Christocentric Philosophy

Our various epistemological endeavors as human thinkers presuppose some form of order or unity to the objects of knowledge (the “facts”). It is safe to say that the possibility of human knowledge necessitates that various relations exist between facts. These relations could range from conceptual, to logical, causal, epistemic, numerical, etc. Denying relations between facts leads to brute factuality and eventually skepticism (see here ). These observations lead us to inquire as to what exactly facilitates the various relations needed for knowledge of facts to obtain. It would seem there are only three possible answers to this question. From this, we can offer a transcendental argument which I have chosen to call “Van Til’s Trilemma”. Van Til writes: Why live in a dream world, deceiving ourselves and making false pretense before the world? The non-Christian view of science: (a) presupposes the autonomy of man; (b) presupposes the non-created character, i.e., the chance-controlled charac...

Recent discussions on the Internet have led me to believe that there is a need to write this post. Here I will be clarifying, formalizing, and defending an argument which I believe is central to Van Til’s thought. To my knowledge, there is no such clarification and formalization of the argument available and so in writing this article, I hope to bring something fresh to the Van Tilian’s arsenal of arguments. Van Til’s Doctrine of Analogy Central to Van Til’s thought is the doctrine of analogy. Van Til made a distinction between reasoning that is univocal and reasoning which is analogical . Greg Bahnsen describes univocal reasoning in this way: “ Univocal” reasoning does not honor the Creator-creature distinction, but assumes that God and man approach knowing in the same way and under essentially the same conditions. It refuses to “think God’s thoughts after Him” (cf. chap. 4.5 above) and asserts its intellectual autonomy. 1 However, for Van Til, human knowledge must be analogical. Tha...

One may wonder what kind of argument can be offered for Revelational Epistemology — the idea that human knowledge depends solely upon divine revelation and providence. Bahnsen gives one of such argument in the appendix of his book Presuppositional Apologetics: States and Defended . I would be quoting the relevant section at length here. The quoted text would be in italics . THE EPISTEMIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATOR-RELATION Because man lives in an environment conditioned by, and resting upon, the knowledge and interpretative principles of his ancestors, and because man is created with certain inherent knowledge of his Creator, man has epistemologically been able to take too much for granted. Men deceive themselves to such a degree that they conclude that they are epistemologically autonomous (i.e., free from the necessity of exploring the Creator-relation when doing science and philosophy). Consider the following illustration. Imagine an acoustic society where the people are pre-alphab...

Here I would be responding to a YouTube video released recently by David Pallmann titled “What’s Wrong With Presuppositional Apologetics: A Response to Greg Bahnsen”. His video may be found here ( https://youtu.be/kGty9nX9_8U ). Circular Reasoning and the Is/Ought Fallacy The quotes from Van Til and Bahnsen were taken out of context. He quotes Bahnsen: All argumentation between non-Christian and believer must inevitably become circular,  beginning and ending with some personal authority. However, this is the context of the above quote: But at base, when one is giving reasons for his fundamental outlook on reality and knowledge he will appeal to some personal authority: his own mind, an esteemed scholar, a group of thinkers, the majority opinion, or God. Providing that no mistakes have been made in logical calculus or observation, a difference in personal authority will always lie behind an argument that is at an impasse. Disagreements in world-view (the axis of metaphysics-epistemo...