In pp. 77–79 of The Defense of the Faith (first edition), Cornelius Van Til addresses the fundamental differences between Christian and non-Christian perspectives on ethics, particularly focusing on the role of the will of God as foundational to ethical systems. Van Til begins by asserting that God’s will is absolute and self-determinative. God is eternally good, not becoming good through a process, but being so by his very nature. Unlike humans, God does not have to achieve goodness; it is intrinsic to his eternal character. Therefore, God is both absolutely necessary and absolutely free.

Van Til introduces a key distinction between Christian and non-Christian viewpoints. Christians uphold the concept of an absolutely self-determinative God, who is the necessary presupposition for all human activity. Non-Christian ethics, however, assume that if the Christian God were real, he would stifle ethical activity. This is because non-theistic views perceive God and man as having wills conditioned by an environment, implying that God must also achieve goodness through a process.

Van Til critiques Platonic philosophy, noting that Plato’s conception of “the Good” was ultimate, but his god was not. For Plato, “the Good” was abstract and separated from a fully personal God, leaving the ultimate reality as dependent on the element of Chance. Thus, even if Plato spoke of the Good, it was not self-determined or sovereign in the Christian sense. Modern idealist philosophers tried to build on Platonic thought by proposing an “absolutely self-determinative Experience,” but ultimately failed, according to Van Til, because they made God dependent on the space-time universe, blending time and eternity. As a result, God became dependent on external processes rather than being sovereign over them.

The core ethical difference between Christianity and non-Christian systems is the acceptance or rejection of an ultimately self-determinative God. Van Til argues that without the presupposition of God as absolute, there can be no coherent or purposeful human experience, including ethics. The absolute sovereignty of God is not a hindrance to human responsibility but rather its foundation.

Van Til makes a point to distinguish Christian doctrine from philosophical determinism. While both affirm necessity, philosophical determinism is impersonal, suggesting that everything is determined by blind, impersonal forces. Christianity, in contrast, asserts that the ultimate reality is personal; God’s sovereign will underlies the possibility of genuine human freedom and responsibility.

Watch on YouTube and Vimeo.

Chapters

• 00:00:07 Introduction
• 00:05:31 Ethics and the Christian Philosophy of Reality
• 00:11:45 The Christian Conception of God
• 00:18:02 The Absolute Contrast between Christian and Non-Christian Ethics
• 00:29:48 Contrasts with Platonism
• 00:47:18 Contrast with Idealism
• 00:52:10 The Central Ethical Distinction
• 00:55:22 Contrast with Philosophical Determinism
• 01:05:11 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Carlton Wynne, Lane G. Tipton

In this episode, we welcome Scott J. Hatch, author of Reformed Forum’s latest publication, Van Til and the Foundation of Christian Ethics: A God-Centered Approach to Moral Philosophy, to consider the profound relationship between theology and ethics as articulated by Cornelius Van Til. In addition to providing an original treatment of the subject, Hatch has also edited a critical edition of Van Til’s Christian-Theistic Ethics, which is included as a lengthy appendix in this volume. This never before been available, and anyone interested in the thought of Cornelius Van Til should surely get a copy for their library.

This insightful conversation illuminates Van Til’s unique approach to Christian ethics, emphasizing a God-centered moral philosophy grounded in the doctrine of the self-contained ontological Trinity. Hatch explores Van Til’s critique of moral relativism and how his theological framework offers a compelling solution to ethical dilemmas, contrasting with the perspectives of other ethicists and theologians.

The episode promises to enrich understanding of Christian ethics through the lens of Reformed theology, challenging believers to consider the foundational role of the Triune God in all moral considerations. Join us for a thought-provoking exploration of how Cornelius Van Til’s groundbreaking work continues to shape contemporary discussions on Christian ethics, offering a robust, God-centered approach that speaks to the challenges of modern moral relativism.

Chapters

• 00:00:07 Introduction
• 00:04:12 Being Introduced to Cornelius Van Til’s Theology and Apologetics
• 00:09:54 Versions of Van Til’s Ethics
• 00:21:24 The Uniqueness of Van Til’s Ethical Approach
• 00:28:42 Ethics and the Doctrine of God
• 00:36:44 Alasdair MacIntryre and Critiques of Moral Relativism
• 00:45:11 Critiques and Misunderstandings of Van Til’s Ethics
• 00:53:29 Van Til’s Value for Future Generations
• 00:59:13 For Further Study
• 01:03:54 Conclusion

Links

• Purchase Van Til and the Foundation of Christian Ethics
• Purchase from Reformation Heritage Books for international shipping options

Participants: Camden Bucey, Scott Hatch

In this installment of Van Til Group, we turn to the section of Defense of the Faith (pp. 69–72), which begins the chapter titled “The Christian Philosophy of Behavior.” This section outlines the Christian perspective on ethics, drawing from the Reformed confessions to emphasize that human actions, or behavior, should aim to glorify God. It presents a confessional scheme focusing on three key aspects: the highest good (summum bonum) that humans should strive for, the criterion for achieving this good (which must be based on God’s revealed will in Scripture), and the motivation for pursuing this good, highlighting the necessity of faith and regeneration by the Holy Spirit for genuine ethical action.

The chapter then considers the relationship between ethics and the Christian philosophy of knowledge. It asserts that understanding God’s nature is fundamental to grasping the essence of Christian ethics, with God’s absolute personality serving as the ultimate interpretative category for human existence. This perspective contrasts with non-Christian views by emphasizing that the good is defined by God’s nature and will, rather than existing independently.

The section on “Man as Made in God’s Image” discusses the original moral perfection of humanity, created in the image of the Godhead, and underscores the derivative nature of human moral consciousness. Unlike non-Christian ethics, which may view moral consciousness as the ultimate arbiter of good, Christian ethics sees it as reliant on divine revelation. This foundational difference in epistemology between Christian and non-Christian thought underscores the Christian belief in a receptive rather than creative construction of moral knowledge, with humanity’s moral nature and external revelation jointly guiding ethical understanding.

Chapters

• 00:00:07 Introduction
• 00:04:56 The Christian View of Ethics
• 00:21:06 Motive, Standard, and Goal
• 00:32:02 The Summum Bonum
• 00:39:44 The Euthyphro Dilemma
• 00:45:13 God’s Nature and Will
• 00:51:58 Man Made in the Image of God
• 00:55:53 Christian Epistemology
• 01:08:58 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Carlton Wynne, Lane G. Tipton

After recording a course on the subject for Reformed Academy, Dr. Carlton Wynne comes to the podcast studio to discuss John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. Topics covered include Calvin’s theology, the right ordering of knowledge, general and special revelation, the effects of the fall on human reasoning, natural theology, and comparisons to the thought of Thomas Aquinas and Cornelius Van Til. Carlton also shares about his experience as a pastor-theologian and his talk on maintaining true religion in a modernist world at the recent Reformation Worship Conference. The conversation touches on the legacy of J. Gresham Machen and the need for the church to guard the good deposit of faith.

Chapters

• 00:00:07 Introduction
• 00:05:41 Introduction to Carlton’s Course on Calvin’s Institutes
• 00:13:56 The Church and the Academy
• 00:20:58 Approaching a Course on the Institutes
• 00:30:30 The Natural Knowledge of God
• 00:37:52 Natural Theology, Ethics, and “Formal” Truth
• 00:49:48 The Reformation Worship Conference
• 00:57:28 Machen 2.0
• 01:10:39 Calvin and the Threefold Office of Mediator
• 01:12:52 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Carlton Wynne

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Bruce Baugus to our program to discuss his book, The Roots of Reformed Moral Theology, published by Reformation Heritage Books. In this comprehensive work, Dr. Baugus delves into the foundational elements that have shaped moral theology within the Reformed tradition. He provides both historical and theological contexts, covering a range of topics including the Old Testament’s influence on Reformed moral thought, the significance of the Ten Commandments, the Reformation’s impact on moral theology, and its evolution in the modern era. Additionally, Dr. Baugus explores the practical applications of Reformed moral theology for contemporary Christian living.

This conversation serves as a continuation of a dialogue that began during our online Symposium on Reformed Moral Theology, held in August 2023. In the symposium’s concluding session, Dr. Baugus and Dr. David VanDrunen each presented their perspectives on the role of law in the Gospels, with a particular focus on the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the Book of Matthew. The session also featured an interactive discussion between the two scholars and T. David Gordon.

Dr. Bruce P. Baugus is Professor of Systematic Theology & Apologetics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He earned a PhD in Philosophical Theology from Calvin Theological Seminary (2009) and served on the faculty of Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, for fourteen years (2008–2022) prior to joining Puritan Reformed. He is also the editor of China’s Reforming Churches (RHB, 2014) and has contributed numerous chapters, articles, and papers.

Dr. David VanDrunen is Robert B. Strimple Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Westminster Seminary California.

Chapters

• 00:00:07 Introduction
• 00:07:33 Moral Theology and Christian Ethics
• 00:12:49 Understanding the Roots of Moral Theology
• 00:15:10 Historical Developments in Reformed Moral Theology
• 00:18:38 A Distinctly Reformed Moral Theology
• 00:21:47 Moral Theology and Aquinas
• 00:23:51 The Law of Moses in the Reformed Tradition
• 00:33:53 Jesus and the Law
• 00:37:21 Jesus Showing the Climactic Character of His Coming
• 00:44:25 An Enduring Moral Law
• 00:51:51 The Redemptive-Historical Significance of Jesus’ Coming
• 00:54:46 The Law and the New Covenant People
• 01:03:01 The Natural Order and the New Creation
• 01:07:44 Conclusion

Participants: Bruce Baugus, Camden Bucey, David VanDrunen

Join us as we explore the increasingly overlapping spheres of artificial intelligence (AI) and pastoral ministry. Our discussion uncovers both the promising opportunities and the intricate challenges presented by this cross-disciplinary synthesis, offering listeners a space for thoughtful reflection and critical analysis.

We begin by considering the ways in which AI could influence scholarly and pastoral work, discussing its potential to revolutionize sermon preparation, theological interpretation, and pastoral responsibilities. From enhancing exegesis through computational analysis to automated pastoral care systems, the conversation paints a picture of a possible future in which technology and theology are closely entwined.

However, the integration of AI into such deeply human and nuanced fields raises a multitude of ethical and philosophical concerns. Can an artificial system genuinely contribute to a process so rooted in personal insight and spirituality? Would reliance on AI for intellectual tasks promote laziness or engender a culture of plagiarism within the realm of theological scholarship? Furthermore, we ponder the risk of losing the essence of pastoral care—the human touch—in the wake of automated systems.

We invite you to join a thoughtful, in-depth exploration of the role AI could play in scholarship and pastoral ministry. For those curious about the intersection of technology, faith, and ethics, this discussion offers a chance to engage with a deeply fascinating and increasingly relevant topic.

Chapters

• 00:07 Thinking about Artificial Intelligence
• 01:17 Jim’s Course on John 1–10
• 07:17 Thinking about Artificial Intelligence
• 13:58 A Laymen’s Understanding of How Large Language Models Work
• 20:55 Ethical Issues with the Use of AI in Scholarship and Ministry
• 27:15 How AI Relates to Current Publishing Practices
• 32:11 The Use of Research Assistants in Scholarship
• 35:25 Situating AI amongst Other Tools
• 41:45 AI in Ministry
• 46:59 AI and Psychology
• 54:57 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy

Carlton Wynne, Lane Tipton, and Camden Bucey turn to pp. 63–67 of Cornelius Van Til’s The Defense of the Faith to discuss the Christian theory of knowledge. In this section, Van Til speaks of the effects of sin and its curse upon human knowledge.

Chapters

• 00:00:07 Introduction
• 00:05:07 The Effects of Sin
• 00:21:08 God Is Self-Sufficient and Self-Complete
• 00:37:24 Aspects of Non-Christian Thought
• 00:48:40 The Contradiction of a Developing Absolute
• 00:56:57 Three Types of Consciousness
• 00:58:49 Kuyper and Common Grace
• 01:03:23 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Carlton Wynne, Lane G. Tipton

Carlton Wynne, Lane Tipton, and Camden Bucey turn to pp. 58–63 of Cornelius Van Til’s The Defense of the Faith to discuss the Christian theory of knowledge. In this section, Van Til speaks of man’s knowledge of the world.

Chapters

• 00:07 Introduction
• 08:29 Review Up to This Point
• 12:59 Man’s Knowledge of God and of His Environment
• 19:29 Human Knowledge Is Entirely Dependent upon God
• 22:29 Theology Proper and the Image of God
• 33:27 Types of Knowledge of God
• 41:29 Human Knowledge Can Be True though Never Comprehensive
• 43:39 Realism and Anti-Realism
• 52:39 The Mysterious Depth Dimension to All Human Knowledge
• 56:09 The Full Bucket
• 58:52 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Carlton Wynne, Lane G. Tipton

Carlton Wynne, Lane Tipton, and Camden Bucey turn to pp. 54–58 of Cornelius Van Til’s The Defense of the Faith to discuss the Christian theory of knowledge. In this section, Van Til speaks of God’s knowledge of the world and then man’s knowledge of God.

Chapters

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:28 God’s Knowledge of the World
• 07:41 The Plan of God to Create the World
• 13:13 The Pantheistic Switch
• 24:31 God’s Free Knowledge Does Not Imply an Eternal Creation
• 35:32 Refusing to Concede to Rationalism
• 43:10 Man’s Knowledge of God
• 49:46 Devotional Thoughts on the Creator-Creature Distinction
• 56:45 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Carlton Wynne, Lane G. Tipton

Carlton Wynne, Lane Tipton, and Camden Bucey turn to pp. 48–54 of Cornelius Van Til’s The Defense of the Faith to discuss the Christian theory of knowledge. In this section, Van Til speaks of the relationship between a theory of reality and the theory of knowledge and how for orthodox Christians, the absolute God of Scripture is identical with his knowledge while finite creatures are fundamentally dependent upon him.

We also announce the arrival of Lane Tipton’s book, The Trinitarian Theology of Cornelius Van Til.

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Introduction
• 00:02:16 New Book: The Trinitarian Theology of Cornelius Van Til
• 00:12:28 Reviewing Chapters 1–2 of the Book
• 00:23:38 A Christian Theory of Being
• 00:35:30 The Bible and Christian Experience
• 00:37:50 Ontology and Epistemology from the Garden of Eden
• 00:42:59 Epistemological Authority
• 00:48:35 Satan’s Tactic in Temptation
• 00:55:16 God’s Knowledge and Being are Coterminous
• 01:00:52 Pantheism
• 01:06:04 Consequences of Saying that God’s Knowledge Changes
• 01:15:44 Biblical Examples of God’s Knowledge in Relation to Creation
• 01:21:00 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Carlton Wynne, Lane G. Tipton

Carlton Wynne, Lane Tipton, and Camden Bucey open Cornelius Van Til’s book, The Defense of the Faith to pages 43–47. Van Til addresses the unity and diversity within creation before covering the fall into sin and the curse.

Throughout this chapter, Van Til reminds his readers of the categorical difference between God and creation while maintaining creation’s dependence upon God for its very existence. The answers to these fundamental questions distinguish orthodox Christianity from all other philosophies and religions.

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Introduction
• 00:03:52 Thoughts on Learning Van Til
• 00:12:32 Temporal Unity and Plurality
• 00:24:30 Non-Being
• 00:36:56 Reformed vs. Roman Catholic Conceptions of Nature and Sin
• 00:49:58 The Mystery of the Fall into Sin
• 00:56:49 Created Laws and Facts
• 01:03:42 Van Til the Evangelist and Van Til the Theologian
• 01:06:33 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Carlton Wynne, Lane G. Tipton

Carlton Wynne, Lane Tipton, and Camden Bucey open Cornelius Van Til’s book, The Defense of the Faith to pages 40–43, in which Van Til describes the Christian philosophy of reality. While to some degree it is necessary to use categories of God, man, and universe common to unbelievers in order to engage them apologetically and to evangelize, Christians must clearly set forth the distinctly Christian philosophy of reality. Van Til commences that work in chapter two and promptly addresses eternal unity and plurality with regard to the problem of the one and many.

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Introduction
• 00:03:39 The Christian Philosophy of Reality
• 00:09:36 The Infection and Rejection Theses
• 00:14:49 The Belief that God Is Identical with Reality
• 00:28:25 The Reality of God as Self-Sufficient
• 00:31:42 Applying the Philosophy
• 00:34:01 The Problem of the One and the Many
• 00:40:19 Practical Considerations of Particularity
• 00:45:15 The Self-Contained God and the One and Many Problem
• 00:52:32 Equal Ultimacy Precludes an Abstract Essence
• 00:59:41 Bavinck on Diversity and Unity
• 01:02:20 Perichoresis
• 01:05:50 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Carlton Wynne, Lane G. Tipton

Dr. Christopher Watkin joins us to speak about his book, Michel Foucault, published by P&R Publishing in the Great Thinkers series. Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Although he was widely influential during his lifetime, Foucault’s philosophy has come to even greater influence and applicability in recent years within the contemporary cultural and political discourse regarding sexual ethics and identity.

Dr. Watkin is a lecturer at Monash University in Melbourne. He is the author of a number of academic books in the area of modern European philosophy. Over the past few years he has written four books published by P&R Publishing, including Thinking through Creation: Genesis 1 and 2 as Tools of Cultural Critique and three books in the Great Thinkers series: Jacques Derrida (2017), Michel Foucault (2018) and Gilles Deleuze (2020).

Links

• Christ the Center episode 598 on Thinking through Creation
• Michel Foucault, History of Madness
• Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
• Michel Foucault, The Order of Things
• Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: Introduction

Participants: Camden Bucey, Christopher Watkin

Dr. Carl R. Trueman joins us to speak about his significant new book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Crossway), in which he addresses the factors undergirding modern culture’s obsession with identity. Sexual identity in particular has dominated public discourse since the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision in 2015. Tracing influential thought from Augustine to Marx and beyond, Trueman explains the historical and intellectual phenomenon of the modern conception selfhood. Trueman writes,

My aim is to explain how and why a certain notion of the self has come to dominate the culture of the West, why this self finds its most obvious manifestation in the transformation of sexual mores, and what the wider implications of this transformation are and may well be in the future.

Dr. Trueman is professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College. He is an esteemed church historian and previously served as the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life at Princeton University. Trueman has authored or edited more than a dozen books, including The Creedal Imperative, Luther on the Christian Life, and Histories and Fallacies. Trueman is a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Carl Trueman

Jim Cassidy speaks about Karl Barth and his relationship with idealism. On the heels of Lane Tipton’s recent course, Introduction to the Theology and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, the panel compares and contrasts Barth’s ontology and doctrine of revelation in the Christ-event with Van Til’s critique of idealism and warnings of correlativism.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy, Lane G. Tipton

Dr. James N. Anderson speaks about the philosophy of David Hume, one of the foremost thinkers of the Western tradition. Hume is well known for his influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. Throughout his work, Hume developed a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature.

Dr. Anderson is the Carl W. McMurray Professor of Theology and Philosophy and Academic Dean (Global and New York) of Reformed Theological Seminary. He is the author of David Hume (Great Thinkers) published by P&R Publishing, What’s Your Worldview: An Interactive Approach to Life’s Big Questions, and Paradox in Christian Theology.

