Christocentric Philosophy

I have heard people claim that the Bible does not present us with a specific epistemological theory. It has been claimed that the Bible does not speak on epistemology and so we should not try to read any epistemological theories into the text. While it may be true that the Bible is not an epistemology textbook, there are various passages and doctrines of Scripture that have profound epistemological implications. One of such passages is Proverbs 3:5-6 which reads: Trust in the  Lord  with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.(KJV) Here we have what I believe to be a powerful repudiation of an autonomous approach to any area of human life—including philosophy and epistemology!  First, we are instructed to trust the Lord with all our hearts. This implies a total, unconditional and unquestioned submission to God—His word, providence, will, etc. Our trust in God cannot be conditional, being c...

  Being a Van Tilian can be boring. Why do I say this? Well, when one has come to a certain level of understanding of this method of apologetics, it’s not long till one realizes that there is little, if any, substantial and informed pushback from the unbelieving side. Contemporary philosophy of religion and apologetics features heated discussions and debates between atheists/agnostics and Christian philosophers or apologists. The quality of the discourse is quite high with thinkers such as Graham Oppy, Alex Malpass, Joe Schmid, William Lange Craig, Josh Rasmussen, Edward Feser, Rob Koons, and many more giving various arguments in favor their positions and addressing objections. There is no shortage of philosophical action for the traditional apologist even if he is not in the upper echelon of contributors to the philosophy of religion. An intermediate apologist who defends the Kalam Cosmological Argument has to address a multitude of philosophical objections to that argument and th...

Traditionally, knowledge has been divided into two distinct categories: knowledge that is a priori and knowledge that is a posteriori . The former category has been taken to refer to knowledge gained wholly apart from experience of the world. The latter category has been taken to refer to knowledge that relies upon experience in some way. Similar to the above distinction is the analytic/synthetic distinction. Analytic truths, roughly speaking, are taken to be propositions that can be known to be true solely in virtue of the meanings of the terms. Analytic truths are also taken to be known a priori  because one need not go out and experience the world in order to know analytic truths; their truths can be ascertained by merely an analysis of the meanings of the terms involved. On the other hand, synthetic truths are not true in virtue of the meanings of the terms. One must observe the world in order to ascertain their truth. Synthetic truths are thought of as being known a posteriori...

I was bored this morning and so I decided to get on YouTube. I clicked on the Search bar and typed in “Presuppositionalism”. My aim was to get a feel of the YouTube discourse surrounding Presuppositionalism because from what I remembered, it wasn’t very good. So I scrolled along, saw some videos I’ve watched before, and also some I haven’t watched. But I came across a particular video that caught my attention. It was titled “Alex Malpass on presuppositionalism” and you can find it here ( https://youtu.be/-4PipfxAVAQ ) It caught my attention because (1) it was relatively short at just 7 minutes long, (2) because I actually rate Dr. Alex Malpass highly when it comes to critiquing Presuppositionalism. I believe that, unlike most other critics, he’s a bit more conversant with the relevant literature and his objections are a bit more interesting and philosophically nuanced due to the fact that he has a PhD in philosophy, and (3) because it was a relatively recent video being just 4 months o...

In this post I’ll be responding to an article written by Josh Sommer. The article can be found here . Josh takes issue with Van Til and Bahnsen and the idea that knowledge of God is immediate. However he makes some mistakes that I shall point out. The first of these mistakes is his confusion of what is meant by “immediate knowledge”. He writes: Both Van Til and Bahnsen thought immediate knowledge, in terms of which they understood innate cognition of the divine, was  underived  in terms of one’s possession of it. They thought it was content original or natural to the creature. Bahnsen, for example, says, “Unbelievers have a true knowledge of the existence and character of God, which is justified by the evidence directly apprehended in God’s clear and inescapable natural revelation of Himself ( Van Til’s   Apologetic,  p. 261).” Notice, Bahnsen does not say the unbeliever has this knowledge  through  the evidence directly apprehended in God’s natural revelat...