{"id":1156,"date":"2025-07-24T20:04:05","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T19:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/?page_id=1156"},"modified":"2025-07-25T17:12:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T16:12:14","slug":"a-christian-conception-of-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"A Christian Conception of Philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>3 A Christian Conception of Philosophy<\/h1>\n

<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>3.1 Overview<\/h2>\n

What we will endeavor to accomplish in this chapter is to build on the understanding of philosophy in the previous chapter and to work our way towards what a distinctively Christian conception of philosophy requires.\u00a0 From the assessment of the previous chapter, we can safely assume a \u201ctraditional\u201d division of philosophy as offering the most holistic account but here we want to precise it with the concepts that will help to make it a robust philosophical account.<\/p>\n

First, we clearly distil the categories we have been assuming in our previous critical discussion, modifying and clarifying where necessary.\u00a0 Such is the importance of our refutation of the skepticism regarding metaphysics, which suffered repeated philosophical assaults during the 20th<\/sup> century, that we must put a spotlight on the relation between the wider fields of human knowledge, science, and metaphysics.\u00a0 It is a principial and important relation if for no other reason that the language game of science, and particularly naturalistic<\/em> science, is the dominant paradigm of our time. [1]<\/a>\u00a0 If we cannot show that what we believe is scientifically<\/em> respectable or at least defensible, or if we are unable to persuasively deconstruct or recontextualize the credibility of a naturalized metaphysics or a naturalized epistemology, we will struggle in the philosophical and wider cultural marketplace.<\/p>\n

Our ultimate strategy will be to establish the necessity of a transcendental criteria for rationality generally,<\/em> we can then demonstrate that the confidence in a \u201cscientific worldview,\u201d<\/em> whatever that might<\/em> mean in its details, is only defensible as a generality with a Christian metaphysic as its foundation.\u00a0 We then firmly place the Epistemological Self-Consciousness project in the appropriate context, that of worldview philosophy.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>3.2 Metaphysics<\/h2>\n

<\/a><\/a><\/a>3.2.1 Speculative, Descriptive and Revisionary Metaphysics<\/h3>\n

Ladyman in a contribution to what was conceived of as the \u201cmost comprehensive attempt to provide a philosophy of science,\u201d\u200a[2]<\/a> offers a definition of metaphysics as \u201cthe theory of what exists [ontology]\u2026the most fundamental questions about being and the nature of reality\u2026whether there are objective natural kinds [categories]\u2026 [or whether] there are laws of nature.\u201d\u200a[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Thus, temporarily leaving Ladyman\u2019s own exposition aside of a scientifically orientated metaphysics, it is easy to see why \u2018metaphysics\u2019 can easily become a speculative, amorphous, imprecise, and loaded term easily associated with mystical or occult accounts of the universe and the supra-rational interrelation of its objects; sometimes being pushed to posit an irrational denial of all distinction, a monism posited against the direct evidence of our perceptions.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

That is, metaphysics and science often end up being contrasted, even by the more moderate and informed practitioners. \u00a0Consider this account of Mumford, who as a metaphysician, wants to define metaphysics for us:<\/p>\n

\u201cScience is based on observation, which is often its starting point and the ultimate arbiter of the truth of a theory. Metaphysics, while it\u2019s concerned with the world, is not so much concerned with that part of it that can be observed. What we can see with our eyes is of little help in metaphysics, or philosophy in general<\/em>. The evidence of the senses is not what decides whether a philosophical theory is to be accepted or rejected<\/em>. We considered, for example, whether a table was just a bundle of properties or was a substance underlying and holding together all those properties. We should note that we cannot decide between these two theories on the basis of observation.<\/p>\n

It is not as if we could actually remove the properties of a real object and find a propertyless substratum. What would one look like, given that it was propertyless? Our questions are not, therefore, scientific ones\u2026what we do in metaphysics is indeed above and beyond physics<\/em>. It is above in its level of generality; and it is beyond the observational investigation of the world, thinking about the features that rationally the world should or could have.\u201d\u200a[5]<\/a> (Emphasis added)<\/p>\n

Thus, Mumford wants to drive a thick wedge between science and metaphysics, or more specifically, between physics (broadly conceived as the theory of the physical) and metaphysics.\u00a0 However, he also wants to distinguish between philosophy and science on the basis that science is an empirical<\/em> process, which we have already demonstrated in our discussion is a highly contentious position. \u00a0The sociological dimension of his self-identification as a \u201cmetaphysician\u201d might be the best explanation for such a na\u00efve view.\u00a0 It seems scientists are not the only ones that want to demarcate their subject from its competitors.[6]<\/a> \u00a0We can rightly be critical of him here:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. It would be a particular type of arcane philosopher or religious mystic who would not be concerned with what their eyes do see, or to deny that what they see with their eyes has no bearing on philosophy.<\/li>\n
  2. For a realist, one of the principal tests of a philosophical theory is its relation to reality and excepting the absolute idealists, most idealists would also be concerned with how their concepts are tied to the intersubjective world, however conceived.<\/li>\n
  3. As we demonstrated previously, to separate philosophy from science is not an objective procedure, it is a matter of arbitrary criteria, prejudice, or linguistic convenience (and probably a combination of all three). That is, it is logically impossible to distinguish between whether or when a physical law which has an organizing feature should be considered \u2018metaphysical\u2019 or \u2018scientific\u2019 without begging the question.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In summary, Mumford in his account of metaphysics is demonstrating for us what should be properly called \u201cspeculative\u201d metaphysics, the rather more secularized and respectable form of \u201creligious\u201d metaphysics.\u00a0 When reading Mumford, one senses his desire for the procedure which he wants to defend to be considered \u201cscientifically respectable,\u201d but you are then easily frustrated by the passages above where he seems to be suggesting no such reconciliation is possible. \u00a0This makes it easier to understand why metaphysics was the target of extreme dismissal by Hume in the 18th century and by the logical positivists in the 20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

    However, as we also noted, that dismissal was later demonstrated by the devastating critique of Quine as nothing but itself a metaphysical<\/em> position which dogmatically<\/em> asserted the single principle that denied all metaphysics. \u00a0In response, Quine himself proposed a revolutionary\u200a[7]<\/a> \u2018naturalized,\u2019 descriptive metaphysics (quickly followed by a \u201cnaturalized epistemology\u201d\u200a[8]<\/a>) which had a degree of scientific and logical respectability and was established by himself and others of similar naturalist convictions.\u00a0 This was to provide a functional ontological foundation\u200a[9]<\/a> for science, informing the practice of it by what is most properly called methodological naturalism<\/em>.[10]<\/a>\u00a0 Quine\u2019s metaphysics were austere and limited in scope indeed, but for that reason were eminently respectable and acceptable to the naturalist project.<\/em>\u00a0 Ladyman\u2019s account with which we began this section belongs broadly to this naturalistic tradition, but he also clearly demonstrates in his discussion the multitude of sometimes contradictory assumptions and mutually exclusive perspectives possible beneath that umbrella of naturalism. \u00a0Exactly what entities were admitted and how they exist or relate to one another, if indeed at all, makes it somewhat fluid, arbitrary, and subject to change with the paradigm shifts of science.[11]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Thus, the Quinean model seemed overly austere in contrast to the ambitious metaphysics of those who were seeking some kind of a recovery of the generality of description[12]<\/sup><\/a> and even explanation or \u2018revisionary\u2019 improvement of the understanding of the world[13]<\/a> in the post-positivist period. \u00a0There was, and always will be, a deep dissatisfaction for the worldview philosopher with the incongruity of lodging at the Humean philosophical dead-end of there being no reasonable basis for reason, enduring the Kantian psychologization of reason, which then degenerates further into a Quinean, behaviorist account encompassing the whole of nature and learning.\u00a0 Unable to solve the intransigent problems of knowledge, they are dissolved by subsuming them under another science.<\/p>\n

    That is, Quine liberated the world from the dogmatism of logical positivism, only to return to their altar of the \u201cpseudo-problem\u201d for worship as he paid homage with behavioral psychology as the successor subject to epistemology.\u00a0 His naturalist followers appealed to evolutionary science as their hope, but Plantinga then proceeded to strongly argue that naturalism and evolutionary theory were incommensurable<\/em> at the logical level that should have been of fundamental importance to Quine.[14]<\/a>\u00a0 There was a scholarly (and sometimes unscholarly) argument with Plantinga over the details,[15]<\/a> but that led to his refinement of the argument over the best part of two decades. \u00a0There is now a substantive agreement about the force of these anti-naturalistic arguments when conceived in the detailed Bayesian fashion\u200a[16]<\/a> or as a broader conceptual argument, as found for example also in Lewis\u200a[17]<\/a> and as revised in his interpreter Reppert.[18]<\/a> \u00a0It would appear to be a metaphysical prejudice, a religious commitment to an atheistic scientism, that keeps us in the Humean cul-de-sac.<\/p>\n

    Further, the austere answers of Hume and the naturalism he influenced are far more inadequate in other ways important to us as philosophers who do not merely think of philosophy as the handmaiden of science\u200a[19]<\/a> but, to borrow Russell\u2019s phrase, as an \u201cinspiration to a better way of life.\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[20]<\/a> \u00a0We find unlikely support for our contention in ironically one of the most visionary and prophetic of the 20th<\/sup> century public intellectuals, Aldous Huxley, who in his philosophical writings had once argued for a complete negation of metaphysics in a negative, atheistic existentialism.\u00a0 In sympathy with Russell, he advocated for an \u201cerotic revolt\u201d that the moral restrictions \u201cimposed by Moses\u201d might be undone as mere conventions. In rejecting such a \u201cChristian\u201d view of the social and economic order, society could be liberated and more just when reconstituted on a socialist basis.\u00a0 However, later in his life, Huxley in an unusually cogent piece of writing argued as early as 1937 that Hume\u2019s view decimated vast swathes of human experience as \u201cmeaningless\u201d when these experiences were what brings meaning<\/em> when faced with the \u201cangst\u201d of meaninglessness.\u00a0 \u201cMeaninglessness\u201d was no longer the pathway to emancipation but a negation of being and becoming, the social emancipation an illusion as \u201cThe Party\u201d was elevated as an infallible organ of tyranny. [21]<\/a>\u00a0 In doing so, he paralleled Wittgenstein\u2019s latter rebuttal of the positivist interpretation of his view of language in the Tractatus<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[22]<\/a> and their political application of it in their manifesto.[23]<\/a><\/p>\n

    So, in summary, it behooves us to refuse to surrender to an intellectual powerlessness and skepticism about the world; we are seeking to understand nature, master and reshape it.\u00a0 That is why this work has no reticence in arguing for a strong metaphysics and we now proceed as to how metaphysics can legitimately provide a foundation for science and our epistemology.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.2.2 Metaphysics as the Foundation of Science<\/h3>\n

    In the previous section, we rejected substantially Mumford\u2019s definition of metaphysics, but we can affirm with him that metaphysics will supply interpretative tools, ordering functions and concepts.\u00a0 This process is inevitable, and most philosophers of science after Quine would accept that we always interpret<\/em> the data that might come to us from the phenomenal experience through a conceptual scheme or what we will eventually label a \u201cworldview.\u201d \u00a0We will see why equating a \u201cworldview\u201d with a \u201cconceptual scheme\u201d alone is not wholly adequate, but our point here is that metaphysics aims to help rescue our conceptions of a meaningful<\/em> universe, an understandable cosmos and thus informs how we should<\/em> behave in it.<\/p>\n

    We have already seen how Huxley as representative of a caste of young intellectuals desired to cast the universe as \u201cmeaningless\u201d so that we can swap places with God as the locus around which reality revolves. \u00a0However attractive that this atheistic moral nihilism of Nietzsche and the scientific socialism of the Marxists was to both the young Huxley and the young Orwell, as it was to generations of Romantics, radicals and libertines on different Continents, it was replaced with the dark pessimism of his Brave New World <\/em>and of Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/em>; both of which saw no limit on the moral self-justification and appropriation of executive power by the State empowered by the inevitable flow of history towards its utopian consummation; this was all too easy to be co-opted by those otherwise with the more classical Liberal view, for the State, is, after all, \u201ca minister of God to you for good.\u201d <\/em>[24]<\/a> \u00a0To avoid this tyranny and the merging of Church, here broadly conceived as even the secular \u201ccivic religion,\u201d and State,[25]<\/a> \u00a0is the political challenge that is before us, a metaphysic must provide a context for action and a guide to our morals.[26]<\/a><\/p>\n

    To this end, Viktor Frankl a survivor of Auschwitz and other concentration camps, vividly reminded the post-Holocaust world of the immanent freedom and dignity of the human person which would only come from a metaphysical awareness of one\u2019s value and place in the universe.[27]<\/a>\u00a0 Rather than choosing the absurdism of Sartre or the moral nihilism in the embracing of sexual licentiousness of a Huxley or a Russell [28]<\/a> in response to their existential condition, the existentialism of Frankl, which grew into an entire school of psychology and psychiatric practice, focused on the individual discovering, encountering, and embracing the meaning<\/em> of their existence.\u00a0 This was found and expressed most of all in maintaining the dignity and nobility of their humanity in the face of the greatest and gravest of indignity, evil and ignobility that confronts one.[29]<\/a> \u00a0He asserted that the concentration camp had merely one aim and that was to dehumanize, such that a person seeks merely to survive at the cost of all moral sense which would then justify their treatment as sub-human animals by their captors,[30]<\/a> rather than answer the questions that their very existence asks of them.[31]<\/a>\u00a0 Both the Nazis and the Communists believed their programmes to be \u201cscientific,\u201d with religious moral sentimentality washed away by Nietzsche and the salvific manifestos of the logical positivists for science,[32]<\/a> it was not just legitimate, but incumbent<\/em> in this new era to make the scientifically<\/em> informed judgments regarding the inferior races, particularly when it is for the noble aim of regenerating humanity.[33]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Similarly, philosophically, and theologically, naturalistic science struggles to arrest such an internally coherent account<\/em> of brutality if it is limited to the methods of empirical science.\u00a0 The empiricist model of science posits itself as descriptive rather than analytical but if we have no analysis there can be no synthesis, no organizing of our observations into a framework where it can be understood and interpreted, we then have no moral conscience in that thing we call science<\/em>.\u00a0 This is what Plantinga and Lewis more generally call naturalism refuting itself by its own presuppositions.[34]<\/a>\u00a0 So, in what sense does it make sense to refer to metaphysics as the foundation for science?\u00a0 We can discern this indirectly by returning to Mumford and correcting what he describes as the organizing \u2018worldview\u2019 feature of metaphysics:<\/p>\n

