{"id":434,"date":"2020-02-28T10:07:04","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T15:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/?p=434"},"modified":"2020-03-02T22:37:35","modified_gmt":"2020-03-03T03:37:35","slug":"another-round-of-the-thomist-rumor-mill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/02\/28\/another-round-of-the-thomist-rumor-mill\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Round of the Thomist Rumor Mill against Van Til: Keith A. Mathison\u2019s \u201cChristianity and Van Tillianism\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

PDF version<\/a><\/p>\n

In the August 2019 issue of Ligonier Ministries\u2019s magazine Tabletalk<\/em>, Keith Mathison writes a lengthy essay<\/a> titled \u201cChristianity and Van Tillianism,\u201d which is written from the perspective of Reformed Thomism in criticism of Cornelius Van Til\u2019s apologetic program. \u00a0\u00a0He has republished<\/a> it in PDF format at academia.edu as well. \u00a0J.V. Fesko published a book earlier this year, which I reviewed here<\/a>, which also criticizes Van Til from the position of Reformed Thomism.\u00a0 Mathison makes many of the same arguments that Fesko and other Reformed Thomists, and more broadly, Protestant Thomists, have made against Van Til.\u00a0 Mathison continues the legacy of R.C. Sproul, who founded Ligonier Ministries, in defending classical apologetics against Van Til\u2019s presuppositional school.\u00a0 Mathison begins with a gracious introduction in which he acknowledges that Van Til was a brother in Christ, was dealing with complex issues, that neither he nor Van Til or infallible, and that we should not become mindless cheerleaders for either side.\u00a0 My comments here are offered in hopes of furthering a thoughtful discussion. <\/p>\n

Yet, while Mathison is cordial and complimentary up front, he also suggests that Van Til\u2019s apologetic is \u201ca monstrous synthesis of idealism and Christ.\u201d\u00a0 Many will recognize that he is returning the \u201cfavor\u201d of Van Til calling Roman Catholic views a \u201cmonstrous synthesis of Aristotle and Christ.\u201d\u00a0 Mathison continues for several paragraphs saying that Van Til\u2019s use of some idealist terms have caused people to \u201cquestion\u201d whether Van Til adopted anti-Christian beliefs from idealism, yet Mathison admits that he can\u2019t find proof of Van Til\u2019s infidelity.\u00a0 Van Til at least cites specific statements by Aquinas and other well-known Catholic theologians as evidence that Roman Catholicism adopts some anti-Christian ideas from Aristotle.\u00a0 \u00a0Readers are given material to examine and reach their own conclusions (even if Van Til could have provided citations of Aquinas more often than he did). \u00a0Mathison does not do the same for Van Til.\u00a0 He says that Van Til used some idealist terminology, but then he admits that Van Til redefines the terms to fit Christian theology.\u00a0 Yet Mathison still charges Van Til with compromising Christian theology by adopting tenants of idealist philosophy. \u00a0Given this method that fails to produce a specific offending text, Mathison\u2019s charge against Van Til is nothing more than innuendo. \u00a0Then there is the title of Mathison\u2019s essay. \u00a0\u201cChristianity and Van Tillianism\u201d evokes the titles \u201cChristianity and Liberalism\u201d by Machen and Van Til\u2019s own \u201cChristianity and Barthianism\u201d and \u201cChristianity and Idealism,\u201d all of which argued that the named \u201cism\u201d was an abandonment Christianity.\u00a0 So while the opening paragraphs are very cordial, Mathison is trying to set up a knockdown punch against Van Til.\u00a0 But because Mathison tries to do it with innuendo rather than concrete arguments and evidence, his punches can\u2019t connect.\u00a0 If Van Til\u2019s views are compromised by anti-Christian ideas, then Van Til deserves to be punched, rhetorically.\u00a0 But Mathison fails to make his case.<\/p>\n

In the discussion below, I begin with a quote from Mathison that is numbered and placed in italics, and then I follow with my comments.\u00a0 I use the page numbers from the PDF version published at academia.edu, and I reproduce his headings from the TableTalk<\/em> version (the headings are slightly modified in the PDF version) as a further aid to those who are obsessed enough with this debate to follow the arguments in his lengthy essay and my somewhat detailed response.<\/p>\n

PRESUPPOSING SCRIPTURE WITHOUT SCRIPTURE <\/strong>(p. 19)<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. . . one of the most striking features of Van Til\u2019s writing is the almost complete lack of biblical exegesis in support of his numerous claims.\u00a0 There is, on occasion, a passing reference to Romans 1 and other texts, but for the most part, Van Til\u2019s works are filled with assertions grounded in no other authority than Van Til himself. This is not sufficient when one is asserting that much of what Reformed theologians have been teaching for the previous five centuries has been in error.<\/em> (p. 19)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Mathison doesn\u2019t give an example of a specific claim that he wants exegetical support for.\u00a0 Van Til defends against philosophical attacks the basic Reformed doctrines such as God\u2019s sovereignty, creation out of nothing with a beginning, a historical fall of the first human parents, total depravity, sovereign grace, and the infallible authority of the Bible.\u00a0 As a Reformed theologian, Mathison shouldn\u2019t need exegesis provided for those doctrines.\u00a0 Van Til does not teach that these doctrines taught for the previous five centuries are in error, but defends them.\u00a0 The teaching that is in error is in terms of holding to various philosophical ideas and ways of defending the faith that are inconsistent with basic Reformed doctrine.\u00a0 That\u2019s not a matter of exegesis but of logical analysis. \u00a0To the extent that Van Til\u2019s apologetic needs exegetical support, surely Mathison is aware of Greg Bahnsen\u2019s writings that provide exegetical support for presuppositionalism.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 If Mathison is asking why Van Til did not provide exegetical support for positions like denying the existence of natural revelation and that unbelievers have no knowledge, that\u2019s because Van Til did not teach these things, as I\u2019ll show below.<\/p>\n

    A FUNDAMENTAL AMBIGUITY <\/strong>(p. 20)<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. In an initial editorial introducing the articles, Cecil De Boer complained that Van Til \u201carbitrarily assigns new and unheard of meanings to certain technical terms in philosophy.\u201d Probably the most well-known example of this is Van Til\u2019s redefinition of the word analogical, a word that had an established history of usage in medieval and Reformed scholasticism. <\/em>(pp. 20-21)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      How has Van Til redefined the word analogical?\u00a0 Mathison should explain this if he is going to make this charge, but he doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 Earlier in the essay, Mathison says, \u201cAs Van Til explains, \u2018Our ideas must correspond to God\u2019s ideas.\u2019\u00a0 Human knowledge, therefore, is \u2018analogical.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Surely Mathison does not disagree with that definition.\u00a0 He probably agrees with it and would argue that Aquinas agrees with it too, so Van Til should not have criticized Aquinas for his view of analogy.\u00a0 Van Til would not disagree that Aquinas makes several statements that agree with Van Til\u2019s definition of analogy; but Van Til further argues that Aquinas adopts an Aristotelian view of the form\/matter scheme of reality that is inconsistent with the biblical sense in which man is an analog of God.\u00a0 By emphasizing that God is a concrete universal and that Aristotle\u2019s form\/matter scheme is incompatible with it, Van Til is able to explain the analogy between God and man in the way that Aquinas wanted to but was unable because he undercut and confused the biblical view with the Aristotelian view.<\/p>\n

      Consider Aquinas\u2019s statement of his position in Summa Theologica<\/em>, First Part, Question 13, Article 1: \u201cWhether a name can be given to God<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0Aquinas wants to object to the claim that \u201cno name can be given to God\u201d and affirm the language of Scripture that gives names to God, replying, \u201cOn the contrary, It is written (Exodus 15:3): \u2018The Lord is a man of war, Almighty is His name.\u2019”\u00a0 Yet Aquinas\u2019s Reply to Objection 1 actually affirms the objection!\u00a0 He writes:\u00a0 \u201cReply to Objection 1. The reason why God has no name, or is said to be above being named, is because His essence is above all that we understand about God, and signify in word.\u201d\u00a0 God cannot be named because Aquinas accepts the Aristotelian view of being, which makes God into a pure, abstract form.\u00a0 As Van Til often depicts Aquinas\u2019s position, God is a \u201cthat\u201d without a \u201cwhat.\u201d[2]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0Aquinas himself puts it this way:\u00a0 \u201cGod is a supremely simple form, as was shown above (Question [3], Article [7]). . . .Reason cannot reach up to simple form, so as to know \u2018what it is;\u2019 but it can know \u2018whether it is.\u2019\u201d[3]<\/a> \u00a0Van Til points out that it makes no sense to say that something exists when all conceptual content has been removed from that thing.\u00a0 And Van Til points out a further problem:[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Aquinas claims that God\u2019s existence is His essence;[5]<\/a> therefore, if we can\u2019t know God\u2019s essence, then we can\u2019t know of God\u2019s existence.\u00a0 That\u2019s the kind of trouble you get into by defining God as a purely abstract form.\u00a0\u00a0 Aquinas wants to straddle a fence that separates opposing views.\u00a0 He thinks that he is riding two horses going the same direction, but he is really riding two horses going in opposite directions.\u00a0 He wants to have the Aristotelian metaphysics of form and matter that removes all content from God\u2019s nature; but then he still wants to talk about God like the Bible does, as a definable, personal being.\u00a0 Can Aquinas say that we can\u2019t know God and can\u2019t use words to describe Him because He is a pure Form, with all content removed, and then say that there is still a way that we can know and talk about God?\u00a0 No, not without being inconsistent.\u00a0 We would have to consider God as having content to His nature, which would rule out regarding Him as a \u201csupremely simple Form.\u201d\u00a0 As Van Til puts it, \u201cWhen he says that reason (by an Aristotelian method) can prove that God exists, this is pointless inasmuch as he adds that it cannot say what God is. And if he tones this contrast down sometimes by saying that man by reason can know something of the general characteristics of God, this is merely inconsistency.\u201d[6]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

      But Aquinas still wants to hold the biblical position that we can know God and talk about Him, so, continuing in 1.13.1, Aquinas provides three ways that we can know God:\u00a0 \u201c. . . but we know God from creatures as their principle, and also by way of excellence and remotion.\u201d\u00a0 Briefly in response: \u00a0Aquinas says that we can know God from his effects on creatures as their ultimate cause, but for God to be the cause of the diverse material world in the biblical sense of creating and planning it all (unlike Aristotle\u2019s Unmoved Mover, which can do neither), God cannot be an empty concept. \u00a0God must be a thinking person with content to His nature, a \u201cconcrete universal\u201d as Van Til puts it, in order to create the material world according to a detailed plan.\u00a0 The \u201cway of excellence\u201d (a.k.a, \u201cway of eminence\u201d) suffers from the same problem.\u00a0 If God is a pure form, having no content to His nature, then God has no positive qualities of excellence that can imparted to creatures on a finite level.\u00a0 As Van Til puts it, having defined God as pure form, \u201cThomas has no right at all to employ the \u2018way of eminence.\u2019\u201d[7]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 The third way of knowing God is called \u201cremotion,\u201d also known by the terms \u201cvia negativa<\/em>\u201d and \u201cvia negationis<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Remotion is where we remove all of the positive content from our knowledge of creatures to arrive at the knowledge of God.\u00a0 This process, again, leaves God as an empty concept.[8]<\/a>\u00a0 Even on Aquinas\u2019s own admission, the methods of natural reason to know God cannot tell us \u201cwhat it is\u201d we know,[9]<\/a> which means we really don\u2019t know<\/em> God through natural reason.\u00a0 Aquinas wants to defend the God of the Bible, but he acquiesces to the God the Philosophers, eviscerating all content to God\u2019s nature and our knowledge of Him.\u00a0 On this basis, there can be no similarity between language of the material world and God, which means we cannot speak analogically of God.<\/p>\n

      Notice here that Van Til\u2019s objection to Aquinas is not<\/em> that God\u2019s existence is not revealed through causation in nature or qualities of excellence in creatures, despite what even Van Til\u2019s student John Frame has claimed.[10]<\/a>\u00a0 Rather, Aquinas has \u201cno right\u201d to appeal to these factors as proof for the existence of God given that Aquinas defines God\u2019s nature in a way that excludes these factors as revealing God.\u00a0 Likewise, Van Til\u2019s objection is not that Aquinas merely<\/em> proves that God is the First Cause rather than proving all the biblical attributes of God, again as John Frame has claimed.[11]<\/a>\u00a0 No, Van Til\u2019s objection is that Aquinas fails to prove that God is the First Cause.\u00a0 Aquinas, based on Aristotle\u2019s view of form and matter, \u201ccould not rightfully claim that we can argue from effect to cause.\u00a0 There is no justification for thinking that the cause and effect relation obtains between the things with which human knowledge deals unless it be based upon the presupposition of the doctrine of the comprehensive plan of God.\u201d[12]<\/a><\/p>\n

      Those who attempt to make sense of Aquinas on this issue of knowing of God\u2019s existence apart from knowing His essence offer the following example:[13]<\/a>\u00a0 Let\u2019s say that the essence of water is its molecular composition, H2O.\u00a0 There are many people who don\u2019t know the molecular composition of water, but they know what water is from the empirical effects of its molecules, like being colorless, odorless, liquid within a certain temperature range, and so on.\u00a0 Just as people can know water from the empirical effects of its essence without knowing the essence, H2O, so humans can know God from the effects that He has on the material world even though we can\u2019t know God\u2019s essence.\u00a0 But this example does not work to rescue Aquinas because H2O is an essence with content, but Aquinas specifically defines God\u2019s essence as without content, as a \u201csupremely simple form.\u201d<\/p>\n