Participants: Camden Bucey, James Anderson, Jim Cassidy

The Synod of Dort (1618–19) not only produced the famous Canons of Dort and a church order, but also the first translation of the Bible into Dutch from the original languages, known as the Statenvertaling. Along with this translation, marginal notes (kanttekeningen) were added to aid in the study of God’s Word. You could say it was one of the earliest “Study Bibles,” though the Genevan (1560) has historical priority.

Why are these notes significant? First, while no office bearer in the church was required to subscribe to these marginal notes, like as to the Three Forms of Unity, they still provide a window into the biblical interpretation of the architects of the Canons of Dort.

Second, these notes soon gained international recognition in keeping with the international nature of the synod. In 1645 the Westminster Assembly commissioned Theodore Hank to translate them into English, which he later published in 1657. An English translation of the annotations can be found here.[1] The notes on Colossians 2:8 briefly distinguish between a true and false philosophy and posit the proper use of philosophy as an instrument to better understand or explain God’s Word.

Kolossensen 2:8

Colossians 2:8 reads,

Ziet toe, dat niemand u als een roof vervoere door de filosofie, en ijdele verleiding, naar de overlevering der mensen, naar de eerste beginselen der wereld, en niet naar Christus

Beware lest any man carry you off as spoil through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the first principles of the world, and not after Christ.

Marginal Note on Ziet toe (“See to it”)

Hier begint de apostel het verhaal der dwalingen, waar hij hen tegen waarschuwt, namelijk wijsbegeerte, menselijke inzettingen, en vermengingen van de wet der ceremoniën, die hij de een voor, de andere na, wederspreekt.

Here the apostle begins the account of the errors against which he warns them, namely, philosophy, human ordinances and mingling of the ceremonial law, which he, the one first, the other after, opposes.

Marginal Note on als een roof (“as spoil”)

… namelijk van Christus en Zijne waarheid tot andere leringen of middelen ter zaligheid buiten Christus; ene gelijkenis, genomen van rovers, die niet alleen de goederen, maar ook de mensen zelf tot een roof wegvoerden, om hen tot slaven … te maken. Zie een voorbeeld, 1 Sam. 30.

… namely, from Christ and His truth unto other doctrines or means of salvation outside of Christ. A similitude taken from such robbers, who used to carry away not only goods, but also the persons themselves for a prey, to make them slaves …. See an example, 1 Samuel 30.

Marginal note on de filosofie (“philosophy”)

Hierdoor wordt de rechte filosofie niet verstaan, die ene gave Gods is, en zelfs een instrument of middel is, dienstig om Gods Woord beter te verstaan en te verklaren; maar de sophisterij of bedriegelijke schijnwijsheid van enige heidense filosofen, gelijk de volgende woorden ijdele verleiding verklaren, en gelijk Paulus hiervan spreekt, Rom. 1:21, 22, welke filosofen in deze hunne schijnwijsheid enige dingen van God en van den weg tot het opperste goed hadden voorgesteld, die deze leraars met het Evangelie wilden vermengen, gelijk ook de scholastieke leraars in het Pausdom doen, waardoor de eenvoudigheid en oprechtheid der zaligmakende leer van het Evangelie merkelijk is verduisterd en vervalst.

Hereby is not understood the true philosophy, which is a gift of God and is even an instrument or means useful for the better understanding and explaining of the Word of God, but the sophistry or specious discourses of some pagan philosophers, as the following words vain deceit declare, and as Paul speaks hereof in Rom. 1:21, 22, which philosophers in this their apparent wisdom had propounded some things concerning God, and concerning the way to the highest good, which these teachers wanted to mingle with the Gospel, as the scholastic teachers also do amongst the Papists, whereby the simplicity and sincerity of the saving doctrine of the Gospel is notably obscured and falsified.

Revelation and Philosophy according to Groen van Prinsterer

Groen van Prinsterer cites this marginal note in his Proeve over de middelen waardoor de waarheid wordt gekend en gestaafd (1834) in support of his claim: “Revelation alone is the foundation of a complete philosophy; it contains the highest, the only true philosophy.”[2] This statement comes in the context of a larger discussion on Christianity and philosophy:

Man is related to the spiritual and the material world. No human reasoning teaches how spirit and matter are united in him; the philosopher has preferably devoted himself to one or the other component, so that one has either spiritualized the dust or materialized the spirit. Spiritualism and materialism emerged.[3]

For man, if he does not know the first cause of universal corruption, then there is no more enigmatic being than he himself. He feels a pull toward a higher existence; but he also feels that he is at every turn led by inclinations and impulses in the opposite direction.  How great and also how miserable; how earthly, and also how heavenly![4]

Christianity solves the riddles that cannot be solved by philosophy, insofar as this is necessary for wisdom about life [levenswijsheid] and eternal happiness. By faith, the harmony of feeling and reason is restored. Revelation teaches how the self-consciousness of greatness and misery can be explained. She gives firmness to principles while she allows freedom of opinions. She gives what philosophy promised.[5]

Christian philosophy … contains the life principle [levensbeginsel] of knowledge and science. She is the sun, which spreads over the field of human investigation brightness, warmth, and life. Every science, properly practiced, bears witness to the truth of revelation; not properly practiced, they glorify, by deviations and misunderstandings, the highest truth nolens volens. Accurate study leads back to the universal source of light and life.[6]

1. Thank you to Slabbert Le Cornu for bringing this English translation to my attention. May the Lord bless your efforts in translating these notes into Afrikaans.
2. De Openbaring alleen is de grondslag eener volledige wijsbegeerte; zij bevat de hoogste, de alleen ware filozofie.
3. De mensch is aan de geestelijke en aan de stofflijke wereld verwant. Geen menschelijke redenering leert hoe geest en stof vereenigd in hem zijn; de wijsgeer heeft zich bij voorkeur aan het eene of aan het andere bestanddeel gehecht, zoodat men óf het stof vergeestelijkt, óf den geest verstoffelijkt heeft. 
4. Voor den mensch, zoo hij de eerste oorzaak der algemeene verbastering niet kent, is geen raadselachtiger wezen dan hij zelf. Hij gevoelt een trek naar hooger bestaan; doch gevoelt ook dat hij telkens door neigingen en driften in tegenovergestelden zin wordt geleid. Hoe groot en tevens hoe ellendig; hoe aardsch, en tevens hoe hemelschgezind!
5. Het Christendom lost de voor de wijsbegeerte onoplosbare raadselen, voor zoo ver dit tot levenswijsheid en eeuwig geluk noodig is, op. Door het geloof wordt de harmonie van gevoel en rede hersteld. De Openbaring leert hoe de zelfbewustheid van grootheid en ellende kan worden verklaard. Zij geeft vastheid van beginsels terwijl ze vrijheid van meeningen laat. Zij geeft wat de wijsbegeerte belooft.
6. De christelijke wijsbegeerte … bevat het levensbeginsel van kennis en wetenschap. Zij is de zon, die op het veld van menschelijk onderzoek helderheid, warmte en leven verspreidt. Elke wetenschap, wel beoefend, legt van de waarheid der Openbaring getuigenis af; niet wel beoefend, verheerlijkt zij, door afwijking en wanbegrip, de hoogste waarheid tegen wil en dank. Naauwkeurige studie brengt naar de algemeene bron van licht en leven terug. 

Christopher Watkin speaks about his book Thinking through Creation: Genesis 1 and 2 as Tools of Cultural Critique. Watkin looks to the early chapters of Genesis for foundational doctrines about God, the world, and ourselves. In so doing, he advocates for a robust engagement with others about contemporary culture and ideas.

Dr. Watkin completed his Bachelor’s and Doctoral degrees at Cambridge University. He lectured at Cambridge for a couple of years before moving with his family to Australia, where he now works as a lecturer at Monash University in Melbourne. He is the author of a number of academic books in the area of modern European philosophy, including Difficult Atheism (2011) and French Philosophy Today (2016), both with Edinburgh University Press. Over the past few years he has written four books published by P&R Publishing. Three of them are in the Great Thinkers series: Jacques Derrida (2017), Michel Foucault (2018) and Gilles Deleuze (forthcoming).

Links to Thinking through the Bible

• Main site: https://thinkingthroughthebible.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Thinking-Through-the-Bible-455889715164228/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/thinking_bible

Participants: Adam York, Camden Bucey, Christopher Watkin

Cory Brock and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto speak about Herman Bavinck’s Philosophy of Revelation (Hendrickson Publishers). Drs. Brock and Sutanto have edited a new annotated edition of Bavinck’s Stone Lectures, which were delivered at Princeton in 1908. Other than his Reformed Dogmatics, this is Bavinck’s most important work. We are blessed to welcome new editions and translations of these works. Along with James Eglinton, Brock and Sutanto are also editing Bavinck’s Christian Worldview, scheduled to be published by Crossway next year.

Cory Brock is Minister of Young Adults and College at First Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Jackson, MS. He also serves on the faculty of Belhaven University teaching biblical studies. Nathaniel Gray Sutanto is Assistant Pastor at Covenant City Church in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Cory Brock, Dan Ragusa, Nathaniel Gray Sutanto

“And though this world with devils filled, should threaten to undo us…”—so penned Luther in his famous hymn A Mighty Fortress is Our God. But on what epistemological basis could Luther (and the whole Christian church for that matter) affirm the existence of devils and spirits in this world? Was it rational to believe that spirits could interact with material bodies so that they could even be deemed a real threat to undo the church? The claim of the existence of the supernatural and the working of the supernatural upon the natural world, including men, was not a self-given, nor a datum of sense experience, but ultimately founded upon the simple teaching of Scripture. There, in the revelation of the triune God, the real struggle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness is made known, in which heaven and earth, the spiritual and the material, angels and men are shown to be in a dynamic relationship with one another, all according to the wisdom and providence of God. It should come as no surprise, then, that as submission to God’s revelation in Scripture was replaced with the autonomy of man (whether in the form of rationalism or empiricism, as happened with the Enlightenment), the reality of Satan, spirits, and the supernatural would be, at first, doubted and, eventually, rejected in favor of either a dualistic or purely naturalistic conception of reality. This occurred not only in the realm of secular philosophy, but unfortunately also within the church as Cartesian philosophy began to infiltrate and theologians attempted to synthesize it with their theological systems. One such figure within the church, Balthasar Bekker (1634–1698), a Dutch Reformed preacher, came under the “spell” of the new philosophy dominating the age and so deemed it his life mission to “disenchant the world.” And he pursued this in the most dangerous fashion: under the guise of Reformed language and concepts. He received heavy opposition, however, from those within the Reformed church who saw behind his façade, most notably from Petrus van Mastricht (1630–1706). Mastricht responded to Bekker’s internationally influential work, Betoverde Weereld (The World Bewitched), in a treatise presented to Classis Amsterdam, entitled, Ad Verum Clariss. D. Balthasaren Beckerum, S. S. Theol. Doct. Epanorthosis gratulatoria.[1] Mastricht recognized that Bekker’s teaching ultimately compromised the basic Reformed principle of the authority of Scripture by subordinating it to an alien philosophy. Yet, there was more than just the relationship of Scripture and philosophy at the (pastoral) heart of Mastricht’s polemic against Bekker. Mastricht also perceived that by not beginning with Scripture as his principium cognoscendi, Bekker had removed the only foundation for true religion, which prohibited him entirely from building a practical superstructure of doxology and worship. In other words, Mastricht’s polemic against Bekker included the fact that by not beginning with Scripture, his theology did not and could not end with worship. Thus, it was not merely a matter of whose principium was correct, but who worshiped the one true God in spirit and truth. The teleological end (worship) of doctrine and theology was directly dependent upon its protological beginning (Scripture) in the mind of Mastricht. Herein we are given a view into the wedding of doctrine and life, theology and piety in the Post-Reformation Reformed thought of Mastricht, which recent scholarship has been beginning to notice in this time period in general. Mastricht does not formulate his doctrine in a rigid, cold way, but in correlation with the exegesis of Scripture and a deep concern for right praxis, a true living to God. This article will first place Mastricht’s work within its historical context, with special attention given to Balthasar Bekker and his controversial four-volume work, Betoverde Weereld. It will then proceed to consider the main arguments of Mastricht’s treatise, noting his fourfold approach that incorporates exegesis, doctrine, elenctics, and praxis.

1. Philosophical Context in General: Cartesianism and Spinozism

Cartesianism in the Netherlands

Descartes moved to the Netherlands in 1628 since he realized that the intellectual atmosphere in Paris was not conducive or tolerant of his new ideas. As a result, his rationalism would come to be a mighty force in the Netherlands that the Reformed church would have to reckon with. In these early stages, Voetius would fend off the influence of Descartes on the Dutch Reformed church from his academic post at Utrecht, always with an eye on the well-being of the church.[20] Cartesianism, however, would develop in a much more variegated way than any kind of strict allegiance to Descartes—resulting in a true Descartes vs. the Cartesians. While it goes beyond the scope of this paper to trace out these differences, it can be noted that “the Dutch Cartesians shared a common viewpoint, a common openness to the New Science, and a common hostility to the Voetian Counter-Reformation.”[21] McGahagan goes on to describe the philosophical climate as follows:

Both early and later Cartesians were also equally insistent on the separation of philosophy and religion. Even the alliance of later Cartesianism with Cocceianism rested on the fact that Cocceianism seemed to offer a theological legitimation of this separation. This separation was not derived from Descartes, who indeed distinguished philosophy from theology, but who also grounded the possibility of an a priori physics in the doctrine of God’s free creation of eternal truths. Rather, the Dutch Cartesian separation of faith and reason can only be understood in the context of their opposition to the Voetian Counter-Reformation.[22]

This would no less be the case with regard to Mastricht’s contention with Bekker in his consideration of the relationship of Scripture and philosophy as well as the proper use of reason as a handmaiden of theology.

Spirits and Spinozism

Jonathan Israel observes, “During the last third of the seventeenth century, the scene was set for a vast triangular contest in Europe between intellectual conservatives, moderates, and radicals overthe status of the supernatural in human life and the reality of the Devil, demons, spirits, and magic.”[23] It was Naude and Hobbes who led the charge in “injecting a measure of scepticism about diabolical power and the reality of spirits.”[24] This eventually led to a full-force campaign that sought to extinguish belief in Satan, spirits and supernatural forces altogether “in complete defiance of received ideas.”[25] This is the expected result when a revelatory epistemology is replaced with a Cartesian rationalism and thorough going philosophical Naturalism that attributes an autonomous existence to the mind of man. Accordingly, nothing beyond man’s rational capacities or immediate sense experiences can be permitted to have any real existence—a case of whatever my net cannot catch, is not fish. Israel notes that this philosophical move was not irreligious, but “part of a broader conceptual attack on authority, tradition, and Revelation.”[26] He continues,

The new philosophy, however, could not totally repudiate the existence of the supernatural. While the Scientific Revolution, the rise of the mechanical world-view, and Lockean empiricism all helped erode the foundations on which older notions about magic, wonder-working, and the supernatural rested, neither Cartesianism with its dichotomy of substances, nor Locke’s epistemology, nor any mainstream trend of the Early Enlightenment provided a rationale for total repudiation of belief in spirits and magic.[27]

The debate over the supernatural was the surface level concern of a deeper and more foundational issue regarding the epistemological significance (or insignificance) of God’s revelation in Scripture. Was Scripture, which spoke of spirits and Satan, authoritative? Or must Scripture submit to the scientific advancements of man and the natural limitations of his mind? The goal of the Reformed and traditional proponents was not to maintain the supernatural for the supernatural’s sake, but to maintain the worldview of Scripture in submission to the Creator of all things. Furthermore, as we will see in Mastricht’s polemic against Bekker, this debate over the supernatural had direct bearing upon man’s knowledge of God and the proper worship and enjoyment of him—the supremely practical concern that wedded doctrine and piety, theology and life in Mastricht’s polemic. Spinoza was one of the strongest protagonists of the campaign against diabolical power and magic. He argued against the existence of devils and spirits in his Korte Verhandeling and was pronounced by Bayle to be the pre-eminent modern adversary of credence in spirits and the supernatural. Bekker was primarily accused of Spinozism by Reformed theologians, most notably Jacobus Koelman,[28] and was specifically criticized for his utilization of a hermeneutic that approximated Spinoza’s, especially with respect to the doctrine of accommodation,[29] and his similar position to Spinoza on the activities of spirits.[30] Bekker, however, criticized Spinoza outright, though his opponents, such as Koelman, objected that this was not genuine but only a guise to cover his heretical ideas.[31] Bekker accused Spinoza of “violating the Dutch Cartesian principle of the separation of religion from philosophy by making philosophy the ‘master of things of belief.’”[32] In addition, he called Spinoza’s philosophy “absurd” and listed as his chief “errors” the following ideas:

1) That there is not substance, that is, independent entity, outside God; and that creatures are but modes, that is ways of God’s existence. 2) That this one substance has two essential characteristics: extension and thought. And there are infinite others that we do not know about. 3) That all depends on an infinite number of causes, following each other in an infinite order and in infinite ways. 4) That no thing or deed is in itself good or bad. 5) That the Holy Scripture was not originally from God and that the holy writers erred in much. 6) That miracles are caused by and can be explained by natural causes.[33]

Andrew Fix, in his evaluation of Bekker’s relation to Spinoza, notes that “although he did not go as far as Spinoza, he did use Spinoza’s exegetical methods for his own attack on spirit belief.”[34] Similarly Jonathan Israel notes, “Spinoza’s influence … clearly underlies Bekker’s claims that philosophical reason is the only valid criterion when investigating ‘natural things,’ and that Scripture is not intended to teach truly about worldly phenomena, but provides explanations adapted to the understanding of ordinary folks so as to help instill obedience to God’s commandments.”[35] The basic issue here is that by utilizing Spinoza’s methodology, which was essentially non-Christian, Bekker’s system itself could not be considered Christian, even if it utilized Christian, even Reformed, language and concepts, as it trended toward skepticism and atheism.