    \u201c[W]e have been trying to understand the fundamental nature of reality…Science also seeks to understand the nature of reality, but it does so in a different way. Science looks for some general truths, but they are also concrete, whereas the truths of metaphysics are very general and abstract\u2026the philosopher\u2019s answer will be at the highest levels of generality. They may say there are particulars that fall into natural kinds, there are properties, changes, causes, laws of nature, and so on. The job of science, however, is to say what specific things exist under each of those categories. Metaphysics seeks to organize and systematize all these specific truths that science discovers and to describe their general features.\u201d [35]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Whilst we have already taken issue with Mumford\u2019s strict dichotomy between science and philosophy viewing it as untenable, we can permit the methodological variation and the functional differences between the two without incoherence.\u00a0 We would also want to challenge this naturalistic notion of \u201cabstract,\u201d like Murdoch argued\u200a[36]<\/a> our values are never distinct from, but rather spring from, our metaphysical assumptions. \u00a0We would also want to challenge that it would be possible to come up with \u201cspecific truths that science discovers\u201d<\/em> without first having the organizing metaphysic in place to help us interpret<\/em> those facts; we never encounter \u201cnaked facts,\u201d\u200a[37]<\/a> we always view reality through whatever metaphysical lens we assume.\u00a0 However, Mumford is correct to identify metaphysics as providing an organizing function.\u00a0 Most importantly, that metaphysical lens will also organize our conceptions of value.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.2.3 Metaphysics as the Organizing Transcendentals<\/h3>\n

    So, in summary and to this end, metaphysical concepts such as causality, probability and possibility, time, personality, identity through time, eventuation, mind, and matter legitimately provide organizing transcendentals<\/em> of experience\u2014that is, they make all<\/u><\/em><\/strong> experience coherent and understandable because they are presupposed<\/em> for the purposes of intelligibility.\u00a0 The organizing principles of metaphysics attempt to unify the human field of knowledge by systematizing the human sciences but also attempting to explain why<\/em> science itself is successful as a methodology, or being rather more Wittgensteinian and critical, seek to identify what are the \u2018family resemblances\u2019 between the many different sciences which might explain their success.\u00a0 They must also provide a justification for the values with which science is conducted. \u00a0Thus, we will understand as we develop our understanding of our Christian version of transcendentalism, that it is only with the addition of the ontological Trinity that there is a transcendental justification for these transcendentals and a value base for our actions, if we are to rescue ourselves from the skeptical challenge of arbitrariness, moral nihilism, ethical relativism, and dogmatism.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>3.3 Epistemology<\/h2>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.3.1 Introduction<\/h3>\n

    Epistemology for our purposes is conceived of as the theory of knowledge, \u201cconcerned with\u2026the analysis of knowledge and its relationship to belief and truth, the theory of justification, and how to respond to the challenge of\u2026skepticism\u201d [38]<\/a> but also, and importantly for the development of this work, warrant.\u00a0 This term is particularly important for us as a study in Christian philosophy as the definition and exposition of the term by Plantinga was considered \u201cone of the major accomplishments of twentieth century epistemology.\u201d\u200a[39]<\/a> \u00a0Our aim in this section is to distil these highly complex issues in a non-trivial way and with enough detail that we can provide a robust grounding for our theory of knowledge and thus provide the underpinning for epistemological self-consciousness.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.3.2 A Philosophy of Facts<\/h3>\n

    \u2018Belief,\u2019 \u2018fact\u2019 and \u2018truth\u2019 are complex concepts in need of analysis and clarification.\u00a0 There are elaborate extended theories of belief which we shall not examine as they are not relevant for us here, for we can immediately recognize with Bahnsen that \u201cknowledge is a subcategory of belief: to know something is, <\/em>at least, to believe it\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[40]<\/a> (emphasis added). \u00a0It is the subcategory we are concerned with, not the padding.\u00a0 Most generally, a belief might be characterized as:<\/p>\n

    \u201ca positive<\/em> cognitive attitude toward a proposition, an action-guiding mental state on which a person relies (whether intermittently or continuously) in his theoretical or practical actions and plans.\u201d[41]<\/a> (Emphasis added)<\/p>\n

    In our emphasis, we are noting that volition<\/em> is involved in belief. \u00a0That is, we view belief such that a person will<\/em> act upon their beliefs but that does not mean they are necessarily conscious of those beliefs; they might have subconscious beliefs or beliefs which are too difficult to verbalize or are sublimated beneath layers of pain.\u00a0 A person might insist they \u201cbelieve\u201d x, y, or z but then their actions demonstrate otherwise.\u00a0 Somewhat paradoxically, someone may hold what they consider to be a belief in their conscious<\/em> mind, but their actions show a different and stronger (or more positive<\/em>) commitment to another set of subconscious<\/em> beliefs.\u00a0 We should also recognize that some beliefs are held based on deduction or inference from other beliefs, whilst some beliefs are considered incorrigible or infallible to us; that is, they are not held on the basis of substantiating evidence or they are considered to be self-evidencing, they are basic<\/em> beliefs.\u00a0 For example, Calvin held that belief in God was properly basic, and to avoid impiousness, the only<\/em> appropriate way to believe in God.[42]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Now let us consider factuality.\u00a0 Most importantly, we need to recognize immediately that what constitutes a particular \u201cfact\u201d about the world will be a function<\/em> of our epistemological position (thus, our beliefs) and<\/em> our metaphysical commitments.\u00a0 That is, our philosophy<\/em> of facts governs our treatment of evidence and whatever basicity, deduction, induction, or inference we might defensibly make from those facts.\u00a0 This also has the implication that what<\/em> is even accepted as deductive or inductive is also governed by our presuppositions.<\/p>\n

    This was established beyond reasonable doubt by the work of Quine and most notably Thomas Kuhn in the post-positivist period, he argued that there are no such things as \u201cbrute facts\u201d as had previously been argued by many of the logical positivists and to some extent, empiricism generally, but that our very observations of the world were \u201ctheory laden\u201d<\/em> or \u201cworldview dependent.\u201d<\/em>\u200a\u200a[43]<\/a>\u00a0 Kuhn argued convincingly that contrary to a na\u00efve empiricism, a \u201cfact\u201d is not an abstract, objective entity that is independent of our perception and conceptualization of it or even its cultural context. \u00a0In the contemporary language of the philosophy of science we explicate this when we assert that \u2018facts\u2019 are never naked sensory data (for we can just as well argue philosophically just what the term \u2018data\u2019 might mean),[44]<\/a> they are interpreted within a conceptual framework (or, in Kuhn\u2019s terms, a normative paradigm<\/em>)\u200a[45]<\/a> that renders them meaningful.\u00a0\u00a0 This might be better explained as the basic distinction between \u201cseeing\u201d and \u201cseeing as<\/em>\u201d:<\/em> an aborigine in a first-contact encounter, will have the same phenomenological experience as us if we were to show them a television but would not have the same perceptual process and might have a very different idea of our television. \u00a0It might reasonably<\/em> be rendered a portal to the spirit world.<\/p>\n

    Thus, \u201ctheory laden\u201d or \u201cworldview dependent\u201d are givens in our discussion, and the latter phrase will become increasingly important for us as we focus the discussion, there is no other way by which we can conceive of the problem in a rigorous, transparent, and coherent manner.\u00a0 There is also an indissoluble relationship between truth and factuality.\u00a0 Nagel puts the intimate and important connection this way:<\/p>\n

    \u201cSome philosophical claims about knowledge have turned out to be confused or self-undermining, but other findings about knowledge, like its special connection with truth,<\/em> have stood the test of time.\u201d\u200a[46]<\/a> (Emphasis added).<\/p>\n

    It would seem reasonable to assert that all facts should be truths about the world and some theories of truth would indeed declare we have merely expressed a tautology in that assertion.\u00a0 However, all truths are not necessarily (logically) facts, unless we permit abstract truths with no material analogue into our theory of truth.\u00a0 That is, \u201cfacts\u201d are perceived as having, if not a necessary, a special or strong connection with reality; \u201ctruth\u201d can be conceived broadly (in terms of theoretical coherence) or narrowly (in terms of correspondence or disquotation).[47]<\/a><\/p>\n

    We should remind ourselves from a previous discussion that these are then not two oppositional theories of truth as frequently conceived but are addressing different questions, one dealing with the metaphysics<\/em> of truth (what is<\/em> truth?), the other with how we know<\/em> something is true (within the context of a theory), the epistemology <\/em>of truth.\u00a0 It is our theory of the world, or worldview<\/em> that gives us both a test for<\/em> and the conditions of<\/em> truth; it is not merely a \u201cconceptual scheme\u201d but makes ontological commitments.\u00a0 Thus, Quine would speak of our \u201ctheory of nature\u201d as giving meaning to any proposition or factuality about the world.[48]<\/a>\u00a0 The question then before us becomes how<\/em> we test worldviews for coherence and truthfulness if all are epistemologically self-contained and we are not to surrender to relativism and arbitrariness. \u00a0For example, Rorty would appropriate Kuhn to attempt to deconstruct any normative conception of reality and ethics on the basis \u201ceverything is under a description\u201d<\/em> and concluded the only position we should hold is a certain tentative, ironic view of our predicament in the world (we think in lieu of Sartre\u2019s starting point that our existence is just \u201cabsurd\u201d), we should not take life and certainly not philosophy, too seriously.[49]<\/a>\u00a0 However, in Blackburn\u2019s critique\u200a[50]<\/a> of Rorty, he asserts this is just moral cowardice and Rorty himself spilt much ink in later years arguing the importance of \u201cethics\u201d and for a particular political vision\u200a[51]<\/a> with the utmost sobriety and through both academic and popular media.[52]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Hence, we should be able to immediately appreciate the importance of factuality. \u00a0Some consider \u2018God\u2019 to be the most substantive and important \u2018fact\u2019 of the universe upon which all others \u2018facts\u2019 depend and have their origin:<\/p>\n

    \u201cWe may say, then, that we seek to defend the fact of miracle, the fact of providence, the fact of creation, and therefore, the fact of God, in relation to modern non-Christian science\u2026that we are seeking to defend Christian theism as a fact<\/em>.\u00a0 And this is really the same thing as to say that we believe the facts of the universe are unaccounted for except on a Christian-theistic basis.<\/em>\u201d\u200a[53]<\/a>\u00a0 (Emphasis added).<\/p>\n

    This will be the view that we will be defending and advancing.\u00a0 However, others forcefully reject God is any<\/em> kind of \u2018fact\u2019 other than that of a delusion or shared mistake:<\/p>\n

    \u201cthe difficulty for the religious community is to show that its agreement is not simply agreement about a shared mistake<\/em>\u2026it is clear that particular religious beliefs are mistaken, since religious groups do not\u2026agree and they cannot all be right\u2026\u201d\u200a[54]<\/a> (Emphasis added).<\/p>\n

    We will consider the resolution of the dispute as we progress, but the principle of \u201cworldview dependent\u201d perception and conception is biblical, Christian and sound; Calvin had grasped this many centuries earlier when he spoke of the \u201cspectacles of Scripture\u201d enabling us to \u201c[gather] up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our dullness, clearly shows us the true God.\u201d<\/em>\u2009<\/em>[55]<\/a>\u00a0 In this case our description is scripture, and \u201ceverything\u201d is the created realm.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.3.3 A Philosophy of Evidences<\/h3>\n

    Our previous discussion concluded that worldview considerations govern the very perception of our experience and govern our interpretation of data. \u00a0A traditional na\u00efve view of evidence as being weighed in the balances of a neutral scientific practitioner engaged in disinterested research and marching us ever onward towards truth and objectivity is most certainly found wanting. \u00a0This was the basis of the concern that this confidence in empirical methods remained so strong in Christian apologetics that it reduced any apologetic claims to discussions of probabilities of truth rather than certainty.\u00a0 Thus, let us consider the reformational move that Van Til made to reshape the landscape of Christian apologetics.<\/p>\n

    Van Til emphasized that he was not rejecting traditional evidential<\/em> arguments such as the cosmological or ontological proofs, and historical arguments for the resurrection but that he was not going to use them in a linear, sequential manner to demonstrate the proof or truth of God\u2019s existence.\u00a0 This is because as we noted previously, as standalone, apologetic<\/em> arguments they are logically very weak and limited in what they can establish. To illustrate further, there is nothing necessary<\/em> derived from the fact<\/em> of Christ\u2019s resurrection other than a man who was dead had come back to live for reason or reason(s) unknown unless<\/em> we have already<\/em> believed the scriptural narrative that interprets it for us.[56]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Indeed, the proof or truth of God\u2019s existence had rather to be assumed for those arguments to have logical force and so, consequently, will have very little apologetic value for the conscious sceptic.\u00a0 Thus, for Van Til, the appropriate apologetic method is to seek to uncover the presuppositions that make experience itself possible and to discover the only worldview that supports those presuppositions.[57]<\/a>\u00a0 That is, as we had previously posited, he concurred with Kant about the transcendental question but proceeded to answer the question with a transcendent transcendental framework rather than using the tools of transcendental psychology.<\/p>\n

    This becomes an epistemological principle of principal importance that allows us to escape from the circularity problem caused by the interdependence of metaphysics and epistemology.\u00a0 There was the constant challenge in the history of philosophy of whether metaphysics must proceed epistemology or vice versa.\u00a0 How can we know<\/em> objects unless we have a theory of objects?\u00a0 Yet how can we define a theory of objects unless we know<\/em> what an object is<\/em>?\u00a0 This circular argument \u201ctormented and obsessed\u201d<\/em> epistemologists such as Chisholm.[58]<\/a>\u00a0 Only in the conception of a God who is trinitarian, both immanent and transcendent can this problem of being above and within creation, as both a unity and a diversity, be solved.\u00a0\u00a0 He is both the one and the many, the whole and the particular; or to use the Van Tillian term, the \u201cconcrete universal.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

    This is a term which Van Til derived from idealism.\u00a0\u00a0 Van Til had claims to be an expert on Bernard Bosanquet (1848-1923) whom Van Til \u201cdeemed the most advanced and sophisticated idealist of his generation\u201d<\/em>\u2009[59]<\/a> and interacted with F H Bradley, one of the last and most influential of the British idealists.\u00a0 Thus, it was a controversial term for him to use but it was only the willful refusal of critics to engage with the additional (or completed) sense he was giving the term that made it so.\u00a0 Van Til directly responded to the contradiction implicit in this term by agreeing that idealism could never resolve this contradiction if it proceeded on naturalistic or atheistic assumptions.\u00a0 This is because it worked from the assumption that \u201cMan and the Absolute\u201d were correlative, whereas for Van Til, Christian theism considers it necessary that God is self-contained, requiring only Himself.[60]<\/a>\u00a0 This was Van Til\u2019s nuancing of his understanding and his solution to the \u201cone and the many\u201d problem which had been one of the most intractable problems of unbelieving philosophy, e.g., are universals merely linguistic conveniences or have they metaphysical status (do natural kinds exist?) and if only particulars exist, how are we able to communicate in a contingent universe governed by chance? \u00a0For Van Til \u201ckind\u201d was what it was because God thinking<\/em> of an object makes it what it is, his thinking is then constitutive of the particular objects of reality.\u00a0 This would be in contrast to human thought which was always derivative in its concepts from God\u2019s conceptualization and subsequent actualization of the world.\u00a0 There is thus a tight correlation and interdependence between his metaphysics and epistemology in which both spring from his Christian theism, \u201c\u2026God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist\u2026<\/em>\u201d\u200a[61]<\/a><\/p>\n