      Here is how Van Til explains the problem of Aquinas and analogy:<\/p>\n

      The Scholastics made the same mistake as the Greeks. Both took for granted that words must be used either simply univocally or simply equivocally. Both took for granted that every predicate used must apply to God in the same way that it applies to man or there can be no meaning in any predication at all.\u00a0 It is possible to produce quotations from Aquinas and the other Scholastics which seem to assert the contrary of this.\u00a0 Aquinas speaks of the necessity of analogical reasoning.\u00a0 But the point is that he is not consistent in this.\u00a0 He constantly reverted to the Greek position that it is reasonable and possible for man to engage in the attempt to solve these antinomies.\u00a0 Moreover, what Aquinas means by analogical reasoning is based upon the Aristotelian notion of analogy of being. This notion implies that the abstract rationality of Parmenides and the abstract diversity of Heraclitus are involved in one another. The Thomistic notion of analogical knowledge is therefore the direct opposite of the idea of analogical knowledge inherent in Augustine\u2019s latest thinking. Augustine\u2019s notion of analogy presupposes the biblical teachings of the Trinity, of creation, and of redemption, while the Thomistic notion of analogy is built on Aristotelian philosophy and, therefore, excludes these biblical presuppositions.[14]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

      If the Aristotelian view is adopted, then the analogy between man and God must become a futile attempt to balance two principles that exclude each other:\u00a0 complete identification of man\u2019s being with God\u2019s being in terms of the Greek view of form, and complete separation of man from God in terms of the Greek view of matter.\u00a0 The Christian view does not require balancing these two principles that exclude each other like fire and water.\u00a0 God is the source of both form and matter, both the unity and diversity of our world, so God\u2019s creation has unity and diversity that is derived from God\u2019s on a finite scale.\u00a0 If Mathison wants to argue that Aquinas did not exclude content to God\u2019s nature by adopting Aristotle\u2019s view of form and matter, then Aquinas and his followers should agree with Van Til that God is a concrete universal.\u00a0 There is no third alternative.\u00a0 See the diagram below.\u00a0 Either the one and the many are eternally related in God, or the one and the many are originally abstract from each other.\u00a0 There are three options under the originally abstract view, and all sorts of diverse emphases within those views can be found in the history of philosophy, but they are all a negation of the absolute view.\u00a0 If one takes the absolute view, then there is no problem of using words to describe God.\u00a0 He is not \u201ca supremely simple Form,\u201d so He has content to His nature that can be described in words.\u00a0 There is no problem saying that reason proves a creation with a beginning because matter originates from God just as much as the unity of our world does.\u00a0 An eternal world is inescapable if Form and Matter are originally separate and self-existing as the ancient Greek philosophers held.<\/p>\n

      \"Absolute<\/a><\/p>\n

        \n
      1. He also uses philosophical terms such as limiting concept and concrete universal in a way that differ from the way they were used by Kant, Hegel, and others. The problem with giving new definitions to technical terms with established definitions is that it inevitably causes confusion in the minds of readers who are familiar with those terms. It inevitably hinders clear communication, and there is no compelling reason to do it.<\/em> (p.21)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        First, note the irony that a Thomist would complain about bringing in terms from non-Christian philosophy to help explain Christianity.\u00a0 We don\u2019t find \u201csimple form,\u201d \u201cact,\u201d and \u201cpotency\u201d used in the Bible in the way that Thomists use those words.\u00a0 At some point in history after the Bible was written, someone had to be the first to apply the term \u201csimple form\u201d from Greek philosophy to describe God; and Thomas Aquinas practices this appropriation of terms from non-Christian philosophy extensively.\u00a0 Van Til argues that Aquinas brought in non-Christian meanings along with his use of the terms; Aquinas did not redefine the terms as much as he should have.\u00a0 If Van Til is wrong, then he has been confused by Aquinas\u2019s lack of clarity by failing to distinguish how he is using terms in a different way than Aristotle did.<\/p>\n

        Giving new definitions to technical terms should not confuse readers if the author explains the difference between his usage and the previous usage.\u00a0 In my view, Van Til does that extensively.\u00a0 Furthermore, there can be a compelling reason to give a new definition to prior terms.\u00a0 Unbelieving intellectuals, even though they distort the truth in fundamental ways, still desire to make their case convincing to others.\u00a0 An author\u2019s description of how the world works has to have a ring of truth to his readers to be persuasive.\u00a0 It must fit what the readers have encountered in their attempts to understand the world.\u00a0 In the course of doing this, unbelieving intellectuals may hit upon some genuinely important concepts, descriptions, and issues.\u00a0 These terms may have to be adjusted to fit a Christian context, but when that is done, they can serve to better explain the way that Christianity provides the solutions to problems that arise when we attempt to understand the world.\u00a0 This applies to the terms \u201climiting concept\u201d and \u201cconcrete universal.\u201d<\/p>\n

        As for the term \u201climiting concept,\u201d Van Til explains that Kant used this term in a way that borrowed from the Christian view of God, so it should not be too difficult to see how this term could be applied to Christian theology when placed in the orthodox Christian context:<\/p>\n

        It may be profitable to develop this criticism of the absolute ideal of science more fully by indicating what is meant by the fact that it is in modern times called a limiting concept. The absolute ideal is said to be a limit toward which man must strive. This notion of a limiting concept has had its first modern expression in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Kant used this idea of a limiting, or regulative, concept in contrast to the notion of a constitutive concept. He said that we cannot actually by the employment of the categories of the understanding prove the existence of God. Yet we cannot do without the notion of God entirely. We need the notion of God as a correlative to the phenomenal universe. Human thought is itself constitutive. For that reason God\u2019s thought cannot be constitutive. Yet human thought is not comprehensive. For that reason it needs the notion of God as an ideal, as a limit toward which man must strive.[15]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

        Van Til sometimes distinguishes the Christian view from the Kantian view by saying that God in the Christian view is a \u201cconstitutive rather than a limiting concept.\u201d[16]<\/a>\u00a0 Other times he talks about Kant\u2019s view of God as \u201conly as a limiting concept.\u201d[17]<\/a> \u00a0Either way, his meaning is clear.\u00a0 For Kant, God is a limiting concept as the personification of a purely human ideal;[18]<\/a> whereas for the Christian, God is a limiting concept as a real, personal being. \u00a0When Kant\u2019s term \u201climiting concept\u201d is put back in an orthodox Christian context, it just means that God\u2019s knowledge is the limit of all knowledge, and that human knowledge is limited to what God reveals to us.[19]<\/a>\u00a0 Whereas for Kant, human knowledge is limited by the non-rational, in the Christian view, human knowledge is limited by absolute rationality \u2013 God.\u00a0 There is no non-rational, uninterpreted aspect of reality on the Christian view.\u00a0 All facts are originally interpreted by God from eternity past; man\u2019s interpretation must reflect God’s in order to be true.<\/p>\n

        Also important to realize in regard to Mathison’s charge is that, before Van Til used the term “limiting concept,” there were neo-orthodox theologians using the term to describe their own views.\u00a0 They used Christian language, but that was really just a cover for Kantian philosophy.\u00a0 It was important for Van Til to address this issue by defining how the use of the term can be a cover for Kantian anti-theism, and how the term must be defined to make it consistent with Reformed orthodoxy.\u00a0 Van Til comments, \u201cFor Brunner, however, the idea of an absolute God is and must be nothing but a limiting conception. \u2018For our knowledge, the Absolute is no more\u2014though also no less\u2014than a necessary limiting conception.\u2019\u201d[20]<\/a>\u00a0 Explaining the way in which \u201climiting concept\u201d can be used in an orthodox sense and how it is used in an unorthodox sense is important in order to guard Christians from accepting non-Christian ideas because they are used in ways that are made to sound like Christian ideas.<\/p>\n

        The term \u201cconcrete universal\u201d comes from Hegel.\u00a0 The \u201cabsolute\u201d is all of reality, and the concrete universal in its absolute form is the goal of history, which is fully self-conscious interpretation that envelopes every fact in all reality.\u00a0 For the Christian, full self-consciousness of every fact in all reality happened in eternity past in the mind of God in His exhaustive plan for the universe.\u00a0 The problem of the \u201cone and the many,\u201d which is general enough and important enough to crop up throughout the history of philosophy, is answered in the view that God is the source of all unity and diversity \u2013 the source of all facts and all the concepts that apply to them.\u00a0 Calling God the concrete universal is helpful for conveying to unbelievers that the Christian view of God addresses this problem that unbelievers wrestle with, and it can also help Christians understand their own view of God better and how it relates to various philosophical issues. Likewise, when Christians say that God is \u201cabsolute,\u201d they can make use of Hegel\u2019s terminology to explain that in a philosophically relevant way while also distinguishing Hegel\u2019s monistic view from the Christian view of God and the Creator\/creation distinction.<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. The lack of clarity in Van Til\u2019s thought is perhaps nowhere more obvious than in his claims about what, if anything, unbelievers know. This is significant because this point is one of the central elements of Van Til\u2019s system of thought. As observed above, Van Til repeatedly makes unqualified statements to the effect that unbelievers know nothing truly. The unbeliever cannot even look at a tree and know that it is a tree. And yet, in other places, Van Til will say that unbelievers do have true knowledge of many things, including trees. As we observed above, Van Til does address the issue in terms of different points of view, but he also admitted that he could not provide a fully satisfactory solution to this theological problem.\u00a0 He simply made both kinds of assertions about the knowledge of unbelievers and claimed that truly Reformed Christians have to accept both. Even contemporary proponents of Van Tillian presuppositionalism have noted the problem. John Frame, for example, says that Van Til never completely solved the problem of how to relate the antithesis to common grace.<\/em> (pp. 22-23)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          On the one hand, Mathison says, \u201cVan Til does address the issue in terms of different points of view,\u201d but then he turns around and says, \u201cHe simply made both kinds of assertions about the knowledge of unbelievers and claimed that truly Reformed Christians have to accept both.\u201d\u00a0 The first statement nullifies the second.\u00a0 Van Til did not simply make both kinds of assertions; he explains the difference in terms of different points of view.<\/p>\n

          There are a few statements where Van Til could have added something like \u201caccording to the unbeliever\u2019s God-denying principles\u201d in order to make clear that he was not denying that unbelievers lack all knowledge, but Van Til makes this qualification many, many times.\u00a0 Any careful reader of Van Til writings should have known what Van Til was saying given his writings as a whole.\u00a0 John Frame is a favorite citation for Van Til\u2019s critics on this issue.\u00a0 As a supporter of Van Til in many areas, he has added to the critics\u2019 case that Van Til denied that the unbeliever has any knowledge by saying that Van Til sometimes wrote as if he held that view.\u00a0 Yet, Frame recounts that when he wrote papers for Van Til in seminary making this criticism, Van Til corrected him that that was not what he meant:<\/p>\n

          When I was a student, I wrote a paper quoting and criticizing what seemed to me to be rather extreme expressions of antithesis in his writings.\u00a0 Alongside my quotations, Van Til wrote several times in the margin \u201caccording to their principle,\u201d \u201cin their systems,\u201d etc.\u00a0 Note: \u201cAnd it is of these systems of their own interpretation that we speak when we say that men are as wrong in their interpretation of trees as in their interpretation of God.\u201d[21]<\/a><\/p>\n

          After having received this clarification from the author himself, the only criticism that Frame should have made is that Van Til meant for these qualifications to be understood but he did not make the qualifications as clear as he could have.\u00a0 Saying that Van Til actually taught that the unbeliever does not have knowledge in any sense is irresponsible.\u00a0 I have argued elsewhere that Frame\u2019s criticisms of Van Til are inaccurate.[22]<\/a><\/p>\n

          Van Til argues that according to their ultimate philosophical commitments, the unbeliever can know nothing.\u00a0 Their ultimate philosophical commitment to an impersonal origin to the universe undermines the possibility of rationality.\u00a0 But since their view of the universe is not true, since the origin of the universe really is an absolutely rational God and since man is made in God\u2019s image, unbelievers are able to have knowledge.\u00a0 Van Til often says that this knowledge, though \u201ctrue as far as it goes,\u201d is not \u201ctrue knowledge\u201d in the sense that<\/em> (this is important) they place it in a false context of their false view of reality.\u00a0 The unbeliever can look outside and see a tree.\u00a0 He knows that a tree is there.\u00a0 But the unbeliever does not \u201ctruly\u201d know the tree because he explains the tree as having its origin completely from mindless matter and energy rather than as intelligently designed by God.\u00a0 Van Til sometimes describes this as the difference between principle and practice:\u00a0 \u201cYet the absolute antithesis is one of principle only. And principles do not come to full expression in human life until the end of history. In practice therefore, the non-Christian can know and teach much that is right and true.\u201d[23]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 In principle unbelievers can know nothing, but in practice they know a great deal, often more than Christians know.<\/p>\n

          Mathison finds this instance where Van Til says in regard to the unbeliever, \u201cI have never denied that he has true knowledge.\u201d\u00a0 Mathison responds, \u201cHow can Van Til deny saying something that he says over and over again?\u201d\u00a0 He\u2019s not.\u00a0 Read the context.\u00a0 He explains that the true knowledge of the unbeliever here is natural revelation from God that is implanted in man\u2019s mind and in man\u2019s environment.\u00a0 This knowledge is no longer \u201ctrue\u201d when the unbeliever distorts it by placing it in a God-denying interpretive scheme of reality.\u00a0 Here is the quote in context:<\/p>\n

          I have never denied that he has true knowledge. My appeal has constantly been to Calvin\u2019s position. Calvin argues that as created in God\u2019s image every man, of necessity, has a knowledge of God. This \u201cinnate knowledge\u201d is correlative to God\u2019s revelation in man\u2019s environment. And try as he may the sinner cannot efface this knowledge. He can only seek to suppress it.[24]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

          As he puts it in another place, men in general \u201care first of all truth possessors<\/em>, or truth-knowers, who have, by sinning, become truth suppressors<\/em>.\u201d[25]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til often emphasizes that man is given inescapable, clear, true knowledge of God through natural revelation (in contrast to Aquinas\u2019s claim of an obscure natural knowledge of God derived solely from sense experience), as I laid out in my first essay in response to Fesko\u2019s book.[26]<\/a><\/p>\n

