Christocentric Philosophy

Imagine you had a basket full of apples and you wanted to distinguish between the ones that are good and the ones that are bad. You decide to build an apple-sorting machine that would do exactly that. This machine is supposed to sort the good apples from the bad apples. But how can you build this machine without already knowing how to differentiate good apples from bad ones? You can’t. But you also can’t sort the good apples from the bad ones without the machine. So you are left in a position of helplessness - unable to tell which apples are good and which apples are bad. The above analogy perfectly summarizes the age-long philosophical conundrum known as the  problem of the criterion . The problem can be explained by asking two questions: (1) what do we know? and (2) how do we determine in any particular case that we know? It seems that we cannot answer (1) without having an answer to (2). We cannot point to particular cases of knowledge without a standard/criterion according to w...

As you probably know, when it comes to apologetic methodology, Presuppositional Apologetics as conceived of by Cornelius Van Til is probably the most controversial. However, there is something about it that makes it the best defense of the Christian faith: the transcendental argument. Transcendental arguments in general aim to show that some principle which a skeptic denies is necessary for some other principle which the skeptic takes for granted.  This implies that, if successful, a transcendental argument will show a performative inconsistency in the skeptic. This is the  ad hominem  nature of transcendental arguments. That is, they are directed to the man - the skeptic. They show that his skepticism is only possible due to the very thing he denies. Apply this to the debate over the truth of Christianity. Van Til’s transcendental argument aims to establish Christianity as transcendentally necessary. In other words, it aims to establish Christianity as a necessary precon...

A few days ago, I made the following post on Facebook: If logical truths are knowable, then Christian theism is true. Logical truths are knowable. Therefore, Christian theism is true One comment on that post went like this:  “An intelligent unbeliever would have a bit of a field day with this.   Why does your conclusion, above, necessarily follow from the premise?   We could just start making up any "if, then" statements here, but that doesn't make it ok.   I'm kind of confused on this one.” I gave a brief response to the comment but I thought it would be a good idea to flesh out my thoughts on this here. So, what is the justification for the idea that if logical truths are knowable, then Christianity is true? The best way to approach this would be to ask ourselves: how do we know logical truths? Logical truths here refer to truths about the relationships between propositions, rules of inference, so-called laws of logic, etc. Such truths are usually ta...

The Christian and unbeliever have views of the world that are diametrically opposed. It should come as no surprise then that their views of human knowledge are antithetical as well. To see this, let’s examine how each system views man’s knowledge of a cup. On the Christian view, when man knows a cup, he is reconstructing God’s system of knowledge. The cup owes its existence and nature to the eternal counsel of God. God’s conception of the cup is what makes the cup what it is. So God is the first to know the cup, and man simply mirrors God’s knowledge. It is in this sense that man’s knowledge is said to be analogical. Being created in God’s image, man’s conceptual structure is designed to reflect God’s mind on a created level. Thus, man’s knowledge of a cup is an analogical reflection of God’s original knowledge of the cup.  On the unbeliever’s view, however, when man knows a cup, he is trying to know a previously unknown thing. There is no eternal counsel that makes the cup what it...

Undoubtedly, the cornerstone of the Van Tilian defense of the faith is the transcendental argument for Christian Theism.  However, the philosophical nuances of this argument may seem complicated, especially for those not so philosophically inclined. So here’s… How to argue transcendentally in 4 easy steps 1. Begin with some feature of human experience.  Van Til taught that one can begin with any fact and formulate an objective proof of Christianity. And he was right. Greg Bahnsen famously formulated a toothpaste proof for God’s existence. The transcendental argument starts with any fact or feature of human experience that is undeniable or taken for granted. We can start with the beauty of flowers, or music, or the applicability of mathematics, or the success of science, or the deliciousness of my mom’s cooking. It doesn’t matter. What we’ll notice is that all these things that make our experience what it is (coherent, rational, and intelligible) all presuppose certain things. ...

Immanuel Kant is one of the most famous philosophers to have ever lived. His works covered quite a number of topics - from moral philosophy, to philosophy of religion, to idealism, and many more. But one thing he is most famous for is his introduction of the noumena/phenomena distinction.  Kantian scholars disagree over how exactly to interpret his works, but there is no doubt that Kant made a distinction between the world as perceived by the human mind (the phenomena), and the reality beyond the human mind (the noumena).  For Kant, reality is divided into two: the domain of experience and a domain which human experience cannot reach. We can call this the Kantian view of reality.  The phenomenal realm is the domain of human experience and it is intelligible to the human mind. This is the part of reality that man can understand and make intelligible. However, Kant, unlike the empiricists and rationalists, believed that the human mind is active in gaining knowledge. What th...