    So, in summary, despite epistemology often being taught as if it was a self-contained discipline, we can conclude even at this stage that this is misguided and incorrect.\u00a0 It would be inconceivable for a materialist to maintain a supernaturalistic metaphysics; they would intuitively opt for an empirical hypothesis.\u00a0 Thus, we have established that metaphysics and epistemology are linked, and further that this circularity is only<\/em> resolved by the mind of God as the origin of both correspondence and coherence. \u00a0Our presuppositions govern how we handle the evidence of our senses and push us in the direction of transcendental philosophy.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.3.4 Overcoming Skepticism<\/h3>\n

    When we considered skepticism previously it was within the context of how the response to skepticism had generated several different philosophical schools, each of which with their particular approaches to reality were attempting to mitigate it in some way; we might say we examined the epistemology of the various skepticisms.\u00a0 Yet we did not consider skepticism itself<\/em> (we might say the metaphysics of skepticism) or its ethical dimensions.\u00a0 It is by adding these dimensions that we shall demonstrate how that makes it possible to answer far more comprehensively the skeptical challenge.<\/p>\n

    Here we examine in detail the two main forms of skepticism, and in the process of navigating through the turbulent waters we encounter the Christian philosophy of Gordon Clarke who used a skeptical premise to build his theory of knowledge and his apologetic approach.\u00a0 However, we find his positions untenable and a dangerous, immoral application of a skeptical premise.\u00a0 We then proceed to examine how considering the psychology of skepticism proves an effective tool to dismantle most of its force.\u00a0 We then arrive at a terminus that suggests a transcendental critique is the only route forward to dismiss any residual logical force of the skeptical argument.<\/p>\n

    Recollect that Ladyman, writing as a philosopher of science, helpfully focusses the epistemological project as directly concerned with, as one of its primary goals, the task of countering skepticism, \u201cEpistemology is the theory of knowledge and as such is concerned with\u2026how [we] respond to the challenge of local\u2026or global skepticism.\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[62]<\/a>\u00a0 Implicit in Ladyman\u2019s account is the assumption that unless the skeptical challenge can be mitigated, there can be no<\/em> robust science and in lieu of our previous conclusions from \u00a72, we can forcefully concur with that judgment; though unfortunately, there is little to find in his account other than a repetition of the various attempts we have already seen to mitigate it. \u00a0However, we can still usefully apply his definition as a starting point for our own discussion.<\/p>\n

    Primarily, his definition tells us that skepticism comes in two specific forms:\u00a0 local<\/em> and global<\/em>.\u00a0 That is, it is conceivable someone has difficulties in accepting the absolute certainty of individual \u2018facts\u2019 but claims<\/em> to be non-skeptical and instrumentalist in their general approach to reality.\u00a0 This we would call local<\/em> skepticism that is mitigated in some way in practice.\u00a0 In direct contrast to this, we can<\/em> all imagine a stubborn or lazy apologist for idleness who wants to camp out at the Humean caravan park, claiming we have no reasonable basis for reason; that is, there is no purpose or meaning to life other than what we give it, so let us eat, drink, and join Hume himself in playing backgammon until we die!\u200a[63]<\/a>\u00a0 This would be a global claim.<\/p>\n

    Whether this global claim of epistemological impotence can be maintained without collapsing into incoherence we will probe shortly for it would seem prima facie<\/em> to be an abandonment of our epistemic duties<\/em> and as a Sartre or a Camus would put it, make the starting point for our existence in the world an absurd one.[64]<\/a> \u00a0Such a position is one we cannot afford to entertain, we already have the records of the dissipation and destruction suffered by such Romantic thinkers as Rousseau, Shelley and Byron who downgraded reason in favor of feeling.[65]<\/a>\u00a0 Even if we cannot precisely formulate just what is wrong<\/em> with global skepticism of that sort, it is the moral disappropriation that follows in its wake that should immediately make us incredulous and become our strongest lever against skepticism.<\/p>\n

    So, in lieu of our introductory remarks above, there is arguably a difference between a local skepticism as a method<\/em> (as say employed by Descartes) and by someone considering skepticism as a metaphysical feature<\/em> telling us something about the way reality is constituted or of our conceptual relations to reality (as in Hume).\u00a0 Thus Strawson, who spent large sections of his career challenging the legitimacy of skepticism in the latter sense nevertheless accepted the legitimacy of the former:<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe sceptic is, strictly, not one who denies the validity of certain types of belief, but one who questions, if only initially and for methodological reasons, the adequacy of our grounds for holding them. He puts forward his doubts by way of a challenge\u2014sometimes a challenge to himself\u2014to show that the doubts are unjustified, that the beliefs put in question are justified. He may conclude, like Descartes, that the challenge can successfully be met; or, like Hume, that it cannot\u2026Traditional targets of philosophic doubt include the existence of the external world, i.e., of physical objects or bodies; our knowledge of other minds; the justification of induction; the reality of the past.\u201d\u200a[66]<\/a><\/p>\n

    That is, by a local <\/em>skepticism we are challenging, perhaps by some kind of hypothesis, counterfactual or thought experiment, to what degree (if any) a particular \u2018fact\u2019 of the world, recollection or memory can be held to be \u2018true,\u2019 incorrigible, or infallible.\u00a0 In contrast, the global sceptic, because he tolerates no metaphysic has no logical<\/em> boundaries to his skepticism, will live his life in an intellectually schizophrenic manner; because he nevertheless must act as if there were certain elements and laws of nature that constrain him.[67]<\/a><\/p>\n

    So, whereas local skepticism can be a practical gateway into knowledge, global<\/em> skepticism, the metaphysical form of skepticism, is the assertion that claims to knowledge are beyond the reach of the human mind.\u00a0 All that remains are contingent features of the world and the coherence of the world as a whole is beyond the powers of human cognition.\u00a0 However, there are also variations of severity and tenor of the global sceptics.\u00a0 With Hume\u2019s criticism as asymptotic to their theories of knowledge, such a claim was normative for the logical positivist movement of the 20th<\/sup> century we met earlier in this work, with both Schlick and Neurath offering versions of it.\u00a0 However, Schlick and Neurath had no motivation to be morally cynical or intellectually lazy, there\u2019s was a mitigated global skepticism with Ayer labelling it a \u201cthoroughgoing phenomenalism\u201d;<\/em>\u2009<\/em>[68]<\/a> the positivist movement was wanting to be the scientific<\/em> view of the world. \u00a0This was a long way from the deliberate nihilism of a Huxley or a Sartre. Their unmitigated global skepticism was a much stronger claim, it would suggest an undermining of the entire scientific and philosophical project.<\/p>\n

    How can such a claim even be formulated in an intellectually respectable manner?\u00a0 Well, some have argued based on the unreliability of our senses in particular<\/em> instances that we can thus never<\/em> trust our senses.\u00a0 However, this seems to be committing the basic logical fallacy of hasty generalization, so it is of some interest that Christian logician<\/em> Gordon H Clarke argued precisely this\u200a[69]<\/a> when presenting a major revision of his Neo-Platonist epistemology for which he had gained a considerable reputation.[70]<\/a> \u00a0Clarke\u2019s revised theory asserted that Man\u2019s only knowledge was knowledge contained in the Bible or knowledge deduced from what is contained in the Bible, arguing in the final major works of his career for fideism as the only option for the Christian philosopher.\u00a0 Fideism,[71]<\/a> or \u201cdogmatism\u201d\u200a[72]<\/a> as he preferred to label it, was where we accept that the central or basic claims we make as part of our epistemology are unprovable and accepted as axioms, unprovable<\/em> presuppositions:<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe only personal solution to this logical impasse is a change of heart on the part of one of the contestants.\u00a0 Agreement can be obtained only by one party\u2019s repudiating his premises and accepting the other\u2019s presuppositions\u2026the change is something logic [argumentation] cannot do.\u00a0 God alone is able.\u201d\u200a[73]<\/a><\/p>\n

    His reasoning was that secular philosophy could not give an account or justify any single item of human knowledge therefore there was no knowledge available to Man via his senses or deduction except what is revealed in the Bible or deduced from what is in the Bible:<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe term dogmatism therefore designates that method of procedure which tries to systematize beliefs concerning God, science, immorality, etc. on the basis of information divinely revealed in the sacred writings\u2026 If now one appreciates the present status of the argument, the dogmatic answer to the question can easily be given. The present status of the argument is the choice between dogmatism and nihilism.\u201d\u200a[74]<\/a><\/p>\n

    As just noted, Clarke had adopted this position from his previous logicism which had gained a substantial following amongst a distinct group of conservative presbyterian apologists\u200a[75]<\/a> after he became grounded as a Neo-Platonist would with some of the imponderables and paradoxes that Plato was all too aware of. \u00a0Nash\u2019s essay included in the 1968 Festschrift for Clarke was primarily concerned with Clarke\u2019s original epistemology which had gained him so much scholarly respect and in explicating Clarke\u2019s difficulties in wrestling with these Platonic conundrums, but he added an appendix dealing with Clarke\u2019s revised view, declaring it in short shrift incoherent.[76]<\/a><\/p>\n

    This response was echoed in an identical manner by Bahnsen\u200a[77]<\/a> because it assumes empirical methods offered no possibility of knowledge and yet we would need to read the Bible (an empirical process) to obtain the biblical knowledge. \u00a0Although Clarke did not deal with this objection immediately, deflecting his opponents with a challenge to contradict his deconstruction of empiricism (which was forceful), his later attempts appealed to forms of intuitionism and to the immanent presence of the knowledge contained in the scriptures in the human heart.\u00a0 However, as Butler then noted, it \u201cthen makes the scriptures themselves redundant\u201d<\/em> [78]<\/a> for their revelation is prescient in the human subject.<\/p>\n

    More seriously, from the point of view of Christian worldview philosophy, the most dangerous consequence of this position was that there are no normative ethical boundaries for our conduct.\u00a0 Whereas Clark or his followers\u200a[79]<\/a> would never countenance such a move as Reformed Christians, they could not offer an argument against it because his final move was undeniably a fideist one. \u00a0Specifically, all proof is conceived of as being within a system of proof and it is the sovereignty of God, not an apologetic argument that Clark offers as his ultimate rationale. \u00a0As Bahnsen noted, apologetics as a philosophical defense, is destroyed by this expression of global skepticism.[80]<\/a><\/p>\n

    It is not difficult to see the perversity of such a view and the nefarious applications for the unbeliever that is available through such a view.\u00a0 The desire for the facsimile of justification for irrationality in our worldview has been a recurring feature in Romantic and post-Kantian philosophy. \u00a0Huxley expressed this vividly and simply in his retrospect and frames it specifically as originating from the desire to reject a Christian view of the world:<\/p>\n

    \u201cFor myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of liberation\u2026We objected to morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust.\u00a0 The supporters of these systems claimed in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning they insisted) of the world.\u00a0 There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt:\u00a0 we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever…<\/em>\u201d\u200a[81]<\/a> (Emphasis added).<\/p>\n

    However, rather paradoxically for Huxley, he found the rejection of the Judeo-Christian principles was catastrophic.\u00a0 He found that one of the strongest practical<\/em> objections to his global skepticism was that it opened the door to the very political tyranny which he had wanted to avoid:<\/p>\n

    \u201cBy the end of the twenties a reaction had begun to set in – away from the easy-going philosophy of general meaninglessness towards the hard, ferocious theologies of nationalistic and revolutionary idolatry\u2026The universe as a whole remained still meaningless, but certain of its parts, such as the nation, the state, the class, the party, were endowed with significance and the highest value\u2026[and]\u2026can have only<\/em> evil and disastrous results\u2026\u201d\u200a[82]<\/a> (Emphasis added)<\/p>\n

    The political dimension we will begin to consider in more detail in the subsequent section when we deal directly with ethics, but we should at least get a sense of the interconnectedness of one\u2019s ethical theory with one\u2019s metaphysic and theory of knowledge.<\/p>\n

    We can also make a further observation that narrows the legitimacy of skepticism still further.\u00a0 A skepticism regarding our senses is incoherent for another basic, methodological<\/em> reason.\u00a0 It is in the additional<\/em> observations of our senses, perhaps informed by additional understanding from theoretical analysis, that often corrects our previous<\/em> observations or leads us to additional theoretical reflections.\u00a0 That is, a radically new theory formulated through \u2018edge-case\u2019 analysis previously dismissed as \u201cexperimental error\u201d is not at all uncommon in the history of science, physics especially.[83]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

    Further and perhaps conclusively, if we assume the global sceptic wants to convince<\/em> us all to become global sceptics, they will need to believe they \u201cknow\u201d global skepticism to be the case.\u00a0 In other words, they are requiring that they can be certain<\/em> that there is no<\/em> certainty.<\/em>\u00a0 No matter how this is presented in the philosophical or scientific literature, \u201csometimes under the guise of newly introduced technical vocabulary,\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[84]<\/a> there is a basic incongruity in this position that is at its most obvious with primitive skepticism, and furthermore, if we push it harder to demand an account<\/em> of the skepticism, we should now see is implicit in any<\/em> form of skepticism.\u00a0 Too often the sceptic is assuming directly or indirectly, consciously, or subconsciously, that which they are seeking to refute,<\/em> Plantinga attacks Hume on that basis:<\/p>\n

    \u201cAnd this leads to the scandal of skepticism:\u00a0 if I argue<\/em> to skepticism, then of course I rely on the very cognitive faculties whose unreliability is the conclusion of my skeptical argument.\u201d\u200a[85]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Looking forward to our future discussion, we will see that in Van Tillian terms, this is recognized as a failure of skepticism under transcendental<\/em> critique.\u00a0 Transcendentalism is important to argument in a much more basic sense of making argumentation itself<\/em> possible and coherent, so a transcendental argument is categorically different to a deductive or an inductive style argument. \u00a0Thus, we will need to consider transcendentalism in much greater detail but for our purposes now, the transcendental is that part of our knowledge structure that makes rationality reasonable and completely disarms the skeptical challenge.[86]<\/a><\/p>\n

    So, in summary, we should, on an ethical basis, immediately label the primitive global skeptical view as both incoherent and destructive.\u00a0 We can also note at this point a very important feature of the skeptical challenge, that as soon as we talk methodology, and try to apply the global skeptical premise, we find we cannot without instantiating specific cases and we find that we are now talking about \u2018local\u2019 skepticism.\u00a0 In Wittgensteinian terms, the solution to the problem is the disappearing of the problem once we have clarified exactly what we mean.\u00a0 That is, as soon as we attempt to state a more moderate form of global skepticism that asserts that there is no certainty<\/em> available to us, or that all our scientific conclusions are subject to \u2018revision,\u2019 we have moved to a consideration of local skepticism.\u00a0 Global skepticism then appears as a principle with absurd consequences and thoroughly impractical because we can never articulate any of its consequences or implications without self-contradiction.<\/p>\n

    We can reinforce this conclusion reminding ourselves of our previous section dealing with skepticism, where we can now recognize local skepticism as characteristic of the genus fallibilist<\/em>.\u00a0 In that section we have already seen that the various fallibilist schools failed to be internally coherent when they were looking for a plausible account<\/em> of the possibility, or an account of, the knowledge that we are aware or know<\/em> we possess regarding the world.\u00a0 Thus, even a local skepticism on anything but a methodological level as a hypothetical tool cannot be acceptable to us.\u00a0 That is, local skepticism is not warranted in a moral<\/em> sense as a gateway into a general skepticism even if in some abstract, absolute logical sense its referent cannot be refuted because of the possibility of error.\u00a0 In a reciprocal fashion, we may not be able to claim absolute certainty for certain kinds of measurements, inductions, or observations regarding the physical world but that does not morally warrant us to give up experimentation and having a psychological confidence and an ethical commitment to improvement.<\/p>\n