          In summary, Van Til distinguishes three states of man\u2019s knowledge:<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. All men receive inescapable, true, clear knowledge of God through natural revelation, which comes through man\u2019s own consciousness (innate) and every fact of God\u2019s creation (acquired).<\/li>\n
          2. Fallen men suppress the truth that they receive from God by adopting false principles of interpreting the world; in this way their expressions of knowledge are, to the extent that they are not completely false, \u201ctrue as far as it goes\u201d but are not true \u201cin principle.\u201d<\/li>\n
          3. Redeemed men have the principles of their interpretive scheme corrected by the Holy Spirit and Scripture, which gives them knowledge that is true in principle and clearer than natural revelation, although the redeemed imperfectly adhere to the principles revealed to them in Scripture this side of Glory.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            Is the distinction that Van Til makes between principle and practice really that hard to understand?\u00a0 The implication of naturalistic evolution is that humans are just bags of molecules.\u00a0 But these evolutionists still act as if other humans have value that exceeds that of a dirt clod, and they act as if other humans have a unified, intentional consciousness that persists through time rather than just being a collection of matter in flux. \u00a0Their principles don\u2019t match their practice.\u00a0 In conformity to their anti-theism, unbelievers often say that all morality is relative, but then they make moral denunciations in absolute terms against \u201coppression\u201d in various forms (e.g. Marx in terms of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat).\u00a0 In principle unbelievers should reject absolute morality, but in practice they don\u2019t always do that. \u00a0Nonbelievers are in rebellion against God, but they are not as depraved as they could be if they were consistent with their rebellious principles of interpretation.\u00a0 On the flip side, Christians act inconsistently with their belief that God exists and that they should always obey God\u2019s word.\u00a0 Are these not understandable distinctions between principle and practice?\u00a0 Is a person\u2019s failure to live consistently with the principles that the person professes to believe incomprehensible to Thomists?\u00a0 Can Thomists not understand that people can hold to a philosophical principle that conflicts with and undermines other beliefs that they have, while claiming no conflict? \u00a0Toby Sumpter, in his review<\/a> of Mathison\u2019s essay, puts it well when he said, \u201cThe space between formal positions and de facto<\/em> positions are the hallmarks of hypocrites, pharisees, legalists, and to some extent, every stripe of sinner.\u201d\u00a0 I think Protestant Thomists probably recognize such distinctions all the time.\u00a0 But they have been trained to treat Van Til\u2019s use of the distinction as confusing.<\/p>\n

            When Mathison says that Van Til \u201calso admitted that he could not provide a fully satisfactory solution to this theological problem,\u201d what he \u2013 and Frame \u2013 miss here is that Van Til is not saying that his principle\/practice distinction is faulty and unclear, but that with any particular statement of a nonbeliever, distinguishing the common grace from the rebellion is not always easy:\u00a0 \u201cThe actual situation is therefore always a mixture of truth and error.\u00a0 Being \u2018without God in the world\u2019 the natural man yet knows God, and, in spite of himself, to some extent recognizes God.\u201d[27]<\/a>\u00a0 He says that the idea of an antithesis in principle is necessary to give some clarity<\/strong> to the situation of fallen man\u2019s thinking being a mixture of truth and error<\/em>:\u00a0 \u201cIn order to hem in our question we are persuaded that we must begin by emphasizing the absolute ethical antithesis<\/em> in which the \u2018natural man\u2019 stands to God. . . .\u00a0 From this ultimate point of view the \u2018natural man\u2019 knows nothing truly.\u201d[28]<\/a>\u00a0 By rejecting God, in principle the unbeliever has rejected all truth and undermined the intelligibility of all reality.\u00a0 But they are not completely consistent in their rebellion against God.<\/p>\n

            THE DOCTRINE OF GOD <\/strong>(p. 25)<\/p>\n

              \n
            1. In one place, Van Til appears to define personin terms of consciousness, saying in connection with his discussion of God as one person and three persons that \u201cGod is a one-conscious being, and yet, he is also a tri-conscious being.\u201d Why is this definition such a problem? Because Van Til also claims that in God, being and consciousness are coterminous. Van Til says, \u201cIt should be noted that it is only if we hold to the cotermineity of the being and the consciousness of God that we can avoid pantheism.\u201d But if God is \u201ca one-conscious being, and yet, he is also a tri-conscious being\u201d and if consciousness is coterminous with being, then we potentially have a God who is not only \u201cone person and three persons\u201d but also \u201cone being and three beings.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>(pp.26-27)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

              By \u201cthe cotermineity of being and the consciousness of God\u201d Van Til is simply saying that God is fully self-aware.\u00a0 God\u2019s consciousness extends to every aspect of His being (unlike with pantheism).\u00a0 I doubt that Mathison disagrees with that.\u00a0 Van Til specifically says that by \u201ccotermineity of the knowledge and being of God,\u201d[29]<\/a> he is not claiming that being and consciousness are two terms for the same thing:\u00a0 \u201cIt is, of course, true that we must distinguish between God\u2019s knowledge and his being.\u00a0 This as true as that we must distinguish between the various attributes of God.\u201d[30]<\/a><\/p>\n

                \n
              1. The Westminster Confession of Faith speaks of God in terms of \u201cthree persons, of one substance\u201d (2.3). . . . Yet by redefining the Trinity as \u201cone person and three persons,\u201d Van Til is at least implying that the teaching of the Reformed confessions is in error on a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith. <\/em>(pp. 28, 29)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                Van Til does not deny that God is one substance.\u00a0 He says that \u201cwe are permitted and compelled by Scripture to make the distinction between a specific or generic type of being, and three personal subsistences.\u201d[31]<\/a> Denying that God is one substance would be equivalent to denying that God is one being and that the three Persons are one God.\u00a0 There is no reasonable way to get out of Van Til\u2019s statement that \u201cGod is one person\u201d that the three persons are not one God. \u00a0Just the opposite.\u00a0 Van Til is emphasizing that the unified nature of God is personal.\u00a0 He is adding a quality to \u201csubstance,\u201d not taking anything away.\u00a0 Mathison acknowledges that the Bible portrays God as speaking as one Person, even though Mathison doesn\u2019t like this language because it is from the Old Testament and prior to the New Testament revelation of the Trinity (p. 28, n. 127).\u00a0\u00a0 But the New Testament does not abandon the unity of God\u2019s will and knowledge within the Trinity, which is what Van Til is emphasizing.<\/p>\n

                Van Til defends his formulation of God as one person by quoting Charles Hodge on perichoresis:<\/p>\n

                As the essence of the Godhead is common to the several persons, they have a common intelligence, will and power. There are not in God three intelligences, three wills, three efficiencies. The three are one God, and, therefore, have one mind and will. This intimate union was expressed in the Greek Church by the word perichooresis<\/em>, which the Latin words \u2018inexistentia<\/em>,\u2019 \u2018inhabitatio<\/em>\u2019 and \u2018intercommunio<\/em>,\u2019 were used to explain.[32]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

                Ligonier Ministries endorses the teaching of perichoresis to describe God.[33]<\/a>\u00a0 It is especially strange that a defender of \u201cclassical theism\u201d would object to calling God one person.\u00a0\u00a0 In a book that Mathison endorses, James Dolezal says that \u201ceach attribute is identical with His essence.\u201d[34]<\/a>\u00a0 God is personal, so his essence is personal.\u00a0 As Hodge says, perichoresis includes attributes of a person:\u00a0 mind and will.\u00a0 There is unity of knowledge and will between the three Persons.\u00a0 Van Til\u2019s formulation of the Trinity is not a denial of the traditional formulations, but rather the doctrine of \u201cthree persons, one substance\u201d combined with the doctrine of perichoresis.\u00a0 The unity of God\u2019s being is the unity of qualities of a person, even while there are three individual personalities distinguishable within that unity.<\/p>\n

                The problem for classical theism as defined by Aquinas, Mathison, and Dolezal is accounting for the Trinity when their view of God\u2019s simplicity strips all complexity from God\u2019s nature.\u00a0 Dolezal says, \u201cIt further follows from God\u2019s non-compositeness that all His attributes are really identical with each other. . . .\u00a0\u00a0 Swinnock likewise asserts that God\u2019s attributes \u2018are one indivisible essence, to will and to understand, and to love and to hate, and to be, are all the same and one in God.\u2019\u201d[35]<\/a>\u00a0 Dolezal says that humans speak of these attributes applying to God as if they were different from each other because of our limitations as finite creatures.[36]<\/a>\u00a0 How then can any genuine distinctions be maintained between the Persons of the Trinity?\u00a0 Are the distinctions between the Father, Son, and Spirit merely an imperfect, creaturely way of talking about that which is identical?\u00a0 Dolezal tries to rescue his view of divine simplicity from this implication concerning the Trinity by saying in regard to the Persons of the Trinity, \u201cOtherness . . . is proper and irreducible in any relation.\u201d[37]<\/a>\u00a0 He says the relations between the Persons of the Trinity contrast with the attributes of God in that \u201cNone of the essential attributes of God is a relation.\u201d[38]<\/a>\u00a0 But first, merely saying that otherness in relations is irreducible only highlights the problem.\u00a0 If the relations of the Trinity can\u2019t be reduced to pure unity, and if God is pure unity, then God can\u2019t be a Trinity. \u00a0And second, is it true that \u201cnone of the essential attributes of God is a relation\u201d?\u00a0 Is not love and hate an oppositional relation?\u00a0 They are dispositions that exclude each other, at least when applied to the same object (such as a certain behavior of a person).<\/p>\n

                Philosophically, Van Til says that God is one Person because he is concerned to deny the charge that personhood does not apply to the unity of God\u2019s nature, so that God\u2019s substance is \u201cuninterpreted being of some sort,\u201d[39]<\/a> extending beyond the minds of the triune Persons.\u00a0 Van Til argues that if that were true, God\u2019s absolute rationality would be denied in favor of a finite rationality of each individual member of the Trinity.\u00a0 In that case, God would not be the source of universal concepts, nor would anything else, which would undermine the possibility of rationality for God and for His creatures.\u00a0 God\u2019s mind would be finite, with a non-rational being extending beyond His mind.\u00a0 This would destroy the simplicity of God\u2019s being.\u00a0 It would mean that God has to gain knowledge of his own nature discursively, \u201cby a process of investigation of a being that exists independently of himself.\u201d[40]<\/a><\/p>\n

                  \n
                1. However, in some places, Van Til makes statements about immutability that are unclear in their meaning. He says in one place, for example: \u201cWhether Adam was to obey or to disobey, the situation would be changed. And thus God\u2019s attitude would be changed.\u201d Does this mean that God changes? In the same context, Van Til indicates that God\u2019s attitude changes but that \u201cGod in Himself is changeless.\u201d\u00a0But what exactly are \u201cattitudes\u201d in God, and how are they distinguished from \u201cGod in Himself\u201d? Van Til\u2019s answer to that question remains unclear. <\/em>(p. 30)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                  Mathison is \u201cunclear\u201d about how God could be changeless if His attitudes change because he is assuming the \u201cclassical\u201d view that there is absolutely no change in God.\u00a0 On this view, there are no \u201caccidents\u201d in the nature of God; therefore, since God is unchanging in His essential nature, then God is completely changeless. [41]<\/a> I don\u2019t see Van Til sharing this view, and Mathison can see that.\u00a0 But rather than exegetically and philosophically defend God\u2019s immutability in the Parmenidean sense, Mathison merely assumes in this essay that any other view doesn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n

                  The Unmoved Mover of Aristotle\u2019s philosophy is not only unmoved by other things, it is unmoving, completely static.\u00a0 It \u201ccauses\u201d the world to move because the world loves (desires) the Unmoved Mover, like a dog would be moved toward meat by the desire for it.[42]<\/a>\u00a0 Aristotle\u2019s Unmoved Mover does not willfully cause the world to move any more than meat wills the movement of a dog toward it.\u00a0 This may be puzzling to those who remember that the Unmoved Mover is called \u201cpure Act\u201d by Aristotelians (who, I think, get confused by their own language).\u00a0 But they define \u201cpure Act\u201d as lacking any potential for change.\u00a0 A better name for \u201cpure Act,\u201d then, would be \u201cpure inaction\u201d or \u201cpure impotence.\u201d[43]<\/a>\u00a0 Aristotle\u2019s Unmoved Mover doesn\u2019t create the world or even have knowledge of the world.[44]<\/a>\u00a0 Both matter and the Unmoved Mover are eternal.\u00a0 This is what Aquinas and his followers want to equate with the God of the Bible.\u00a0 Van Til comments, \u201cWe are again to be on the alert lest we confuse Christian with non-Christian thought on the question of the immutability of God. . . .\u00a0 [S]urely in the case of Aristotle the immutability of the divine being was due to its emptiness and internal immobility.\u00a0 No greater contrast is thinkable than that between the umoved noesis noeeseoos<\/em> [thought thinking itself] of Aristotle and the Christian God.\u201d[45]<\/a>\u00a0 Only because God has internal activity is He able to be the Creator of our complex, moving world:\u00a0 \u201cAnd because he is life in himself and internal activity, the God of Christianity, unlike the god of Aristotle, could become the self-contained source of the created universe.\u201d[46]<\/a>\u00a0 Aquinas admits that he can\u2019t prove that the universe has a beginning rather than existing eternally, so he says that the universe having a beginning must be an article of faith.[47]<\/a> \u00a0The problem with that stance is that Aristotle\u2019s Unmoved Mover could not<\/em> be a creator of the universe.\u00a0 An empty abstraction does not have the power to do anything.\u00a0 We must reject the existence of the Unmoved Mover in order to embrace the existence of the God of the Bible who created all things by His will.\u00a0 In this case, faith cannot take over where reason leaves off.\u00a0 Reasoning according to Aristotelian assumptions leads to different conclusions than what the Christian faith teaches.<\/p>\n

                  In the \u201cclassical\u201d view, the immutability of God goes hand-in-hand with the simplicity of God, which they define as the denial that there are any distinctions that can be made in God.\u00a0 A change in God from an attitude of favor to an attitude of judgment, as Van Til mentions for Adam based on his obedience or disobedience, violates God\u2019s simplicity as well as His immutability because it introduces differences within God\u2019s being.\u00a0 On this view of divine simplicity, as Dolezal confirms in the quote above, there could be no real distinction between God\u2019s grace and God\u2019s wrath.\u00a0 They are exactly<\/em> the same in reality; they just seem different from our limited, distorted human point of view.\u00a0 Pick any alternative attitudes or actions that you see describing God in the Bible, they can\u2019t really be true.<\/p>\n

