Christocentric Philosophy

Firstly, consider that all things which are actual are also possible. This should be obvious enough. Is there anything that is impossible but also actual? No. Impossible things, by definition, cannot be actual. So we can say that possibility is logically prior to actuality. With me so far? OK. Now, secondly, note that if something is impossible, then there is something else that explains why that thing is impossible. In other words, there is no brute impossibility. Impossibility always has an explanation. Think about it: it's impossible to be alive and dead at the same time. But why is it impossible? Ultimately, because of the laws of logic. Think about anything you believe to be impossible - there is always something else that makes it impossible. Here's another thing: whatever is able to make something impossible must be necessary. So, it is  logically  impossible to be both dead and alive because the law of non-contraction (which implies that contradictions cannot be true) ...

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...

One of the most fundamental questions in philosophical theology is the question of God’s relation to abstract objects, particularly things like logical laws. It seems intuitive to conceive of logic as being necessarily existing, unchanging, and timeless. However, if that’s the case, then it would seem to imply that logic is uncreated. This seems to create some tension with the view held by many Christians that all things which are not God were created by God. So, did God create logic? Or is logic uncreated? There are various views surrounding this issue amongst Christian philosophers. There are those who reject the view that God created logic because that would lead to an absurd state of affairs. If God created logic, the argument goes, then logic becomes contingent and arbitrary. If so, then God could will that contradictions be true or act in illogical ways - which is absurd. Such philosophers usually hold that logic has always existed and has always constrained God’s power. You’d he...

Ever heard the saying “there’s nothing new under the sun”? Well, what if there was? Imagine we come across an object that is, in the most literal sense, a novelty? This object does not possess any property that we are familiar with. Rather the object possesses the following properties: it is schlep, schloop, and schlorp.  I know what you’re thinking, “that doesn’t make any sense!”  Exactly.  Such an object would be wholly other and would have no basis in our experience. We cannot wrap our head around it or even begin to comprehend it. We cannot even conceive of such a thing. It is totally unknowable, mysterious, and cannot be distinguished from something that is nonexistent. The point is simply that the intelligibility of our experience is contingent on there being no novelties (in the true sense of the word) in our experience. We would like to think that there is nothing new under the sun. Sure, there may be things which we do not understand. However, whatever it is we e...

The conflict of opinion between the atheist and theist is a foundational and deep-seated one that arises from major disagreements over the nature of reality. The atheist believes that God does not exist while the Christian theist believes, in accordance with Scripture, that God exists and has revealed Himself through the person of Christ. The atheist’s rejection of God, however, does not come without its consequences. It is undeniable that the affirmation of the existence of God grants the theist certain metaphysical and epistemological resources that allow him to explain various aspects of reality and human experience. In rejecting God, the atheist does away with a lot of these resources and must then find alternative explanations for the reality we experience. Many atheist thinkers have taken on this task and believe that they have completed it quite successfully. Unfortunately, there are far more serious problems that the atheist has to face due to his rejection of God. One of such ...

The world we experience is characterized by individuality, novelty, and change. The world is contingent. It can even be said that the most persistent empirical experience we have is that the world is contingent and constantly changing; everything is on the move. If we combine such a picture with an atheistic view, we see that the atheist is committed to a metaphysics of Chance. Chance reigns supreme. Absolutely anything can happen. The world is contingent, so there are a lot of things that are possible. Absolutely anything can be birthed from the womb of Chance. To avoid this, the atheist will most likely posit the existence of laws of nature. Firstly, due to Hume's problem of induction, he cannot know from particular experiences that there's a uniformity of nature. The atheist does not have universal experience. Even if he could have such experience, he can never know what nature MUST be like. Laws of nature, to an atheist, are - at best - descriptive. They're neither nece...

“On Christ the solid rock I stand, All other ground is sinking sand, All other ground is sinking sand” This chorus from the popular hymnal “The Solid Rock” is so simple yet profound. It is profound because it not only echoes a Christian truth, but it also captures the basic idea of the presuppositional method of apologetics in a simple yet beautiful way. Christ is the Solid Rock not only religiously or morally but intellectually as well. Christ alone is the solid foundation upon which one can erect a coherent world-and-life view. All other ground - all other foundations - is sinking sand. Every attempt at building a worldview not founded on Christ is doomed to fail and the structure is doomed to sink. This message is passed across clearly in this chorus. Van Til’s transcendental challenge to unbelief can be construed as a dilemma: Either you submit to God’s revelation, or you forfeit all rationality. Either you accept Christ, or accept intellectual chaos. Either you build on the Solid ...

Every fact requires a context to be intelligible. Individual words, propositions, objects of experience, and facts about the world require a context in which they can be intelligible and interpreted.  The proposition "the monkey ate the banana" would not be intelligible without a system of beliefs about monkeys, bananas, eating and a host of other things. Also, our experience of individual objects cannot be made sense of without reference to concepts and categories of interpretation. When we experience an apple, we relate it to the various categories or roundness, sweetness, redness, etc. The question immediately arises as to where one acquires the system or context to make sense of facts, objects, propositions, etc.  One possible answer is that we acquire the system from experience. The immediate problem with this is that we have already noted that we require the system to make sense of the facts. Without prior interpretive categories, we cannot make sense of our experience....

Most Christians would agree that, although man is made in His image, God is greater than man. Amongst other things, this means that God is more powerful, more knowledgeable, etc. This has been generally understood as the Creator/creature Distinction. When it comes to this distinction, however, a lot of emphasis has been placed on the quantitative difference between God and man. When we talk about omniscience in particular, it is common to emphasize the difference between God and man in quantitative terms - God so great that He knows all things unlike man who is ignorant of most things. Reformed Christians, however, would also want to emphasize the qualitative distinction between Creator and creature. In the case of omniscience, there isn’t just a quantitative difference between God’s knowledge and man’s knowledge, there is a qualitative difference as well. When it comes to knowledge, scope is not the only thing that matters - the method of knowing is important as well.  We can iden...