    So, our knowledge, even if it is changed, adapted, or replaced with new formulations, is still certainly<\/em> available to us through a combination of a transcendental principle, empirical and deductive processes.\u00a0 They are sometimes supplemented by abductive or probabilistic analyses, and we do not have to choose between them.\u00a0 They often answer different questions, they are often complementary and are parts of our epistemic toolbox.\u00a0 Thus, we should have seen in our analyses here and in our previous section regarding the various secular responses to the challenge of skepticism, that epistemological error results when one principle is chosen to the exclusion of all others.<\/p>\n

    To reiterate, we find that global skepticism seems to be a concept that lacks content and application, it is an abstraction masquerading as a category.\u00a0 As soon as we try to apply it, it concretizes into local skeptical arguments which if conceived in anything but as a hypothetical tool (rather than as a statement for which there is no way the question could be answered), it would render the achievements and procedures of human science and research illegitimate.\u00a0 In contrast, for us, the pursuit of truth and warranted verisimilitude remain legitimate goals of research.\u00a0 Thus, as a further step in our argument, this is surely a discussion of what is valuable<\/em> to us and not just a matter for logic.<\/p>\n

    That is, we can see that a rebuff of skepticism is pushing us in the direction of ethical considerations and in the direction of a coherent, integrated, worldview philosophy.\u00a0 If we attempt to deal with skepticism in a naturalistic or purely propositional fashion, we arrive at a philosophical impasse unable to dislodge the sceptic.\u00a0 Yet the moral imperative is to dislodge the sceptic just as it is the moral imperative to have the courage to condemn the prison camp guard at Auschwitz.[87]<\/a>\u00a0 That is, if we remain personally and collectively committed to progress, that is we believe it is something we should<\/em> do, our incomplete or tentative moves towards \u2018absolute\u2019 certainty do not prevent us from acting as if we were \u201ccertain\u201d at important milestones along the way and acting in a way that demonstrates our moral commitments.[88]<\/a>\u00a0 It only warrants a skeptical despair and an amoral impasse to the morally cowardly or the apathetic in the face of the great potential of our progress as a race.\u00a0 We can at once be confident of the truth we know now whilst we understand that we might know the same truth in a more complete or robust fashion in the future, but we can remain confident that we have still encountered and know the truth at the present time.\u00a0 Blackburn expresses this thought well:<\/p>\n

    \u201cPerhaps we never found logos or a \u2018first philosophy\u2019, an underlying foundational story telling us, from somewhere outside our own world view, just why that world view is the right one. But perhaps we have learned to do without that, just as we learn to retain our hard-won confidences, without closing our minds to any further illuminations that the future may bring. Above all, I hope we have become confident in using our well-tried and tested vocabulary of explanation and assessment. We can take the postmodernist inverted commas off things that ought to matter to us: truth, reason, objectivity and confidence. They are no less, if no more, than the virtues<\/em> that we should all cherish as we try to understand the bewildering world about us.\u201d\u2009[89]<\/a> (Emphasis added)<\/p>\n

    Notice how Blackburn uses metaphysical and epistemological terminology and correlates that with ethics.\u00a0 This is a good example of \u201cworldview\u201d thinking.\u00a0 For Blackburn, his assertions are ethical and fall within that worldview to justify them, even in the face of epistemological skepticism. \u00a0\u00a0Skepticism becomes far more of a psychological<\/em> choice and an example of epistemic irresponsibility, than it is a philosophical necessity.\u00a0 For example, Hume, on his own admission, answered his own thoroughgoing skepticism by playing backgammon with his friends and living day to day ignoring<\/em> his skepticism.\u00a0 Hume\u2019s failure in the final analysis was an ethical one, not a logical one and was caused by his metaphysical prejudice. We do not permit ourselves that indulgence within epistemological self-consciousness.<\/p>\n

    Yet we do<\/em> acknowledge there is a further step in discrediting skepticism on a logical level.\u00a0 This we defer to when we discuss the transcendental mode of argumentation for answering the skeptical challenge, for this enables us to establish the rational basis for reason and then to argue that we are able to have objective<\/em> certainty about the existence of the Christian God and that it is provable,<\/em> rather than merely an evidential or probabilistic claim about the existence of \u201ca God\u201d (though we might now understand we would be within our epistemic rights to claim we are not irrational in believing).\u00a0 For the time being, we can now assert that psychologically, skepticism holds no compelling appeal for us to be epistemologically cautious.\u00a0 However, skepticism has historically been borne out of naturalism pushed to its logical limits, so we now move to consider why naturalism is more generally incoherent to further invalidate the skepticism built on it.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a>3.3.5 Two Dogmas of Evolutionary Thought<\/h3>\n

    In titling this section as I have, I am playing on the title of Quine\u2019s famous refutation of logical positivism, Two Dogmas of Empiricism<\/em>.\u00a0 Quine, as we have already noted, was one of the most innovative and influential post-positivist philosophers of the second half of the 20th<\/sup> century, famous for both his radical behaviorism and proposing a naturalized metaphysics and a naturalized epistemology as a replacement and mitigation of the dogmatic criticisms he had levelled in that famous paper. Thus, let us examine the reasons why we should also immediately reject any form of his \u201cnaturalized epistemology\u201d<\/em> even when first argued by such eminent naturalists as himself.<\/p>\n

    Firstly, it must be said that the naturalist model uses evolutionism (and particularly natural selection<\/em>) as a quasi-religious device, rather like an atheological hermeneutic that allows the flow of science through time to be given structure and reasonable meaning<\/em> – no statement regarding counter-intuitive complexity or conceptual confusion is not capable of clarification by appealing to natural selection.\u00a0 Further, I would argue that historically, evolutionary thought was and remains today, primarily a metaphysical dogma in its entirety<\/em>.\u00a0 Most significantly, it predates Darwin, even in its modern scientific incarnation, with Darwin himself in extant correspondence admitting he was riding a wave of popular sentiment regarding the inevitability of human progress and improvement which had become a strong theme in the paleopositivist philosophy of Comte, and similar socialist and humanistic thinkers inspired by the French Revolution.[90]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Conceptually, it has roots in the very origins of the pre-Socratic tradition (though it must be recognized to what degree is a disputed claim\u200a[91]<\/a>) but both evolutionists and creationists have agreed on that assertion for very different reasons.\u00a0 What changed with Darwin was that it got a scientific makeover and a proposed mechanism<\/em> (\u2018natural selection\u2019) was offered; but, on detailed inspection of Darwin\u2019s text, on the most tentative basis and with minimal evidential support.[92]<\/a>\u00a0 Even during Darwin\u2019s lifetime, it was considered scientifically<\/em> implausible and with the work of his contemporary Mendel on genetics undermining a central claim of his theory,[93]<\/a> it was only with the deliberate scholarly suppression of Mendel\u2019s work and the aggressive scientistic zeal of Thomas Henry Huxley,[94]<\/a> \u201cDarwin\u2019s bulldog,\u201d that Darwinism was maintained as a credible thesis.<\/p>\n

    The scientific plausibility problem did not go away.\u00a0 Historically, as paleontological evidence mounted during the 20th<\/sup> century and the embarrassment of the major gaps in the fossil record became the major issue for the most serious evolutionists, there was an urgent internal search (though not a trace of it was or seen in mainstream school textbooks and graduate introductions) for an alternative model of evolutionary thought.\u00a0 Following almost 70 years of theory and counter theory, it arrived in 1972 with Stephen J Gould proposing a major revision known as punctuated <\/em>evolution.\u00a0 The sophistication of presentation and subtle sophistry of the revised theory was quite magnificent, Gould himself describing it as the paradox of the \u201cinsulation<\/em> from disproof<\/em>\u200a\u201d<\/em> without realizing that was because he was still reasoning in a tautological manner on a key philosophical and explanatory point, explaining the gaps in the fossil record as a result of periods of rapid change followed by \u2018quiet\u2019 periods in evolutionary history, that therefore<\/em> we would expect to see no evidence of intermediate forms.[95]<\/a><\/p>\n

    However, there is no<\/em> \u201ctherefore\u201d in this account; he is simply affirming the consequent. \u00a0Clearly, this was not a hypothesis which was then tested against the evidence confirming the predictions of a theory but rather a pseudo-hypothesis that was fit to the evidence to give the desired end-result. \u00a0However, it was<\/em> a major repudiation of Darwinism based on the lack of paleontological evidence, this was<\/em> a direct contradiction of gradualism and the mechanism of natural selection as well as<\/em> a deconstruction of many of the competitor views to his own.\u00a0 Philosophically, it was in essence a more sophisticated borrowing of the concept of rapid revolutionary change from Marxism\u200a[96]<\/a> by a scientifically capable and credible researcher\u200a[97]<\/a> (it had previously been attempted dogmatically by Marxists aware of the evidence problem), but it utterly cemented the tautological structure of evolutionary thought.\u00a0 Even more astonishingly, we would not know of the scientific poverty of the theory\u200a[98]<\/a> reading our standard textbooks, but as Gould openly states, \u201c<\/em>it is a metaphysical commitment on our part.\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[99]<\/a> \u00a0Thus, tellingly, when Neo-Darwinists speak of \u2018Natural Selection\u2019 today they mean something very<\/em> different from natural selection as the principial mechanism of evolution.\u00a0 Apparently, we have a choice of two dogmas, gradualist evolution or punctuated evolution, both claiming to be Darwinian but mutually exclusive.[100]<\/a> \u00a0Similarly, Plantinga demonstrates this dogmatism in his critique of Dawkins\u2019 arguments:<\/p>\n

    \u201cFor the nontheist, undirected evolution is the only game in town, and natural selection seems to be the most plausible mechanism to drive the process.\u00a0 Here is this stunningly intricate world with its enormous diversity and apparent design; from the perspective of naturalism or non-theism, the only way it could have happened is by way of unguided Darwinian evolution; hence, it must<\/em> have happened that way; hence there must<\/em> be a Darwinian series for each current life form.\u201d\u200a\u200a[101]<\/a>\u00a0 (Emphasis original)<\/p>\n

    That is, Plantinga argues here that the presuppositions of naturalism simply provide a dogma with which to deal with the question of origins and the diversity of nature and concludes it will not allow us to \u201cfollow the argument where it leads.\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[102]<\/a>\u00a0 In contrast, the theist might<\/em> want to countenance some form of guided evolution as the means to creating a Darwinian series which is then interpreted as a creative act of God; for other reasons they might be unwise to do so (it would require a creative hermeneutic to reconstruct historical biblical claims, which have all proved philosophically embarrassing\u200a[103]<\/a>), but they could<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    Secondly, the unnerving fallacy that Plantinga exposes in naturalist thinking is that even if<\/em> we grant the naturalist that natural selection was somehow epistemically justifiable and biologically possible in some non-astronomical scale,[104]<\/a> that does not mean it was necessarily <\/em>the case as argued in for example, New Atheism.\u00a0 It just does not follow that we can argue as Dawkins did in the Delusion <\/em>that because God as a supremely complex being is thought of being \u201cimprobable\u201d that evolution by natural selection is more<\/em> probable (presumably because it demands less complication) and thus must<\/em> be the case.[105]<\/a>\u00a0 Rather, a metaphysical presupposition will be implicit in answering that question; as Dawkins indicated himself, he was inverting the probability argument frequently made by believers for his own purposes, but we can observe that neither inflection of the argument has superior logical force, and the logical force of the argument in either form is particularly poor on critical examination.\u00a0 On a trivial level, Dawkins\u2019 conundrum is rather like having eight options before us, all with a low probability but being required to choose one.\u00a0 At the very least, our epistemic rights permit us to withhold commitment until we are convinced by substantiating evidence or a compelling logical argument.<\/p>\n

    That is, there is a basic problem, even if we accept that there are Darwinian sequences or even if we admit natural selection, that in itself does not establish a design-free universe and require us to accept the naturalist presupposition.\u00a0 However, the most glaring philosophical fallacy is to treat the hypothesis of God as if it was the same<\/em> as any other scientific<\/em> hypothesis.\u00a0 Dawkins explicitly stated this fallacy as his opening assumption and has oft repeated it.[106]<\/a>\u00a0 Yet, in discussing ultimate authorities, there is no way we can stand outside of that authority otherwise we would be asserting that the human mind has the superior authority, and it would be the ultimate authority, usurping God.\u00a0 Dawkins has fundamentally begged the question in even framing the argument as he does, and it is an error oft repeated in unbelieving polemics across the arts and the sciences.\u00a0 The fundamental assumption of unbelieving thought is the ancient Greek prejudice we began our study with, the unaided intellect can judge the ultimate issues of reality;<\/em> as Lewis stated, it is \u201c<\/em>God [that] is in the dock\u2026God may be acquitted but the important principle is that [men are doing the judging].\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[107]<\/a><\/p>\n

    So, in summary, a sneering Dawkins or a mocking Dennett claims much more for the evolutionary argument than it can deliver, even if we grant them a hearing for the sake of the wider case being argued, for as Plantinga rightly states, \u201cArgumentum ad Derisionem<\/em> is hardly an approved argument form.\u201d\u200a[108]<\/a>\u00a0 What we are beginning to suspect is that naturalism is taking on the characteristics of a dogma, or as we noted previously, Gould\u2019s \u201cmetaphysical commitment\u201d<\/em> that is pre-theoretical.\u00a0 I believe in the following three subsections we can establish that beyond reasonable doubt.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a>3.3.6 Physicalism<\/h3>\n

    The most extreme form of naturalistic epistemology is known as physicalism.\u00a0\u00a0 Physicalism<\/em> is the position that all processes, even mental ones, eventually<\/em> reduce to physical processes\u2014that is, all is physics!\u00a0 Though popular with a particular clique of physicists (implausible though that might seem!) and a sect of naturalist philosophers, it understandably draws substantial criticism from non-physicists unhappy that their branch of science is viewed as a downgraded science, and the more holistic philosophers unhappy at the rarefaction of the human experience.[109]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Similarly, epistemologically, it then follows that all knowledge forming processes can be reduced to neuroscience or evolutionary psychology and problems of epistemology become problems for another branch of science; this was the strategy of the \u201cnaturalization\u201d project of Quine.\u00a0 However, when the neuroscientist or the psychologist is asked to give an account<\/em> of the knowledge forming process, all that can be offered is \u201cevolutionary advantage\u201d which, as we noted above, is a \u201cmiserable tautology.\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[110]<\/a><\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a>3.3.7 Those That Survive Think Inductively<\/h3>\n