                  One of the criticisms of the \u201cclassical\u201d view of God is that nearly all the passages in the Bible that talk about God, except a handful of verses that say that God is unchanging, must be taken as presenting a false view of the true nature of God.\u00a0 And those handful about God being unchanging present the \u201cclassical\u201d view of God only when read in the light of Greek philosophy. \u00a0Signing on as a card-carrying Van Tillian is not necessary to see this; just deciding to read the Bible without ancient Greek glasses is enough. \u00a0Princeton theologian Charles Hodge, living a generation before Van Til, rejected the simplicity of God as the complete identity of God\u2019s attributes, as Dolezal notes,[48]<\/a> even though Hodge taught perichoresis of the Persons of the Trinity.\u00a0 Does the statement that something is unchanging mean that that being is unchanging in every sense?\u00a0 Usually not.\u00a0 I am unchanging in regard to being a human, but I still change in many ways. \u00a0Of course, I change morally between good and evil; and God does not; but just because God does not change in one respect does not mean that He does not change in other ways. Yet according to promoters of \u201cclassical\u201d Christian doctrine about God, all the passages speaking of God beginning and ending some action or attitude don\u2019t really mean that God began or ended some action, because that would mean that God changed in some way, which is forbidden when read in terms of classical Greek rationalism.<\/p>\n

                  Dolezal and other Thomists argue that perichoresis is not sufficient to avoid polytheism.[49]<\/a>\u00a0 One might hold to perichoresis and also claim that the three divine persons were once separate divine persons who at some point decided to have their substances permeate each other.\u00a0 After all, perichoresis has been used to describe Christ\u2019s two natures, yet there was a point in time when they became joined; Christ\u2019s human nature does not exist eternally in the past in union with the divine nature.\u00a0 The Thomists say that the only way to avoid the possibility of polytheism is the Parmenidean argument that any change in being results in a new being,[50]<\/a> therefore the unity of God\u2019s being is possible only if all change is excluded.\u00a0 By logical necessity then, the unity of God is a timeless, static unity that excludes all distinctions within God\u2019s being.<\/p>\n

                  Van Til has another way to argue for the necessity of God\u2019s eternal unity:\u00a0 his transcendental argument that God is a concrete universal.\u00a0 As a concrete universal, the One and the Many are equally ultimate in God.\u00a0 They are eternally<\/em> related.\u00a0 This is necessarily<\/em> so for the possibility of rationality.\u00a0 God as a concrete universal means that all concepts are applied to all facts from all eternity in the mind of God.\u00a0 An abstract unity (the One of Greek philosophy) is an empty concept and defined to exclude all diversity.\u00a0 Knowledge requires content; therefore an abstract unity cannot be the source of knowledge.\u00a0 An abstract plurality is just pure chaos.\u00a0 With no order (e.g., no laws of logic, no universals), there can be no knowledge.\u00a0 Combining the two to form the intelligible realm of \u201cbecoming\u201d where humans live (as presented in Plato\u2019s and Aristotle\u2019s philosophies) fails to yield the order with content required for knowledge because each excludes the other.\u00a0 It is an attempt to combine two irrational elements, chaos plus a blank, to form the rational world.\u00a0 Van Til famously compares such an approach to a futile attempt to string beads with no holes (chaotic diversity) on a string with no ends (an empty universal).\u00a0 Rationality in the universe can be explained by an ultimately rational source for the universe, but an ultimately irrational source for the universe cannot explain the rationality of the universe.<\/p>\n

                  Van Til teaches about the simplicity of God by using a term that he uses much more often than \u201csimplicity,\u201d which is \u201cself-contained.\u201d\u00a0 For God to be \u201cself-contained\u201d means that His being is not derived from anything outside of Him and that He is the self-sufficient source of all reality.\u00a0 Aristotle\u2019s Unmoved Mover fails this test of simplicity because it is not the self-sufficient source of all reality, just the source of abstract unity:\u00a0 \u201cIf he were the abstract one of Aristotle, he would be nothing but the correlative of the universe, and would therefore have no control over it.\u201d[51]<\/a><\/p>\n

                    \n
                  1. According to Van Til, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism have nothing in common on any point of doctrine. <\/em>(p. 32)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                    Mathison doesn\u2019t cite a specific statement by Van Til where he says this; he merely references two pages in Van Til\u2019s book Christian Apologetics<\/em>.\u00a0 I guess that he is referring to these sentences:\u00a0 \u201cAnd so it comes to pass that the Roman Catholic doctrines of faith are in every instance adjusted to the idea of human autonomy.\u00a0 To be sure, the natural man is said to be fallen, but he has fallen but a little way; even in the state of rectitude he justly insisted on autonomy.\u201d[52]<\/a>\u00a0 Notice here that Van Til acknowledges that Roman Catholics teach that man is fallen, so there is that point of doctrine in common with Protestants.\u00a0 Van Til\u2019s argument is that, because Aristotle\u2019s philosophy is inconsistent with the Christian view of reality in fundamental ways, the Roman Catholic attempt to thoroughly integrate the two undermines Christian theology in every doctrine.\u00a0 Roman Catholics can\u2019t be exhaustively successful integrating the two because that would result in obliterating one in favor of the other. \u00a0As Van Til explains in other places, in regard to the nature of man before the fall, Roman Catholics introduce the donum superadditum<\/em> in an attempt to integrate the Greek worldview into Christianity, which undermines Adam and Eve\u2019s pre-Fall perfection (as I mentioned in the review<\/a> of Fesko\u2019s book); and after the fall, Roman Catholics deny or do not consistently hold to the doctrines of total depravity and sovereign grace, which is also a compromise of Christian doctrine that is necessitated by the Greek worldview.<\/p>\n

                    Van Til never says anywhere that \u201cRoman Catholicism and Protestantism have nothing in common on any point of doctrine.\u201d\u00a0 For Mathison to think that such a statement fairly characterizes Van Til\u2019s criticism of Roman Catholicism reveals Mathison\u2019s significant ignorance of Van Til\u2019s views.\u00a0 Van Til\u2019s argument throughout his writings is that Roman Catholicism is inconsistent<\/em> in its proclamation of Christian doctrines. \u00a0It\u2019s a \u201ca straddling position\u201d between Christianity and paganism.[53]<\/a> \u00a0Roman Catholics profess belief in Christian doctrine on many points, but then they try to integrate the form\/matter scheme from Aristotelean philosophy, which is incompatible with Christianity.\u00a0 Van Til says that \u201cThomas, the theologian,\u201d wants to defend the Triune Creator who communicates through an infallible Bible, while \u201cThomas, the philosopher,\u201d wants to view God and man in terms of the Greek scale of being, crowned with an Unmoved Mover who does not know the world and could not communicate with the world.[54]<\/a>\u00a0 Mathison may disagree with Van Til\u2019s argument about how the form\/matter scheme undermines Christian teaching, but he doesn\u2019t even acknowledge the argument, much less provide a response to it.<\/p>\n

                      \n
                    1. Classical realism, therefore, must be rejected. But if the metaphysical framework that provided the context for the church\u2019s development, formulation, and defense of the doctrine of God is rejected, then that doctrine of God itself becomes problematic. <\/em>(pp. 32-33)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                      There are a lot of things that were part of \u201cthe context for the church\u2019s development, formulation, and defense of the doctrine of God,\u201d but to make this a refutation of Van Til, Mathison must show that the church\u2019s doctrine of God would fall apart without classical realism, which for Van Til refers to the form\/matter scheme of Aristotle\u2019s and Plato\u2019s philosophies.\u00a0 Does Mathison make that case?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 In an endnote, Mathison says, \u201cIn using the word\u00a0ousia<\/em>, Christians were using a word that\u00a0<\/em>had a history in Greek philosophy. Likewise, Christological discussions of the \u2018natures\u2019 of Christ borrowed words and concepts from Greek philosophy.\u201d\u00a0 If every Greek word must carry with it the entire history of its meaning as used by pagans, then writing the New Testament in Greek would have been impossible.\u00a0 \u201cLogos\u201d could never refer to a transcendent Creator, for example.\u00a0 For Mathison\u2019s criticism here to count against Van Til, he needs to demonstrate that using these Greek terms necessarily commits one to the Greek form\/matter scheme of reality.\u00a0 Mathison doesn\u2019t do that because 1) he is unaware that this is the heart of Van Til\u2019s criticism of Greek philosophy, and 2) he thinks that Van Til is just plain prejudiced against Aristotle, which does not require an argument in response since prejudice is not based on argument.<\/p>\n

                        \n
                      1. Van Til seems to grant the possibility of \u201celements of truth\u201d in any non-Christian system of thought except Aristotelianism. <\/em>(p. 33, n. 144)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                        Here\u2019s Mathison\u2019s claim that Van Til opposed Aquinas\u2019s use of Aristotle out of some arbitrary prejudice against Aristotle.\u00a0 But is it true? No.\u00a0 Strangely, Mathison even quotes this passage earlier in his paper (pp. 13-14) where Van affirms that Christians can learn some things from Aristotle:<\/p>\n

                        It should be carefully noted that our criticism of this procedure does not imply that we hold it to be wrong for the Christian church to make formal use of the categories of thought discovered by Aristotle or any other\u00a0 thinker.\u00a0 On the contrary, we believe that in the Providence of God, Aristotle was raised up of God so that he might serve the church of God by laying at its feet the measures of his brilliant intellect.\u00a0 When Solomon built the temple of God he was instructed to make use of the peculiar skill and the peculiar gifts of the pagan nation that was his neighbor.[55]<\/a><\/p>\n

                          \n
                        1. If history is any guide, Van Til\u2019s rejection of the older philosophy will eventually result in the denial of classical theism by some who follow his lead. <\/em>(p. 36)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                          Before he tries to predict people\u2019s future behavior (the slippery slope fallacy), Mathison needs to prove that Van Til\u2019s philosophy logically entails<\/em> the denial of the biblical view of God, which Mathison does not prove.\u00a0 (I am saying \u201cbiblical\u201d rather than \u201cclassical\u201d because, while Van Til agrees with the historic creeds of the church, obviously there are statements in the writings of theologians prior to the Reformation that Van Til disagrees with.)\u00a0 Rather than make the logical case, Mathison makes logically unrelated comparisons.\u00a0 He says that \u201cpost-Enlightenment philosophers\u201d abandoned the philosophical framework of the Middle Ages, leading them to abandon Trinitarian theism; therefore Van Til\u2019s abandonment of the philosophy of the Middle Ages could lead to his followers abandoning Trinitarian theism.\u00a0 But that only works if he can show that Van Til\u2019s view are logically equivalent to post-Enlightenment views, which they are not \u2013 and far from it.\u00a0 Mathison\u2019s argument is like a Roman Catholic arguing that atheists reject the authority of the Pope, and Protestants reject the authority of the Pope, therefore Protestantism entails atheism and Protestants will eventually become atheists.\u00a0 This ignores the differences in the arguments that the two groups have relied on to reach similar conclusions.<\/p>\n

                          In fact, Van Til argues that it is a short trip from Aristotle\u2019s form\/matter scheme to Kant\u2019s freedom\/nature scheme.[56]<\/a>\u00a0 A god who cannot be known or named because all human knowledge arises from sensation and this god is pure form rather than a sensible object,[57]<\/a> is substantially the same as Kant\u2019s god who cannot be known or named because all human knowledge arises from sensation and his god is in the noumenal realm rather than the phenomenal realm.\u00a0 Kant argued that the historical accounts in the Bible of revelation and God\u2019s intervention into history at particular times must all be considered temporal descriptions of what are actually atemporal truths.[58]<\/a>\u00a0 Likewise, Thomists, when being most consistent with Aristotle, argue that accounts of God speaking at particular points in history are metaphorical ways of describing a god who cannot change, and thus cannot interact in particular ways with man at particular points in the flow of history.\u00a0 Because Aquinas holds that our knowledge of being arises from sensation and is limited to composites of form and matter, Van Til describes his theory of knowledge is \u201ca sort of pre-Kantian phenomenalism.\u201d[59]<\/a><\/p>\n

                          Hans K\u00fcng famously argued in his book Justification: The Doctrine of Karl Barth and a Catholic Reflection<\/em> that there is not much distance separating Karl Barth\u2019s Kantian \u201cProtestantism\u201d from Roman Catholic theology, and Van Til argues that there is even less distance than K\u00fcng claimed.[60]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 The ecumenical movement between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism finds its unity in the \u201cAristotle-Christ-Kant Synthesis.\u201d[61]<\/a> \u00a0Aquinas tried to unequally yoke Christianity to Aristotelianism, but Aristotle and Kant are natural bedfellows.\u00a0 Mathison should respond to the claim of the idealist leanings of his own view.<\/p>\n

                          POOR HISTORICAL THEOLOGY <\/strong>(p. 36)<\/p>\n

                            \n
                          1. Van Til asserts throughout his writings that Aquinas denied the Creator-creature distinction and taught that God and His creation exist on a scale of being. <\/em>(p. 37)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                            No.\u00a0 Van Til says, for instance, \u201cAs for Thomas, he does defend the idea of creation.\u201d[62]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til argues that the logical implication<\/em> of Aquinas\u2019s adoption of Aristotle\u2019s form\/matter scheme is a scale of being rather than the Creator-creature distinction taught in the Bible.\u00a0 Van Til recognizes that Aquinas taught that there is a Creator-creature distinction because it is taught in the Bible, but Aquinas also tried to explain God and creation in terms of Greek philosophy in which there is no Creator or creation.\u00a0 Instead, the Greek view is that reality is constituted by a mixture of form and matter on a scale of being, with pure form having pure being and with matter arising from and tending to non-being.\u00a0 If God is a supremely simple form in terms of Greek philosophy, then He can\u2019t create anything.\u00a0 In that case He is not a Person but an it \u2013 an empty, static concept of pure unity.[63]<\/a>\u00a0 Given this view, there can be no Creator-creature distinction.\u00a0 By necessity on this view, anything with being is part of the same being as every other being, including the being of the Supreme Being.\u00a0 And any distinction between beings is because of \u201cmatter\u201d which arises from non-being and is not a creation of Aristotle\u2019s god.<\/p>\n