2. Theological Context

Locating Mastricht within Post-Reformation Reformed Orthodoxy

According to the periods proposed by Richard Muller, Mastricht is located within the era of high orthodoxy (ca. 1640–1685–1725). Muller notes that now the “architectonic clarity of early orthodoxy is replaced to a certain extent or at least put to the service of a more broadly developed and even discursive system.”[36] There is an expansion of polemical argumentation and the creative phase of early orthodoxy gives way to a phase of elaboration, refinement, and modification, which is evident in such prominent theologians as Voetius, Turretin, and Mastricht. Muller goes on to describe the posture towards philosophy during this time:

Among the major transitions that took place as Reformed theology passed from early orthodoxy into the high orthodox era was the transition from a philosophical development focused on the reception, assessment, and critical appropriation of the various trajectories of Christian Aristotelianism and of the late Renaissance developments … to the encounter of these older, highly nuanced approach with the new rationalists of the seventeenth century. … [T]he high orthodox, ca. 1640, were beginning to feel the impact of Cartesian thought. Just as the early orthodox era manifests not a monolithic appropriation of the older Aristotelian philosophies, but the reception of elements of various trajectories, so does the high orthodox era manifest varied receptions of the newer rationalism among the Reformed, and, indeed, the continuance of themes and issues from the older trajectories, now modified and altered by the changed philosophical context. Specifically, elements of the older Thomism, Scotism, and nominalism can still be detected as mediated through and modified by philosophical currents in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries—and elements of Cartesian thought and its modifications can also be found both debated and appropriated by various individual Reformed thinkers.[37]

Theological Context in General: Reformed Opponents Embracing Cartesianism

The negative influence of Cartesian rationalism was felt by Reformed theologians on numerous fronts. Old enemies were embracing Cartesian thought, which augmented Reformed skepticism toward and rejection of the new philosophy. For one, the Remonstrants—with whom the Reformed already had to contend with, culminating in the pronouncements against them at the Synod of Dort (1618-1619)—continued to veer further and further away from Reformed theology as it embraced Cartesian thought. Muller observes, “[T]he Remonstrant theology posed a major threat to the Reformed and called forth new argumentation, since it was, in its beginning, an offshoot of the Reformed system and, in its development, a highly rationalistic structure allied with Cartesian and eventually with Lockean thought.”[38] Likewise the Socinians more and more embraced the rationalism of Cartesianism that was dominating the age:

The increasingly rationalistic biblicism of the Socinian movement in its seventeenth-century forms posed an even more intense problem for the Reformed orthodox. … [T]he Socinians opposed the balance of revelation and reason advocated by the Reformed and claimed a fundamental biblical basis for their doctrine and repudiated natural theology—at the same time that they argued against the simplicity and infinity of God, denied the Trinity and the two natures of Christ, and proposed an alternative view of the work of Christ. From the Reformed perspective, all of these doctrines appeared to be at the same time the result of a new rationalism and a radically deviant exegesis.[39]

While not as radical as the Remonstrants or the Socinians, Cocceians were also embracing Cartesian philosophy to greater or lesser degrees:

Cocceius himself did not take part in the controversy over Cartesianism – he did not advocate any particular philosophy as a basis for or intellectual partner with theology, but maintained a somewhat eclectic attitude, viewing all philosophy, whether Platonic or Aristotelian, Ramist or Cartesian, as at best a handmaid to theology.[40]

Cocceius’ associate, Heidanus, however, “overtly approved of Cartesian philosophy. … His definition of God as ‘an uncreated, independent, thinking substance’ is clearly Cartesian, as is his discussion of the body and soul in man in terms of thought and extension.”[41] Bekker himself writes concerning Cocceius’ separation of the natural and supernatural: “He held the same course as Descartes, although he sailed in another fairway: wishing all prejudices abolished, and supernatural knowledge sought from Scripture alone; just as the other built natural science exclusively on nature and sound reason.”[42] It should be noted that the Reformed, and particularly Voetius and Mastricht, did not reject Cartesianism simply because its enemies embraced it—as if a friend of my enemy is by necessity my enemy too. Rather, the differing responses to Cartesianism simply manifested previous points of contention between these theological parties. It was the most basic and fundamental Reformed principle of Scripture as authoritative and the sole principium cognoscendi, which neither the Remonstrants nor Socinians consistently embraced in the formulation of their own theological systems, that raised Reformed suspicion against the new philosophy. In other words, this issue only brought to light earlier principial commitments that had surfaced before with respect to other theological loci, but now having an acute bearing on their prolegomena. These theological camps were, therefore, forced to show their cards as to the foundation upon which their systems were built. This is the bottom-line reason for the contention of Mastricht and other Dutch Reformed theologians against the new philosophy of Descartes, Spinoza, and their followers, including Bekker.

3. Balthasar Bekker

His Life and Work in General

Jonathan Israel echoes Luis Antonio Verney as to the four strongest protagonists against diabolical power and magic of the seventeenth century: Anthonie Van Dale, Fontenelle, Christian Thomasius, and Balthasar Bekker.[43] “Of the four, moreover, it was unquestionably Bekker who raised the greatest storm and became the prime focus of controversy.”[44] Israel deems him as “indisputably one of the foremost figures of the European Early Enlightenment.”[45] The severity of this danger was exponentially increased by the fact that Bekker worked under the guise of a Reformed preached and true Christian. Bekker believed that the new philosophy could provide positive support for Reformed theology.[46]This meant that his teaching was not explicitly anti-Christian, yet it was undermining the true faith and led down the path of atheism and skepticism, as Koelman, Mastricht and others would point out. He was ultimately declared an agent of Spinozism and ‘atheism,’ and lumped in with the other novelty theologies that deviated from orthodox belief.[47] Bekker began his studies at Groningen in the early 1650s when the conflict between Cartesianism and anti-Cartesianism first began to shake the university. Israel notes that Bekker desired to be seen by others as a cutting-edge intellectual, which made Cartesianism very attractive for him. He would soon become a fervent Cartesian, even while he began his career as a preacher in the Reformed church.[48] However, he encountered heavy opposition from his ecclesiastical colleagues in Friesland and so transferred to a rural church in Holland in 1674. During this time he recounts a long discussion that he had with Spinoza. “This encounter,” writes Israel, “reflected no liking for Spinoza’s philosophy but rather intellectual commitment and a desire to be at the forefront.”[49] Though as we noted earlier, while Bekker formally rejected the influence of Spinoza on his own thought, this was more of a façade. In 1679 he moved to Amsterdam and began his campaign against the empire of Satan, which would be the defining project of the rest of his life. There he jumped into the controversy over whether comets could be supernatural portents, which he, of course, rejected. Bekker distinguished himself as one eager to “accommodate to theology the latest findings in philosophy and science,” though he was always more willing to sacrifice the former to the later.[50] His real life “mission was to disenchant the world.”[51]

Betoverde Weereld

Bekker began his magnum opus, the Betoverde Weereld (The World Bewitched) in the late 1680s. It consisted of four volumes and would have a major influence not only in the Netherlands, but internationally.[52] The material issue was that of the relationship between spirits and corporal bodies and the doctrine of Satan, whether he was real or merely symbolic. But underlying all of this was the more foundational issue of the relationship between Scripture and philosophy, and whether philosophy must submit to Scripture or Scripture to philosophy. Book I provides an historical survey of views on the supernatural, including spirits and demons. Bekker argues that the Jews, early Christians, and Church Fathers commandeered the distinctly pagan notion of magic and spirits, which was otherwise foreign to Christianity. He then observes that this paganism was exponentially worsened by the Medieval church, which led to deep-rooted superstition regarding the devil and witches and speculation over trite matters regarding angels. While Bekker believed the Reformation restored some sanity to the church in these matters, it did not, in his view, fully exorcise the basically pagan infiltration of the supernatural into Christianity.[53] In Books II-IV he “expounds his philosophical and Scriptural objections to received ideas about magic, Satan, spirits, and witchcraft.”[54]While he claimed to believe whatever is stated clearly in Scripture, his exegetical method indebted to Spinoza and his Cartesian presuppositions, lead him to distinct conclusions that were really opposed to Scripture, as Mastricht will demonstrate.

What he denied was the near universal conviction that Satan, demons, or any spirits can, through spells, possession, bewitchment, or any magical device, alter the normal workings of nature’s laws and influence men’s lives. Sticking rigidly to Descartes’ dichotomy of ‘thought’ and ‘extension,’ he claims their being distinct substances precludes all interaction between the two, so that evil spirits, the essence of which is ‘thought,’ can no more influence bodies than bodies can spirits. Contact between disembodied spirits and humans is completely impossible.[55]

Bekker did believe that God was able to change the course of nature and effect the lives of men, being neither thought (spirit) nor extension (body), for he preceded and transcended all substance. In Book II he disproves various interpretations of Scripture passages that have been garnered in support of the notion that Satan can influence men. His basic exegetical approach was to demonstrate that every such passage that speaks of the intervention of the devil in the lives of men in Scripture was “purely figurative.”[56] Satan, according to Bekker, could not have become a serpent to tempt Eve, nor appear in the wilderness to tempt Christ. Bekker goes on to argue that Satan has actually been chained by God in hell so that he remains completely powerless to effect anything on earth. These passages will be addressed by Mastricht in his treatise against Bekker. In Book III he denies the possibility of men making deals with the devil, which would then exclude all witchcraft, spells, exorcisms, or magic of any kind. The supernatural wonders worked by Pharaoh’s magicians in Scripture accordingly became purely figurative—the common hermeneutic principle utilized to rid Scripture of any teaching on the real interaction of spirits and bodies, the Devil and men. In the final book, Book IV, he “examines a vast catalogue of supposedly attested cases of witchcraft, possession, exorcism, haunted places, soothsaying, and apparitions, showing mankind’s inherent proneness to attribute exceptional events for which a natural explanation is lacking to supernatural forces, and the unfortunate consequences of our doing so.”[57] He then states that it is the Christian duty of the Churches, schools, and courts to insure that men no longer believe magic exists, that the world be disenchanted.

4. Petrus van Mastricht, Ad Verum Clariss. D. Balthasaren Beckerum

Overview of Mastricht’s Fourfold Approach to Theology: Exegesis, Doctrine, Elenctics, Praxis 

Neele observes that in each of the loci of his Theoretica-practica theologia, Mastricht organizes his thoughts into four parts: exegesis, doctrine, elenctics, and ‘pars practica.’[58] This same approach is found in his Ad Verum Clariss. D. Balthasaren Beckerum. While his work addressing Bekker is primarily polemical in nature, this fourfold approach to theology structures the document. In sections XX–XXIX, Mastricht expounds and vindicates Scripture passages that teach the real and historical operation of Satan and spirits in the world and upon man. He also addresses the proper relation of Scripture and Philosophy. In sections XXX–XXXVII, the doctrine of Satan is stated in contrast to Bekker’s formulation. This then leads to a lengthy polemical section, in which the doctrine is defended against possible objections and apparent contradictions with other doctrines (XXXVIII–LVIII). Mastricht then turns to the offense to show the contradictions of Bekker’s position (LIX–LXVII). He finally concludes with a practical concern for the church, addressing the matter of worship and piety (LXVIII–XCV).

Scripture and Exegesis (XIX–XXIX)

As was observed earlier, Bekker, in Book II of Betoverde Weereld, looks to undermine various passages of Scripture which have been used to affirm the interaction and influence of the Devil on men by understanding them as purely figurative. Mastricht makes direct mention of this book and its underlying problem in section XIX. Before looking at specific passages, Mastricht states, Interim tibi plurima objucis Scripturae testimonia, utriusque Instrumenti, quibus, Angelis verae operationes asseruntur. He then notes the positive activity of the angels in announcing to Abraham the future birth of his son, Isaac (Gen. 18:10) and to Mary the birth of Jesus (Luke 1). Scripture also records angels announcing the birth of Christ to the shepherds (Luke 2:8-14) and his resurrection to the disciples at the end of each gospel, as well as his ascension (Acts 1:10-11). Mastricht notes the positive role of the angels in rescuing Lot from the destruction of Sodom (Gen. 19), Daniel from the lion’s den (Dan. 5), and the apostles from prison (Acts 5:19; 12:7). Angels are also said to accompany Christ when he comes again (Matt 25:31; 1 Thess. 4:16; 2 Thess. 1:7; Heb. 1:14). So, says, Mastricht, et quae sunt hujus generis fexcenta alia. If spirits are mere thoughts, as Bekker proposed, then how can they have this influence upon the world, as Scripture ascribes to them: quia, ceu spiritus, non sint nisi merae cogitationes, quibus non competant operationes ad extra.[59] These cannot be mere figments of man’s imagination, as Bekker argued.[60] Mastricht will next take up more specific passages in order to vindicate them against Bekker who would read them as purely symbolic or figurative.

 Vindication of Scripture Passages

The main question of section XX is whether evil spirits, after the primal temptation, still work in humans? Bekker, Mastricht notes, has consigned every evil spirit to chains in hell so that they can no longer be at work in the world. Whereas Bekker has no place in Scripture to maintain this position, Mastricht claims many (infinita) places for his position. He then appeals to the Classis on the basis that Bekker ultimately makes God out to be a liar who would fool the common person by accommodating his revelation to their error and false ideas. He writes,

Dic tibi quaeso Clariss. per tuam conscientiam si daremus quod non facimus Deum in negotiis naturalibus levioris momenti se quandoque componere ad erroneam vulgi opinionem num tibi persuadere possis ad unum omnes Prophetas, Apostolos, ipsumque Servatorem circa errorem tanti momenti per quem tibi Scriptura non potest esse verbum Dei per quem tibi Scriptura non potest non potest esse nec Jehova Deus nec Christus Messias…

Following this general critique, he takes up in section XII, 2 Peter 2:4, which Bekker appeals to in order to affirm that the devils and evil spirits are currently chained in hell and so incapable of being at work in men. Mastricht affirms that the devils are damned to eternal prison, but he denies that they should no more deceive at present because their sentence at present does not limit them to a specific place since they wander in chains (velut in catenis vagetur). However, it is true that they cannot escape their sentence to aeternae condemnationi. Next in section XXII Mastricht considers the temptation narrative in Genesis 3 to vindicate it against Bekker who does not read it as historical. He makes the point that Scripture does not say that Satan deceived through or by means of a serpent, but that the serpent who deceived esse satanamunder the providence of God. Mastricht utilizes the Reformed principle of Scripture interpreting Scripture and appeals to Revelation 12:9 to support this reading of Genesis 3, as well as contrasting it with the account of Balaam’s donkey. Mastricht concludes that Bekker’s interpretation has two main problems: (1) it destroys the factuality of the temptation and (2) paves the way for skepticism and atheism. He makes a similar argument in the vindication of the historical nature of Christ’s temptation by the devil in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1-12; Mark. 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-14) in section XXIII. Mastricht argues that if you say the devil truly tempted Christ, then you must be able to say that he was also at work in the first temptation. But Bekker says that they are not to be understood as literal (non omnia inquis ad literam hic sunt intelligendae). Again, Mastricht charges this interpretation as leading to skepticism and atheism: Quo tandem ista sese exoneraunt, nisi in Scepticismum & Atheismum? In section XXIV Mastricht seeks to vindicate Jude 9 from Bekker’s interpretation that does violence to the text. He does not see a problem with this passage if one simply learned to, first, believe the Scriptures, second, overturn ratiocinations& omnem sublimitatem,and third, have their mind captive to the obedience of Christ. He refers to 2 Cor. 10:4-5, “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…” In section XXV he considers the account of Satan inciting David to take a census, which was punished by the Lord, in 1 Chronicles 21:1. How does this relate, he asks, to 2 Samuel 24:1 where it is said that not Satan, but the Lord incited David? Mastricht answers this apparent contradiction by stating the simple point that the way in which God and Satan cause the same even can differ. God is the efficient cause and wisely permits it, while Satan is the perpetrator (idem diverso sensu possee tribui, & Deo & satanae: Deo, ut causae efficaciter & sapientissime permittentidirigentique; & satanae, ut pessime perpetranti). He then takes up the vindication of Job 1:11 in section XXVI. He sees a good argument for evil spirits conversing with men in 1 Samuel 28 and Acts 16:16. He then takes up Bekker’s objection to Satan being granted permission by the Lord to inflict Job with dirissmus calamitatibus and for Job to have been declared by the Lord to be in Satan’s hand (Job 1:12; 2:6). His basic argument again uses Scripture to interpret Scripture, appealing to Psalm 37:37. He also appeals to the analogia vel fidei and the context (vel contextus), and utilizes the original languages. He again notes how this passage does not coincide with Bekker’s point that Satan is chained in hell so that he cannot roam the earth. Mastricht affirms that while Satan does not operate outside the power, knowledge, and providence of God, he does still in fact operate nonetheless. So far Mastricht has shown that Scripture clearly teaches the activity of Satan and evil spirits in the world after the first temptation. He summarizes: hactenus sinfulis militavimus Scripturae testimoniis, & expugnavimus, satanam vere seduxisse Protoplaftos, tentasse Christum, dimicasse cum Michaele, incitasse Davidem, ut Israelem numeraret, Jobum exagitasse, confestis in eum calamitatibus; dimicasse exagitasse congestis in eum. In section XXVII, he adds to this the manifold teaching of Scripture about Satan and devils, including their nature (indole) in 2 Cor. 11:3; Rev. 11:24; John 8:44; strength or power (viribus) in Acts 26:18; and business or activities (negotio). The third is described in general in 2 Thess. 2:9. In addition, Satan is said to take away the word in Mark 4:15. In 2 Cor. 7:5; 1 Cor 2:10; Rev. 12:9, 10 he is said to accuse. There is also his activity mentioned in Luke 22:31; 22:3; John 13:17; Acts 5:3; 1 Thess. 2:18; Rev. 2:9, 13. Scripture also includes Satan’s mode of agency (agendi modo) in 2 Cor. 11:14 as he disguises himself as an angel of light. He is also presently captured (captivus) in Rev. 20:7 and nearing his destruction (de appropinquante ejus exitio) according to Luke 11:18; Rom. 16:20; Matt. 25:41; Rev. 20:10. Having considered all those passages of Scripture that have now been vindicated, Mastricht says that we are to be convinced that Satan continues to operate in humans and that we must acknowledge snakes and witches (Pythonibus & Pythonissis), the angel Satan (Angelis satanae), the possessed (de energumenis), evil spirits (malignis spiritibus), demonic apparitions (apparitionibus daemoniorum), the kingdom of Satan (regno satanae), kingdom of darkness (regno tenebrarum), that he is the god of this world (Deus sit hujus seculi), the prince of this world (princeps hujus mundi), emperor of the dead (imperium mortis habeat), lord of the air (in aere dominetur), etc. Thus, argues Mastricht, Scripture attributes much to Satan and therefore all Christians (universali Christianismo) receive this doctrine of Satan. And for those who reject it, si Deus juvet.