    The more respectable and sophisticated naturalism found in a Quine or in a Goodman suffers from a similar weakness to the crude form found in Dawkins. \u00a0Quine especially, for all his exposure of the dogmatism of positivism seems to be arguing for a softer, but equally pervasive set of naturalist presuppositions justified or explained by some tautological recourse to evolutionary theory. Quine\u2019s conception of induction is a perfect example, let us paraphrase:\u00a0 we<\/em> think inductively, and we have survived;<\/em> thus,<\/em> those that have survived, have survived because evolutionary advantage resulted when they thought inductively<\/em>.\u00a0 This is a repeatable formula for any natural characteristic or phenomenological event\u2014it persisted or was beneficial because it offered evolutionary advantage and evolutionary advantage resulted from its presence, so what is present is present, a miserable tautology indeed.\u00a0 Quine readily admitted such reasoning was begging the question:<\/p>\n

    \u201c[T]he answer [to the riddle of induction] is best sought in terms of natural selection.\u00a0 An innate sensitivity to certain traits, and insensitivity to others, will have survival value insofar as the traits [of prediction that the future will be like the past] that are favored are favorable to prediction [but] [n]either the projectible traits nor the traits favored by natural selection are easily characterized, and the relationship between them is more tenuous still.\u00a0 Further, when we appeal to biology and theories of neural organization we appeal to science that is itself grounded, in large measure, inductively<\/em>.\u201d\u200a\u200a[111]<\/a> (Emphasis added)<\/p>\n

    Thus, there is surely nothing subtle about the circularity, it viciously<\/em> begs the question in the most tautological fashion.\u00a0 That is, if we can never explain why <\/em>or what<\/em> the specific evolutionary advantage was, such reasoning is always viciously circular.\u00a0 It was simply a presupposition or limiting notion necessary to support the naturalist programme.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a>3.3.8 If All We Have Is Nature\u2026<\/h3>\n

    Interestingly, one of the most searching critiques of naturalism was provided by C S Lewis in his Miracles,<\/em> the second edition of which benefitted from the robust critique of Elizabeth Anscombe of the first.\u00a0 Lewis has not received the recognition he deserves for his philosophical thought with a major factor being the mistruths spread because of the debate with Anscombe.[112]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 In brief, he asserted that if nature is all we have, there is absolutely no reason<\/em> to accept what nature says on an epistemological level unless we have a supernaturalistic metaphysics.\u00a0 This position was defended in the most robust manner by Plantinga in which he acknowledges the debt to Lewis\u2019 formulation of the argument against naturalism.[113]<\/a><\/p>\n

    In making his case, Plantinga notes Darwin himself was uneasy about the emerging naturalism of his viewpoint and the consequences it held for the status of reason, asking: if all was nature, why would we trust the reason that arises from that same nature?<\/em>\u00a0 That is, just how far do we need to be up the evolutionary tree for our reason to be reliable?\u00a0 On this basis, Plantinga noted that Quine, Ayer, and Dawkins all \u201cfound hope\u201d<\/em> in Darwin as providing a hermeneutic in evolutionary thought but notes the hope is far less robust than they want to admit for the very reason that Darwin and Lewis perceived\u2014there can be no natural<\/em> justification of nature because justification is always conceptual in character and thus beyond nature by definition<\/em>.\u00a0 It reflects<\/em> on nature; it is apart from nature, and it is an abstraction of thought.[114]<\/a> \u00a0So, in this short but I hope fair and salient account of as Lewis would say \u201cthe cardinal problems of naturalism,\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[115]<\/a> we find naturalism as self-vitiating and evolutionary thought as a dogma.\u00a0 We can now proceed to seek firmer epistemological foundations elsewhere.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.3.9 Justified True Belief (JTB), Gettier and Epistemic Warrant<\/h3>\n

    Robert Audi in his authoritative introduction to epistemology, offered us this definition of epistemology which will help us frame one of the most influential and persistent working definitions of knowledge, the JTB thesis:<\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/strong>\u201cEpistemology, or the theory of knowledge, is concerned with how we know what we do, what justifies<\/em> us in believing what we do, and what standards of evidence<\/em> we should use in seeking truths about the world and human experience.\u201d\u200a[116]<\/a> (Emphasis added).<\/p>\n

    This connection of truth, evidence and justification can be traced all the way back to Plato and is thus known as the \u201cclassical\u201d definition of knowledge.\u00a0 \u00a0Despite not being without serious problematics or controversy, some of which were articulated by Plato himself and the most important of which we will consider immediately below, it has, nevertheless, for many philosophers remained a substantive basis on which to found much epistemological discussion. [117]<\/a><\/p>\n

    For example, in Descartes and then Locke, this definition was associated with a reliance on some form of justification through evidentialism<\/em>, where for a belief to be responsibly held, i.e., to fulfil one\u2019s epistemic obligations or duty, you should have good reasons<\/em> for the beliefs you hold. \u00a0Likewise, this was the view forcefully argued by 19th<\/sup> century polymath William Kingdon Clifford\u200a[118]<\/a> who asserted it was a moral duty incumbent upon all to have good reasons for what is believed. It is of note that he then dismissed \u201cfaith\u201d on the grounds it lacked such justification which chimed well with the Darwinist thesis that had been advanced a few years before he wrote.<\/p>\n

    However, the most significant challenge to the JTB thesis (though it had its historical precursors) were the \u201cGettier problems.\u201d \u00a0Gettier\u2019s tiny three-page article,[119]<\/a> spawned an encyclopedic response which remains a live issue for epistemologists who in one way or another still consider epistemology as a legitimate category. [120]<\/a>\u00a0 He had demonstrated in an elegant fashion using some simple parables that belief, truth, and \u2018simple\u2019 or first-person evidential justification (\u2018I saw that, heard this\u2019 etc.), otherwise known as \u201cinternalist accounts\u201d which emphasize the first-person involvement in the \u201cknowing\u201d process, were not sufficient (and, on the contra-externalist accounts, not even necessary<\/em>) grounds for knowledge.[121]<\/a>\u00a0 For example, someone may have personal justification<\/em> for a belief that was contingently<\/em> correct, e.g., they observed a stopped clock (formed a justified belief regarding the time) that just happened to be correct at the instant of observation (i.e., true).\u00a0 Yet with our God\u2019s eye view and the additional information available to us, the fulfilment of JTB conditions would not mean that they had come to knowledge of the time.[122]<\/a> \u00a0Those elements of belief, justification and truth were necessary<\/em>, but not sufficient<\/em> and two thousand years of Western thought regarding knowledge crashes unceremoniously to the ground. \u00a0As Plantinga noted, \u201cthe havoc he\u2026wrought in contemporary epistemology has been entirely salutary.\u201d<\/em>\u200a\u200a<\/em>[123]<\/a><\/p>\n

    There was clearly a need for a \u201cfourth element\u201d and many accounts have attempted to append an additional criterion. \u00a0For our purposes, we need but note that even in the face of a \u201cblizzard of rival theories\u201d<\/em> that emerged to try and improve on its shortcomings, those theories proved too complex or problematic to replace what they were trying to improve upon.[124]<\/a> \u00a0Yet, Plantinga has probably, more than any other epistemologist, given as full an analysis as possible as to the problem of knowledge and an \u2018answer,\u2019 or more accurately an alternative conception of knowing as an answer to the Gettier problems and it is to this we now turn as an important building block towards epistemological self-consciousness.[125]<\/a><\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.3.10 Plantinga and Warranted Belief<\/h3>\n

    Plantinga develops a broadly Reidian\u200a[126]<\/a> framework in his own theory.<\/em> \u00a0Plantinga considered Reid \u201csubstantially correct\u201d<\/em> in his account and his basic approach to reality, which was a commitment to realism<\/em> and reliabilism<\/em>.\u00a0 The former refers to the belief in an objective external world and the latter to the belief that properly functioning cognitive faculties give you access to that world.\u00a0 However, Reid\u2019s philosophy used a particular conception of \u201ccommon sense realism,\u201d and we should all realize that \u201ccommon sense\u201d is a problematic concept, as it is usually indexed to a form of life within a culture, or even a subculture.[127]<\/a> \u00a0Thus, Plantinga strengthened the account of Reid in two volumes\u200a[128]<\/sup><\/a> before developing his account of warranted Christian<\/em> belief in a third.[129]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Plantinga\u2019s arguments reject internalist accounts of knowledge as inadequate, but it is important to understand that he substantively modified and enhanced the rival externalist school such that belief in God could be considered both basic and epistemically responsible.\u00a0 Externalism holds that knowledge is essentially a \u201crelationship between a person and a fact,\u201d<\/em>\u200a\u200a<\/em>[130]<\/a> noting that a person can be quite unaware of the origin of their knowledge (thus failing the primary internalist criteria), e.g., they know that Everest is the highest mountain but have no recollection of why<\/em> they know that.\u00a0 That is, they may<\/em> have had evidence at some point to come to that belief or they may<\/em> have accepted it based on testimony or some other authority.\u00a0 Despite their failure to meet internalist criteria, most of us would be happy to concede that they really did<\/em> know something about Everest.<\/p>\n

    However, externalism suffers from what is known as \u2018The Generality Problem.\u2019\u00a0 The externalist must grant that there is some discriminating faculty within the individual that makes it possible to establish that relationship and to discriminate between the true and just what appears to be true because of contingency.\u00a0 The theory is only robust if there is a specific faculty that can assess the reliability of the mechanism in those cases, but most assessments will be made on the criteria of vision, hearing, or some other relatively general<\/em> faculty.\u00a0 Thus, as Nagel notes, because first party justification is deemed to play no role:<\/p>\n

    \u201cIf we carve up belief-forming processes so narrowly, then any true belief will count as knowledge.\u00a0 How do we hit the target of describing the mechanism and its context at just the right level of detail?\u201d\u200a\u200a[131]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Hence, a pure externalist account will be problematic and so Plantinga does not deny that internalist conceptions such as justification will play no role, but he strengthens, or better subsumes, the internalist conception of justification to warrant<\/em> (which has additional externalist and reliabilist underpinnings).\u00a0 \u201cWarrant\u201d becomes what must be added to truth and belief to ascend to a claim of knowledge. \u00a0He conducts the details of this argument at great length in his Warrant <\/em>trilogy\u200a\u200a[132]<\/a> and presented a helpful, abbreviated form in a simplified, retrospective summary volume.[133]<\/a>\u00a0 We will trace the salient features of this model below.<\/p>\n

    Firstly, Plantinga makes the important distinction between warrant<\/em> and justification,<\/em> with warrant being the stronger term.\u00a0 Justification, for Plantinga, is the locus for what Gettier problems revolve around and concretely for Plantinga, someone is justified<\/em> when they have \u201cnot flouted one\u2019s epistemic duties\u201d<\/em> by properly considering the available evidence in the formation of their beliefs and the subsequent progress of their \u201cdownstream experience\u201d<\/em> which permits them continued justification.[134]<\/a>\u00a0 However, as the Gettier scenarios demonstrate, the possibility remains of a dissonant component that misdirects commitment to a generally false but contingently true, justified belief. \u00a0Warrant for Plantinga is the defeating of this dissonant component from the cognitive environment with a stronger definition:<\/p>\n

    \u201c[T]he claim is that such belief\u2026originate[s] in cognitive faculties that are functioning properly in a suitable environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at producing true beliefs.\u201d\u200a[135]<\/a><\/p>\n

    This, as we have noted, owes much to Reidian reliabilism, but Plantinga strengthens Reid by reducing the reliance on the fluid concept of common sense and adding the concepts of a design plan ideally suited for the epistemic environment successfully aimed at truth.\u00a0 What he means by this is that correctly functioning cognitive faculties could be following a design plan, but that design plan could be aimed at say, survival, rather than the truth.\u00a0 In this case, the claim to knowledge would fail, which would seem to be intuitively reasonable\u2014we know that when survival becomes a priority, an organism might quickly behave instinctively or selfishly rather than in a dispassionately rational manner.<\/p>\n

    Plantinga also overhauled the \u2018proper function\u2019 requirement, expounding the \u2018proper\u2019 to assert that a naturalist account of warrant can only be supported by a supernaturalistic metaphysics, thus importing a theistic premise as functionally necessary for a rational system:<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe fundamental idea is that God provides us human beings with faculties or belief producing processes that yield these beliefs and are successfully aimed at the truth; when they work the way they were designed to in the sort of environment for which they were designed, the result is knowledge or warranted belief.\u201d\u200a[136]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Thus, turning specifically to Christian beliefs, he asserts that as a form of theism, we can be warranted, that is, rational<\/em> in our faith.\u00a0 That was a substantial achievement and was enough for his work to be noted as \u201cone of the major accomplishments of twentieth century epistemology\u201d<\/em> by one of his epistemological peers.[137]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Now some such as Butler have critiqued Plantinga that his initial account of warrant (Plantinga 1993a, b) was \u201cnaturalistic,\u201d\u200a[138]<\/a> this is accurate in the sense Plantinga conceived of warrant in term of cognitive functions (part of our natural<\/em> makeup), common to all of us and readily admitted he was offering a naturalistic<\/em> epistemology but<\/em> cojoined with a supernaturalistic metaphysics.[139]<\/a>\u00a0 I would assert that his emphasis here though was in the conjoining, the epistemology does not stand alone but should be considered with the metaphysics, which is precisely the direction we want to travel in epistemological self-consciousness.\u00a0 Additionally, God is conceived of as providing us with these faculties and central to Plantinga\u2019s argument is Calvin\u2019s sensus divinitus,<\/em> conceived of as a cognitive function that works to present a belief in God that is properly basic,<\/em> i.e., not arrived at via inference from evidence; much like perception, memory and a priori<\/em> knowledge.[140]<\/a> \u00a0Plantinga then relies heavily on Calvin\u2019s theological account of it, as seen from the exegesis of the key biblical passages.[141]<\/a>\u00a0 More generally, he describes one of the focusses of his project as developing \u201cCalvinist Epistemology\u201d\u200a[142]<\/a> and I believe we can see in his most mature work, Plantinga is offering an apologetic that is not neutral and not wholly negative.\u00a0 It is also not clear that Butler\u2019s criticism would be sustained if we import Bas van Frassen\u2019s critical definition of naturalism,[143]<\/a> which reduces to \u201cthere is no such person as God\u201d<\/em>\u2009<\/em>[144]<\/a> which would appear a long way from Plantinga.\u00a0 Strawson is also careful to indicate the \u201celastic\u201d usage of the term and its interpretation.[145]<\/a>\u00a0 So, the accusation of being a \u201cnaturalistic\u201d account is not on its own conclusive with regard to the claim that Plantinga was offering an insufficiently Reformed epistemology.<\/p>\n

    Butler\u2019s further and stronger claim is that this is not a \u201cbiblical\u201d epistemology, or more specifically, an epistemology drawn from scripture.\u00a0 He wants to contrast Plantinga with the apologetic method of Bahnsen.\u00a0 Bahnsen explicates and exegetes at great length the scriptural basis for his method\u200a[146]<\/a> with his distinctive analytic style.\u00a0 However, rather paradoxically, Butler\u2019s criticism of Plantinga on a Van Tillian basis might have been levelled at Van Til. \u00a0Bahnsen had wanted to correct the \u2018deficiency\u2019 admitted by Van Til that he regretted never demonstrating in detail the scriptural basis for his apologetic.[147]<\/a>\u00a0 I would argue something similar is going on with Plantinga; Plantinga is<\/em> assuming a Christian basis (and I would say \u201cstrongly assuming\u201d if we believe his own intellectual and personal autobiography\u200a[148]<\/a>\u200a) but we do not find a Bahnsenite threading of scriptures together in his work.\u00a0 We rather, like Van Til, find profound works of philosophical theology. \u00a0There are papers where he pulls in quotes from Paul, the exegesis of Calvin or something from Anselm, Aquinas, or Augustine, or makes the case against a natural theology from Rom. 1:18.\u00a0 So, it seems Plantinga can claim rather better theological credentials than those that Butler is willing to grant him at this point.<\/p>\n