                            The Aristotelian view of knowledge involves the view that knowledge is identical with the object of knowledge.\u00a0 Van Til quotes Aristotle saying, \u201cActual knowledge is identical with its object of knowledge. . .\u00a0 When the mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more:\u00a0 this alone is immortal and eternal.\u201d[64]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til points out that, putting this view in Christian language, this means that \u201cTo the extent that man knows God from knowing himself he must also be<\/em> God.\u201d[65]<\/a>\u00a0 This view of knowledge wipes out the Creator-creature distinction.\u00a0 Rather than man\u2019s consciousness receiving revelation from his Creator, man\u2019s consciousness is divine.<\/p>\n

                            Thomas applies biblical terminology of \u201cCreator\u201d and \u201ccreature\u201d to talk about the distinction between God and nature, but then he slips into scale-of-being language.\u00a0 For example, when Aquinas says that God has goodness in the highest degree, as in the fourth of the five ways to prove God\u2019s existence,[66]<\/a> that, by itself, could be compatible with either the biblical Creator\/creature distinction or a Greek scale of being.\u00a0 But as Aquinas discusses the fourth way, he says, \u201cfor those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. II.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Equating truth with being, and citing Aristotle making the same argument (\u201cas each thing is in respect of being, so is it in respect of truth\u201d [Meta<\/em>., 2.993b]), puts the context of the discussion of degrees of perfection into the Greek form\/matter view of reality rather than the biblical view of Creator-creature distinction.[67]<\/a>\u00a0 When, in another discussion in Summa Theologica<\/em>, Aquinas equates being with goodness, saying that \u201cevery being, as being, is good,\u201d[68]<\/a> he again is putting the issue of goodness in terms of a scale of being rather than a biblical distinction between Creator and creation, because in the latter case goodness is a matter of the creature\u2019s will obeying God\u2019s transcendent law, not a matter of participation in being.\u00a0 Scripture speaks of evil in purely ethical terms, not metaphysical terms.<\/p>\n

                            Of course, Aquinas also talks about ethics in terms of obeying God\u2019s law, but he tries to make that consistent with a scale-of-being view of reality.\u00a0 Since God\u2019s law defines goodness, and goodness equates to being, choosing God\u2019s law amounts to choosing being over non-being, and evil amounts to choosing non-being over being.\u00a0 In terms of Aristotle\u2019s form-matter scheme, the human will is a combination choosing the good because it participates in God\u2019s being (pure Form), or choosing evil because it participates in non-being \u2013 a combination of pure determinism and pure indeterminism. As Van Til points out,[69]<\/a> Aquinas says, \u201cBut only good can be a cause, because nothing can be a cause unless it is a being, and every being as such, is good.\u201d[70]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 So how does an evil will have the power to do anything?\u00a0 How does non-being cause such misery in the world if non-being can\u2019t cause anything?\u00a0 Aquinas tries to get around that by saying that evil choices are always choices for a good thing that has accidentally bad consequences:\u00a0 \u201cAnd evil as such cannot be intended, nor in any way willed or desired, since being desired has the nature of good, to which evil as such is contrary.\u00a0 And so we see that no person does any evil except intending something that seems good to the person. . . .\u00a0 The will indeed causes evil by accident when the will is borne to something that is good in some respect but is linked to something that is unqualifiedly evil.\u201d[71]<\/a> \u00a0The failure to follow God\u2019s law is a matter of acting while being inattentive<\/em> to the rule that declares the act to be an absolute evil.\u00a0 God\u2019s law is negated not by direct opposition but by nonuse of the rule:\u00a0 \u201cBut not attending to the rule first takes on the aspect of evil because the soul proceeds to make a moral choice without considering the rule.\u00a0 Just so, the carpenter errs because he proceeds to cut the piece of wood without using the measuring bar, . . . likewise, the moral fault of the will consists in the fact that the will proceeds to choose without using the rule of reason or God\u2019s law.\u201d[72]<\/a>\u00a0 This inattention to the rule is compared to \u201csilence or darkness, since the deficiency is just a negation.\u201d[73]<\/a>\u00a0 As Van Til quotes Jacque Maritain explaining, \u201c. . . the creature slinks, not by an action but a free non-action or disaction,\u2014from the influx of the First Cause,\u2014which influx is loaded with being and goodness\u2014it slinks from it insofar as this influx reaches the free region as such, it renders this influx sterile, it nihilates<\/em> it.\u201d[74]<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0There is no room in Aquinas\u2019s explanation of evil as non-being for a person to know the good and directly, intentionally commit evil.\u00a0 Yet that is what the Bible teaches in Romans 1.\u00a0 Evil consists in the fact that, \u201calthough they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him\u201d (Rom. 1:21), and \u201cThough they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them\u201d (Rom. 1:32).<\/p>\n

                            Aquinas\u2019s doctrine on the donum superadditum<\/em> fits into the form-matter scheme.\u00a0 On this view, Adam was righteous before the Fall because of this grace added to Adam\u2019s created nature.\u00a0 If goodness is being, then this grace is a rise in the scale of being, and losing this grace in the Fall meant sliding down the scale of being closer to non-being. \u00a0As Van Til puts it, on the Thomistic view, humans are sinful because of their \u201cslenderness of being.\u201d[75]<\/a> \u00a0The Protestant view, in contrast, is that Adam was righteous just in his created nature before the Fall.\u00a0 There is no need to equate finiteness with sin, so there is no need for the donum superadditum<\/em> to explain Adam\u2019s pre-Fall perfection.\u00a0 The difference between the Roman Catholic view and Protestant view of salvation becomes a difference between infused grace in the Roman Catholic view, which is a metaphysical idea, and imputed grace in the Protestant view, which is a forensic, ethical concept rather than a metaphysical one.<\/p>\n

                            Aquinas\u2019s views of providence and predestination are often regarded as virtually the same as Calvin\u2019s, and Van Til acknowledges that Aquinas teaches that God\u2019s providence extends to everything in creation according to the pre-existent plan in the divine mind.[76]<\/a>\u00a0 This includes predestination of salvation[77]<\/a> and allowing reprobation of the others.[78]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 But whereas Calvin based his views of predestination on the clear knowledge from God found in the revelation of the Bible, Aquinas, in addition to appealing to Scripture, tries to explain these doctrines in terms of the Aristotelian form\/matter scheme, which gives the whole issue a very different, anti-biblical character.\u00a0 In accordance with Aquinas\u2019s appeal to Aristotle\u2019s concept of being, God\u2019s control of all things arises from the idea that the perfection of God\u2019s being is identical to the perfection of derivative being.\u00a0 God wills the fullness of His being in creation:\u00a0 \u201cFurthermore, in willing Himself God wills all that is in Him. But all things in a certain manner pre-exist in Him through their proper models, as was shown above.\u00a0 God, therefore, in willing Himself likewise wills other things.\u201d[79]<\/a>\u00a0 Arthur Lovejoy calls this the principle of plentitude.[80]<\/a>\u00a0 On this principle, God should will all that is within God, which is infinite, in His creation at all times.\u00a0 Aquinas must find a way to avoid this absurd consequence and to affirm the voluntary nature of God\u2019s will so that God can choose not to will some things, even though they are good things. The only way that Aquinas can avoid this is by being inconsistent and by appealing to non-being to negate being.\u00a0 He is inconsistent by later talking about God\u2019s perfection being reflected in creation by creating a mere \u201cmany\u201d things rather than \u201call\u201d things or an infinite number of things.[81]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 The complete determinism of being is countered by non-being:\u00a0 \u201cHence, although the being of any given thing is as such a good and its non-being an evil, the non-being of something can fall under the will (though not by necessity) because of some adjoined good that is preserved.\u201d[82]<\/a>\u00a0 The sum of this means that God\u2019s will has a rational aspect that follows God\u2019s intellect, but God\u2019s will also has an irrational aspect that finds its freedom in non-being.\u00a0 As Van Til puts it, \u201cThe will of God is, on the one hand, said to be identical with the intellect of God.\u00a0 This is on Thomas\u2019 principles sheer monism.\u00a0 But then again the will of God is set over against the intellect of God and is made purely irrational.\u201d[83]<\/a> \u00a0Providence in creation, then, is limited.\u00a0 As Van Til observes, Aquinas relates providence to types in God.[84]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til references an article in Summa Theologica<\/em> in which Aquinas says, \u201cit is necessary that the type of the order of things towards their end should pre-exist in the divine mind: and the type of things ordered towards an end is, properly speaking, providence.\u201d[85]<\/a> Necessity applies to types, but contingency applies to the matter that joins with the form. \u00a0So then, Van Til argues, put in the context of Aristotle\u2019s philosophy in which there can be no Creator\/creation distinction, comprehensive predestination would amount to complete determinism because everything would fully participate in the being of Form; but that would destroy matter, which arises from non-being.\u00a0 Since there is both Form and matter, Form cannot fully extend to every detail of the world.\u00a0 Consequently, on Aquinas\u2019s view of providence and predestination, evil is a necessary part of the world; and this is not just because God accomplishes a greater good by allowing evil, but because matter and non-being are necessarily both components of the world.\u00a0 Remember, Aquinas equates being with moral goodness; therefore gradations in being means gradations in goodness.\u00a0 He says that \u201cthe perfection of the universe requires that there should be inequality in things, so that every grade of goodness may be realized.\u201d[86]<\/a>\u00a0 Contrary to the Calvinist view, Aquinas holds that it would be impossible for God to make a world in which some people do not fall into sin. \u00a0Continuing in the same article, Aquinas says, \u201cso the perfection of the universe requires that there should be some which can fail in goodness, and thence it follows that sometimes they do fail. Now it is in this that evil consists, namely, in the fact that a thing fails in goodness.\u201d[87]<\/a>\u00a0 In conclusion, Aquinas explains freedom of the will of both God and man in terms of non-being.<\/p>\n

                            I should also note that overturning the Greek view of form and matter in favor of the sovereignty of a personal Creator was necessary for the development of modern science, providing a basis for the detailed, rational study of matter.\u00a0 Thomas Torrence explains that the Christian view sanctified matter to make science a noble pursuit:<\/p>\n

                            Christian belief in the goodness and integrity of the physical universe . . . played an incalculable part in transforming the ancient worldview.\u00a0 It destroyed the Platonic and Aristotelian idea that matter is, if not evil, the raw material of corruption and unreality and the source of disorder in the universe, and it also ruled entirely out of consideration the pessimistic views of nature that emanated from the dualistic sects such as the Manichaeans and the Gnostics, thereby emancipating the material reality of the universe for serious scientific attention.[88]<\/a><\/p>\n

                              \n
                            1. Van Til\u2019s comments on scholasticism are likewise incorrect. In the first place, he speaks of scholasticism as if it were a monolithic school of thought or doctrine based on Aristotelianism. . .<\/em> Scholasticism is not a particular doctrine. It was a method designed for schools\u2014thus the name \u201cscholastic.\u201d. . . Van Til\u2019s misunderstanding of scholasticism in the Reformed tradition goes hand in hand with the old Calvin vs. the Calvinists thesis, which has also been thoroughly debunked. <\/em>(p. 39, 40)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                              I\u2019ll admit that I have not yet had the time to read Richard Muller\u2019s multi-volume work, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics<\/em>.\u00a0 But given what I have read in the same vein, plus my knowledge of Van Til\u2019s writings, I think that I can make some relevant comments.<\/p>\n

                              First, it should be noted that, if Van Til was wrong in some of his views on historical theology, that does not undermine the soundness of his philosophical arguments for the truth of Christianity.\u00a0 If scholasticism cannot be broadly characterized as Aristotelian, that does not undermine Van Til\u2019s arguments against specific arguments by specific people like Aquinas.\u00a0 If there were scholastics who were Van Tillian before there was a Van Til, so much the better.\u00a0 Of course, the Reformed Thomists promoting historical revisionism of scholasticism don\u2019t expect to find that.\u00a0 For some reason they think that finding non-Aristotelian scholastics boosts their case for Aquinas\u2019s Aristotelianism.<\/p>\n

                              Second, Van Til is still within his rights to make criticism of scholasticism as a broad class of thinkers even if there are exceptions to the views that he attributes to scholasticism.\u00a0 To illustrate, a person can be regarded as accurate in criticizing \u201cmodern evangelicalism\u201d on certainly broadly-held points among modern evangelicals even though there are those within that group to which the criticisms do not apply.\u00a0 It should be noted that Van Til acknowledges that both Augustinianism and Aristotelianism were influential in scholasticism, with Aristotelianism gaining the upper hand in the later years.[89]<\/a>\u00a0 Therefore, when Van Til characterizes scholasticism as Aristotelian, we can interpret him to be referring mainly to the later years, although he does not always make that distinction clear.<\/p>\n

                              Third, the revisionist studies that Mathison cites that purport to show that scholasticism was not broadly uniform in theological substance are only relevant to Van Til\u2019s claims in so far as these studies examine the issues with which Van Til was concerned.\u00a0 Scholastics no doubt had many disagreements among themselves, but did they differ on the points that Van Til faults them for?\u00a0 Even if certain scholastics strongly argued against Aristotle on some issues, did they still assume the form\/matter scheme of Greek thought?\u00a0 Even more broadly, did they assume that human reason is generally uncorrupted in regard to earthly matters?\u00a0 These are Van Til\u2019s main criticisms of scholasticism.\u00a0 Critics of Van Til are notoriously bad at correctly representing his views, so they are unlikely to address Van Til\u2019s concerns in their studies of historical theology.<\/p>\n

