, Part #6
In our last post, (a while back!) I argued that Jenson had in fact compromised the creator creature distinction and I said that we would flesh that out a bit, which is what I plan to do here. So, if…
God After God: Jenson After Barth, Part #5
In the last post we asked if Jenson had gone beyond Barth. Has he temporalized eternity? Jenson is certainly bolder in his assertions linking eternity and time, but has he really achieved a consummation between the two? Frankly, at this…
Theology and Philosophy
In an article discussing the theology of Albert Ritschl, Herman Bavinck writes that throughout history Christian theology “fashioned for herself a philosophy or appropriated an existing one such that as that of Aristotle as she had need of it and could…
Which Comes First, the Intellect or the Will?
Jeff Waddington compares Alvin Plantinga and Jonathan Edwards on the perennial anthropological question regarding the relationship between the intellect and the will. In 2000, distinguished Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga offered an account of how Christian belief squares with warrant in…
Intuition in Contemporary Philosophy
In this short essay, I want to draw out the nature and downfalls of a salient principle of analytic philosophy: the primacy of rational intuition. Philosophers think of rational intuition as the capacity in human persons to believe (and know)…
Will the Real Bonhoeffer Please Stand Up? Part 4
Having begun with Kant’s concept of the transcendental unity of apperception in order to establish God’s immanence Bonhoeffer was brought up against a potential philosophical problem. Kant’s Transcendentalism had a solipsistic tendency. In other words, if my mind is the…
Covenantal Apologetics and Common-Sense Realism
Nathaniel Gray Sutanto joins us to speak about apologetics and his recent article titled, “Covenantal Apologetics and Common-Sense Realism: Recalibrating the Argument from Consciousness as a Test Case” in JETS, 57/4 (2014) 773–91. In this article, Gray offers a covenantal and presuppositional criticism of common-sense…
Thomas, Barth and Modernity: Entering the Fray Over Matthew Rose’s Barth Article
A recent firestorm has arisen within the blogosphere concerning an alleged failure by Karl Barth. It was initiated by Matthew Rose over at First Things here, responded to by IVP editor David Congdon here, Darren Sumner here, David Guretzki here,…