    However, Butler makes another, and I believe the strongest, most serious criticism of Plantinga.\u00a0 It is that his apologetic is merely theistic<\/em> rather than Christian, strong in its negative function but weak in putting forward a positive apologetic. \u00a0That is, we might view his project as merely establishing the rationality<\/em> of Christianity as a basic belief but conceding that the non-believer could<\/em> be just as rational.[149]<\/a> \u00a0We should be happy to concede that this seems to be the position that Plantinga would be seen as arguing for through his early work into the middle period of the RE movement.[150]<\/a>\u00a0 The reason we would want to challenge this as his final position is because Plantinga himself seems to have had recognized this criticism and moves in his warrant trilogy from establishing some general notion of warrant, to its application for theistic belief and then specifically for its application to Christian<\/em> belief.\u00a0 Most significantly, he also deals directly with the challenge of religious pluralism with the clear presupposition that Christianity should<\/em> be considered true and warranted:<\/p>\n

    \u201cFrom a Christian perspective, this situation of religious pluralism is itself a manifestation of our miserable human condition\u2026A fresh or heightened awareness of the facts of religious pluralism\u2026could serve as an occasion for a renewed and more powerful working of the belief-producing processes by which we come to apprehend [the truth of Christianity and our obligation to God].\u00a0 In this way knowledge of the facts of pluralism could initially serve as a defeater; in the long run, however, it can have precisely the opposite effect.\u201d\u200a[151]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Thus, he explicitly deals with what he calls \u201cdefeaters\u201d to Christian belief, conceived of as an argument that undermines the basicity<\/em> of a belief by demonstrating its falsity:<\/p>\n

    \u201cIf the believer concedes that she doesn\u2019t <\/em>have any special source of knowledge or true belief with respect to Christian belief\u2014no sensus divinitus, <\/em>no internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, no teaching by a church inspired and protected from error by the Holy Spirit, nothing not available to those who disagree with her\u2014then<\/em>, perhaps\u2026she will have a defeater for her Christian belief.\u00a0 But why would she concede these things?\u00a0 She\u2026should<\/em> ordinarily think\u2026that there are indeed sources of warranted belief that issue in these beliefs\u2026.She believes, for example, that in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself;\u00a0 she may believe this on the basis of what the Bible or the church teaches\u2026it is the work of the Holy Spirit to convince our hearts that what our ears receive has come from him.\u201d\u200a[152]<\/a> (Emphasis original)<\/p>\n

    So, it seems problematic to characterize Plantinga\u2019s theological terminus as purely theistic, he certainly has Christian theism in mind. \u00a0Notwithstanding, Butler makes the further criticism that Plantinga\u2019s conception of warrant moves from the general to the specific with the final move for Plantinga to<\/em> Christian belief. \u00a0That is, it is a naturalistic account from the bottom-up.\u00a0 Plantinga can certainly be interpreted that way and concedes as much with an important qualification, he always requires a metaphysical foundation of theism but finishes with a clear explication of Christian belief:<\/p>\n

    \u201cWhen I speak here of Christian belief, I mean what is common to the great creeds of the main branches of the Christian church\u2026the theistic<\/em> component of Christian belief [but] also the uniquely Christian component.\u201d\u200a[153]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Butler asserts that a Van Tillian or truly Reformed apologetic would go to the scriptures, establish warrant from the scriptures and then build their epistemology from the top down in a presuppositional manner.\u00a0 Butler explicates this in his presentation immediately after discussing Plantinga, noting his approach as a \u201ctruly Reformed epistemology\u2026we derive our epistemology from the Bible for it to be a biblical epistemology.\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[154]<\/a> \u00a0Butler also makes the important point, examined and argued at length in Jeffreys,[155]<\/a> that Plantinga has modified and extended Calvin\u2019s conception of the sensus divinitus<\/em> and allows it to play a far larger role in his thought than Calvin permitted in his.\u00a0 The implication is thus that Plantinga cannot be considered sufficiently \u201cReformed\u201d in this regard.\u00a0 Yet, even if we grant this contention, this does not in itself delegitimize Plantinga\u2019s extension of the concept any more than it does Van Til\u2019s extension and refinement of Calvin\u2019s thought.[156]<\/a>\u00a0 Where Butler is more difficult to answer is in arguing that Plantinga is using a different concept of the sensus divinitus<\/em> altogether, suggesting it is knowledge gaining,<\/em> in opposition to Calvin asserting all men already<\/em> have knowledge of God.\u00a0 I believe the answer at this point is that both Butler and Plantinga have defensible positions at this point\u2014we have an issue with begging the question at this point as to what precisely Calvin meant by knowledge<\/em>.\u00a0 His discussion seems to involve both an a priori<\/em> and an a posteriori<\/em> conception of knowledge, combined also with \u2018instinct\u2019 and conscience:<\/p>\n

    \u201cThat there exists in the human minds and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity, we hold to be beyond dispute, since God himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued all men with some idea of his Godhead, the memory<\/em> of which he constantly renews and occasionally enlarges<\/em>, that all to a man being aware that there is a God, and that he is their Maker, may be condemned by their own conscience when they neither worship him nor consecrate their lives to his service.\u201d\u200a[157]<\/a> (Emphasis added)<\/p>\n

    Calvin proceeds to expound this sensus divinitatus<\/em> in a polyvalent fashion. Plantinga freely admits he is extending<\/em> this conception and precising it within a specific framework of modern epistemology.\u00a0 He, I would argue, is emphasizing the knowledge gaining<\/em> noetic process, which is rather different than Butler\u2019s Van Tillian metaphysical criticism, though Butler is a fine analyst also.\u00a0 Calvin is certainly proceeding in his argument in a systematic fashion, but his categories are not those of modern analysis.\u00a0 We thus must caution that Butler\u2019s criticism is not proved as a defeater for Plantinga.<\/p>\n

    In summary, I would argue that largely what we see here is a linguistic distinction between the analytic philosophical method of Plantinga and the presuppositional apologetic of a Van Tillian more aligned with the methods<\/em> and vocabulary<\/em> of Idealism.[158]<\/a>\u00a0 Anderson concurs broadly with me there\u200a[159]<\/a> and has probably made use of both positions sympathetically though well known as a Van Tillian.\u00a0 Plantinga\u2019s controlling methodology is to \u201canswer the fool according to his folly that he not be wise in his own estimation\u201d<\/em> whereas the Van Tillian method is \u201cDo not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you yourself also be like him.\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[160]<\/a>\u00a0 Just as these two scriptures are not contradictory but occur as a couplet for our benefit, we should see the legitimacy of both approaches, just as we appreciate the polyvalency of Calvin\u2019s account. \u00a0The Van Tillian defends the faith in a manner consistent with the presuppositions of scripture, Plantinga deconstructs and exposes the presuppositions and the consequences of the arguments of the unbelieving opponent, frequently demonstrating their limitations and the faults of their arguments.<\/p>\n

    It seems we are in danger of making a philosophical mistake by the forced juxtaposition of the two apologetic approaches as if they were mutually exclusive options; their motivations and goals are different but largely complimentary (as Butler also indicates in recommending aspects of Plantinga\u2019s work)\u2014Plantinga provides the detailed analysis, Van Til provides the high-level transcendental proof.\u00a0 It is one of the weaknesses of the Van Tillians, as noted by Bahnsen himself, that there can be a laziness when it comes to the detailed argumentation in refuting an informed (even if very wrongly informed but nevertheless articulate) opponent.\u00a0 It is not sufficient to jump directly to the final transcendental refutation missing out serious evidential or scientific objections that have been answered by equally serious research.[161]<\/a>\u00a0 We might not need evidence on our own terms within our own community, but we must certainly argue the point with our opponents rather than just accuse them of incorrect presuppositions and autonomous reasoning, no matter how perfectly correct that assessment would prove (as we will demonstrate in future chapters).\u00a0 It is just not a complete<\/em> account or rigorous intellectual refutation of their culpability.<\/p>\n

    Notwithstanding, there remains an important substantive difference between Plantinga and Van Til as captured in Butler\u2019s final criticism of Plantinga as an epistemology that does not prove the necessity<\/em> of Christianity, merely its sufficiency.\u00a0 This is salient and pertinent as we note that Plantinga considers it \u201cbeyond the competency of philosophy\u201d<\/em> to demonstrate the truth of Christianity despite his own strong, personal conviction of its truth.[162]<\/a>\u00a0 Plantinga mitigates what he believes rational argument can establish, he believes that Christian belief is in the final analysis formed in a way that supersedes what rational argument can accomplish, he does not believe he establishes the truth<\/em> of that belief though he believes it is<\/em> true:<\/p>\n

    \u201cI won\u2019t argue that [Christian] belief is<\/em> true, although of course I believe that it is.\u00a0 The fact is that there are some very good arguments for [Christian] belief, arguments about as good as philosophical arguments get; nevertheless, these arguments are not strong enough to support the conviction with which serious believers in God do in fact accept [Christian] belief\u2026these arguments are not strong enough to confer knowledge on someone who accepts them\u2026\u201d\u200a[163]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Now, I do believe that Plantinga is being particularly nuanced here and I still believe his position remains a Calvinist one.[164]<\/a>\u00a0 The Calvinist will always maintain that it is the sovereignty of God and the grace of God that brings one to salvation and not a rational argument, it seems Plantinga has drawn the line between the philosophical and the theological here\u2014thus, the limiting of the competence of philosophy:<\/p>\n

    \u201cBut is <\/em>it true?\u00a0 This is the really important question. And here we pass beyond the competence of philosophy.\u00a0 In my opinion, no argument with premises accepted by everyone or nearly everyone is strong enough to support full blown Christian belief.\u201d\u200a[165]<\/a><\/p>\n

    There is also the equivalent coda in the full statement of his arguments:<\/p>\n

    \u201c\u2026here we pass beyond the competence of philosophy, whose main competence\u2026is to clear away certain objections, impedances, and obstacles to Christian belief.\u00a0 Speaking for myself and of course not in the name of philosophy\u2026it does, indeed, seem to me to be true, and to be the maximally important truth.\u201d\u200a[166]<\/a><\/p>\n

    So, in summary, we can acknowledge Butler has the formal right to criticize Plantinga as wanting in the final analysis for proving the objective truth of Christian belief, but he equally should (and I would say further that he does<\/em>) acknowledge the strength and force of what Plantinga has given us in defending the faith.[167]<\/a> \u00a0However, in agreement with Butler, it necessitates we must follow Van Til if we wish to proceed to an objective proof of the existence of and the necessity of the Christian God as the guarantor of knowledge, as required by epistemological self-consciousness.\u00a0 We will examine the transcendentalist approach of Van Til in subsequent chapters which allows Van Til to assert that the only possibility for coherence in human predication is the necessary existence of the Christian conception of God.[168]<\/a>\u00a0 However, we need another thread to our philosophical garment if it is to serve us in the most demanding winters and it is the ethical or our theory of values.\u00a0 Ethics, or our theory of values and of what is valuable,[169]<\/a> grounds our philosophy by testing it against the world we dwell in, so it is to that we now turn.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>3.4 Ethics<\/h2>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.4.1 Introduction<\/h3>\n

    Ethics is almost always prefixed with a qualifier: classical<\/em>, situational<\/em>, secular <\/em>and rule-egoism<\/em> being four examples reflecting distinct conceptions of ethics that have at one time exercised an influence over Christian ethicists.[170]<\/a>\u00a0 All these schools still fall within the remit of ethical discussions, for sometimes ethics is treated more as a descriptive science than a prescriptive process.\u00a0 We should also note that these terms are already something of an aggregation, there are distinct schools within Christian ethics and secular ethics which have reflected on one another, cross-pollinated one another, and importantly, aggressively rejected one another.\u00a0 Thus, there is no way we can do justice to the detail<\/em> of the variation of ethical perspectives and why they diverge as they do, but rather we will do justice to the guiding ethical principles of our<\/em> thesis and why it is authoritative for us, and why such a detailed enumeration of rival ethical theories is then rendered superfluous.<\/p>\n

    Ethics is most basically \u201cthe surrounding climate of ideas about how to live.\u00a0 It determines what we find acceptable or unacceptable, admirable, or contemptible\u2026what is due to us, and what is due from us, as we relate to others.\u201d\u200a[171]<\/a> That is, it is the constitutive material of our moral knowledge.\u00a0 Whereas a \u201cmoral\u201d act is considered the \u201cright way\u201d to act, an ethical theory is the theory that defines why it should be the right way to act.\u00a0 Thus, Van Til spoke of \u201cthe Christian view of human action or behavior.\u201d\u200a\u200a[172]<\/a> \u00a0This will include our Christian conceptions of \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d actions, virtue and vice, justice and injustice, and the Christian criteria which are proposed to judge such actions.\u00a0 Ethics is also inherently political, how we organize and govern ourselves or permit ourselves to be governed flow inexorably from our ethical conclusions.<\/p>\n

    Of course, any comprehensive treatment of ethics would demand far more space than is permitted here but we can give just enough of an argument to demonstrate that we can reject the positivistic and naturalistic psychologizing of ethics.\u00a0 Like Willard, we refute the abolition of moral knowledge and boldly assert its reality, we thus do not merely describe what ethics might be, but we reason and argue to the point that we might prescribe what our ethics should<\/em> be.[173]<\/a> \u00a0Our ethics are not just a manner of behavioral conditioning, exotic socio-biological psychology\u200a[174]<\/a> or relativised to our cultural situation or personal feelings (though all are factors to consider) but an outer expression of our inner convictions regarding our place in the Universe and our relation to the God of scripture and one another.\u00a0 For the epistemological self-conscious, our objective referent must be the revelation through the narrative of scripture.\u00a0 Yet, this is not merely memorizing the Ten Commandments but appreciating the elaborate and detailed exposition of those principles in the Law and the narratives of scripture.\u00a0 The ethical life for the Christian is the life lived in harmony with the mind of God but let us first walk the path to this as the only logical terminus for the ethical life.\u00a0 That is the aim of this section.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.4.2 Ethics, Moral Knowledge, and Worldview<\/h3>\n

    Perhaps more than any other area of study in philosophy, ethics is the interface between philosophical belief and action.\u00a0 A basis for and a theory of ethics is required for us to live in the world and with one another.\u00a0 The challenge is presented to us is that which Aristotle clearly lays before us:<\/p>\n

    \u201cBut not every action nor every passion admits of a mean; for some have names that already imply badness, e.g. spite, shamelessness, envy, and in the case of actions adultery (moicheia<\/em>), theft (klop\u00ea<\/em>), murder (androphonia<\/em>)\u2026It is not possible, then, ever to be right with regard to them; one must always be wrong.\u201d (EN<\/em>\u00a0II.6 1107a8\u201315)\u200a[175]<\/a><\/p>\n