                              Fourth, Van Til points out that a sharp distinction between method and substance is naive.\u00a0 Method is shaped by a philosophy of reality.[90]<\/a> There is no neutrality.\u00a0 Why would so many men over so long a time hold to the same method of scholarship?\u00a0 Because they shared a similar view of the world.\u00a0 Why did scholasticism come to an end?\u00a0 Because men changed their worldview and developed new methods to suit the new philosophical views.\u00a0 Scholasticism\u2019s dialectic method served well the purpose of exploring ways to reconcile various authorities.\u00a0 When men\u2019s views of authority changed, particularly in caring less about reconciling ancient authorities with the Bible, it makes sense for their methods of scholarship to change too.\u00a0 To give a modern example of the connection between method and substance, the method of modern science is to exclude the supernatural, and the method of creationism is to include the Bible as authoritative in science.\u00a0 Neither side would view the method of the other side as neutral with respect to a theory of reality.<\/p>\n

                                \n
                              1. Calvin cannot be saying that non-Christians know nothing when he explicitly says that non-Christians know something and that Christians can learn much from non-Christians about earthly things. <\/em>(pp. 42-43)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                Van Til agrees.\u00a0 Next.<\/p>\n

                                  \n
                                1. Calvin says that the natural man does truly know the world (earthly things). According to Van Til, Calvin says that that the natural man does not truly know the world. In other words, Van Til presents Calvin as teaching the opposite of what Calvin explicitly says. . . . Making all of this even more confusing is the fact that what Van Til says Calvin really means is also the opposite of what Van Til himself says when he himself grants that natural men do have knowledge of earthly things. <\/em>(p. 43)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                  Fesko makes this same argument against Van Til, and I address it more fully in my review<\/a> of his book.\u00a0 Van Til holds that Calvin was not completely consistent, so there are occasional statements that Calvin makes about human knowledge that Van Til does not agree with.\u00a0 Of course, Mathison\u2019s argument here concerns the same issue that I address above about whether unbelievers have \u201ctrue knowledge.\u201d\u00a0 Mathison fails to distinguish the three, noncontradictory perspectives that Van Til takes on that question.<\/p>\n

                                  A MONSTROUS SYNTHESIS OF IDEALISM AND CHRIST? <\/strong>(p. 44)<\/p>\n

                                    \n
                                  1. Because Van Til sometimes qualifies these statements and grants that unbelievers have true knowledge of the external world, these similarities with post-Kantian thought are not sufficient to demonstrate that Van Til has adopted the systems of either Kantianism or idealism. <\/em>(p. 48)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                    But then:<\/p>\n

                                    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0. . . he seems to have allowed post-Enlightenment philosophy to dictate his apologetic agenda. <\/em>(p. 49)<\/p>\n

                                    Van Til is very clear how he redefines idealistic terminology to fit orthodox theology, and he writes extensively about his disagreements with idealism on core issues, even identifying Kant\u2019s philosophy as the most consistent expression of rebellion against God in the history of philosophy up to that point in history:<\/p>\n

                                    Paul says that after the fall of Adam man makes God in his image. \u00a0He represses the truth about himself as the creature made by God.\u00a0 As the responsible heirs of Adam\u2019s rebellion, all men, from the earliest times to the present, start with this assumption of human autonomy. \u00a0Kant did not invent this principle of autonomy or self-sufficient inwardness. \u00a0He merely expressed it more consistently than did his predecessors.[91]<\/a><\/p>\n

                                    Van Til regards a Kantian synthesis with Christianity as monstrous as an Aristotelian synthesis:\u00a0 \u201cThe synthesis of Aristotle and Christ is as monstrous as is the synthesis of Kant and Christ.\u201d[92]<\/a>\u00a0 Yet Mathison, like other Protestant Thomists in our day, wants to criticize Van Til for adopting anti-Christian Kantian ideas, despite not being able to find the particular evidence to pin the charge on him.\u00a0 Modern Protestant Thomists have all convinced themselves that there is some kind of idealist influence in Van Til\u2019s apologetic that has led him to compromise Christianity in some way.\u00a0 Even though Mathison admits that when Van Til uses an idealist term, he is \u201cnot using it in a Kantian sense,\u201d he still brings up idealist terms as a problem.\u00a0 Mathison goes on for several paragraphs raising innuendoes about Van Til being an idealist.\u00a0 It\u2019s a case of gossip being dressed up like a philosophical argument.\u00a0 Van Til\u2019s use of some idealist terminology while also extensively denouncing the idealists\u2019 rebellion against God is hardly equivalent to Aquinas\u2019s slavish devotion to \u201cthe Philosopher\u201d while also claiming that Aristotle proved the existence of the true God.\u00a0 You aren\u2019t going to find Aquinas describing Aristotle\u2019s philosophy as \u201cimmediately and directly destructive of Christian theism\u201d as Van Til does of Kantianism:<\/p>\n

                                    It is of utmost importance to see the true meaning of Kant\u2019s phenomenalism.\u00a0 This phenomenalism, it now appears, is immediately and directly destructive of Christian theism.\u00a0 Phenomenalism of the sort that Kant has given us can be kept alive only by a constant warfare of exclusion of all that Christianity holds dear. . . .\u00a0\u00a0 [T]here must of necessity be a death-struggle whenever Christianity and Criticism meet.\u00a0 And they meet at every front since the days when the Copernicus of philosophy took his regular walks in K\u00f6nigsberg.[93]<\/a><\/p>\n

                                    If Van Til adopted Kant\u2019s noumenal-phenomenal distinction, that would be equivalent to Aquinas adopting Aristotle\u2019s form-matter distinction.\u00a0 It would be adopting an anti-biblical view of reality and dressing it up in biblical language.\u00a0 But Van Til strongly repudiates Kant\u2019s noumenal-phenomenal distinction.<\/p>\n

                                    On the other hand, Van Til\u2019s appropriation of Kant\u2019s type of argument, the transcendental argument, is not all that different from Aristotle\u2019s and Aquinas\u2019s type of argument.\u00a0 Therefore if using a transcendental argument entails adopting idealist philosophy, then Aristotle and Aquinas have adopted idealist philosophy.\u00a0 A transcendental argument is one that concerns what is necessary for the possibility of intelligible experience, and any well-developed philosophy will have a view of what makes experience intelligible.\u00a0 Aristotle thought that the intelligibility of experience is explained by combining Parmenides\u2019s principle of abstract unity with Heraclitus\u2019s principle of abstract diversity from matter, while placing form within matter (hylomorphism) rather than in a separate realm like Plato did.\u00a0 Aquinas adopted Aristotle\u2019s view while trying to make it consistent with Christianity.\u00a0\u00a0 So the difference between Van Til and Aquinas is not really that one makes use of transcendental argument and the other doesn\u2019t, but which one has a good transcendental argument.\u00a0 The problem with Aquinas\u2019s view is that it is a bad transcendental argument in two ways.\u00a0 First, his argument tries to combine two views that are inconsistent with one another \u2013 the Greek form\/matter distinction and the Christian Creator\/creation distinction.\u00a0 Van Til faults Aquinas for attempting a \u201cneutral\u201d argument because he tries to present an anti-Christian view as if it is Christian.\u00a0 Second, Aquinas presents a bad transcendental argument because Aristotle\u2019s form\/matter view does not account for intelligible experience.\u00a0 It is a futile attempt to combine abstract unity (a blank) with abstract diversity (pure chaos) to form the intelligible world.<\/p>\n

                                    PRESUPPOSING REASON <\/strong>(p. 50)<\/p>\n

                                      \n
                                    1. No traditional Christian apologist, whether Aquinas or the Reformed scholastics, affirms the blasphemous idea that the mind of man is ultimate in the sense of being metaphysically ultimate. <\/em>(p. 50-51)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                      Van Til\u2019s claim is not that Aquinas and others explicitly state that the mind of man is ultimate.\u00a0 His claim is that they hold positions that entail that the mind of man is ultimate even though they are trying to prove the transcendent God of Christianity.\u00a0 Aquinas mistakenly tries to integrate Aristotle\u2019s monistic philosophy with Christianity\u2019s Creator-creature dualism.<\/p>\n

                                        \n
                                      1. Van Til, of course, does not deny that the unbeliever has the ability to understand the apologist\u2019s arguments, and his method assumes the unbeliever\u2019s ability to judge between two views (the Christian and the non-Christian) as well as his ability to determine which view explains intelligibility itself. He says as much himself. But when these same kinds of statements are made by traditional apologists, Van Til explains them as examples of autonomous human reason. \u00a0Van Til acknowledges that in terms of the human intellectual faculty and its processes, reason has to be assumed in every appeal to the unbeliever\u2019s mind, but granting this obvious point, as Van Til does, undermines his strong claims regarding the antithesis and thus undermines his entire presuppositional system and his arguments against traditional apologetics. <\/em>(p. 53)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                        No, recognizing that unbelievers can reason does not undermine the strong claims of antithesis.\u00a0 The strong claims of antithesis are in regard to the unbeliever\u2019s ultimate principles that deny God.\u00a0 But because unbelievers are made in God\u2019s image, live in God\u2019s world, and are restrained by God\u2019s common grace, they are not as bad as their principles entail.\u00a0 The difference between the traditional apologetics that Van Til criticizes and his own position is the difference between neutral common ground<\/em> and common ground that is God\u2019s ground<\/em>.\u00a0 Van Til opposes the idea of theistically neutral common ground.\u00a0 Like many critics of Van Til, Mathison claims that Van Til rejects common ground (p. 58), which is false \u2013 he rejects only neutral<\/em> common ground.\u00a0 There is no neutrality in this world in regard to God because all ground is God\u2019s ground.\u00a0 God created and rules all things; and nothing in life makes sense if God does not exist.\u00a0 Without God there could be neither knowledge nor ethics.\u00a0 But because unbelievers and believers both live in God\u2019s world, they have common ground with each other that believers can use to argue for God\u2019s existence. \u00a0Even though unbelievers will not profess belief in the true God, their knowledge of God is inescapable, and that knowledge must be relied upon to some degree to function in God\u2019s world.\u00a0 Van Til argues that common grace, when properly understood, confirms absolute antithesis:<\/p>\n

                                        At this point I may interject that when I thus emphasize the absolute antithesis I am not denying or even for a moment forgetting the doctrine of common grace. That doctrine does not militate against but here as elsewhere confirms the doctrine of the absolute antithesis. Common grace does not overlook ultimate differences. Nor does it when correctly understood, in any way tone down those ultimate differences. On the contrary, common grace helps to point out that things which look alike are not ultimately alike. Common grace points specifically to the fact that similarities between the people of God and the people of this world are but proximate similarities and that these proximate similarities play before the background of ultimate differences. If people do not believe in common grace or do not know what it means, they are likely to raise proximate similarities to ultimate similarities or to raise proximate differences to ultimate differences with the result that the absolute differences are toned down.[94]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

                                        REJECTION OF REFORMED NATURAL THEOLOGY <\/strong>(p. 53)<\/p>\n

                                          \n
                                        1. If man cannot know anything truly about the created order, then a knowledge of God that begins with an examination of the created order will obviously not be possible. Van Til explicitly ties these two ideas together, saying that since fallen man cannot truly know anything, natural theology is impossible. <\/em>(p. 55)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                          Like Fesko, Mathison confuses Van Til\u2019s statements about the unbeliever\u2019s reaction to natural revelation, which is to suppress and distort it, with the false claim that Van Til denies natural revelation, which the unbeliever knows inescapably and with enough clarity to make him responsible for failing to acknowledge the true God, thus earning himself a place in Hell.\u00a0 Roman Catholic theology does not sufficiently distinguish between natural revelation with man\u2019s reaction to it, so their affirmation of natural revelation is often associated with claims that unbelievers acknowledge the true God.\u00a0 As Van Til puts it, \u201cThe Roman Catholic has no such doctrine of common grace. In his system the believer and the unbeliever have an area in common without difference. Romanism assumes that the \u2018natural theology\u2019 of the natural man is a true evaluation of the revelation of God in nature. It thus virtually confuses God\u2019s revelation to man with man\u2019s response to that revelation.\u201d[95]<\/a>\u00a0 Because unbelievers suppress and distort natural revelation, their statements about any sort of god that they acknowledge will be a gross distortion of the true God\u2019s nature.\u00a0 In that sense, natural theology is always natural idolatry in the hands of unbelievers.\u00a0 That\u2019s what Paul teaches in Romans 1.\u00a0 Men suppress the clear revelation of God\u2019s nature through creation and worship created things instead.\u00a0 Again, this does not mean that unbelievers are wrong about everything they say in every respect.\u00a0 But at least it means that we should not expect to find a pagan, an enemy of God, who provides a rigorous proof of the existence of the true God.\u00a0 Furthermore, Van Til does not merely quote Romans 1 to prove that Aristotle\u2019s philosophy did not prove the true God.\u00a0 Van Til examines Aristotle\u2019s specific arguments and shows that they don\u2019t present us with the true God.\u00a0 The form\/matter scheme of Aristotle\u2019s thought must be tossed aside in order to construct an argument for the true God.<\/p>\n

                                          Yet, the Christian, having his eyes opened by the Holy Spirit and enlightened by God\u2019s special revelation in the Bible, is able to construct an argument for God\u2019s existence from nature.\u00a0 That is what Van Til\u2019s transcendental argument for the existence of God is, an example of natural theology done right.[96]<\/a>\u00a0 He argues that the possibility of any and all knowledge, \u201cwhether it be the trees of the garden or the angels in heaven,\u201d requires the existence of God.[97]<\/a>\u00a0 The process of induction that scientists rely on, that there is uniformity to natural law, requires the existence of God.[98]<\/a>\u00a0 Such arguments from nature to prove God\u2019s existence can be presented to pagans and be used by the Holy Spirit to open their eyes so that they have saving faith in the true God.<\/p>\n