Scripture and Philosophy

In section XXIX, Mastricht guards against the abuse of philosophy (cavendum ab abusu Philosophiae) that would otherwise do violence to the Scriptures and theology. He rhetorically asks, if there is no passage in Scripture that affirms Satan is no longer active with men after the primal temptation, and if the common consensus of all Christians is that he is still at work, then what can possibly be Bekker’s objection against it? In short, his objection cannot be based on Scripture or the analogia fidei. Bekker is opposed to the totality of Scripture (adversus totam Scriptram) and not only the general knowledge of the Church, but also the sense of the world (mundi sensum). So Van Mastricht asks, Cum igitur Scriptura, sicut demonstravimus, non potuerit; quid potuit, si non Philosophia? The objection does not arise from Scripture, but from an a priori commitment to alien philosophical system. In other words, his theological conclusions are formed by a more basic philosophy, not revelation. Quae doceat, spiritum non operari extra se? Van Mastricht points out that Bekker says in the preface to his first book that he rejects the operation of spirits in humans ex Philosophia agnosceres. Van Mastricht points out that in most controversial heads, Scripture is said to err because his thought is governed by philosophy. He finds support for this in chapter 25, paragraph 15 and chapter 9, paragraph 6, and the preface to book one, as Bekker writes, te omnium minime satisfacturum his, qui Cartesii fundamenta rejiciunt, juxta quae, spiritum & corpus distinguas. Van Mastricht follows Paul in warning and guarding against deceptive teaching and philosophy that would overturn the wisdom and revelation of God in Scripture, as he cites 2 Cor. 11:1ff.; 1 Tim. 6:20; Col. 2:8; 1 Cor. 1:20; 2:4; 2 Cor. 1:12. This was true long ago with Paul and continues to be the case (quae tot olim praecipites dedit, & etiamnun dat). This knowledge is not pleasing to God that exalts itself against the knowledge of Christ (extollit adversus cognitionem Christi). He concludes by asking whether Scripture must give way or concede (cedat) to philosophy or philosophy to Scripture? “Mastricht argued that Bekker placed philosophy above Scripture and that theology was being relinquished to the axiom ‘philosophy is the infallible interpreter of Scripture.’”[61]

Scripture and his Fourfold Approach

It is telling that Mastricht begins his polemic against Bekker with the vindication of Scripture since it is for him the principium cognoscendi of his theology. With that being said, this means that his Scriptural exegesis cannot be isolated from the subsequent sections that deal with doctrine, elenctics, and praxis. As Neele observes, “Mastricht’s exegesis cannot be evaluated without reading of his doctrinal, elenctical, and practical reflections on the theological subject in which consists the interconnectedness of his fourfold approach arising from the text of Scripture a parallel approach integrally present in Calvin’s Scripture commentary.”[62]

Doctrine (XXX–XXXVII)

Mastricht next looks at the reasons Bekker proposes for why spirits cannot interact with the body. He reproduces Bekker’s logic: If the devil is a spirit, and spirit is only thought, and thought does not have contact with the body, then (working backwards), the spirit does not act on the body, and if the spirit does not act on the body, then neither does the devil who is spirit. Mastricht goes on to affirm that the devil is spirit, but he rejects the proposition that there is no communion or interaction between spirit and body and instead proposes in section XXXV that spirits can operate in and on bodies. He rejects Bekker on the basis that his proposition is owing to a Cartesian dualism that assumes that spirit is thought and body is extension. Mastricht, on the other hand, affirms the operation of spirits on bodies on the basis of Scripture. While Cartesianism cannot find a unity within creation to bring together spirit and body, the spiritual and material, and so end up with a hard dualism, Mastricht locates the unity of the two with God who ultimately brings them together.

Elenctics (XXXVIII–LXVII)

Having affirmed the doctrine that Satan can operate on and influence men even after the primal temptation in the Garden, Mastricht proceeds to defend this claim against possible objections, before going on the offense against Bekker’s teaching.

Defense (XXXVIII–LVIII)

He argues that the monarchy of God is not annulled by this teaching, nor the oneness of God denied—that is, the affirmation of the Devil does not require ditheism or Manicheanism. Furthermore, the doctrine of Satan does not impede the kingdom of Christ, nor does violence to the deity of the Son and the Spirit. It does not do harm to the authority of Scripture or to the Christian religion. The operation of Satan, states Mastricht, does not tear down the authority of Scripture. Neither does this doctrine take away from the fear of the Lord, detract from the holiness of God, harm the truthfulness or goodness of God, nor the honor of angels, nor love towards one’s neighbor. It does not teach that sins or crimes are derived from the temptation of Satan, which would relinquish man of his responsibility, nor does it lead to any sins against God or other men.

Offense (LIX–LXVII)

The teaching of Bekker, on the other hand, subverts the authority of Scripture and, on account of that, the whole Christian religion (see esp. sections LX and LXII). Bekker’s teaching also defaces the fear and reverence of God and leads to positioning people in morally dangerous positions as it encourages disregard for guarding against the temptations of the evil one. It also leads to the neglect of love toward one’s neighbor.

Summary: Doctrine Measured by Love

Overall, Mastricht’s polemic against Bekker considers whether the doctrine lends itself to love for God and for neighbor. In other words, along with its goal in worship, as will be demonstrated in the following section, there is also the practical working out of faith in love that fuels Mastricht’s thought. The affirmation of Satan is required for a true love for God and neighbor in fulfillment of the law of God.

Praxis (LXVIII–XCV)

In section LXVIII, Mastricht states that the doctrine of the devil is efficacious to the worship of God, that is, to true piety (efficax esse ad pietatem). This is so because it emphasizes or illustrates the majesty and glory of God as it sets up a diametrical contrast of him with Satan, who is opposed to every good thing. This doctrine also explains the misery of those who are under the power of the devil and, therefore, again by contrast, the joy of those who have come under the reign and rule of Christ. This doctrine further warns that the convocation of sin is demonic, which keeps God’s people from indulging themselves. It also incites God’s people to shrink back from the image of Satan and to desire conformity to the image of Christ and fellowship with the Son of God. It forbids fellowship with all evil and sin, and makes God’s people strong and resilient through trials and temptations. Finally, it provides comfort from the assaults of the devil against God’s people and his church, since they know that Satan is under the power and knowledge of God and must serve his ultimate purposes.

5. Comparing Mastricht and Bekker

Having now considered the historical context and teaching of Bekker in Betoverde Weereld, as well as the correlation of exegesis, doctrine, elenctics, and praxis in Mastricht’s polemic against him, we now turn to a comparison of the two on a couple key issues. First, as to the subject of the relationship between Scripture and philosophy, Bekker sought to subordinate Scripture to his Cartesian philosophy. This was especially evident in his exegetical and hermeneutical method that sought to conform the clear and simple teaching of Scripture on Satan and evil spirits to the dualistic spirit/body schema of Descartes. Accordingly, spirits as thought and bodies as extension could not have any interaction. This meant for Bekker that every passage in Scripture that seemed to teach their interaction must be written off as purely symbolic or figurative. Mastricht, on the other hand, subordinated philosophy to Scripture as its servant and handmaiden. Philosophy was helpful insofar as it aided in the explanation of Scripture, but was to be rejected wherever it contradicted its clear teaching. Thus, because Scripture affirms the interaction of spirits and bodies, Satan and men, so did Mastricht. Exegetically Mastricht avoids the elaborate and circus-like playing with the text that was required by Bekker to fit Scripture into his philosophy. Instead, Mastricht drew out the clear meaning and intention of the Scripture text, used Scripture to interpret Scripture as was common in the Reformed tradition, and appealed to the analogia fidei and the Reformed catechism as a catholic-Reformed Christian. We also recognize that while Bekker was playing games with philosophy under the guise of theology, Mastricht refused to join him by pitting Aristotelianism (or any other philosophy) against Bekker’s Cartesianism. Mastricht, instead, was a Reformed theologian of the highest order who was faithful to the only foundation of the true, Christian religion: the self-revelation of God in Scripture. Finally, Mastricht exhibits a heart for true piety, which is absent from the intellectualizing of Bekker. Mastricht saw that the rejection of this doctrine of Satan not only revealed a deeper epistemological issue as to the autonomous princpium cognoscendi in Bekker’s thought, but also a corrupting of piety and the true worship of God. Whereas Mastricht aimed at living to God in true piety, Bekker sought dying to man in philosophical inquisitiveness.

Conclusion

Mastricht has yet to fully penetrate the English world, which makes him ripe for further study. While past scholarship has only noted his epistemological concern with Bekker who was subordinating Scripture to philosophy, this article has attempted to draw out his equally crucial concern for piety in his polemic. All doctrine, including the doctrine of Satan and spirits, has a doxological purpose and is efficacious towards the true worship of God. Mastricht demonstrates this by wedding Scriptural exegesis, doctrine and praxis as a threefold polemical response against Bekker. The foundational error of Bekker, which stemmed from the improper formulation of the relationship between Scripture and philosophy, led to the teleological error of compromised (and, therefore, false) worship of God. Thus, far from a mere desire to maintain rigid, cold doctrinal standards, the placement of his doctrine and elenctics between Scripture and doxology in this polemical work is telling. Doctrine was not an isolated discipline for Mastrict. Rather, for him it had its beginning in the proper exegesis of Scripture—as to its simple meaning and in accordance with the analogia fidei and the Reformed confessions—and served the worship of God as its ultimate end. Theology and piety, doctrine and life were woven together in the polemical concerns of Mastricht who began with Scripture and ended with worship.

[1]Petrus van Mastricht, Ad Verum Clariss. D. Balthasaren Beckerum, S. S. Theol. Doct. Epanorthosis gratulatoria. Occasione Articulorum, quos Venerandae Classi Amstelodamensi exhibuit. die XXII Janu. 1692. Exarata a Petro van Mastrioht(Anthenium Schouten, 1692). [2]Ernst Bizer, “Reformed Orthodoxy and Cartesianism,” in Journal for Theology and the Church, vol. 2, Translating Theology into the Modern Age, ed., Robert Funk (New York, 1965); orig. “Die reformierte Orthodoxie und der Cartesianismus,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 55 (1958). [3]Ernst Bizer, “Die reformierte Orthodoxie und der Cartesianimus,” in Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche55 (1958), cited by Adriaan C. Neele, Petrus van Mastricht(1630-1706), Reformed Orthodoxy: Method and Piety, Brill’s Series in Church History vol. 35 (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2009), 7. [4]Aza Goudriaan, Reformed Orthodoxy and Philosophy, 1625-1750: Gisbertus Voetius, Petrus Van Mastricht, and Anthonius Driessen, Brill’s Series in Church History vol. 26 (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2006). [5]Ibid.,2. [6]Ibid., 5. [7]Ibid., 331. [8]Adriaan C. Neele, Petrus van Mastricht(1630-1706), Reformed Orthodoxy: Method and Piety, Brill’s Series in Church History vol. 35 (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2009). This study arises from his earlier doctoral dissertation The Art of Living to God: A Study of Method and Piety in the Theoretica-practica theologia of Petrus van Mastricht(1630-1706)(Th.D. thesis, University of Utrecht, 2005: Pretoria: Pretoria University Pres, 2005). [9]Ibid., 1. [10]Ibid., 1. [11]Also observed by Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1: Prolegomena to Theology(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 1:62. [12]Neele, Petrus van Mastricht, 285. [13]See Neele, Petrust van Mastricht, 54-55; 103; 285. [14]Neele, Petrus van Mastricht, 55. “Mastricht’s concern was, in a broader context, whether Scripture yielded to philosophy or the latter to the former. Either Scripture is the eternal, true, and authentic Word of God, held Mastricht, or the world will be overrun by philosophy, skepticism, and atheism” (ibid., 103). [15]“Accommodation—Orthodox, Socinian, and Contemporary,” Westminster Theological Journal 75 (2013): 335-48. [16]Lee cites Mastricht’sVindiciae veritatis et authoritatis Sacrae Scripturae in rebus philosophicis(Utrecht: Jonhannis Waesberge, 1655). [17]Andrew Fix, “Bekker and Spinoza,” in Disguised and Overt Spinozism Around 1700: Papers Presented at the International Colloquium, Held at Rotterdam, 5-8 October, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History vol. 69 (Brill, 1996), 29. [18]Balthasar Bekker, De philosophia cartesiana admonitio candida et sincera(Wesel: Andrea Hoogenhuysen, 1668), 10, cited by Lee, “Accommodation,” 337. See also Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld(Deventer, 1739.) 2:143-79. [19]Lee, “Accommodation,” 337. [20]For a study on Voetius and Descartes’ interactions, see Thomas Arthur McGahagan, Cartesianism in the Netherlands, 1639-1676: The New Science and the Calvinist Counter-Reformation(Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1976). His study primarily deals with Voetius and makes only a brief comment about Mastricht that he “maintained the anti-Cartesian campaign after 1676,” which goes beyond the focus of his study (p. 53). The same historical limitation is found in Theo Verbeek’s work Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesian Philosophy 1637-1650(Cardondale and Edwardville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), who accordingly makes no mention of Mastricht. For more on Voetius and Descartes, see Von Erst Bizer, “Die reformierte Orthodoxie und der Cartesianismus,” 307-29; B. Hoon Woo, “The Understanding of Gisbertus Voetius and Rene Descartes on the Relationship of Faith and Reason, and Theology and Philosophy,” Westminster Theological Journal75, no. 1 (Spr 2013): 45-63; Andreas J. Beck, Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676): Sein Theologieverständnis und seine Gotteslehre(Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007). [21]McGahagan, Cartesianism in the Netherlands, 106. [22]Ibid.,109. [23]Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 375. [24]Ibid. [25]Ibid. [26]Ibid., 376. [27]Ibid. [28]Jacobus Koelman, Wederlegging van Balthasar Bekker’s Bestoverde Wereld(Amsterdam, 1692), 118. [29]Wiep van Bunge, “Balthasar Bekker’s Cartesian Hermeneutics and the Challenge of Spinozism,” The British Journal for the History of Philosophy1 (1993): 55-79. [30]Fix, “Bekker and Spinoza,” 23. [31]Ibid., 23. [32]Ibid., 24. [33]Kort Begryp del Aldemeine Kerkelyke Historien, Zedert het Jaar 1666 daar Hornius eindigt, tot den Jare 1684 (Amsterdam, 1739), 38, cited by Fix, “Bekker and Spinoza, 24. [34]Fix, “Bekker and Spinoza,” 35. [35]Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 384. [36]Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 1:73. [37]Ibid., 1:74. [38]Ibid., 1:75. [39]Ibid. [40]Ibid., 1:77; see also Willem J. van Asselt, The Federal Theology of Johannes Cocceius (1603-1669)(Netherlands: Brill, 2001), 81-89. [41]Muller, PPRD, 1:78. [42]Bekker, Kort begrijp, cited by McGahagan, 386. For more on the relationship of Cocceianism and Cartesianism, see McGahagan, Cartesianism in the Netherlands, 365-67. [43]Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 378. [44]Ibid. [45]Ibid., 405. [46]McGahagan, Cartesianism in the Netherlands, 11. [47]Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 378. [48]Ibid. [49]Ibid. [50]Ibid. [51]Ibid., 379. [52]See Israel,Radical Reformation, 392-405; Andrew Fix, “What Happened to Balthasar Bekker in England? A Mysery in the History of Publishing,” CHRC90.4 (2010): 609-31. [53]Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 379. [54]Ibid., 380. [55]Ibid. [56]Ibid. [57]Ibid., 381. [58]Neele, Petrus van Mastricht, 139. [59]He also writes, Quantum assequor, non aliud, quam quod, ex placitis Philosophiae, spiritui, ceu merae cogitationi, non possint competere vires, quibus operetur extra se, id quod suo loco, ex prosesso discutiemus. [60]Existimant, pleraque Scripturis narrata, de Angelorum operationibus, tibi non esse nisi figmenta & imaginationes, quibus nihil minus intendatur, quam quod verba sonant. [61]Neele, Petrus van Mastricht, 55. “Mastricht’s concern was, in a broader context, whether Scripture yielded to philosophy or the latter to the former. Either Scripture is the eternal, true, and authentic Word of God, held Mastricht, or the world will be overrun by philosophy, skepticism, and atheism” (p. 103). [62]Neele, “The Reception of John Calvin’s Work by Petrus van Mastricht,” Church History and Religious Culture, 91, no. 1-2 (2011): 163.

In this episode, Rev. Andrew Compton, Assistant Professor of Old Testament Studies at Mid-America Reformed Seminary, speaks about the book of Proverbs. While many have approached Proverbs as a source for personal guidance or a collection of general life lessons, Compton argues that Proverbs possesses a canonical awareness and presents itself as the divinely inspired source of true wisdom, as well as the infallible norm for the wisdom of God, against which all other so-called “wisdom” must be tested.

Participants: Andrew Compton, Camden Bucey

Dan Ragusa speaks about Herman Bavinck’s Trinitarian theology and its implications for a revelational epistemology and worldview. Bavinck argues for an organic connection between general and special revelation, which results in a “triniformity” in both.

Links

• The Bavinck Review
• Messiah’s Reformed Fellowship (URCNA), Manhattan

Participants: Camden Bucey, Dan Ragusa

Jim Cassidy and Camden Bucey discuss theological methodology in light of Calvin’s view of natural theology. As a starting point for the discussion, they turn to Thiago M. Silva’s article, “John Calvin and the Limits of Natural Theology,” Puritan Reformed Journal 8, 2 (2016): 33-48.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy

The more I read orthodox theology, the more apparent it becomes that a fundamental tenet of Christian belief is either embraced or ignored (to various degrees) by any given author. For me, this choice or tendency on the part of the author has dramatic implications for the truth of what he or she says. That tenet is this: Scripture is the very speech of God. Most conservative Christians are quick to grant the validity of this tenet and would even affirm its centrality to our thinking about God. But I find in some orthodox theology an inconsistent working out of this tenet in the areas of metaphysics, epistemology, and language. This is not the place to pose and proliferate on theoretical questions concerning how Scripture as the speech of God influences our understanding of the nature of reality, or human thought, or language—those are oceans that even the best theologians that I have read have trouble navigating. I myself have only just begun exploring these issues and hope, by God’s grace, to write about them in the future. But I would at least suggest that confessional, orthodox theologians ask themselves a simple question when they begin thinking about a particular doctrine or body of thought in the above areas: What does God himself say about X in Scripture? Put differently, what does God’s speech tell us about his own nature and the nature of reality (metaphysics), how we acquire knowledge of him and the world that he has made (epistemology), and how our communicative behavior (language) functions to reveal both our epistemology and metaphysic? I believe that meditating on Scripture as the speech of God is absolutely critical in answering these questions. In the paragraphs that follow, I hope to explain why. To begin with, if the Bible is the speech of God, it is the highest, most trustworthy, and most illuminating authority we have—on everything. In my understanding, that is why the Reformers were so adamant about the maxim sola Scriptura. Scripture alone is sufficient for us because Scripture alone is the speech of God—the verbal revelation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the medium of human language. Given this fundamental belief of Reformed theology, I cannot help but be puzzled as to why some theologians would first turn to a “respectable” figure in the history of human thought when they begin thinking about metaphysics, epistemology, or language—especially a figure outside the Christian tradition. Plato is not God, and neither is Aristotle, or Locke, or Wittgenstein. And yet the inanity of the previous sentence does not keep some theologians from turning to such figures first (sometimes through an intermediary such as Aquinas) when questions of metaphysics arise, for instance. Now, let me be careful. I do not want to downplay the value of these thinkers and others when it comes to “big questions” of philosophy and theology. I did my undergraduate work at a liberal arts institution. I have benefited greatly from reading as widely as I can. To reaffirm the words Carl Trueman once uttered, echoing many before him, we learn a great deal not from reading only those who agree with us, but from reading those who disagree with us, those who differ from us. So, this is not a question of whether great figures in the history of human thought should be mined for their insight. It is a question of where Christian theologians are to begin. What will be their foundation for inquiry? When the question is put that way, I cannot help wondering, why do we not always begin by asking what God himself has to say about metaphysics, about the nature of human knowledge, and about language? Why not always begin with the speech of God in Scripture? The inspiring thing about these questions is that when we do begin with the speech of God, I find that the whole world—our perception of God and reality, as well as human knowledge—takes on a linguistic dimension. In other words, the very fact that the triune God speaks, as revealed in Scripture means that he has created, sustains, and governs everything by word. Should this not profoundly shape the areas of human thought mentioned above? Should we not have a metaphysic, epistemology, and view of language grounded in and shaped by God’s speech?