    This we might interpret as, \u201cif our ethics end up condoning adultery\/theft\/murder there is something wrong with our ethics.\u201d<\/em> \u00a0However, in our modern context, the debate surrounding birth and death, [176]<\/a> particularly regarding abortion and euthanasia, witness to the fact that not everyone agrees with everyone else where ethics is concerned. \u00a0In Aristotle there is something a priori<\/em> in his conception of ethics and<\/em> something of an active, psychological commitment demanded of the actor, known as hexis<\/em> in his writing, a term found also in Plato reportedly from Socrates\u2019 conception of knowledge.[177]<\/a>\u00a0 It refers to a personal ownership of and responsibility for your conduct, a resonance rather than a dissonance between your theory of your world and your practice of life.<\/p>\n

    Ethics is, in any reputable<\/em> conception, about the how<\/em> we live and<\/em> the why<\/em> we live the way we do.\u00a0 Now \u201creputable\u201d is a loaded term but like Willard argued with a high degree of plausibility, much of 20th<\/sup> century ethics was<\/em> in disrepute. \u00a0Beginning with the analytic method of Moore and the positivistic conceptions of Schlick, ethics was reduced to a descriptive science, i.e., a set of propositions considered \u2018true.\u2019\u200a[178]<\/a> \u00a0These were the psychologized conceptions of ethics that pursued knowledge only (i.e., description) that had a putative debt to Watson\u2019s behaviorist accounts of psychology,[179]<\/a> which were then pushed to greatest extreme in the psychological theories of Skinner who believed we could engineer a perfect society, because human behavior was, after all, entirely<\/em> a matter of conditioned response.<\/em>\u00a0 The disrepute results because in such an understanding there is no <\/em>moral culpability because one\u2019s behavior was an inevitable<\/em> consequence of one\u2019s environment.\u00a0 Thus, if there is a \u201cfault\u201d it is that of \u201csociety\u201d; more specifically, the fault is that social engineers and cultural visionaries who have been too timid<\/em> and have allowed concepts such as freedom, dignity, and democracy to obstruct the scientific path to an ordered and peaceful world.<\/p>\n

    Now, this immediately begs the question as to why<\/em> such a world as envisaged by Skinner and his fellow travelers would<\/em> be desirable.\u00a0 Why<\/em> would we consider an \u2018ordered and peaceful\u2019 world preferable to a \u2018free, dignified and democratic\u2019 one\u2014this is an ethical question, and we should demand the answer rather than accept these as poles of a dilemma. \u00a0Why choose between these two?\u00a0 In my view, this is a false<\/em> dilemma, a \u2018free, dignified and democratic\u2019 society in no way implies a disordered and a non-peaceful society, unless the order and peace we seek is that modelled by North Korea.[180]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Particularly for Christian worldview philosophy, these views should not escape the need for ethical evaluation and rebuke, and for the epistemologically self-conscious, their coercive and autonomous character stands utterly opposed to the freedom and liberty within the scriptures that form our foundation.[181]<\/a> \u00a0Thus, to fully grasp the nettle of the real nature and purpose of ethical reflection, we should understand the inseparable nature of our metaphysics (being of<\/em> \u200athe world), our epistemology (our theory<\/em> and thoughts in<\/em> the world) and our ethics (what we decide<\/em> to do being of<\/em> and in<\/em> the world).\u00a0 All these are presuppositions that control our thinking about and action in the world.\u00a0 The aggregate of these we might also call our worldview <\/em>which will increasingly feature in our discussion as epistemological self-consciousness develops.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.4.3 Theonomy and Ethics<\/h3>\n

    In the view of this work, the core of Reformed normative ethics can but be \u201ctheonomical.\u201d\u00a0 It integrates<\/em> our ethics with our epistemology and with our metaphysics, they become a coherent package rather than viewed as disparate categories.\u00a0 \u00a0Bahnsen helps us understand why this is a preferable approach:<\/p>\n

    \u201cIf the law of God is the moral ideal to be followed\u2026and if the practice\u2026is contrary to it, what measures [will correct] the situation?\u00a0 This question, as every other question, must be addressed by the law of God itself.\u00a0 The moral code not only sets forth standards to be followed\u2026it lays down principles of conduct to be followed by those who wish to bring about<\/em> [reformation].\u201d\u200a[182]<\/a><\/p>\n

    The theonomical<\/em> ethical position asserts the primacy of the scripture in ethical matters rather than the primacy of the autonomous human intellect. \u00a0The intellect is not to be ignored as if this was merely a dogmatic commitment, the intellect is rather to be used as a tool<\/em> and applied with the presupposition<\/em> of working through the material provided in the scriptures and systematizing it whilst properly regarding the Creator-creature distinction. \u00a0It is this conception of theonomy <\/em>and the role it plays in defining our ethical theory and informing our practice that diffuses what Van Til called \u201cthe labyrinth of ethical literature.\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[183]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Theonomy in the most general sense is associated with Reformational confessions, especially those of the Puritans and more specifically the Westminster Standards of 1647. \u00a0Theonomy is formed from Theos<\/em> and Nomos<\/em>, classical Greek words for \u201cGod\u201d and \u201cLaw\u201d; so theonomy is simply a preference for \u201cGod\u2019s law\u201d in contrast to autonomy<\/em>, formed from Autos<\/em> and Nomos,<\/em> meaning \u201cSelf\u201d and \u201cLaw.\u201d \u00a0God\u2019s Law in this sense\u200a[184]<\/a> is conceived of as being scripture alone and all of scripture:<\/p>\n

    \u201c[I]t is necessary for the Christian to maintain without any apology and without any concession that it is Scripture, and Scripture alone, <\/em>in the light of which all moral questions must be answered.\u00a0 Scripture as an external revelation became necessary because of the sin of man.\u00a0 No man living can even put the moral question as he ought to put it, or ask the moral questions as he ought to ask them, unless he does so in the light of Scripture\u2026There is no alternative but that of theonomy and autonomy.\u201d\u200a[185]<\/a> (Emphasis added).<\/p>\n

    Now, we do need to qualify the sense of \u201cautonomy\u201d that Van Til uses here and that we are employing.\u00a0 Most vividly, \u201cautonomy\u201d became well known as Kant asserted it as the basic intellectual attitude of the Renaissance with Kant arguing that a condition of moral culpability must be the autonomy of the human subject.\u00a0 We should feel comfortable agreeing with Kant, as Paul also acknowledges, there is a conscience in a person that at once accuses them or declares them innocent.\u00a0 Every person has a personal responsibility before God and is judged on the basis of their<\/em> decisions.\u00a0 There are indeed further serious and complex theological issues of the noetic effects of sin and the necessity of grace to draw the fallen subject to receive salvation, and yet the maintaining of their moral culpability.\u00a0 We examine those issues more closely in \u00a75, yet the principle is sound.<\/p>\n

    Autonomy can also be taken in a more positive sense as shown in the Amplified Version rendering of 2 Co 9:8:<\/p>\n

    \u201cAnd God is able to make all grace [every favor and earthly blessing] come in abundance to you, so that you may always [under all circumstances, regardless of the need] have complete sufficiency in everything [being completely self-sufficient in Him], and have an abundance for every good work and act of charity.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Here the Greek word \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03ac\u03c1\u03ba\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1\u03bd (autarkian) is used for \u2018complete sufficiency\u2019 from which the English word autarky<\/em> (self-governing, self-sufficient) is directly associated.\u00a0 The Greek of the verse and those following are particularly emphatic regarding the overflowing<\/em> abundance of a believer to be a blessing to those around them.\u00a0 Of course, and this is recognized in the Amplified Text, the self-sufficiency or autonomy of the believer is not a self-sufficiency originating with their humanity but in their contact with the divine nature.<\/p>\n

    The conception of \u201cautonomy\u201d that we are criticizing is the sense of where it is conceived that Humanity was \u201ccoming of age\u201d and rejecting external sources of coercive authority, particularly as manifested in the Catholic hegemony and then the Protestant hegemonies that replaced, or at times, worked adjacent to them.[186]<\/a>\u00a0 It might also be expressed in the naturalistic and scientistic philosophies we have considered that explicitly and completely, as a matter of methodology, rejected the noumenal, elevating the power of an independently functioning reason as the final criteria of action and the judge of knowledge, even if this resulted in a skeptical conclusion and its own diminution.\u00a0 Similarly, a religious expression of the autonomous attitude was seen post the legitimate rejection of the coercive power of the Catholic church by the \u201cstepchildren\u201d of the Reformers or the \u201cradical Reformation,\u201d some Anabaptist sects were particularly antinomian and moved to extreme positions rejecting all<\/em> civic authority.[187]<\/a>\u00a0 Many \u201canabaptists\u201d, including the Pietists, deemphasized objective scripture that was seen to legitimize the coercive authorities, preferring the \u201cinner light\u201d and subjective criteria.\u00a0 Kant, being from a Pietist background, would have been exposed to this non-dogmatic conception of Christianity and we can understand his complex attitude to religion more easily with that knowledge.[188]<\/a>\u00a0 So, our sense of \u201cautonomy\u201d and indeed the general Van Tillian sense of the term, is when reason is employed independently of any scriptural reference or accountability to God, rather than challenging the moral culpability of a person.\u00a0 Our introductory remarks at the start of this work, emphasized this was the sense understood with respect to the Greek thinkers who had discovered \u201chumanism.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Thus, the theonomical perspective that emphasizes the interpretation of scripture as a whole in search of ethical principles, is not analogous to the primitive fundamentalism of the 1920s and 1930s which was often characterized by \u201cproof texting\u201d and anti-intellectualism.[189]<\/a>\u00a0 For the Puritans, and modern theonomists would concur, theonomy meant taking God\u2019s laws and statutes as normative though that did not<\/em> mean without interpretation; sometimes a law specific to the cultural situation of ancient Israel illustrated a more general principle, and that principle was what was sought after.[190]<\/a>\u00a0 As is well known to students of American history, the \u201cPuritan Canopy\u201d was a reflection of the New England Puritan\u2019s desire to construct a society based on what they had found in the scriptures by their covenantal compacts between and within families at the foundation of their settlements:<\/p>\n

    \u201cPuritan theologians assumed there was a given (rather than a constructed) character to human nature, the world, and God\u2019s way of reaching out to the world.\u00a0 They took for granted that the central religious task was to orient the self to the prerogatives of God as those prerogatives had been revealed in Scripture.<\/em>\u201d\u200a[191]<\/a> (Emphasis added).<\/p>\n

    However, the canopy had begun to fragment by the 1750s ironically under the stress of the Great Awakening centered around Jonathan Edward\u2019s \u201csubtle and most able restatement of [the] inherited Calvinist convictions.\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[192]<\/a> \u00a0Edwards was a revivalist in the literal sense of the word, he was seeking to revive that which, like Eli the High Priest during the time of King Saul had become old, fat and blind in its old age.\u00a0 However, his ecclesiological innovations of prohibiting the openly unregenerate from partaking of the Lord\u2019s Supper\u200a[193]<\/a> and his growing doubts over the theological validity of a localized covenant as envisaged by the New England Puritan orthodoxy and social organization, had in them the seeds which grew in freshly ploughed Arminian soil on the new frontiers. \u00a0Additionally, however unintentionally or indirectly, Edwards\u2019 work opened the door to political republicanism, Noll sees in this the transition: \u201c[a] move from theology to politics, and intellectual leadership\u2026from the clergy to men of state.\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[194]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Nevertheless, the influence of the biblical narratives and more specifically the Law of God remained strong and basic in the American Christian consciousness\u200a[195]<\/a> and provided inspiration for the wave of \u201cArminian\u201d revivalists during the 19th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 Finney was to write:<\/p>\n

    \u201cIn studying elementary law, I found the old authors frequently quoting the Scriptures and referring especially to the Mosaic Law as authority for many of the great principles of common law. This excited my curiosity so much that I purchased a Bible, the first I had ever owned. Whenever I found a reference to the Bible made by the law authors, I turned to the passage and consulted it in its connection.\u201d\u200a[196]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Finney\u2019s theology was rich and deep\u200a and it is a gross simplification to simply designate him as the archetypal modern Arminian evangelical.[197]<\/a> \u00a0Finney was committed to the Law of God, was both a political and a religious reformer and was far more similar in his broad social and political programme to his near contemporary and Presbyterian founder of Westminster Theology Seminary, J Gresham Machen, than to the fundamentalist evangelicals that from the 1870s onwards were emerging as a response to theological liberalism.[198]<\/a>\u00a0 Like Finney, Machen was heavily socially and politically involved, emphasizing the imperative of biblical law as the foundation for ethics:<\/p>\n

    \u201cMen are wondering today what is wrong with the world.\u00a0 They are conscious they are standing over some terrible abyss.\u00a0 Awful ebullitions rise from that abyss.\u00a0 We have lost the sense of the security of our western civilization.\u00a0 Men are wondering what is wrong.\u00a0 It is perfectly clear what is wrong.\u00a0 The law of God has been torn up\u2026and the result is appearing with ever greater clearness.\u00a0 When will the law be rediscovered?\u201d\u200a[199]<\/a><\/p>\n

    In summary, the point I make here is that to the time of Machen there was a clear and enduring commitment to the Law of God as the basis for Christian ethics.\u00a0 An abandonment of the Law of God as the basis for Christian ethics has been an anomalous interlude in the history of the church corrected by its restatement in Van Tillian thought and applied practically by his early interpreters such as Rushdoony and Bahnsen, which then fed into the wider Reconstructionist movement.\u00a0 However, with this application, there was an important dimension added to the term which we will examine in the next section.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.4.4 Modern Theonomy<\/h3>\n

    As noted above, modern theonomy was primarily the work of two men\u200a[200]<\/a> in applying Van Tillian thought to first the socio-political sphere and then more broadly.[201]<\/a> \u00a0Bahnsen was to reflect on this seminal work:<\/p>\n

    \u201cTheonomy in Christian Ethics<\/em> argued that God\u2019s word is authoritative over all areas of life (the premise of a Christian world-and-life view). It argued that within the Scriptures we should presume continuity between Old and New Testament moral principles and regulations until God\u2019s revelation tells us otherwise (the premise of covenant theology). It argued therefore that the Old Testament law continues to offer us an inspired and reliable model for civil justice or socio-political morality (a guide for public reform in our own day, even in the area of crime and punishment).\u201d\u200a[202]<\/a><\/p>\n

    There should<\/em> have been nothing of especial novelty here, it being as Bahnsen put it, \u201cvanilla Reformed social theory\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[203]<\/a> and it might be characterized more formally within moral philosophy as a version of the ancient Divine Command Theory which considers morality as somehow dependent on God.[204]<\/a>\u00a0 However, Rushdoony and Bahnsen formalized the general commitment of the Reformers into a modern<\/em> socio-political programme that became one of the major distinctives of that Reconstructionist movement that grew out of their work.[205]<\/a> \u00a0Their theology was rigorous and more consciously consistent with Reformed principles,[206]<\/a> with the remnant of the neo-Thomistic positions founded on natural law theory purged, and where ethics is not merely theistic but is dependent directly<\/em> on the Christian God as a reflection of His character, particularly His justice and His love.<\/p>\n