                                          Because of Aquinas\u2019s Aristotelian empiricism, that all knowledge begins with sensation, he says concerning proof for the existence of God that the \u201ceffect is better known to us than its cause.\u201d[99]<\/a>\u00a0 In other words, the facts of our immediate, earthly environment are known better to us than God is known.\u00a0 Through nature, we know God \u201cin a general and confused way. . . .\u00a0 This, however, is not to know absolutely that God exists; just as to know that someone is approaching is not the same as to know that Peter is approaching, even though it is Peter who is approaching.\u201d[100]<\/a>\u00a0 Here Aquinas is stating the probabilistic<\/em> character of our knowledge of God through nature.\u00a0 There is some kind of First Cause, but what that cause is like is indeterminate.\u00a0 Yet there is also a sense in which the First Cause of natural revelation necessarily<\/em> exists:\u00a0 \u201cif the effect exists, the cause must pre-exist.\u201d[101]<\/a>\u00a0 (Mathison objects to Van Til saying that Aquinas\u2019s proofs for the existence of God demonstrate His probable existence rather than His necessary existence [p. 56, n. 22].\u00a0 But Aquinas claimed both, in different respects.)\u00a0 But if we examine Aquinas\u2019s views further, \u201cprobabilistic\u201d is even too positive a word to describe our knowledge of God through nature.\u00a0 While Peter has a silhouette that makes him distinguishable from, say, a bird, Aquinas removes all distinctions from God\u2019s nature.\u00a0 Aquinas says that anything positive in our experience of the world must be stripped away in our thinking in order for us to know God through nature, leaving God to be a \u201csupremely simple form;\u201d[102]<\/a> therefore, there is no content to our concept of God that is derived from nature.\u00a0 Contrary to Aquinas\u2019s goals and hopes as a Christian, such an empty concept could not have caused anything in the material world, even to give a faint glimmer of knowledge about it.\u00a0 Aquinas\u2019s cause that must exist, but whose nature is fuzzy, ends up as having a nature devoid of content that could not<\/em> have caused anything in the material world.\u00a0 Aquinas\u2019s attempt at proving the existence of God ends up disproving Him. \u00a0God as an empty concept necessarily does not exist<\/em>, because that would undermine the possibility of rationality, knowledge, and ethics.\u00a0 \u00a0It definitely is not a method that lives up to the Apostle Paul\u2019s statement: \u201cFor what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.\u00a0 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse\u201d (Rom. 1:19-20).<\/p>\n

                                          Contrast Aquinas\u2019s approach with Van Til\u2019s.\u00a0 For Van Til, every fact of experience provides certain knowledge of God as necessarily existing.\u00a0 The very intelligibility of any fact requires the existence of God.\u00a0 God is the source of both matter and form, diversity and unity, so God\u2019s mark as Creator is evident in every fact that we encounter.\u00a0 As the source of both the one and the many, He is absolute, the concrete universal.\u00a0 He cannot be a finite being.\u00a0 (The issue of infinite regress does not arise on this view because nothing could be in back of an absolute God.\u00a0\u00a0 Infinite regress arises as a problem only for finite sources of motion.)\u00a0 Since the knowledge of God is inescapable, the reason that men don\u2019t acknowledge His existence is not because they have only a faint, distorted knowledge of Him but because they suppress the clear knowledge that they have.\u00a0 They sin against their better knowledge, therefore God\u2019s wrath against them for worshipping the creation rather than the Creator is just.<\/p>\n

                                          Contrasting Aquinas and Van Til on Natural Revelation and Natural Theology<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
                                          <\/td>\nNatural Revelation<\/strong><\/td>\nNatural Theology<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
                                          \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

                                          Aquinas<\/strong><\/td>\n

                                          		Faint indications of God\u2019s existence as the remote cause of the universe.<\/td>\nThrough the faint indications of God\u2019s existence, the natural man will acknowledge God\u2019s existence and sometimes develop rigorous arguments to support that belief.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
                                          \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

                                          Van Til<\/strong><\/td>\n

                                          		Inescapable and certain knowledge of God\u2019s existence for all mankind through creation.<\/td>\nNatural men (unbelievers) will suppress the inescapable knowledge of God and worship idols, which will be reflected in their philosophical arguments.\u00a0 While not acknowledging the true God, indications of their knowledge of God will be expressed in various degrees in their behavior and thinking.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
                                            \n
                                          1. Thus Paul, according to Calvin, draws proof from a common ground, from the created world on which we both stand. He used natural theology. <\/em>(p. 58)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                            Mathison is contrasting Paul\u2019s speech in Athens in Acts 17 with Van Til\u2019s alleged view that rejects common ground with unbelievers.\u00a0 As already explained, Van Til does not reject common ground, just theistically-neutral common ground.\u00a0 Consequently, Van Til also does not reject natural theology rightly understood.<\/p>\n

                                            As for Paul\u2019s appeal to the words of pagan philosophers in Acts 17:28, surely Mathison is aware that Paul quotes authors who made these statements in the promotion of pantheism.\u00a0 Their god is an impersonal one that is not distinct from the world.[103]<\/a>\u00a0 Yet Paul is quoting them in a speech that promotes the existence of a transcendent, personal Creator.\u00a0 Therefore, Paul has to be using their words in a way that takes them out of their original context and puts them in a different context that supports a different kind of god than theirs. \u00a0Likewise with Paul\u2019s appeal to the inscription to \u201cthe unknown god\u201d in Acts 17:23.\u00a0 The Athenians did not intend for this inscription to be an appeal to the true God in contrast to all the others gods, but an appeal to a finite god that the Athenians might have missed in their homage to many other finite gods in their pantheon.\u00a0 Paul used the phrase \u201cthe unknown god\u201d to refer to a different god than the Athenians intended. \u00a0This is a perfectly acceptable use of pagan ideas in Van Til\u2019s view.\u00a0 If Paul had argued that the Greek pantheists and polytheists were intending<\/em> to describe the true God, the transcendent Creator, then there would be a problem with the truth of Paul\u2019s claim.[104]<\/a>\u00a0 And it is this kind of claim that Aquinas makes when he says that Aristotle proved the true God:\u00a0 \u201cBut there are some truths which the natural reason also is able to reach. Such are that God exists, that He is one, and the like. In fact, such truths about God have been proved demonstratively by the philosophers, guided by the light of the natural reason.\u201d[105]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0Pagans know that there is one God because of God\u2019s witness through nature, but they suppress that truth, so we are not going to find pagan philosophers offering rigorous arguments that demonstrate the existence of the true God.<\/p>\n

                                            Consider how the pagan quotes in Paul\u2019s speech both are and are not examples of common grace.\u00a0 As they were intended to be understood, the quotes are expressions of rebellion against God, worship of false gods, idols.\u00a0 The quotes are examples of common grace to the extent that elements of the statements can extracted from their original, broader context, i.e. worldview, and placed in an alien worldview. Polytheism can be said to reflect the suppressed knowledge that pagans have that the true God is personal, and pantheism can be said to reflect the suppressed knowledge that pagans have that the true God is universal. \u00a0Nevertheless, Paul\u2019s point in quoting the pagan statements is not to commend their knowledge<\/em> received through common grace but to highlight their ignorance<\/em> of God (Acts 17:30), like blind men groping in darkness even though evidence for God was everywhere around them (Acts 17:27).\u00a0 He quotes the statements of pagans for the rhetorical purpose of getting the attention of the Athenians, trying to get them to forsake their familiar way of looking at the world by using their words to describe a much different view of reality.\u00a0 He was hoping to spur a thought like, \u201cWe\u2019ve had this idea of an \u2018unknown god\u2019 completely wrong.\u00a0 Rather than build an altar to an unknown finite god, we should destroy the whole pantheon and worship the sovereign Creator whom Paul is telling us about, whom we have refused to acknowledge even though He is near to each one of us.\u00a0 The true God is near to us, but that is because He is the sovereign Creator, not because He is an impersonal principle indistinct from nature as our pantheists have claimed.\u201d<\/p>\n

                                            Also, as Van Til points out, in interpreting Paul\u2019s speech to the Athenians, we should consider Paul\u2019s words in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, that Paul specifically refers to the Greeks (v. 22) when he says that God has \u201cmade foolish the wisdom of this world\u201d (v. 20) and that \u201cthe world did not know God through wisdom\u201d (v. 21).[106]<\/a>\u00a0 Greek polytheism did not allow for a transcendent God, and Greek philosophy could not have allowed an incarnation into a living human being its abstract Form that Aristotle called the Unmoved Mover.<\/p>\n

                                              \n
                                            1. If man can know many things about the created world, as Van Til asserts in a number of places, then traditional natural theology and traditional methods of apologetics are also possible. <\/em>(p. 56)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                              In Mathison\u2019s discussion on natural theology, he accuses Van Til of conflating natural revelation and natural theology.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t provide a specific citation for this claim.\u00a0 (He cites Van Til\u2019s entire essay \u201cNature and Scripture\u201d in Note 211, but he provides no quotes or even page numbers.)\u00a0 But this sentence is an example of Mathison doing exactly what he accuses Van Til of doing.\u00a0 The fact that unbelievers are given true knowledge by God and that, on a proximate level, they know many things about the world, does not<\/em> mean that we should expect to find a pagan who develops a sound proof for the existence of God as Aquinas thinks that Aristotle did.\u00a0 Aristotle, like all non-Christians, was a God-hating idolater who suppressed the truth about God according to Paul in Romans 1. \u00a0According to Paul in 1 Corinthians, the Greeks \u201cdid not know God through wisdom\u201d (1 Cor. 1:21). \u00a0We can make use of some ideas from Aristotle here and there, but we must reject any claim that he proclaimed the true God in his philosophy.\u00a0 And Van Til explains exactly how Aristotle\u2019s philosophy excludes the true God:\u00a0 by holding to the form\/matter scheme of reality.\u00a0 Van Til\u2019s analysis justifies Tertullian charge:\u00a0 \u201cphilosophers, those patriarchs of heretics, as they may be fairly called.\u201d[107]<\/a><\/p>\n

                                              Conclusion:\u00a0 Mathison provides a fairly accurate summary of Van Til\u2019s approach to apologetics at the beginning of his paper, but when he comes to examine some of those themes, he has serious misunderstandings and leaves out the heart of Van TIl\u2019s critique of non-Christian thought, which is in terms of the issue of the One and the Many.\u00a0 Particularly with regard to Aquinas, Mathison shows that he has no recognition of Van Til\u2019s central argument against Aquinas, which is adopting Aristotle\u2019s form-matter scheme.\u00a0 His main evidence for Van Til\u2019s compromise with post-Kantian idealism is that, at least some times, Van Til says that unbelievers don\u2019t have knowledge of the external world (p. 48).\u00a0 Mathison is mistaken about Van Til\u2019s view on that.<\/p>\n

                                              Mathison holds to many of the standard distortions of Van Til held by other Protestant Thomists.\u00a0 He strongly holds to the Thomistic\/Aristotelian view of God, and he knows Van Til well enough to know that Van Til rejects, in some significant sense, the Thomism that he holds dearly.\u00a0 That Van Til rejects Thomism is enough for Mathison to reject Van Til without putting significant effort into understanding Van Til.\u00a0 Thomists have a view of the strength of a long tradition of Greek influence on Christian theology that makes it inconceivable for them to separate the two and anathematize the first.\u00a0 Van Til recognizes that there is a long history of appeals to Greek philosophy by Christian theologians, but he argues that this tradition must be rejected when it conflicts with Scripture,[108]<\/a> and not just on a point here or there but undermining the whole structure of Christianity \u2013 God, creation, sin, salvation, incarnation, revelation, etc. \u2013 if followed consistently.[109]<\/a> \u00a0And at least some of the supposed strength of the continuity of \u201cclassical theism\u201d is oversold based on a failure to recognize ambiguity and equivocation \u2013 a particular \u201cclassical\u201d term like \u201csimplicity\u201d is often understood in many different ways by different authors.[110]<\/a><\/p>\n

                                              Beyond the debate on historical theology, if Thomists are going to make a compelling case against Van Til, then there will have to be Thomists who understand Van Til\u2019s central arguments against Aquinas and Aristotle and who then compare his arguments to a close reading of Aquinas\u2019s and Aristotle\u2019s writings.\u00a0 Such a critique by a Thomist has yet to be written.\u00a0 Until such a critique has been written, Thomists can fiddle on the roof and shout \u201cTradition!\u201d all they want; but they are not going to convince anyone who values sound scholarship and the sufficiency of Scripture.<\/p>\n

                                              \n

                                              [1]<\/a>\u00a0 Greg Bahnsen, \u201cSocrates or Christ:\u00a0 The Reformation of Christian Apologetics,\u201d in Foundations of Christian Scholarship:\u00a0 Essays in the Van Til Perspective<\/em>, Gary North, ed. (Vallecito, CA:\u00a0 Ross House Books, 1979); and Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith<\/em> (Covenant Media Foundation, 1996).<\/p>\n

                                              [2]<\/sup><\/a> In his letter to Francis Schaeffer, Van Til says, \u201cWhen Aquinas seeks to prove that God exists without from the outset telling us from the outset what God is, he is talking about a pure abstraction. A that without a what is meaningless.\u201d\u00a0 See also Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology<\/em> (Phillipsburg, NJ:\u00a0 The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1974), p. 161; and A Christian Theory of Knowledge<\/em> (Phillipsburg, NJ:\u00a0 The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1969), p. 169.<\/p>\n

                                              [3]<\/a>\u00a0 Summa Theologica<\/em> 1.12.12<\/a><\/p>\n

                                              [4]<\/a>\u00a0 Cornelius Van Til, The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought<\/em> (Phillipsburg, NJ:\u00a0 Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1980), p. 99.<\/p>\n

                                              [5]<\/a>\u00a0 Summa Theologica,<\/em> 1.3.4<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [6]<\/sup><\/a> Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology<\/em>, p. 161.<\/p>\n

                                              [7]<\/sup><\/a> Van Til, The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought<\/em>, p. 99.<\/p>\n