A Linguistic Metaphysic

Take metaphysics, for instance. Some might argue that Scripture does not have a metaphysic (at least, not a developed one as can be found in Aristotle’s Metaphysics). But I would contest this. I believe that Scripture has a metaphysic yet to be fully developed in the church, though some have certainly begun to explore this. Perhaps what people mean when they say that Scripture does not have a metaphysic is, “Scripture does not have a metaphysic that looks like other metaphysical theories in human history.” But should it? Would we not expect the speech of God to be clearly distinct—even relatively radical—as compared to merely human speech? Or perhaps people mean, “The purpose of Scripture is not to give us a view of metaphysics, but a clear exposition of what God has done in history to redeem his people.” I understand the sentiment behind that statement, but what about the words of 2 Timothy 3:16–17? “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” We would be hard pressed to teach anything—much less be “complete”—if God did not reveal the nature of reality to us. In other words, if the purpose of Scripture is to reveal what God has done in history for our salvation so that we may use this to teach others, how can we do so without having a basic view of reality that is itself dictated by God? This has led me to believe that Scripture does (in fact, must) have a metaphysic. In fact, Scripture begins to lay this out for us in the first chapter of Genesis. The very first page of Scripture tells us that all of reality came into existence by God’s speech (Gen 1), and Scripture elsewhere reminds us that all things are held together by the eternal Word of the Father (John 1:1; Col 1:17; Heb 1:3), who stood behind God’s speech at creation. Scripture’s metaphysic is thus linguistic. All things exist and draw their nature from the language, the speech, of the triune God, which governs the world and guides it to the ends that he has set for it. It is the divine voice—the Father uttering the person of his Son in the power of his Spirit—that has created, sustains, and governs all things. God’s voice has the power to bring the world into being, to sustain it, and to melt it away. As the psalmist wrote, “The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts” (Ps 46:6). This linguistic metaphysic, I believe, should be where theologians begin when they ask what something is, when they ask about the nature of reality. To ask what something is, biblically speaking, is to ask what purpose that thing serves in the spoken plan of God, as revealed in Scripture (God’s written speech). It is to ask what God’s speech has done to create it, sustain it, and direct it to his revealed ends. An apple, for instance, is not merely a piece of produce from the malus pumila tree. That might be true in the context of botanical science, but in the context of redemptive history, an apple is a life-sustaining gift from a garden-speaking God (Gen 1:12). It exists as a revelation of God’s gracious providence, as a means of sustaining God’s image-bearers as they work to steward the world (Gen 1:29). That understanding might not appear in the Latin, and it certainly will not appear in Aristotle, but that does not make it any less true—at least, not for the biblically minded theologian. To discern what something truly is, to understand the nature of the world in which we live, we must turn first to God’s speech in Scripture, not to the thought of a philosopher or even to that of another godly theologian. When we turn to God’s speech, we find a metaphysics of word. That metaphysic certainly does not resemble the neat categories of form and matter, substance and accidents, or potentiality and actuality. But, again, I ask, should it?

An Epistemology of Word

Epistemology has a similar foundation when we examine the speech of God in Scripture. Scripture reveals two things very plainly: (1) God has spoken into existence a world that everywhere “speaks” about him, i.e., offers revelation of God (Ps 19:1–3); and (2) God speaks directly with his people to guide them in paths of wisdom. The bedrock question of epistemology—what is truth and how do we know that something is true—is again based on the speech of God. God tells us what is true in his revelation. This is what Reformed theologians have come to call a revelational epistemology. It is an epistemology that stands firmly on the grounds that God speaks to reveal himself and to reveal what we can faithfully know about his world. So, when we turn to God’s speech, we find an epistemology of word. Again, let me re-emphasize my point here. I am not saying that examining the thought of philosophers is a fruitless endeavor. Despite our fundamental disagreements with them, we can learn much from reading Plato’s Gorgias, or considering satirists such as Voltaire, or rationalists such as Leibniz, or empiricists such as Locke and Hume. But biblical theologians should never begin there. That is not their foundation. Their foundation is God’s speech in Scripture.

A Christian Philosophy of Language

Lastly, language likewise must be understood according to God’s speech. This is perhaps the most profound truth I have ever encountered and something I plan on studying for the rest of my life, and well into eternity. Language—what I have in another article (“Words for Communion”) defined as communion behavior—is not a human faculty; it is a divine disposition that has been gifted, with creaturely restraints, to God’s image bearers. Language is a behavior that allows for interpersonal communion. It is a behavior that God sees fit to use in infallibly revealing himself to us throughout history. It is a behavior that God calls us to take up in prayer. It is a behavior that God calls us to take up in worship. It is, in essence, a behavior that is at the heart of God’s very being and at the heart of our being as image bearers. A Christian philosophy of language begins with the Trinity—the speaking God we encounter on every page of Scripture—and moves from there to humanity. Once more, it is not that we cannot learn something from Aristotle’s view of language (though his etymological discussions are humorous at times), or Wittgenstein’s notion of “language games,” or Austin’s speech-act theory, or Saussure’s structuralism, or Chomsky’s generative grammar, or Derrida’s deconstructionism. We can learn something from all of them even when we have deep disagreements. (I would argue here that Kenneth L. Pike’s language theory is a far more biblical and Trinitarian approach to language than most others, and is often left unconsidered in many discussions of language.) But the point is that we should not begin there. We begin with the speech of God. When we do, we find a view of language that is deeply personal and purposive according to the ends that God has declared for his creation in Scripture.

Conclusion

Now, I’m sure that to some academics what I’ve just said is a blend of naivety and fideism. Some might read this article and conclude that I am merely a biblicist who attempts to elevate himself over all other “thoughtful” human beings. I cannot control what others might think of my motives. But I know my own history. I know what is on my bookshelf and how I have been blessed by great thinkers of the past and present. I also know that my God is a God who speaks. And that truth—the tenet that Scripture is the very speech of God—takes precedence over any thought that mankind could develop. We can interact with the thoughts of men, but we should not begin there. Once we do, we are in danger of pandering to something less than divine revelation. What we end up saying will be attractive to the world, and even to much of Christian academia these days, but will it be pure? Will it be something that aligns with the speech of God? Titus 1:15 says, “Everything is pure to those whose hearts are pure.” Theological “purity,” if we might call it that, is found only in adherence to the speech of God, a speech that has made our hearts pure, and a speech that should purify our thinking as well.

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 Van Til’s thought. But I was recently surprised by Van Til while reading Common Grace and the Gospel.  There he writes:

As for “Old Princeton Theology” in the booklet on Common Grace, I have scarcely referred to it. Elsewhere I have expressed disagreement with its apologetics. In this I was following Kuyper. But never have I expressed a basic difference with its theology or its basic epistemology. (p. 177)

In context Van Til is defending himself against a number of charges leveled against him by William Masselink. Masselink asserts that Van Til disagrees with Old Princeton (among others such as Kuyper, Hepp, etc.) on the matter of epistemology. And here Van Til retorts that while he does disagree with Old Princeton on apologetics, he does not disagree “with its theology or its basic epistemology.” This surprised me, in part, because I have always thought of Van Til’s criticism of Old Princeton as a criticism—first and foremost—of its epistemology. Of special interest here is what Van Til says about Warfield’s notion of “right reason” (for example in Defense of the Faith, 350). Is Van Til’s criticism against Warfield’s notion of how the unbeliever knows, or against his approach to the unbeliever apologetically? Or is it both? I won’t try to answer that question here. But, it seems to me, it is awfully difficult to separate out Warfield’s idea of “right reason” (which seems to be an epistemological issue) from his apologetic method. Is Van Til being completely consistent with himself here? Again, I raise the question not to answer it here. It seems the answer would be complex enough to warrant a longer study. Or, at the very least, it seems to warrant further discussion. Now it’s your turn. Thoughts?

James Baird speaks with Cory Brock and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto about Friedrich Schleiermacher’s philosophical influences and their effect upon his theology. Brock and Sutanto are both PhD candidates at the University of Edinburgh, studying the theology of Herman Bavinck under Dr. James Eglinton. Cory Brock is writing a thesis on Bavinck’s appropriation of Schleiermacher. Gray Sutanto is writing on Bavinck’s theological epistemology. Together, they have co-authored an article titled, “Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Eclecticism: On Catholicity, Consciousness, and Theological Epistemology” forthcoming in The Scottish Journal of Theology.

Participants: Cory Brock, James Baird, Nathaniel Gray Sutanto

Jim Cassidy and Camden Bucey preview our 2016 Theology Conference in Austin, Texas with a conversation on nature and grace. Christians have proposed many different theologies regarding relationship of God’s creation to his Word and supernatural works. Those formulations have great implications for many other areas of theology. Listen as we gear up for another great event.

Links

• “Nature and Scripture” — Christ the Center, episode 240 with K. Scott Oliphint
• “Nature/Grace Dualism” — Christ the Center, episode 244 with Lane G. Tipton
• “God in Mathematics” a transcript of a conversation between Jerry Bowyer and Vern Poythress in Forbes.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy

French intellectual Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) was one of the most important contributors to the post-modern philosophical movement. He was also one of the most notoriously difficult philosophers to understand. In this third episode of a three-part series, Dr. Christopher Watkin helps us understand Derrida’s theology. Dr. Watkin is senior lecturer in French Studies at Monash University, Australia. Dr. Watkin received his MPhil and PhD from Cambridge. He has written multiple books on philosophy, including the Derrida installment of the Great Thinkers series, forthcoming with P&R Publishing.

Participants: Christopher Watkin, James Baird, Jonathan Brack

French intellectual Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) was one of the most important contributors to the post-modern philosophical movement. He was also one of the most notoriously difficult philosophers to understand. In this second episode of a three-part series, Dr. Christopher Watkin helps us understand Derrida’s moral philosophy. Dr. Watkin is senior lecturer in French Studies at Monash University, Australia. Dr. Watkin received his MPhil and PhD from Cambridge. He has written multiple books on philosophy, including the Derrida installment of the Great Thinkers series, forthcoming with P&R Publishing.

Participants: Christopher Watkin, James Baird, Jonathan Brack

French intellectual Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) was one of the most important contributors to the post-modern philosophical movement. He was also one of the most notoriously difficult philosophers to understand. In this first episode of a three-part series, Dr. Christopher Watkin helps us understand Derrida’s metaphysic (theory of reality). Dr. Watkin is senior lecturer in French Studies at Monash University, Australia. Dr. Watkin received his MPhil and PhD from Cambridge. He has written multiple books on philosophy, including the Derrida installment of the Great Thinkers series, forthcoming with P&R Publishing.

Participants: Christopher Watkin, James Baird, Jonathan Brack

We are pleased to welcome John Frame to the program to speak about his significant new volume, A History of Western Philosophy and Theology (P&R Publishing). Dr. Frame holds the J. D. Trimble Chair of Systematic Theology and Philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando and is the author of many books. He joined us previously to discuss his Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington, Jim Cassidy, John Frame

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 and its relationship to God’s essential being. In this episode, Sutanto details different Reformed models to answering this difficult question. He presents a robust model based on a traditional post-Reformation Reformed scholastic archetype-ectype distinction.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington, Nathaniel Gray Sutanto

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 Jenson has damaged the crucial theological distinction between Creator and creature what are the implications? First, let me identify the problem. When discussing the univocity of address between Jesus the man and the eternal God, Jenson cannot adopt the view that God is communication and man is communication, but their conversation is separate from one another. Quite the contrary, if the address of Jesus, the adopted Son, to the Father is univocal (as Jenson argued), then there must be an epistemological correspondence between the conversation of God and man. Moreover, if there is an epistemological correspondence then God is no longer hidden. Now, before critiquing this apparent problem let us explore one way in which Jenson might free himself from this difficulty. He might appeal to Kant’s theory of transcendental unity of apperception as applied to the Godhead. According to Kant, self – consciousness is not really consciousness of self; rather a self – conscious person is merely identifying his experiences as his own. So, says Jenson, “If the ‘I’ is not primally identical with the focus of consciousness, then the self is not a ‘self’-contained or ‘self’-sustaining something.”[1] Jenson applies this concept to theology. For him, “It should always have been apparent that Father, Son, and Spirit could not each be personal quite in the same way.”[2] Jenson’s conclusion is, for example, the Spirit, is then someone’s Spirit, so that he (the Spirit) cannot be an autonomous someone.[3] But the end of such reasoning is that the Persons of the Godhead are not fully self-aware.[4] That is, each person of the Triune Godhead could only identify their experiences ad extra, but not necessarily be aware of themselves individually. So, perhaps Jenson could argue that the hiddenness of God resides at just this point. However, this seems an unlikely position due to the fact that Jenson seems to follow Barth’s model of the Trinity. For Barth, the Trinity was a threefold repetition of the divine ousia. Jenson, consistent with his understanding of being as communication, interprets Barth’s view by suggesting that the doctrine of the Trinity is merely a “set of identifying descriptions” to back up the name “God.”[5] Thus, for Barth, God is a uni-conscious being. However, Jenson, sensitive to the criticism of Modalism that was leveled against Barth, asks if “we can interpret the differing personalities of the Father as the Father, and the Father as the Trinity, ontologically.”[6] His answer is alarming and consistent with Barth. He says, “All suggestions at this point must have an arbitrary air, as we again strain the limits of language.”[7] However, Jenson does attempt to strain the limits of language but in the end he can only affirm the “oneness of the one Trinity.”[8] Consequently, it appears that Kant’s theory of transcendental unity of apperception as applied to the Trinity cannot be sustained over against a God that is solely uni-conscious.[9] Therefore, we return to our original assertion. When discussing the univocity of address between the man Jesus and the eternal God, Jenson cannot adopt the view that God is communication and man is communication, but their conversation is separate from one another. To do so would ontologically and narratively sever the Son from the Father, according to Jenson’s way of thinking. Second, to posit that the univocal correspondence of conversation between the eternal God and the man Jesus would make Scripture more than what Jenson has alleged it to be. For example, if all that I have claimed thus far concerning Jenson’s understanding of language, per a cultural – linguistic model follows, then, for Jenson, the Bible is not a set of truth propositions that have cognitive correspondence between man and God. The statements found in Scripture are only ontologically true insofar as they are intra-systemically consistent. Thus, whether Jenson would admit to it or not, the Bible is reduced to pious feelings set forth in speech. Therefore, to snatch a line from Cornelius Van Til with slight modification, Jenson’s “theology is anthropology still; the ‘cool smile’ of Feuerbach may perhaps now be thought of as a sardonic grin.”[10] Though Jenson obviously believes that Scripture is simply pious feeling set forth in speech he is still unable to extricate himself from the difficulty Jesus’ univocal address creates. That is, if the man Jesus of Nazareth was adopted to be the Second Person of the Trinity, and that adoption is constituted by Jesus’ address to the Father, then Scripture must be more than pious feeling set forth in speech. Moreover, Scripture, at least the address of the Son in Scripture, must have a cognitive correspondence between man and God at that point, which pulls God out from His hiddenness and makes the unknown God knowable. Therefore, we must conclude that although Jenson’s view of God and his revolutionized analogia entis lays the groundwork for the temporalizing of God, it is the incarnation (i.e. the adoption of Christ) that wholly temporalizes God. Furthermore, it is this wholesale temporalizing of the deity that raises a final point that we will address in the final post; our being enfolded into the Triune God or as Jenson puts it, our deification.   [1] Jenson, ST 1, 121. [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid. [4] It’s interesting that Oliphint notes that ideas depicting Christ as schizophrenic have begun to surface in discussions of Christology and the incarnation. Cf. Oliphint, 287-88n14. [5] Jenson, God after God, 98. [6] Jenson, ST 1, 122, Cf. 119. Jenson also calls the Trinity “a conceptually developed and sustained insistence that God himself is identified by and with the particular plotted sequence of events that make the narrative of Israel and her Christ,” (ST 1, 60, Cf. 46). However, one must be sympathetic with Jenson’s attempt to free himself from the charge of Modalism because of the Biblical narrative itself (ST 1, 96-100). [7] Jenson, ST 1, 122. [8] Ibid., 123. [9] Obviously, Jenson could say that God, as a uni-conscious being, is not self-aware. However, this does not seem to be the direction that Jenson wants to go due to his view of God as free act. [10] Cornelius Van Til, The New Modernism: An Appraisal of the Theology of Barth and Brunner (Philadelphia, PA: P & R Publishing, 1947), 244.

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 point his theology appears no more threatening than that of Barth. However, we may not see a storm cloud in the sky but we sure can smell the rain. Therefore, we must now consider the person of Jesus Christ in Jenson’s thought. Because, according to Jenson, this is the epitome of God’s temporality and so to this we now turn. To begin, let us return for a moment to our discussion of Jenson’s revolutionized understanding of the analogia entis as it relates to his archetype ectype distinction. Again, it is vital to remember that God’s being is utterance, which is in contradistinction to “an unspoken mental form.”[1] Thus, “being itself must be such as to compel analogous use of language when evoking it.”[2] So, again we are to understand that being is an irreducible grammatical construction. Following Jenson’s logic, we may conclude that God has being in precisely the same way that creatures have being. Whatever God means by “be” is exactly what it means for Him or a creature to be.[3] “Therefore,” says Jenson, “insofar as ‘being’ says something about God or creatures, ‘being’ must after all be univocal rather than analogous.”[4] But what does Jenson mean by saying that being, as shared by God and creatures, must be univocal? Again, let us remember that for Jenson “being is conversation.”[5] But how can the conversation of God and man be shared univocally when the word of God is hidden behind the word of Scripture? In order for God’s word in conversation to be univocal with our word in conversation, and vice versa, what is attributed to one thing must be identical when attributed to another.[6] Thus, the question is; what is identical in the conversation that God shares with man? Before pursuing this question further I will demonstrate what Jenson does not mean. Jenson does not mean that the statement “God is good” and the statement “Paul is good” share a univocity, and the reason is simple. According to Jenson, “good” is not an essential element of the nature of God or man. Hence, Jenson is clearly defining the parameters of what may be considered univocal and what may not be. Therefore, the only thing that can be considered univocal between God and man is being, and being is conversation. So again, what univocal element does the conversation between God and man share? It seems that Jenson has become entangled in a difficulty. If he says that the language of God and the language of man coincide at any given point then some type of cognitive knowledge between God and man must exist, which is exactly what Jenson does not want to maintain. But if he says that God and man share univocally in being, in the sense that God is communication and man is communication but their conversation is separate from one another, then he has really said nothing about the univocity that supposedly exists between Creator and creature. Perhaps this is the position that Jenson wants to maintain, for prior to this he has maintained that our conversations are surely not identical with one another, though he would certainly disagree that this univocity says nothing about God’s relationship to man. However, Jenson’s view of analogy, as applied to the incarnation, brings a new dimension to the discussion. Jenson begins his discussion of the Persons of the Godhead by affirming an adoptionist Christology. Thus, Jesus of Nazareth was the adopted Son of God. He became what He was not.[7] Jenson claims that the Nazarene was merely a man as set forth in the narrative of Scripture. Moreover, this man from Nazareth was adopted to be the eternal Son of God. But what constitutes the adoption of Jesus? For Jenson, “Primally, it denotes the claim Jesus makes for himself in addressing God as Father.”[8] In fact, posits Jenson, “This Son is an eternally divine Son only in and by this relation” of address.[9] So, for Jenson, the adoption of Christ is established in the univocal address of the Son to God as Father. Let me say it another way. The utterance of Jesus, the man from Nazareth, addresses the Father, and both man and God understood that conversation in a univocal manner. This appears to create a difficulty for Jenson but he puts off answering the crucial point for the time being. He says, “When trinitarian reflection recognizes the Son as an eternal divine Son, a question will indeed arise about the relation of his divine identity to his reality as creature, but this is a question of secondary reflection, whose systematic place is further on.”[10] However, this particular topic is not taken up again. Jenson does deal with pre-existence in light of the birth of Christ, but the notion of the univocal address that constitutes Sonship does not appear again. Yet, the relation of the Son’s “divine identity to His reality as a creature” is no secondary matter, especially as it relates to the univocal relationship of being between God and man. It is at this very point that Jenson can no longer maintain his distinction between Creator and creature. In our next post we will flesh this out.   [1] Jenson, ST II, 38. [2] Ibid., 37. [3] Ibid., 38. [4] Ibid. Following Thomas, “being,” says Jenson, “used simultaneously of God and creatures must, as we use it, mean in the case of God ‘first archetypical causation of created being’ and in the case of creatures just ‘being.’” [5] Ibid., 49. [6]Oliphint, Reasons {for Faith} (Phillipsburg, NJ: P& R Publishing, 2006), 98. [7] For Jenson there is no pre-existence of the Son in any traditional sense, Cf. Jenson, ST 1, 141. [8] Jenson, ST 1, 77. [9] Ibid, emphasis mine. [10] Ibid., 78.

