Christocentric Philosophy

  The transcendental argument for Christian theism, as conceived by Cornelius Van Til, aims to demonstrate the necessity of the Christian worldview for any intelligible experience. One of the most fundamental elements of this transcendental program is the philosophical problem of the One and the Many. Apart from being a potent philosophical argument for Christianity, the One and Many problem is a useful conceptual tool for analyzing and spelling out the areas in which unbelieving philosophical systems fail. That is, a lot of the philosophical problems that plague the non-Christian worldview can be characterized, in one way or another, as instances of the One and Many problem.  A survey of the relevant literature surrounding the defense of the transcendental argument for Christian theism would reveal a tendency for Van Tilians to undermine unbelieving worldviews by pressing problems relating to the lack of order and unity in the objects of knowledge. Arguments that appeal to th...

Van Til claimed that one can begin with any fact of human experience and a transcendental analysis would show that God needs to be “back of” that fact in order for it to be intelligible. I appreciated this insight when I was lurking on the Internet during the week and came across a certain image. It’s a quite popular image and I had seen it in the past. However, it just recently occurred to me how that image contained a powerful argument for God.  The above image, and others like it, is commonly used as an argument for relativism. It is argued that truth is relative to perspective, and that “just because you’re right doesn’t mean I’m wrong”. But most people are smart enough to point out that there was someone who scribbled that number on the ground, thus implying that one of the two opinions is objectively false. This is true. However, most people fail to recognize that, as human thinkers, we are in an analogous position with respect to reality. Only in this case we have hundreds o...

Recent discussions surrounding Molinism and Calvinism, such as the Craig-White discussion that occurred recently on Justin Brierley’s Unbelievable? show, have got me thinking about the issues of God, human freedom, and determinism. I’m not going to comment on the discussion since I haven’t listened to it yet (and probably won’t for a long while). What I am going to do, is give a simple reason why I reject Molinism (and basically any view that rejects theological determinism).  One of the major reasons I reject Molinism (and other views like it) is that it undermines God’s self-sufficiency—His aseity. There have been various sophisticated treatments and critiques of Molinism by very able thinkers. But mine is a more layman’s reason for rejecting views such as Molinism. I believe Scripture teaches the self-sufficiency of God. But Molinism would seem to imply that God is not self-sufficient. Here’s a simple argument for that claim: If God knows X but does not determine X, then God’s ...

Imagine coming across a strange piece of art—say, a mysterious sculpture. You can either make sense of it on your own, giving it your preferred interpretation, or you could ask the maker of the sculpture. In the absence of information from the maker of the sculpture, the piece of art is subject to a variety of interpretations and one can only speculate as to the purpose, meaning, and proper interpretation of the sculpture.  This highlights the key difference between the Christian and unbelieving epistemological schemes. The Christian has information from the creator of the universe and interprets it based on that information. The unbeliever does not possess such information—in fact, the unbeliever says that the universe has no maker. But if the sculpture has no maker, then there is no proper interpretation of it. To try to make sense of it is to try and find meaning in a meaningless object. The unbeliever is relegated to the realm of speculation and guesswork. Imagine, once again, ...