By: Greg (Tiribulus)

Greg (Tiribulus) — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 04:28:12 +0000

If I may be so crass as to quote myself from Daryl Hart’s blog a couple years ago.
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There is a foundational difference between epistemological knowledge and formal knowledge. At the formal level 1+1=2 for absolutely everybody. The form and formal function are identical because of the image of God present in all men, through which God’s common grace operates. At the epistemological level, the level of first principle and heart commitment, is where there exists a total ethical antithesis. To those raised from rebellion and death in the first man Adam to the life and mind of Christ in the last, 1+1=2 because of the ordered mind of the creator God whose image they bear and thoughts they think after Him on a finite derivative scale.

To the mind still dead in sin, 1+1=2 for literally any reason at all other than that only true one which would leave them morally accountable to their creator. They will believe absolutely ANYthing else, not because that’s what they actually believe, but to escape from believing what I believe. Epistemologically, they KNOW where that knowledge comes from according to the first of Romans, but suppress that truth in their unrighteousness.

So you see, the unbeliever’s campaign of rebellion against his God, is financed with intellectual capital that has been stolen, from God’s own bank. (shameless Bahnsen ripoff there) What you call “confusion” on Van Til’s part is actually the very brilliance of his approach to fallen man, missed by a shallow and dismissive reading on your part. The saints have at once, fully everything and nothing in common with sinners. Everything at the formal level and nothing at the epistemological level.

THAT 1+1=2 is the same for both. How and why is eternally different.

Comments on: The Essential Van Til – The Antithesis Between Believer and Unbeliever

By: Greg (Tiribulus)