Dr. Nathan Shannon, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Torch Trinity Graduate University in Seoul, Korea, talks with us about his new book, Shalom and the Ethics of Belief: Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Theory of Situated Rationality. Dr. Shannon is joined by Nathan Sasser, PhD student in philosophy at the University of South Carolina.

Participants: Jared Oliphint, Nate Shannon, Nathan Sasser

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 use it without doing harm.”[1] The relationship of Christian theology to philosophy is a complicated subject. Both disciplines seek to answer the most significant of questions; questions regarding the nature of meaning, of life, value and ultimate reality, thus rendering the interaction of the two inevitable. Defining the precise character of that interaction, however, is the debated topic. More specifically, one must ask these questions: is Christianity more symbiotically connected to a particular existing philosophy, or is it indifferent to them such that a Christian theologian is free to adopt whichever philosophy he finds useful as long as it doesn’t contradict the main theological and soteriological content of the faith? Should Christianity be tethered to a philosophy at all—doesn’t Christianity provide a full-orbed alternative, as Bavinck says, with the capacity to fashion for herself her own philosophy, providing from its own internal resources a prescribed epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics? These questions control the history of the discussion, and thus three answers begin to emerge in answer to those questions. The first option argues that Christianity not only requires a philosophical inheritance, but also that it is more organically tied to particular philosophies over others. One can trace this position back to as early as the 2^nd century apologist, Justin Martyr, who argued that Christianity was the true philosophy, superior to but substantially in continuity with Platonism.[2] Likewise, contemporary examples of this kind of position abound. J.P. Moreland and Charles Taliaferro, to show a couple of cases, argue that Christianity ought to stand on “first philosophy,” which, for them, entails the validity of beginning with first-person commonsense intuitions that are justified prior to any argumentation.[3] This position claims that the epistemological priority of first-person phenomenology and the adoption of Common Sense Realism isn’t just an option that Christians are free to take, but rather that it is the philosophy that ought to be wedded to the Christian worldview. The claim also often involves the belief that Christian special revelation, the Bible, prescribes no explicit philosophy for Christians to adopt, and it is the task of reason to fill this lacuna. Reason, in turn, is normally associated with the category of general revelation: Special revelation tells us theological truths, and reason, as a function of general revelation, provides the broader metaphysical and epistemological framework that confronts the truths of special revelation. Here reason and Scripture play as dual authorities in two respective realms. The second option agrees with the first that it is the role of reason to discern a philosophy which complements that which is found in special revelation, but is indifferent to which philosophy fits Christianity best. Though some accounts of philosophy can be ruled out with urgency, by and large under certain restrictions, the philosophical position one adopts on, say, the question of knowledge is an open one. One representative of this sort of position is Paul Helm, who argues that, relative to epistemology and Reformed orthodoxy, “any epistemology that [is consistent with Scripture] warrants uses of our senses and intellect, and any account of such a warrant that is not at odds with reliance upon the senses and intellect, will do.”[4] So,

. . . though we may rely proximately on some philosophy, such as Scottish Common Sense Realism, the epistemology of the Stoics, or of Aristotle, or of modern externalism, for the articulating and expressing of epistemological realism presupposed in Scripture, ultimately our reason for endorsing it (apart from its indispensability in life) is that though there is no revealed epistemology, some account is presupposed or implied in Scripture itself, in its testimony to the objectivity of the created order, including human writings, and their success in being able to gather reliable information from such sources.[5]

Helm himself ultimately endorses a form of realism, but allows, also, the possibility of Christianity identifying itself with versions of idealism, commending both Jonathan Edwards and Robert Adams in this regard as viable options.[6] Again, a dualism is assumed: reason has the freedom to construct and select an existing philosophy, because Christian special revelation, as far as Helm is concerned, says nothing about epistemology or metaphysics per se. The difference here, from the first position, is that no particular philosophy, whether realism or idealism, has a more organic connection to Christianity, so long as the philosophy in question warrants the use of our intellect, and conceives of external reality as epistemically accessible. The third option maintains that Christianity possesses a complete alternative. Though Christianity may plunder other philosophies for tools and insights, and though Christianity may pose answers that show a formal similarity with other philosophies, Christianity has the sufficient internal resources for the construction of a complete worldview. This position, thus, takes shape in two ways. The first holds that because Christianity provides a unique worldview that cannot subsume alternate philosophies without compromising its substance, Christian theology must coin new conceptual terms and tools in order to convey its content. T.F. Torrance, for example, holds to this position:

Knowledge of new realities or events calls for correspondingly new ways of thinking and speaking, in which new concepts and terms have to be coined, or in which ordinary forms of thought and speech have to be stretched, adapted and refined and to make them appropriate to the new realities to which they are intended to refer.[7]

Coupled with the above positive prescription is a negative assessment of Thomas Aquinas, who, in Torrance’s view, has a position “in which the doctrine of the One God was divided from the doctrine of the Triune God, as though the doctrine of the One God could be set out rationally by itself, while the doctrine of the Triune God could be accepted only on the ground of divine revelation.”[8] Torrance critiques that strand of Christian-theism which holds that Aristotelian realism is somehow closer to Christianity than other forms of philosophy, as if a continuum exists between the two. For Torrance, Christian theology deals with a distinct subject matter—a subject matter that finds its ground, authority, and intelligibility on its own terms. Cornelius Van Til coincidentally echoes this kind of position. In his critique of Bavinck, he endorses the position that only one principium must sustain all of the sciences, the principium cognoscendi of God’s revelation. So, “[I]t is difficult to see how dogmatics is to live by one principle if it is not the same principle that is to guide or thinking both in theology and in other science . . . we shall have to apply that principle when we work out an epistemology no less than when we are engaged in dogmatics proper.”[9] As an implication, in Van Til’s view, no “amount of trimming” can bring the substantial principles of Aristotelianism (or Idealism) “into shape for Christian use.”[10] Hence, Christian-theism forms a whole unit, not a composite of an alien philosophy and a set of theological propositions. Nonetheless, Van Til poses a different fashion of applying this third position. In this second way, instead of coining new terms, following the Torrancean endorsement, Van Til sees value in using existing philosophical terms and refilling them with content grounded in divine revelation. In that way, Van Til was comfortable in, say, utilizing the language of limiting concepts, or a method of implication, and other distinctly idealist terminology in order to put them into use for Christian-theism, provided that we give them sufficient redefinition. One might still wonder, however, if the decision to pour new content into old terms may render oneself unnecessarily vulnerable to misinterpretation. In an essay responding to Van Til’s theory of knowledge, Stoker critiques Van Til for his tendency to incorporate Idealist terms in his writing precisely because it might lend itself to serious misunderstandings, even while he notes that Van Til does redefine them biblically.[11] Knowledge of the history of interpretation of Van Til’s works vindicates Stoker’s concerns, Van Til has been accused of being a fundamentalist, on the one hand, and an idealist on the other hand—two mutually exclusive points of criticism.[12] The misunderstanding, of course, is because of that decision to utilize the language of a pre-existing philosophy. In any case, both Van Til and Torrance hold to a view that, I think, presents a consistent approach despite the significant theological differences between them. For the two theologians Christian-theism is a unit that justifies itself, sufficient within itself, and potent by itself. In it one encounters the true Triune God, who has the authority and capacity to inform us that which we need to know about the world. Divine revelation is thus the norming norm for the pursuit of knowledge, most directly in theology, more directly in anthropology (and thus in philosophy and history), and, perhaps, a little less directly in all the other sciences. The distinction between general and special revelation, in turn, doesn’t entail an epistemological dualism. Christianity, again, isn’t a composite hybrid, but a consistent whole and must be treated as such. So, I offer and collate here three views, at least, with regard to the relationship of philosophy to Christianity. A further question for more reflection could be this: underlying this debate is a more fundamental disagreement relative to the sufficiency of Scripture—in what way is Scripture sufficient, and how is it to be used as a norm in the fields outside the sphere of theology? Is Scripture’s referential application limited, or universal? That, perhaps, is the question to be answered. Notes [1] Herman Bavinck, “The Theology of Albert Ritschl”, The Bavinck Review 3 (Trans. John Bolt; 2012): 123. [2] Christian-theistic Platonism still persists even today, though in a different form. See, for example, Keith Yandell, “On Not Confusing Incomprehensibility and Ineffability: Carl Henry on Literal Propositional Revelation,” Trinity Journal 35.1. (2014), pp. 61-74, and “God and Propositions,” in Beyond the Control of God? Six Views on the Problem of God and Abstract Objects (ed. Paul Gould; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), pp. 21-35. [3] J.P. Moreland, “The Argument from Consciousness,” in The Rationality of Theism (ed. Paul Copan and Paul K. Moser; New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 208-210. Charles Taliaferro, The Golden Cord: A Short Book on the Secular and the Sacred (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), p. 115. [4] Paul Helm, Faith, Form and Fashion: Classical Reformed Theology and its Postmodern Critics (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2014), pp. 64-5. For his discussion on reason as a function of general revelation, and of its judicial role in “natural” matters, see pp. 57-9 [5] Helm, Faith, p. 65. (italics mine). [6] “Such idealism has certainly not been a mainstream Christian view, which is that the external world is independent of our minds, both human and divine, but sustained by the immediate power of God. However, little that Christian theology claims is straightforwardly called into question by such receptive idealism.” Helm, Faith, p. 49. See also page 49, note 9. [7] T.F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), p. 20. [8] Torrance, Christian Doctrine, 10. Whether Torrance’s contention that this form of Thomism is wholly assumed by the Post-Reformation Protestants is right, however, is debatable. [9] Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology: Prolegomena and the Doctrines of Revelation, Scripture, and God, 2^nd ed. (ed. William Edgar; Philipsburg, P&R, 2007), p. 95. Emphasis mine. [10] Van Til, An Introduction, p. 96. Van Til critiques Thomas Aquinas in a manner almost identical with Torrance when he charges Aquinas for being speculative, constructing a “half-Christian, half-Greek” position on page 98. See also Paul Maxwell, “The Formulation of Thomistic Simplicity: Mapping Aquinas’s Method for Configuring God’s Essence.” JETS 57 (2014), pp. 371-403 [11] Hendrik G. Stoker, “Reconnoitering the Theory of Knowledge of Prof. Dr. Cornelius Van Til,” in Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions on the Philosophy and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til (ed. E.R. Geehan; Philipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1971), p. 53. [12] Stoker, “Van Til’s Theory of Knowledge” 54. Later on Stoker still admits the value of utilizing and redefining philosophical categories from a Christian perspective: “Your predilection for using these terms (giving them genuinely biblical meanings) is probably a result of your intensive and extensive knowledge of the philosophy of the absolute idealists and of your conviction of the necessity to criticize them. Your use of the terms expresses accordingly a fundamentally reformative (i.e., genuinely biblical) criticism of this philosophy.” Ibid. 55.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). For centuries Christians have taken this Bible verse to teach the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Before the creation of the world, there was only God: the eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When God freely decided to create, he created ex nihilo, out of nothing. But this classical Christian doctrine leads to some perilous conclusions when taken in conjunction with Alvin Plantinga’s assertion that propositions exist necessarily. In this paper, I will exposit this problem and attempt to show that there are good reasons to think that propositions exist contingently, and that Plantinga offers no convincing reasons to think they exist necessarily. First, I will present Alvin Plantinga’s understanding of the nature of propositions and their necessary existence. Second, I will attempt to show that one cannot cogently bring together both a Plantingalian belief in the necessary existence of propositions and a classical Christian doctrine of God and creation. Third, I will elaborate a weakness of Plantinga’s argument for the necessary existence of propositions and further contend that propositions exist contingently. Finally, I will acknowledge some implications of the contingent existence of propositions. A preliminary word must be said about the philosophical method I will implement in the following paper. I take it that the goal of Christian philosophy is the acquisition of wisdom about God, the world, and humanity. I also take it that an essential component of gaining wisdom is discovering truth, and that, by the grace of God, some of the most important truths have been given to man in the “rule of faith” revealed in the Scriptures and summarized in the statements of ecumenical Christianity.^[1] Furthermore, I take it that important truths have been revealed to man through his pre-theoretical intuitions, and that it is additionally important for Christian philosophers to make philosophical systemizations that are grounded in their intuitions. However, when the latter pair (our pre-theoretical intuitions and philosophical systemizations) come into conflict with the former pair (the Scriptures and ecumenism), the latter pair must be reoriented and sometimes jettisoned. I will attempt in the following paper to examine Plantinga’s understanding of propositions with a high value for philosophical rigor and a deep devotion to the Scriptures and creeds of Christianity, but also with a strong conviction that these two paired elements of Christian philosophical investigation must be properly related. Our pre-philosophical seemings and philosophical speculations must be made subordinate to the authority of the Scriptures and their ecumenical interpretation. I think this is nothing more than to say that we Christians must philosophize by faith, and not by sight (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:7).[2]  “Necessity” in Plantinga’s Construal of Propositions Plantinga recognizes two different ways a proposition can be necessary: a proposition can be necessary with respect to its truth value, and a proposition can be necessary with respect to its exemplification of the property being existent.[3] The former has to do with modality de dicto (modality with respect to a proposition’s truth value), and the second has to do with modality de re (modality with respect to a thing’s exemplifying a property). Plantinga uses possible world semantics to further clarify the two different ways a proposition can be necessary. A possible world, according to Plantinga, is a possible maximal state of affairs, or a complete way that things could have been. We can then say that a proposition, p, is necessarily true if and only if p is true in every possible maximal state of affairs. Furthermore, a proposition, p, necessarily exists if and only if p exists in every possible maximal state of affairs. While in the former case the truth of p cannot fail to obtain in a possible world, in the latter case it is the proposition p that cannot fail to obtain in a possible world. While Plantinga does not think that all propositions are necessarily true—indeed, he thinks that some propositions are necessarily false and still others are contingently true—he does think that propositions necessarily instantiate the property being existent; he thinks all propositions exist in every possible world. Plantinga believes that propositions have many distinctive characteristics besides necessary existence, two of which are particularly significant for our discussion: their status as primary bearers of truth (and falsity) and their abstract nature.[4] For propositions to be the bearers of truth and falsity means that propositions are those items that can be true or false; they are those entities that can receive and sustain a truth value. For propositions to be abstract means that propositions are not concrete entities; at the very least, they differ in some substantial ways from material items, like the furnishings of a bedroom. Plantinga seems to take the truth-value-bearing nature of propositions for granted, without any serious argumentation. He does present one argument for both their abstract nature and their necessary existence. This argument is meant to show that, “propositions…cannot be concrete objects of any sort—at any rate, they can’t be concrete objects that do not exist necessarily.”[5] He means to demonstrate that propositions exist necessarily by establishing that their non-existence implies a contradiction. His argument can be construed in the following way: (1) Propositions do not exist. (2) If propositions do not exist, then it is true that propositions do not exist. (3) If propositions do not exist is true, then it exists. Therefore, (4) If propositions do not exist, then at least one proposition exists. Since (1) is assumed for the sake of argument, (2) and (3) seem obviously true, and (1), (2) and (3) entail the contradiction (4), Plantinga concludes (5) It is impossible for propositions not to exist (i.e., propositions necessarily exist). Plantinga uses this argument for the necessary existence of propositions to prove that propositions cannot be contingent concrete objects (like human mental acts).[6] The Proposition Problem It seems that a Plantingalian belief in the necessary existence of propositions comes into conflict with some basic tenets of the Christian faith. Call this the Proposition Problem. Before we draw out the Proposition Problem in the form of a reductio, we must first make the ecumenical definition of creation ex nihilo more explicit. Put simply, the ecumenical doctrine of creation ex nihilo asserts that God freely created out of nothing. God created out of nothing because only God existed before he created, and God freely created because God had no compulsion to create beyond his own free choice.[7] As Colin E. Gunton points out, the Athanasian understanding of God and creation ratified at the first Council of Constantinople affirms on the basis of Genesis 1:1 that there is “an absolute ontological distinction between creator and creature” such that for any thing, that thing is either God or God’s creature.[8] Furthermore, while those at the first Council of Constantinople affirmed that God necessarily exists, they equally affirmed that the “creation is contingent.”[9] For our purposes, we can say that the ecumenical doctrine of creation ex nihilo implies (6) Necessarily, something exists in every possible world if and only if it is numerically identical with God. An initial problem herein is manifest: the conjunction of a Plantingalian belief in the necessary existence of propositions with the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo leads to a series of implications that come into crass conflict with a traditional Christian doctrine of God. Consider the following reductio: (6) Necessarily, something exists in every possible world if and only if it is numerically identical with God (from the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo). (7) 7 + 5 = 12 exists in every possible world (from the Plantingalian affirmation of the necessary existence of propositions). Therefore, (8) 7 + 5 = 12 is numerically identical with God. The above argument shows that if 7 + 5 = 12 necessarily exists, and if the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo is true, then the proposition 7 + 5 = 12 is numerically identical with God. Given the Indiscernibility of Identicals (“a principle than which none sounder can be conceived”[10]), any property that God has, the proposition 7 + 5 = 12 has also, and vice versa. If (8) is true, not only would 7 + 5 = 12 be responsible for my redemption and worthy of worship, but God would also be a mathematical truth. This seems to me to be patently false. The Lord God is the Redeemer of Israel, not 7 + 5 = 12 or any other proposition for that matter. 7 + 5 = 12 is necessarily true, not God. Moreover, if all propositions exist necessarily in the way Plantinga claims, then we can replace 7 + 5 = 12 in (7) and (8) with any other proposition, including the contradiction p & ~p. If Plantinga is right, not only would God be a mathematical truth, he would also violate of the law of non-contradiction. It is clearly absurd, then, to numerically identify God with any proposition, and much more so to numerically identify God with propositions in general. If we know anything from Scripture and our commonsense intuitions, it is that God and propositions cannot be the same thing.[11] Since creation ex nihilo—including its affirmation of (6)—is a vital ecumenical truth grounded in Scripture that underpins the Christian faith,[12] the only way to avoid the above reductio in an orthodox fashion is to deny that propositions exist necessarily. Propositions, therefore, do not exist in every possible world; (7) is false, and it would be false if we replaced “7 + 5 = 12” with any other proposition. But even if propositions do not exist in every possible world, they clearly exist in some possible worlds, and they certainly exist in this possible world—in the actual world.[13] Since propositions exist in some possible worlds but not all possible worlds, they exist contingently. We can borrow some Athanasian language and conclude that propositions are God’s creatures, distinct from him, freely brought into existence by God’s divine power. Or, in other words, propositions are created objects that exist contingently and are not numerically identical with God. A Respondeo to Plantinga’s Argument for the Necessary Existence of Propositions What about Plantinga’s argument that the possible non-existence of propositions implies a contradiction? There is a vital weakness in Plantinga’s argument that significantly reduces the force of his reasoning: (2) is false. If propositions do not exist, then it is neither true nor false that propositions do not exist. This retort at first might seem to violate the law of bivalence, which states that for any proposition, p, p is either true or false. Upon closer inspection, this response to Plantinga leaves bivalence intact. In the words of Toner: “Certainly we insist on bivalence for propositions that exist. But if there is no proposition there at all, why scruple at denying ‘it’ a truth value?”^[14] Surely, if p exists it must be either true or false—but surely it is not the case that p must be either true or false if p does not exist. It seems that Plantinga’s argument for the necessary existence of propositions is a subtle case of question-begging. This can be seen by further examining Plantinga’s position on actualism and the de dicto/de re modal distinction. Plantinga is a champion of serious actualism: “the view that necessarily no object has a property in a world in which it does not exist.”[15] Plantinga has also argued that “modality de dicto [is] a special case of modality de re”; this is because truth and falsity are properties of propositions.[16] Plantinga’s own work in the metaphysics of modality implies that non-existent propositions cannot be either true or false because non-existent objects cannot have properties, and truth and falsity are properties of propositions. The consequent of (2) is not entailed by the antecedent; it denies the antecedent. By asserting (2) Plantinga has merely assumed that propositions exist in every possible world, instead of proved it. There is a possibility that I have misconstrued Plantinga’s argument for the necessary existence of propositions. Instead of a formal argument intended to establish that the possible non-existence of propositions implies a contradiction, Plantinga may intend to point out that it is counterintuitive to affirm that propositions could not exist. On this interpretation, Plantinga is arguing that it seems wrong to affirm that it is possible for propositions not to exist. If this is indeed the proper representation of Plantinga’s argument, then the easy response to Plantinga is that we do not share his intuition, and, furthermore, that what seems true to him by intuition comes into frightful conflict with the Christian doctrine of God and creation. We are safe to conclude, therefore, that neither reading of Plantinga’s argument for the necessary existence of propositions causes problems for Christians who wish to affirm that propositions are created, contingent entities. Three Implications of the Contingent Existence of Propositions There are a series of implications for many of the philosophical disciplines that result if propositions are created, contingently existent realities. Take philosophy of religion, for example. If propositions did not exist before God created, then it was not true that God exists before he created. This implication for philosophy of religion is not as radical as one might initially expect. Technically we can truly affirm that God existed before he created now that propositions have been created by God, even though no truth-value bearers (i.e., propositions) existed that corresponded to God’s existent reality before he created. Sure, if propositions did not exist before God created, then before God created it was not true that God exists—but neither was it false. This seems to be no serious issue, however. The basic content of the Christian doctrine of God still remains, even if we must change its articulation when speaking philosophically.[17] Another implication for philosophy of religion stemming from the created and contingent existence of propositions is in regard to the nature of God’s knowledge. Theology proper typically calls God’s self-knowledge his necessary knowledge.[18] God’s self-knowledge is necessary because God exists necessarily, and he has his self-knowledge essentially; in every possible world in which God exists he knows himself, and since God exists in every possible world, he knows himself in every possible world. However, if propositions do not necessarily exist, then it follows that God’s necessary knowledge is not necessarily propositional. God did not know himself propositionally before he created, and he never would have if he did not create. Moreover, if God is immutable (as I think he is) such that his self-knowledge is the same in nature across every possible world, then his self-knowledge is essentially non-propositional. We might be tempted to think that it limits or reduces the dignity of God’s intellect for him to lack propositional self-knowledge. But that would be the case only if propositional self-knowledge is required for intellectual dignity, and there is no obvious reason to think that it is. In fact, since God is essentially supremely glorious (cf. Romans 11:36), if he lacked propositional self-knowledge, we should conclude that propositional self-knowledge is not required for intellectual dignity. Finally, I would like to note an entailment of the contingent existence of propositions for modal logic. If all propositions exist contingently, including necessarily true propositions, then it is not true that whatever is necessary is necessarily necessary; in other words, the formal modal logic systems S4 and S5 are incorrect. Necessarily true propositions are not true in every possible world; they are only true in those possible worlds in which they exist. Many metaphysicians might follow Plantinga[19] by finding this implication the most startling, and it may indeed be. A number of advances in metaphysics and other disciplines have been made by philosophers implementing modal logics and possible worlds semantics that depend on S4 and S5 models. Nonetheless, it seems to me better to piously deny S4 and S5 (and be satisfied with the weaker modal system T), than to deny creation ex nihilo or embrace the absurdity of (8). Whatever S4 and S5 appear to add to our understanding of modality and other philosophical matters, they are misguided. The Christian must accept philosophic godliness over modal ingenuity.[20] Conclusion In this paper I have exposited Plantinga’s understanding of propositions. What I have found is that Plantinga’s affirmation of the necessary existence of propositions does not jibe well with an orthodox Christian conception of God and creation. The result is that we must deny that propositions necessarily exist—lest we confuse them with God—and instead affirm that they exist contingently as created entities. To assert that propositions exist contingently does require that a slew of changes be made to commonly held positions on philosophical and modal matters, but all of these changes seem to me quite worth the reward of an orthodox and pious conception of God and creation. Notes [1] Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 34–46. [2] The point of this paragraph is not that Christian philosophers must deny some truths in favor of others, but rather that we should have an incomparably larger sum of trust in Scripture and its ecumenical interpretation than in our intuitive seemings (cf. Romans 1:18; 1 Corinthians 2:2; Galatians 1:6-10; Colossians 2:2–3, 2:8; 1 Peter 1:10–11). [3] Plantinga’s understanding of propositions and modality can be found in his book, The Nature of Necessity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), and summarized by one of his followers in Kenneth Konyndyk, Introductory Modal Logic (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986). [4] Alvin Plantinga, “Why Proposition Cannot Be Concrete,” in Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality, ed. Matthew Davidson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 229. This article originally appeared in Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 117–120. [5] Plantinga, “Propositions,” 229. Emphasis in original. [6] See ibid., 229–233. See also Patrick Toner, “Contingently Existing Propositions?,” Philosophical Studies 129 (2006), 422–423 for a nice summary of Plantinga’s argument. [7] See Torrance, Trinitarian Faith, 76–109. See also Colin E. Gunton, The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 65-96 and Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2004), 425–457. This is the understanding of creation ex nihilo first ratified by the Constantinopolitan theologians, although the idea of creation ex nihilo has its roots in the intertestamental period (Torrance, Trinitarian Faith, 95–98). The Reformational theologians continued the Constantinopolitan theological tradition by adopting this ecumenical understanding of creation ex nihilo (See Herman Bavinck, God and Creation [vol. 2 of Reformed Dogmatics; 4 vols.; ed. John Bolt; trans. John Vriend; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008], 416–420 and John Murray, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Creation,” Westminster Theological Journal 17, no. 1 [1954]: 21–430). Not only does creation ex nihilo (as defined above) have unprecedented historical impetus, there is good reason to believe it is at the heart of ecumenical Christianity. As Torrance has shown in his magisterial presentation of patristic theology, creation ex nihilo (again, as defined above) is a central article of the ecumenical “rule of faith” (Torrance, Trinitarian Faith, 96). [8] Gunton, Creator, 67. [9] Ibid. It is worth emphasizing at this point that, according to Gunton and Torrance, the Constantinopolitan theologians not only taught that created things are ontologically dependent on God, but also that since all created things owe their origin to God’s free will, created objects do not necessarily exist. [10] Alvin Plantinga, “Transworld Identity or Worldbound Individuals?,” in Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality, ed. Matthew Davidson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 75. This article originally appeared in Logic and Ontology, ed. Milton Munitz (New York: New York University Press, 1973), 193–212. [11] I am inclined to think that a similar reductio could be run if we replaced “7 + 5 = 12” with any abstracta Plantinga thinks is necessary, whether it be “numbers, properties, pure sets” or “states of affairs” (Alvin Plantinga, “Actualism and Possible Worlds,” in Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality, ed. Matthew Davidson [New York: Oxford University Press, 2003], 110. This article originally appeared in Theoria 42 [1976]: 139–160). [12] Torrance, Trinitarian Faith, 96. [13] Propositions clearly exist in this possible world for no less a reason than that this sentence itself expresses a proposition; namely, that propositions clearly exist in this possible world. [14] Toner, “Contingently Existing Propositions?,” 423. [15] Alvin Plantinga, “On Existentialism,” in Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality, ed. Matthew Davidson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 167. This article originally appeared in Philosophical Studies 44 (1983): 1–20. [16] Plantinga, “Actualism,” 110. [17] What I have suggested in this paragraph in regard to the proposition God exists can be generalized to be true of any necessarily true proposition about God. [18] See Richard A. Muller, The Divine Essence and Attributes (vol. 3 of Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725; 4 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 411–432. [19] See Plantinga, “Propositions,” 230–231. [20] See Torrance, Trinitarian Faith, 38.