                                              [8]<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0See Aquinas\u2019s explanation of remotion in Summa Contra Gentiles<\/em>, 1:14.2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [9]<\/a>\u00a0 Summa Theologica<\/em> 1.12.12<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [10]<\/a>\u00a0 John Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God<\/em> (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 1994), p. 71;\u00a0Apologetics: A Justification of Christian Belief <\/em>(Phillipsburg, NJ:\u00a0 Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 2015), p. 74.\u00a0\u00a0 See my essay, \u201cA (Very) Critical Review of Frame the Fuzzy Van Tillian\u2019s Book Apologetics,\u201d http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/2015\/09\/20\/review_of_frames_apologetics\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [11]<\/a>\u00a0 John Frame,\u00a0Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought\u00a0<\/em>(Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1995), p. 183.\u00a0 See my essay, \u201cThe Scope and Limits of Van Til\u2019s Transcendental Argument:\u00a0 A Response to John Frame,\u201d\u00a0http:\/\/www.christianciv.com\/The_Scope_and_Limits_of_VTAG.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [12]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge<\/em>, p. 173.<\/p>\n

                                              [13]<\/a>\u00a0 \u201cSaint Thomas Aquinas,\u201d Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy<\/em>, https:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/aquinas\/#God<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [14]<\/sup><\/a> Cornelius Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology<\/em> (Phillipsburg, NJ:\u00a0 The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1969), p. 60.<\/p>\n

                                              [15]<\/sup><\/a> Cornelius Van Til, Christian-Theistic Evidences<\/em> (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Phillipsburg, NJ., 1978), p. 66.<\/p>\n

                                              [16]<\/a>\u00a0 Cornelius Van Til, The New Modernism: An Appraisal of the Theology of Barth and Brunner<\/em> \u00a0(Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1947)p. 378.<\/p>\n

                                              [17]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., p. 152.<\/p>\n

                                              [18]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid. p. 100.<\/p>\n

                                              [19]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel<\/em>\u00a0 (Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1972), <\/em>p. 11.<\/p>\n

                                              [20]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, The New Modernism<\/em>, p. 173.<\/p>\n

                                              [21]<\/a>\u00a0 John Frame, Cornelius Van Til:\u00a0 An Analysis of His Thought<\/em> (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1995), p. 198.<\/p>\n

                                              [22]<\/a>\u00a0 \u201cThe Scope and Limits of Van Til’s Transcendental Argument:\u00a0 A Response to John Frame,\u201d at http:\/\/www.christianciv.com\/The_Scope_and_Limits_of_VTAG.pdf<\/a>; and \u201cA (Very) Critical Review of Frame the Fuzzy Van Tillian\u2019s Book Apologetics,\u201d at http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/2015\/09\/20\/review_of_frames_apologetics\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [23]<\/sup><\/a> Cornelius Van Til, Essays on Christian Education<\/em> (Phillipsburg, NJ: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1979), p. 83. Also, \u201cthe fall of man as involving the principle that the sinner is in principle<\/em> desirous of suppressing the truth but is in practice restrained from fully doing so by God\u2019s common grace,\u201d in Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith<\/em> (Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1955), p. 281 (emphasis in original).\u00a0 And see, Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge<\/em>, p. 225.<\/p>\n

                                              [24]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, The Defense of the Faith<\/em>, p. 285.<\/p>\n

                                              [25]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought<\/em>, p. 17 (emphasis in original).<\/p>\n

                                              [26]<\/a>\u00a0 \u201cCommon Notion Confusion: Part 1 of a Review of J.V. Fesko\u2019s Reforming Apologetics,\u201d (5\/25\/2019), http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/2019\/05\/25\/common-notion-confusion-part-1-of-a-review-of-j-v-feskos-reforming-apologetics\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [27]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology<\/em>, p. 27.<\/p>\n

                                              [28]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., p. 26 (emphasis in original).<\/p>\n

                                              [29]<\/a> \u00a0Ibid., p. 235.<\/p>\n

                                              [30]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n

                                              [31]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., p. 230.<\/p>\n

                                              [32]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0Ibid., p. 225; quoting Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology<\/em>, Vol. 1, p. 461.<\/p>\n

                                              [33]<\/a>\u00a0 https:\/\/www.ligonier.org\/learn\/devotionals\/perichoresis\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [34]<\/a>\u00a0 James E. Dolezal, All that is in God<\/em> (Grand Rapids, MI:\u00a0 Reformation Heritage Book, 2017), p. 42.<\/p>\n

                                              [35]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., p. 42.<\/p>\n

                                              [36]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., p. 76.<\/p>\n

                                              [37]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., p. 120.<\/p>\n

                                              [38]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n

                                              [39]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology<\/em>, p. 229; also see 215-16.<\/p>\n

                                              [40]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., 235.<\/p>\n

                                              [41]<\/a>\u00a0 Dolezal, All that is in God<\/em>, pp. 25-26.<\/p>\n

                                              [42]<\/a>\u00a0 Aristotle, Metaphysics<\/em>, XII.7.<\/p>\n

                                              [43]<\/a>\u00a0 See my essay, \u201cA Thomistic Transcendental Argument that Needs Van Til,\u201d http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/2017\/11\/06\/thomistic-transcendental-argument\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [44]<\/a>\u00a0 On matter being eternal: Aristotle, Physics,<\/em> VIII. 1.\u00a0 On the Unmoved Mover only thinking of itself: Aristotle Metaphysics<\/em>, XII.9.<\/p>\n

                                              [45]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology<\/em>, p. 210.<\/p>\n

                                              [46]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., p. 212.<\/p>\n

                                              [47]<\/a>\u00a0 Summa Contra Gentiles<\/em>, 1:13.29-30<\/a>; Summa Theologica<\/em> 1a.46.2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [48]<\/a>\u00a0 Dolezal, All that is in God<\/em>., p. 72.<\/p>\n

                                              [49]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., pp. 129-30.<\/p>\n

                                              [50]<\/a>\u00a0 Poem of Parmenides<\/em>, VIII.<\/p>\n

                                              [51]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology<\/em>, p. 211, also see p. 216.<\/p>\n

                                              [52]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til,\u00a0Christian Apologetics<\/em> (Phillipsburg, NJ: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1976), pp. 89\u201390.<\/p>\n

                                              [53]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til,\u00a0Christian Apologetics<\/em>, p. 10.<\/p>\n

                                              [54]<\/a>\u00a0 Van TIl, The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought<\/em> p. 96.<\/p>\n

                                              [55]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology<\/em>, p. 57.<\/p>\n

                                              [56]<\/a>\u00a0 Cornelius Van Til, Christianity and Barthianism<\/em> (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1962), p. 380.<\/p>\n

                                              [57]<\/a>\u00a0 Summa Theologica<\/em> 1a.12.12<\/a>, 1a.88.1<\/a>, 1a.88.3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [58]<\/a> \u00a0Immanuel Kant, Religions Within the Bounds of Pure Reason<\/em>.<\/p>\n

                                              [59]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, \u201cNature and Scripture,\u201d p. 289.\u00a0 Van Til quotes Aquinas in Summa Contra Gentiles<\/em>, 2.43.4<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [60]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, Christianity and Barthianism<\/em>., Ch. 14.<\/p>\n

                                              [61]<\/a>\u00a0 Cornelius Van Til, The Sovereignty of Grace: An Appraisal of G. C. Berkouwer\u2019s View of Dordt<\/em> \u00a0(Philadelphia:\u00a0 The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1969), p. 25.\u00a0 On Barth\u2019s Kantianism, also see Van TIl, The New Modernism:\u00a0 An Appraisal of the Theology of Barth and Brunner<\/em> (Philadelphia:\u00a0 The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1947), pp. 52ff.<\/p>\n

                                              [62]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge<\/em>, p. 172.<\/p>\n

                                              [63]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., p. 302. Also see An Introduction to Systematic Theology<\/em>, p. 216.<\/p>\n

                                              [64]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought<\/em>, p. 87, quoting Aristotle\u2019s De Anima.<\/em><\/p>\n

                                              [65]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., emphasis in original.<\/p>\n

                                              [66]<\/a>\u00a0 Summa Theologica,<\/em> 1a.2.3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [67]<\/a>\u00a0 The same argument, with the same citation to Aristotle, is found in Summa Contra Gentiles<\/em>, 1.13.34<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [68]<\/a>\u00a0 Summa Theologica,<\/em> 1a.5.3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [69]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought<\/em><\/a>, p. 104.<\/p>\n

                                              [70]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Summa Theologica<\/em>, 1a.49.1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [71]<\/a>\u00a0 Aquinas, De Malo <\/em>(On Evil<\/em>), 1.3.<\/p>\n

                                              [72]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n

                                              [73]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n

                                              [74]<\/a>\u00a0 Van TIl, The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought<\/em>, p. 103, quoting Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas and the Problem of Evil <\/em>(Milwaukee:\u00a0 Marquette University Press, 1942), p. 34 (emphasis in original).<\/p>\n

                                              [75]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge<\/em>, p. 244.<\/p>\n

                                              [76]<\/a>\u00a0 Van TIl, The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought<\/em> p. 99, citing Summa Theologica<\/em> 1.22.1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [77]<\/a>\u00a0 Van TIl, The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought<\/em> p. 100, citing Summa Theologica <\/em>1.23.2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [78]<\/a>\u00a0 Van TIl, The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought<\/em> p. 101, citing Summa Theologica <\/em>1.23.3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [79]<\/a>\u00a0 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles<\/em>, 1.75.5<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [80]<\/a>\u00a0 Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being<\/em> (Harvard University Press, 1936), p. 76.<\/p>\n

                                              [81]<\/a>\u00a0 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles<\/em>, 2.45.2-3<\/a>.\u00a0 As Lovejoy points out, The Great Chain of Being<\/em>, p. 76.<\/p>\n

                                              [82]<\/a>\u00a0 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles<\/em>, 1.81.3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [83]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought,<\/em> p. 100.<\/p>\n

                                              [84]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n

                                              [85]<\/a>\u00a0 Aquinas, Summa Theologica<\/em>, 1a.22.1<\/a>, cited by Van Til in The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought,<\/em> p. 101.<\/p>\n

                                              [86]<\/a>\u00a0 Aquinas, Summa Theologica<\/em>, \u00a01a.48.2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [87]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til cites Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas and the Problem of Evil<\/em> (Milwaukee, 1942), p. 6, and Maritain cites this passage in Aquinas.<\/p>\n

                                              [88]<\/a>\u00a0 Thomas Torrence, Divine and Contingent Order<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 67.<\/p>\n

                                              [89]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology<\/em>, p. 56.<\/p>\n

                                              [90]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, Christianity and Barthianism<\/em>, p. 241.<\/p>\n

                                              [91]<\/a>\u00a0 Cornelius Van Til, The New Hermeneutic<\/em> (Phillipsburg, NJ: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1974), p. 56.<\/p>\n

                                              [92]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, The Defense of the Faith<\/em>, p. 291.<\/p>\n

                                              [93]<\/a> Van Til, The New Modernism<\/em>, pp. 26, 27.<\/p>\n

                                              [94]<\/sup><\/a> Cornelius Van Til, Essays on Christian Education<\/em> (Phillipsburg, NJ:\u00a0 The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1979), p. 189.<\/p>\n

                                              [95]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., p. 91.<\/p>\n

                                              [96]<\/a>\u00a0 See section 3, \u201cTAG as Natural Revelation,\u201d in my essay, \u201cThe Scope and Limits of Van Til\u2019s Transcendental Argument: A Response to John Frame,\u201d\u00a0 http:\/\/www.christianciv.com\/The_Scope_and_Limits_of_VTAG.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [97]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology<\/em>, p. 102.<\/p>\n

                                              [98]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge<\/em>, p. 308; The Defense of the Faith<\/em>, pp. 283-84.<\/p>\n

                                              [99]<\/a>\u00a0 Summa Theologica<\/em>, 1.2.2.<\/a><\/p>\n

                                              [100]<\/a>\u00a0 Summa Theologica<\/em>, 1.2.1.<\/a><\/p>\n

                                              [101]<\/a>\u00a0 Summa Theologica<\/em>, 1.2.2.<\/a><\/p>\n

                                              [102]<\/a>\u00a0 Summa Theologica<\/em> 1.3.4<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [103]<\/a>\u00a0 Van TIl, Essays on Christian Education<\/em>, p. 4.<\/p>\n

                                              [104]<\/a>\u00a0 See Greg L. Bahnsen, \u201cThe Encounter of Jerusalem with Athens,\u201d http:\/\/www.cmfnow.com\/articles\/pa045.htm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [105]<\/a>\u00a0 Summa Contra Gentiles<\/em>, 1:3:2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [106]<\/a>\u00a0 Van TIl, Essays on Christian Education<\/em>, p. 15.<\/p>\n

                                              [107]<\/a>\u00a0 Tertullian, A Treatise on the Soul<\/em>, Ch. 3.<\/p>\n

                                              [108]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge<\/em>, pp. 72-155.<\/p>\n

                                              [109]<\/a>\u00a0 Warren, \u201cThe Scope and Limits of Van Til\u2019s Transcendental Argument:\u00a0 A Response to John Frame,\u201d\u00a0http:\/\/www.christianciv.com\/The_Scope_and_Limits_of_VTAG.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                                              [110]<\/a>\u00a0 For example, Russell L. Friedman observes that \u201csimplicity can be something of an elastic concept, admitting of degrees,\u201d in his book Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham<\/em> (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 100.\u00a0 For the Patristic Fathers, see Christopher Stead<\/em>, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity<\/em> (Cambridge University Press, 1994); Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity<\/em> (OUP Oxford, 2009); and Gavin Ortlund, \u201cDivine Simplicity in Historical Perspective: Resourcing a Contemporary Discussion,\u201d International Journal of Systematic Theology<\/em>, Vol. 16, No. 4, Oct. 2014).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                                              PDF version In the August 2019 issue of Ligonier Ministries\u2019s magazine Tabletalk, Keith Mathison writes a lengthy essay titled \u201cChristianity and Van Tillianism,\u201d which is written from the perspective of Reformed Thomism in criticism of Cornelius Van Til\u2019s apologetic program. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":452,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions\/452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}