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 the culmination of his warrant series, Warranted Christian Belief. Key to this analysis is Plantinga’s version of the sensus divinitatus, which is then extended to include explicitly Christian belief with three elements: The Bible, the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, and faith. Faith, for Plantinga, involves both the intellect and the will. In the book, Plantinga discusses the relationship between the intellect and the will and assesses the view of Jonathan Edwards. In this episode, Jeff Waddington argues his case that Plantinga has misconstrued Edwards. Instead of prioritizing the intellect, Waddington believes Edwards rejects a hierarchical faculty psychology.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington, Jim Cassidy

Jared Oliphint and Nathan Shannon discuss Brian Leftow’s God and Necessity (Oxford University Press). In this volume, Leftow seeks to offer a metaphysic of modality. This leads him into a discussion of necessity and possibility, truth making, God’s nature, and divine simplicity. It’s a wide-ranging title, but one that offers many important themes for consideration. Dr. Shannon has written a review of the book that will appear soon in the Westminster Theological Journal.

Participants: Jared Oliphint, Nate Shannon

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) certain propositions immediately, that is, without basing their belief on other evidential beliefs or logical inferences. Propositions like what is known must be believed, it is necessary that 2+2=4, and murder is wrong are intuitive because we find ourselves convinced of their truth simply by reflecting on them; we believe them because they seem to us to be true. In his important book, Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke argued that for something to be intuitive is “very heavy evidence.” He went on to say, “I really don’t know, in a way, what more conclusive evidence one can have about anything, ultimately speaking.” For Kripke, then, there is a definitive priority given to our intuitive seemings. Analytic philosophy has shared Kripke’s belief in the primacy of rational intuition for much of the twentieth century, and it has definitively characterized how analytic philosophers have argued for their theories of knowledge, reality, and morals. For example, in analytic epistemology philosophers design test cases to invoke intuitions in their peers that either support or undermine various analyses of knowledge. The most famous use of test cases was by Edmund Gettier in his three page article, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Arguably, the most widely accepted understanding of knowledge in the modern period was the justified-true-belief model. Knowledge was thought to be justified belief in a true proposition. Gettier, however, presented two test cases where a person has justified true belief, but does not seem to have knowledge. Gettier’s small paper was thought to be so powerful because of the way it showed that our intuitions contradict a prominent theory of knowledge. The problem for philosophers since has been to develop an analysis of knowledge that does not fall prey to critiques similar to Gettier’s. So far, a multitude of philosophers have presented accounts of knowledge only to be met by a plethora of published test cases that undermine their analyses. As a result, many philosophers are now skeptical about whether it is possible to analyze knowledge. The apparent inability of philosophers to account for the nature of knowledge has also led to skepticism about whether our intuitions are reliable indicators of the truth. This skepticism with regard to our intuitions has been additionally supported by surveys that suggest our intuitions are in some sense culturally affected. Last month I was able to attend the American Philosophical Association’s central meeting in Saint Louis, Missouri. Although it was a common theme running through many of the lectures, the question of the reliability of our intuitions was at the forefront of the secession on philosophical methodology. Studies were presented of how people from different cultures and of different genders answered philosophical questions. These studies were intended to help determine whether intuitions are universally shared or relative to particular groups of people. Maybe the only time everyone in the room came into agreement was when a participant paraphrased the following quote from philosopher, Peter van Inwagen: “There is no established body of metaphysical results. . . . In metaphysics . . . you are perfectly free to disagree with anything the acknowledged experts say.” It was clear from the discussion that those in the room thought that van Inwagen’s statement held true not only for metaphysics, but for philosophy as a whole. If we are perfectly free to disagree with anything the acknowledged philosophical experts say, then perhaps it would be best to disagree with the priority they have placed on rational intuition. Any ultimate source of evidence that allows for such widespread confusion and disagreement is clearly not doing its job. What if philosophers used Scripture as their ultimate source of evidence, and rational intuition as a subordinate source? Philosophers could then rely on the perfect Word of God to build an epistemological, metaphysical, and moral framework—like the theological framework set forth in the Westminster Confession of Faith—from which they could then address the ancient problems of philosophy. I think this is the most productive way forward for contemporary philosophy, primarily because it is the only way we can avoid being taken “captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8). I am not suggesting that Scripture is the only source of evidence that God has given to man. Rational intuition is clearly essential to everyday life and to philosophy as a discipline. What I am suggesting is that Scripture provides us with the most conclusive evidence possible, ultimately speaking, because “it is the Word of God” (WCF 1.4). Sources — The quote in paragraph three is from Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1972; reprint, 2013), 42. The quote in paragraph nine is from Peter van Inwagen, Metaphysics [Boulder: Westview Press, 1993], 13–14. Edmund Gettier’s article was originally published in Analysis 23 (1963): 121–123. I also consulted Alvin I. Goldman, “Philosophical Intuitions: Their Target, Their Source, and Their Epistemic Status,” Grazer Philosophische Studien 74 (2007): 1–26; Robert Audi, Epistemology (New York: Routledge, 2011); and William G. Lycan, “Epistemology and the Role of Intuitions,” in The Routledge Companion to Epistemology (ed. Sven Bernecker and Duncan Pritchard; New York: Routledge, 2014), 813–822.

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 constitutive manifold of reality, then how can I possess any knowledge regarding the existence of a reality external to me? Yet, for Bonhoeffer, this was not a problem but a wonderful theological advance! He wrote, “Is it merely a coincidence that the most profound German philosophy resulted in the enclosing of the all in the I?”[1]

Theological Advance

For Bonhoeffer, this enclosing of the all—even God—in the I had marvelous theological significance. Imagine how an always present God “existent only in, or for, the consciousness of human beings”[2] was far better than, say, a Barthian conception of God—a “God who ‘comes’ and never the God who ‘is there.’”[3] For Bonhoeffer, locating God in the self-consciousness meant that God “is there.” But this raises the question with which we ended our last post; namely, how does this make Christ haveable? To answer this question Bonhoeffer would have to engage in Christology. He must identify or describe this Christ who both transcends the conscious self and who is enclosed within the self. In Bonhoeffer’s Outline for a Book found in his Letters & Papers from Prison, he gives us a toe hold, “Our relation to God is not a ‘religious’ relationship to the highest, most powerful, and best being imaginable—that is not authentic transcendence…”[4] Nor, says Bonhoeffer, does the transcendence of God have anything to do with the transcendence of epistemological theory.[5] Thus, Bonhoeffer rules out traditional metaphysical and epistemological ideas of transcendence. So, what remains?

Christological Innovation

In Bonhoeffer’s earlier 1933 lectures on Christology he approached the same theological matter from a telling and unique angle. In these lectures he describes the issue of transcendence and immanence as the difference between the question of “who” and “how?”[6] According to Bonhoeffer traditional Christology has always left theologians wrongly speculating on how to fuse a metaphysical transcendent God with a finite and immanent man. Instead, Bonhoeffer shifts the Christological question from the “how” by asking “who,” to which Bonhoeffer responds, “He is the one who has really bound himself in the freedom of his existence to me.”[7] In other words, the Christ who transcends my self-consciousness has ensured his enclosure in it.

The Church to the Rescue

However, Bonhoeffer understood the problem in his theology. It was centered on self. He writes in Act and Being, “All that we have examined so far in this study was individualistically oriented.”[8] Yet Bonhoeffer contended that if his theology is solipsistic then, like idealism, it had failed.[9] But a logical question emerges. Why? If God has enclosed himself in the I, then what more do I need? Bonhoeffer had two answers. First, in his doctoral dissertation, Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer established one essential criteria for his doctrine of the Church, “every concept of community is essentially related to a concept of person.”[10] Accordingly, after having found other definitions of ecclesiology wanting Bonhoeffer writes, “for the individual to exist, ‘others’ must necessarily be there.”[11] This ethical dimension is picked up in Act and Being when Bonhoeffer says, “every member of the church may and should ‘become a Christ’ to the others.”[12] The second and more significant answer comes from Life Together written in 1936. Bonhoeffer says that the Christian needs his brother because “the Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s heart is sure.”[13] Why? Because Bonhoeffer says, “When I go to another believer to confess, I am going to God.”[14] The other believer acting on the authority of the Christ enclosed in his I is able to declare me forgiven[15] and give me certainty and assurance of having been forgiven and I am able to do the same for him. [16] Thus, for Bonhoeffer, the ecclesia extracts the individual from the potential solipsism of idealism as well as supplies me with a present and haveable Christ in my brother who is Christ pro me. Cornelius Van Til once said that you can tell a good deal about a system of theology that has been informed by Kantian philosophy. Bonhoeffer’s theology has certainly drunk deeply from the Kantian well and as a result there is more of man than God in it. The result is personally unsatisfying. However, there are those who vigorously argue that Bonhoeffer is an evangelical to whom we must listen today. In fact, some contend that Bonhoeffer experienced a conversion while in America and though he may once have been a German liberal he became an evangelical Christian. We will head in that direction next time.

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Acts and Being (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009), 80. [2] Ibid., 57. [3] Ibid., 85. [4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (NY: The Macmillan Co., 1971), 381. [5] Ibid., 282. [6] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christology (NY: Harper Collins, 1978), 30. [7] Ibid., 48. [8] Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, 113. [9] Ibid. [10] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 34. [11] Ibid., 51. [12] Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, 113. [13] Bonhoeffer, Life Together and Prayer Book of the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 32. [14] Ibid., 109. [15] Ibid., 111. [16] Ibid., 113.

Consciousness and personality are perennial topics of conversation among philosophers. But that doesn’t mean they’re topics only for the academy. These subjects touch each of us deeply, because they are at the very heart of our existence. That’s why they live in high culture, low culture, and everywhere in between. For example, Tom Stoppard’s latest play, The Hard Problem, focuses on the issue. And who can count how many literary works, films, or songs address consciousness and its relation to personality? The artists have certainly contemplated this for a while. But what about the scientists? Materialists struggle to explain features of human existence. This is an old problem even though it thrives upon the scientific and technological frontier. What is new are the means of investigation and the attitudes about “solving” the so-called problem. More and more people seem optimistic the clouds engulfing consciousness and personality might be dispelled through scientific investigation. Some scientists have suggested they’ve found the human soul. Oliver Burkeman reports that neuroscientists are starting to consider all sorts of possibilities:

Christof Koch, the chief scientific officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and a key player in the Obama administration’s multibillion-dollar initiative to map the human brain, is about as credible as neuroscientists get. But, he told me in December: “I think the earliest desire that drove me to study consciousness was that I wanted, secretly, to show myself that it couldn’t be explained scientifically. I was raised Roman Catholic, and I wanted to find a place where I could say: OK, here, God has intervened. God created souls, and put them into people.” Koch assured me that he had long ago abandoned such improbable notions. Then, not much later, and in all seriousness, he said that on the basis of his recent research he thought it wasn’t impossible that his iPhone might have feelings.

Deep down, Koch wanted there to be something more to human existence than what could be studied scientifically. While hard materialists will deny any sort of transcendent aspect of humanity, some scientists are will to speak about human spirituality. We ought to recognize that humans are body-soul unities. Reducing human existence to one or the other or separating body and soul from one another hermetically will do violence to the truth of who we are. Exploring the connection between body and soul—or the physical and the spiritual—should be of interest to us. Still, such studies are not all created equal:

Perhaps the most influential and rigorous of these early studies was the Good Friday experiment, conducted in 1962 by Walter Pahnke, a psychiatrist and minister working on a Ph.D. dissertation under Leary at Harvard. In a double-blind experiment, twenty divinity students received a capsule of white powder right before a Good Friday service at Marsh Chapel, on the Boston University campus; ten contained psilocybin, ten an active placebo (nicotinic acid). Eight of the ten students receiving psilocybin reported a mystical experience, while only one in the control group experienced a feeling of “sacredness” and a “sense of peace.” (Telling the subjects apart was not difficult, rendering the double-blind a somewhat hollow conceit: those on the placebo sat sedately in their pews while the others lay down or wandered around the chapel, muttering things like “God is everywhere” and “Oh, the glory!”) Pahnke concluded that the experiences of eight who received the psilocybin were “indistinguishable from, if not identical with,” the classic mystical experiences reported in the literature by William James, Walter Stace, and others. (Michael Pollan, “The Trip Treatment” in The New Yorker)

There you have it: spirituality can be reduced to a chain of electro-chemical reactions after all. As any apologist should know, if we have determined reality is only comprised of materiality, materiality is the only explanation for the phenomena. The “hard problems” persist. Reading accounts such as the one above might leave you rolling your eyes. But if you had to sit down and write out your own account of human existence, would it be thorough? coherent? What exactly is consciousness? How does it relate to personality? How does it relate to the physical body in particular and the world in general? Do aspects of humanity transcend the limitations of scientific inquiry? I believe that simply affirming human beings are body-soul unities created in the image of God places us far ahead of the pack. Nonetheless, unchartered waters abound. As I continue to come across investigations into human consciousness and personality, I wish Reformed Christians would write more themselves. We could use more Reformed theologians and philosophers committing their minds and energy to “hard problems” like these.

Kant’s Copernican Revolution might have been better described as a theological warhead aimed directly at theology. The immediate epistemological carnage caused by Kantian Transcendentalism can be witnessed initially in Schleiermacher’s theology of Gefühl (feeling). After all, Kant had rendered any and all cognitive knowledge of God impossible. Barth’s reaction to Schleiermacher had not helped. According to Bonhoeffer, Barth had established the majesty of God on the basis of Kantian Transcendentalism. In other words, Barth’s conception of God as Wholly Other looked a lot like the unknowable Noumena dwelling god of Kant.

Bonhoeffer’s Dilemma

Kant had to be answered. According to Bonhoeffer, Kant had posed the problem and now it was incumbent upon theologians to find a solution. However, rather than taking his stand upon the self-authenticating Bible, Bonhoeffer sought make room in Kant’s Transcendentalism for God’s self-revelation.[1] However, if the Kantian god of the Noumena cannot be accessed because he is not a percept that can be cognitively constructed by human mental categories, then, according to Bonhoeffer, the only place for theology to begin is in the realm of phenomena: the realm of percepts and concepts. So, according to Bohoeffer, the problem to be dealt with lay in “the relationship between ‘the being of God’ and the mental act which grasps that being.”[2] Not surprisingly, Bonhoeffer’s Act and Being has been described as a theology of self-consciousness. So, where was Bonhoeffer to begin? He took his starting point with what Kant called the transcendental unity of apperception or the supposition of self-identity based on a unity of experience. Ewing, a Kantian scholar, summarized Kant’s view of transcendental unity of apperception this way:

The true or transcendental self has no content of its own through which it can gain knowledge of itself. It is mere identity, I am I. In other words, self-consciousness is a mere form through which contents that never themselves constitute the self are apprehended as being objects to the self.[3]

Now, for Kant that meant identity can never be discovered through experiences; it can only be a condition for them. Thus, a self-conscious person is merely identifying his bundle of experiences as his own. There is a “gap” between the I and experience.

Bonhoeffer’s Solution

It was at this point that Bonhoeffer saw an opportunity to find God in Kantian Transcendentalism. He wrote, “I discover God in my coming to myself; I become aware of myself. I find myself—that is, I find God.”[4] And again, “God is the God of my consciousness. Only in my religious consciousness ‘is’ God.”[5] However, Bonhoeffer understands his own dilemma. This means that God “becomes objectified in consciousness and is thereby taken into the unity of transcendental apperception, becoming the prisoner of consciousness.”[6] Consequently, Bonhoeffer provides two possible solutions and adopts the latter saying, “God ‘is’ in the pure process of completion of the act of consciousness but evades every attempt on the part of reflection to grasp God.”[7] Bonhoeffer continues, “In this manner the danger of identifying God and the I is averted. God is the supramundane reality transcending consciousness…. But, on the other hand, it can also be said that God is existent only in, or for, the consciousness of human beings.”[8] Now, do you see what Bonhoeffer has done? He, like Barth, has accepted Kantian categories and conclusions as his starting point. Thus, if Barth had established the transcendence of God on Kantian Transcendentalism, then Bonhoeffer had established the immanence of God on the same foundation. Consequently, even the God of Bonhoeffer’s theological construction remains out of reach—or does he? On the contrary, according to Bonhoeffer, this view makes God present and “haveable.”[9] The question is how? To this we will return in our next post. [1] Cf. “The Theology of Crisis and its Attitude Toward Philosophy and Science” in No Rusty Swords. [2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Acts and Being (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009), 27. [3] A. C. Ewing, A Short Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 82. [4] Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, 50. [5] Ibid., 51. [6] Ibid. [7] Ibid., 54. [8] Ibid., 57. [9] Ibid., 91.

In our last post we concluded that juxtaposing Bonhoeffer against himself might not be the most useful way to determine whether the man was a pietistic evangelical or a German liberal. So, how do we sally forth from what some might consider a safe method of departure? Well, let’s begin with Bonhoeffer’s theological and philosophical background and then consider how he appropriated it to his own theology.

Theological and Philosophical Background

In Germany, less than fifty years before Bonhoeffer emerged on the scene, Nietzsche, had made an astute observation. He claimed that God had “bled to death under our knives.”[1] The knives that Nietzsche had in mind were the quills of the philosophers. Through their unbelieving reason he contended that they had murdered God. Surely, Immanuel Kant was one of the more prominent assailants. After all, when Kant published his book, The Critique of Pure Reason, in 1781 he described it as a Copernican Revolution. Kant’s primary purpose in the Critique was to define the limits and scope of pure reason. In order to accomplish the task he had to answer a crucial question, “What are the necessary conditions of possible experience?” According to Kant, two complimentary conditions need to be met. First, something must be given to our senses. Kant calls this something a percept or a perception (and at times impressions). Second, a percept must be brought under a mental concept. Or to put it another way, a percept must be brought under the constructive powers of the mind or what Kant calls the transcendental aesthetic and the transcendental analytic. Kant’s pedagogical mode of expression for all of this was that concepts (the empty a priori categories of the mind) without percepts (discrete bits of data tethered to our sense experience) are empty and percepts without concepts are meaningless. Now, do you see what effectively Kant has done? Follow his logic for a minute. If human beings can know only perceptions which are then constituted by the constructive powers of the mind, then what is the theological implication? God is not a percept that can be processed through the time/space manifold of the transcendental aesthetic so to be understood by the transcendental analytic. Thus, Kant’s conclusion was that human beings cannot know an imperceptible God. If God exists and created, thought Kant, then He created in such a way so as to forbid creation from knowing it.

Enter Bonhoeffer

Now, what does all this have to do with Bonhoeffer? Well, Bonhoeffer recognized this background and accepted it as the Sitz im Leben of the German theological and philosophical landscape. We might even say that Bonhoeffer believed Kant to be asking the right questions—questions worthy of a theologian. In fact, while in America studying at Union Theological Seminary, Bonhoeffer critiqued his American students, saying, “questions such as that of Kantian epistemology are “nonsense,” and no problem to them, because they take life no further” than what is pragmatic.[1] America focused on William James not Immanuel Kant. And Bonhoeffer thought that this was wrongheaded and frustratingly without depth. He wrote that Americans order up theology and philosophy as one ordered a car from the factory![2] But what Bonhoeffer did not accept were the conclusions of his colleagues and the theological answers they gave in light of Kantian transcendentalism. For example, Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s student and close friend, wrote in his biography that Bonhoeffer “saw Barth establishing the majesty of God by methods of Kantian transcendentalism.”[3] According to Bonhoeffer, Barth had allowed Kant the privilege of asking the questions but problematically he had also allowed Kant the privilege of dictating the answers. For Bonhoeffer, Barth’s response to Kant was to make God remote or wholly other. But, according to Bonhoeffer, Kant had already done that. For Bonhoeffer, this was unacceptable. The task of the theologian was to bring God near while answering not ignoring men like Kant. Consequently, Bonhoeffer decided to address the situation in his post-doctoral habilitation called, Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology. And, not surprisingly, in these opening pages, he writes, “At the heart of the problem is the struggle with the formulation of the question that Kant and idealism have posed for theology.”[4] In this work Bonhoeffer set out to make God immanent rather than transcendent or wholly other. But in order to do that he had to find a way to answer Kantian objections to the knowability of God. How he did that is for our next post. [1]Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche; Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), 97. [1] Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 161. [2] Ibid., 158. [3] Ibid., 134. [4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Act and Being (Minneapolis, Min.: Fortress Press, 2009), 27.

In many quarters the idea seems to prevail that the God of Christianity and the Absolute of modern idealistic philosophy are identical. . . . The alliance thus formed is hailed by philosophers and theologians alike as prophetic of a glorious dawn of peace and progress. Clasping hands we have stopped our wrangle and at last have found an outlet for our energies in the improvement of the human race. Yet there are some murmurings to be heard here and there that all is not gold that glitters. Now since I find myself among the group of malcontents who have not joined their voice to the applause of peace, peace, because there is no peace, I am here called upon to give an account of the faith that is in me. I still believe in the God of Christianity and not in the Absolute of Idealism. Believing my faith to be a “reasonable faith” I shall in this paper attempt to prove that the apparent similarity between Idealism and Christianity covers a fundamental diversity, that consequently we must make a choice between them and that the choice for Christianity is philosophically the more tenable.

What a tremendous statement of Christian fortitude to his dissertation examiners! Van Til went on to state his argument with equal Christian conviction: “To do this it will be sufficient to take the pivotal conception of God which lies at the basis of all Christian theism and contend that it is the only conception that can offer a possible unity to human experience. The only alternative to belief in this God is scepticism [sic].” Both the Van Tilian tradition and the analytic tradition can trace its roots back to the response its earliest proponents gave to absolute idealism. Nonetheless, Van Til’s response was quite different from the ones given by the early analytic philosophers. G. E. Moore (1873—1958) and Bertrand Russell (1872—1970) responded to absolute idealism by insisting that it did not give proper attention to the necessity of logical rigor, linguistic analysis, and commonsense for philosophy. Van Til responded to absolute idealism by insisting that it did not give proper attention to the necessity of the Christian God and his revelation for philosophy. As I showed in my previous post, the use of logical rigor, linguistic analysis, and commonsense has led analytic philosophers like John Searle to a materialistic universe in which free and meaningful human mental activity seems impossible. The hopelessness of materialism does not logically follow from analytic philosophy’s method. However, those practicing an analytic philosophy that does not incorporate the necessity of Scripture into its methodology are bound to arrive at similar wrongheaded conclusions. Man was never meant to experience or reflect upon anything without subordinating his cognition to the norm of God’s special revelation, and since sin has corrupted man’s heart, he needs special revelation all the more—even when doing philosophy. If John Searle repented from his materialism, converted to Reformed Christianity, and accepted the necessity of Scripture for philosophy, then and only then could he make sense of the deep conviction of freedom we all have as human persons. Searle needs the Holy Scriptures to teach him that far from being incompatible with free will, God’s sovereign determination of the created universe toward “a purpose for Himself” (Van Til’s phrase) is the necessary precondition for all meaningful human activity (Cf. John 19:11; Acts 2:23, 4:27-28; Romans 11:36; WCF 3.1).

Sources — All quotes from Van Til appear in his, “God and the Absolute,” accessed through Logos Bible Software 4, The Works of Cornelius Van Til (40 vols.), which unfortunately has no page numbers. The opening biographical information is from John R. Muether, Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman (Phillipsburg, NY: P&R, 2008), 57-58. I also consulted Cornelius Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology (Phillipsburg, NY: P&R, 1969), 1-13.

In this post, I plan to give a brief historical sketch of the movement from nineteenth century absolute idealism to twentieth century analytic philosophy. In a follow-up post, I will survey the response Cornelius Van Til gave to absolute idealism, and then examine the analytic tradition in light of Van Til’s Reformed insights. Absolute idealism held a tempestuous sway over philosophy in Britain, America, and the European continent during the nineteenth century. This philosophical system was initiated by the prominent German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), and then further developed by philosophers like F. H. Bradley (1846–1881), J. M. E. McTaggart (1866–1925), and Josiah Royce (1855–1916). Absolute idealism’s central tenet was that all of reality is a single mental subject. The absolute idealists’ metaphysic—their theory about the nature of ultimate reality—was tied to a distinctive epistemology or theory of knowledge. They believed that reason was the proper source of knowledge, not empirical observation. Whenever we sensibly experience an object as having spatiotemporal location or some other physical property “we are perceiving it more or less as it really is not.” Rationally consider any particular thing, the absolute idealists taught, and you will rather find that that thing is necessarily involved in a higher, all-inclusive, organic thought-complex. Just as soon as absolute idealism reached its highest point of influence, two of its most promising young practitioners, G. E. Moore (1873–1958) and Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), proposed a decisive revolt. This revolt at the start of the twentieth century constituted the beginnings of what is known today as the analytic school of philosophy. Analytic philosophy’s defining characteristic was its rigorous commonsense philosophical method. Analytic philosophers usually dealt with individual problems, and attempted to solve those problems by appealing to logic, intuition, and experience. For example, G. E. Moore in his essay, “Proof of an External World,” famously argued that he had two hands by gesturing with them while saying, “Here is one hand and here is another.” Analytic philosophers also put a premium on linguistic clarity, primarily because of the ambiguity that they thought riddled the writings of absolute idealists. Analytic philosopher John Searle points out that as a result “for most of the twentieth century the philosophy of language was ‘first philosophy.’ Other branches of philosophy were seen as derived from the philosophy of language and dependent on the results in the philosophy of language for their solutions.” Near the end of the twentieth century, another philosophical shift occurred, this time from within analytic philosophy itself. The philosophical method of analytic philosophy remained, but, to use once more the words of John Searle, “the center of attention has now moved from language to mind.” One of the many reasons Searle gives for this recent development is that numerous philosophers “working in the philosophy of language see many of the questions of language as special cases of questions about the mind.” Searle also mentions another likely culprit for the recent reorientation of the philosophical disciplines:

For many of us, myself included, the central question in philosophy at the beginning of the twenty-first century is how to give an account of ourselves as apparently conscious, mindful, free, rational, speaking, social, and political agents in a world that science tells us consists entirely of mindless, meaningless, physical particles. (p. 7)

Although it should be debated whether empirical science truly supports the weighty doctrine of materialism, many analytic philosophers follow Searle in thinking that it does. So, in Searle’s circles, he has sufficient justification for writing his book, Mind, wherein he attempts to give a materialistic explanation of the mental. Searle’s whole project is to account for how we can have meaningful mental capabilities as purely material agents, and this requires for Searle to account for human freedom. But Searle cannot account for human freedom, he says so himself: “We really do not know how free will exists in the brain, if it exists at all. We do not know why or how evolution has given us the unshakable conviction of free will. We do not, in short, know how it could possibly work. But we also know that the conviction of our own freedom is inescapable. We cannot act except under the presupposition of freedom” (p. 164). As has been the case throughout the history of philosophy, we have come full-circle. At the beginning of the twentieth century, analytic philosophers revolted against absolute idealism, along with its insistence upon the mental nature of ultimate reality, in order to follow the dictates of commonsense and to account for material reality. At the end of the twentieth century, analytic philosophers like Searle have followed their intuitions and gained their material world at the seeming expense of meaningful human mental activity.

Sources — The quote in the first paragraph is from J. M. E. McTaggart, “Time,” in Metaphysics: The Big Questions (eds. Peter van Inwagen and Dean W. Zimmerman; 2^nd ed.; Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 123. McTaggart used this phrase in reference to our experience of things as in time, but the phrase also captures the way many absolute idealists addressed our experience of things as having any distinctively physical property. All quotes from Searle appear in his Mind: A Brief Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Other sources I consulted were E. D. Klemke, ed., Contemporary Analytic and Linguistic Philosophies (2^nd ed.; Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2000) and Frederick Copleston, Modern Philosophy: Empiricism, Idealism, and Pragmatism in Britain and America (vol. 8 of A History of Philosophy; New York: Image Books, 1994),

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 realism.

Links

• Covenantal Thoughts

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jared Oliphint, Nathaniel Gray Sutanto

Dr. Vern Poythress comes to the program today to speak about his book, Redeeming Philosophy. In today’s discussion, Dr. Poythress helps us examine the roots of Western philosophy, uncover some of its limitations, and find answers to our questions in dependence upon God’s word. Dr. Poythress is the author of a number of books, including Redeeming Science, In the Beginning Was the Word, Redeeming Sociology, and Logic. He has also spoken on Christ the Center episodes 52, 98, 188, 235, 332, and 356, and on Philosophy for Theologians episode 20.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jared Oliphint, Vern Poythress

We recently spoke with Vern Poythress about his book Redeeming Philosophy: A God-Centered Approach to the Big Questions (Crossway). Look for the episode Friday and watch our video preview below.