    That is, when we say that \u201cGod is good\u201d we mean that in a specific epistemologically self-conscious<\/em> manner.\u00a0 We are not embroiling ourselves in the Euthyphro dilemma by considering \u201cgoodness\u201d as a standard that somehow God lives up to (and is therefore outside of God) and undermines Him as the foundation of moral action, but we immediately take the position God is the origin<\/em> of goodness as He was also the origin of physical creation.[207]<\/a>\u00a0 The \u201cis\u201d here is both the existential \u201cis\u201d and the predicative \u201cis\u201d; God is linguistically and logically unique in this respect and that is what modern theonomy recognizes.<\/p>\n

    Similarly, God acts virtuously<\/em> because He is the origin of virtue and demonstrates virtue just because that is who He is and He acts completely in accord with His Own Law, it being a codification of His character.\u00a0 The Euthyphro dilemma is a dilemma because one considers<\/em> God to be charged with obeying<\/em> His own commands as analogical to our<\/em> act of obedience.\u00a0 That is, it fails to recognize the creature-Creator distinction for in contrast, there is no action of obedience required on God\u2019s part because to be obedient would suggest God has some sort of option to deny the perfect unity and balance of His own character.\u00a0 Alston makes this clear in a more formal fashion:<\/p>\n

    \u201c\u2026a necessary condition of the truth that \u2018S<\/em>\u00a0ought to do\u00a0A<\/em>\u2019 is at least the metaphysical possibility that\u00a0S<\/em>\u00a0does not do\u00a0A<\/em>. On this view, moral obligations attach to all human beings, even those so saintly as to totally lack any tendency, in the ordinary sense of that term, to do other than what it is morally good to do. And no moral obligations attach to God, assuming, as we are here, that God is essentially perfectly good. Thus divine commands can be constitutive of moral obligations for those beings who have them without it being the case that God\u2019s goodness consists in His obeying His own commands, or, indeed, consists in any relation whatsoever of God to His commands.<\/em>\u201d\u200a[208]<\/a>\u00a0 (Emphasis added)<\/p>\n

    Fundamentally, in Van Tillian terms we dissolve the dilemma because we consider the ontological Trinity as our Foundation of Reality.[209]<\/a>\u00a0 Bosserman captures this thought by demonstrating how abstracting our situation<\/em> from the metaphysical context leads us away from truth and into epistemological error and thus culpable ethical failure:<\/p>\n

    \u201cSatan responds with a direct contradiction of God\u2019s claim, and the reasoning at work behind it is a rudimentary example of abstract thinking. If fruit is really good for food, then every particular piece of fruit may be enjoyed as food, and that is that. Any additional claim that it is also good, or perhaps better for the time being as an educational device, to be peered at, but not eaten, represents an obvious contradiction of the earlier, and of course, complete interpretation of the goodness of fruit. In fact, it can easily be discarded as a lie. Satan appealed to something good\u2014the law of God\u2014as a ground for disobeying the law of God (cf. Matt 4:1\u201311). But, in order to support his argument, Satan had to reinterpret God in light of it, casting Him as forbidding the tree out of a selfish desire to prevent Eve from attaining the sort of wisdom and maturity necessary for governing the creation.\u201d\u2009[210]<\/a><\/p>\n

    So, in summary, we see the importance of the normative scripturally based presuppositions that constitute our \u201cworldview\u201d rather than trying to abstractly theorize, analyze or synthesize on an autonomous basis; our metaphysical commitment must be to the goodness of God and the knowledge provided for us by the scriptures.\u00a0 Our ethical orientation must be to theonomy, a commitment to the wisdom (understood as the ability to apply socio-politically our knowledge), revealed to us in the scriptures.\u00a0 Thus, we are now in a better position to understand the import of Paul\u2019s proposition, \u201cChrist, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.\u201d<\/em>\u200a[211]<\/a>\u00a0 In summary, it is only<\/em> a Christian worldview philosophy<\/em> that will be able to provide the ethical position fully consistent with the implications of the Christian metaphysics and with Christian epistemology.\u00a0 It is to that task we now turn in more detail.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>3.5 Christian \u201cWorldview Philosophy\u201d<\/h2>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.5.1 Introduction<\/h3>\n

    In summary of our argument so far, we have seen Plantinga argued as an analytic philosopher and presented an argument for the rationality<\/em> of Christian belief.\u00a0 That is, Plantinga was not so much concerned with proving the truth<\/em> of Christian belief (though he believes it is<\/em> true and the only<\/em> viable option) but rather to shut the mouths of those who would accuse Christians of irrationality. Plantinga frequently argues on his opponent\u2019s own terms and demonstrates the inadequacy of their arguments and how they claim more for their arguments than can be sustained.<\/p>\n

    We have then posited that Van Til\u2019s thought provides the bridge to prove the truth<\/em> of Christianity.\u00a0 It is with bringing Van Til\u2019s thought to the fore that we are primarily concerned with in this section, but we unexpectedly find Plantinga an ally in that regard.\u00a0 The perceived difference between Van Til and Plantinga can be mitigated to a large degree and not seen as weakening either one, with both positions standing in support of distinctively Christian philosophy and in opposition to \u201cclassical\u201d and \u201cevidential\u201d apologetics. \u00a0That is, for any<\/em> system of knowledge, we have already seen that Plantinga has taught us that the justification<\/em> or warrant<\/em> of the beliefs in question are a central concern.\u00a0 Plantinga became known for his analytic scrutiny\u200a[212]<\/a> of issues in contemporary analytic philosophy on their own terms with no apologetic intent but is perhaps less well known for his positive and negative apologetic challenges to Christian philosophers; that is, to both present their own programme and<\/em> to demonstrate the inadequacies of the alternatives.[213]<\/a><\/p>\n

    That is, at this high level, both Van Til and Plantinga were methodologically equivalent\u2014they wanted to expose the shortcomings of secular thought and present the only plausible alternative\u2014Christian<\/em> theism. However, when we stopped our programme with Plantinga we found that there was nothing in his conception which implies there should<\/em> be, logically or ethically, a Christian<\/em> basis for philosophy, only that it is rationally defensible and if<\/em> true, is a justified and warranted purveyor of knowledge.[214]<\/a>\u00a0 We concluded that we needed to move in a progressively Van Tillian direction in order to anchor our beliefs not just as rational defendable and warranted but also necessarily<\/em> true, in a substantive and metaphysical sense.<\/p>\n

    His claim is thus stronger than Plantinga\u2019s, or as we have argued, it picks up where Plantinga leaves off to not just to give sufficient<\/em> conditions for Christian epistemology but to establish the necessity<\/em> of Christian epistemology.\u00a0 This strong claim is correspondingly more controversial, disputed and is what the epistemological self-consciousness project seeks to advance.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is evident that the very nature<\/em> of Van Til\u2019s challenge to unbelievers and Christian philosophers makes his work far less palatable and less likely to be discussed in mainstream religious studies or philosophy of religion overviews, even within the Reformed community.[215]<\/a>\u00a0 For Van Til, philosophical discussion was not merely abstract, therapeutic, pragmatic or elucidatory, it was also about solving<\/em> problems and revealing to a sinful subject their sinfulness\u2014this is an example of epistemological self-consciousness in the most<\/em> basic and explicit sense.\u00a0 The apologetic task was a tool for bringing the hearer to epistemological self-consciousness as a tool<\/em> of<\/em> evangelism,<\/em> which was also an expression of his passion and compassion.[216]<\/a><\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.5.2 What is \u201cChristian Worldview\u201d Philosophy?<\/h3>\n

    As Butler noted,[217]<\/a> the term \u201cChristian worldview philosophy\u201d was once almost patented by the Reformed Van Tillians but is now much more in the common parlance. \u00a0This raises a semantic problem, as \u201cChristian Worldview Philosophy,\u201d much like the designation \u201cfundamentalist,\u201d has been used merely as an imprecise, pejorative term.\u00a0 For example, Robbins in his rather ill-tempered exchange with Plantinga\u2009[218]<\/a> directed the designation at any philosopher that might have the audacity<\/em> to disagree with his appropriation of Rortian postmodern pragmatism into Christian ethics and his subsequent denial that a strong Christian philosophy was even possible.\u00a0 However, Plantinga in reply, although he did not use the term \u201cworldview\u201d himself, clarified and encapsulated the proper definition and use of the concept perfectly:<\/p>\n

    \u201cFirst, Christian philosophers and Christian intellectuals generally must display more autonomy\u2014more independence of the rest of the philosophical world.\u00a0\u00a0 Second, Christian philosophers must display more integrity\u2026in the sense of integral wholeness, or oneness, or unity, being all of one piece\u2026And necessary to these two is a third: Christian courage, or boldness, or strength, or perhaps Christian self-confidence.\u201d\u200a[219]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Similarly, in addressing the need for a distinctively Christian philosophy, he is more explicit still:<\/p>\n

    \u201cAccording to the view of Christian philosophy I and others advocate, Christian philosophers should consider the whole range of problems from a Christian or theistic point of view; in trying to give philosophical account of some area or topic-freedom, for example, evil, or the nature of knowledge, or of counterfactuals, or of probability, she may perfectly properly appeal to what she knows or believes as a Christian.\u00a0 She is under no obligation to appeal only to beliefs shared by nearly what common sense and contemporary science dictate, for example.\u00a0 Nor is she obliged first to try to prove to the satisfaction of other philosophers Christianity is true before setting out on this enterprise of Christian philosophy.\u00a0 Instead, she is entirely within her rights in starting from<\/em> her Christian understanding addressing the philosophical problems in question.\u201d\u200a[220]<\/a> (Emphasis original).<\/p>\n

    In other words, Christian philosophy proceeds on its own terms and using its own presuppositions.\u00a0 Van Til would concur here but would also make the stronger point that this demonstrates there is no \u201cneutral\u201d ground between these positions.[221]<\/a>\u00a0 Secular philosophy assumes the autonomy of the human intellect and its ability to make ultimate rational judgments. \u00a0Christian philosophy denies that right, our intellect, and rationality is derivative and dependent for its operation on the Christian God.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.5.3 The Requirement for a Worldview Transcendental<\/h3>\n

    That is, in Van Tillian terms, our \u201cworldview\u201d governs the overall semantic content of our discourse, our theological views derived from scripture alone will govern the boundaries in which our philosophy is constructed, which must also find its referent in scripture.\u00a0 Thus, Van Til argues you cannot<\/em> have a Christian worldview without simultaneously outlining both<\/em> a theology and a philosophy; he often emphasized you cannot talk about the individual facts of the world until you nailed down a philosophy of facts and have decided what \u201ca fact\u201d is<\/em>.[222]<\/a>\u00a0 To repeat, there is no neutral ground shared with the unbeliever where we may meet and use some authority that we both accept to resolve our differences, without subverting the authority of scripture.\u00a0 He was a philosophical theologian even if he was reticent in admitting it, preferring to be considered a purveyor of scriptural truths with a call to conversion throughout his work:<\/p>\n

    \u201c\u2026from reading your first pages you make me out to be a philosopher.\u00a0 Well, I guess I am one of sorts, but you put everything in a better perspective by pointing out that even [in] my philosophizing\u2026I am trying to bring out that only the biblical answer to this problem is the true answer.\u201d\u200a[223]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Without the Van Tillian transcendental<\/em> Christian presupposition that belief in God is rationally defensible and provable from the impossibility of the contrary, there can be no<\/em> philosophy that is logically sound.\u00a0 On a purely descriptive basis, this incongruity is witnessed to no better than in the history of 20th<\/sup> century philosophy where the meaning and formulation of autonomous and Godless philosophy has been recapitulated again and again. The logical positivist Otto Neurath posited the modern predicament this way:<\/p>\n

    \u201cThere is no way to establish fully secured, neat protocol statements as starting points of the sciences. There is no\u00a0tabula rasa. We are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea, without ever being able to dismantle it in dry-dock and reconstruct it from its best components. Only metaphysics can disappear without a trace. Imprecise \u2018verbal clusters\u2019 [Ballungen] are somehow always part of the ship\u2026 A new ship grows out of the old one, step by step\u2014and while they are still building, the sailors may already be thinking of a new structure, and they will not always agree with one another. The whole business will go on in a way that we cannot even anticipate today. That is our fate.\u201d\u2009[224]<\/a> (Some emphasis added).<\/p>\n

    Cat in explicating Neurath summarized his skeptical cul-de-sac thus:<\/p>\n

    \u201cHe denied any value to philosophy over and above the pursuit of work on science, within science and for science. And science was not logically fixed, securely founded on experience nor was it the purveyor of any System of knowledge<\/em>. Uncertainty, decision and cooperation were intrinsic to it. From this naturalistic, holistic and pragmatist viewpoint, philosophy investigates the conditions of the possibility of science as apparent in science itself\u2026\u201d\u2009[225]<\/a> (Emphasis added).<\/p>\n

    We discern that philosophy had been understood as washed up on the shores of what Schaeffer insightfully calls \u2018anti-philosophy\u2019:<\/p>\n

    \u201cThus, we are left with two antiphilosophies in the world today.\u00a0 One is existentialism, which is an antiphilosophy because it deals with the big questions but with no rationality.\u00a0 If we follow [the alternative] it defines words using reason, [but] finally language leads to neither values nor facts.\u00a0 Language leads to language, and that is all.\u00a0 It is not only the certainty of values that is gone, but the certainty of knowing<\/em>\u2026\u201d\u2009[226]<\/a> (Emphasis added).<\/p>\n

    Schaeffer was not the most thorough or systematic of apologists, drawing criticism from friend and foe alike, but though he could be wrong or inaccurate in the details<\/em>, both Bahnsen\u2009[227]<\/a> and Packer\u2009[228]<\/a> recognized the profound insight of his \u201cbroad strokes\u201d<\/em> into the modern malaise, even if their own programme was substantially different from his.\u00a0 In short, unless we want to join the anti-philosophers who can know nothing and cannot state the basis on which a Nazi concentration camp guard should be condemned,[229]<\/a> there is, of necessity, a requirement to articulate a transcendental basis for all philosophy.\u00a0 We argue that the transcendent authority claims of scripture are legitimate<\/em> as a basis for providing the foundation of the Christian claims of knowledge.\u00a0 More generally, as we proceed in our analysis, we are able to demonstrate that any<\/em> alternative worldview either fails the coherency test, contradicting its own basic propositions or is shown to be borrowing intellectual capital from the Christian worldview in order to facilitate the criticism of the Christian worldview.\u00a0 This was succinctly expressed in three words by Cornelius Van Til, \u201catheism presupposes theism\u201d<\/em>\u2009<\/em>[230]<\/sup><\/a> and our next section aims to bring out the distinctiveness of this presuppositional approach.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.5.4 Evidentialism and Rationalism<\/h3>\n

    Van Til was credited with the \u201creformation of Christian apologetics\u201d<\/em>\u200a[231]<\/a> by articulating a means of defending the faith that remained consistent with the faith itself, whilst avoiding fideism on the one hand and rejecting the appeal to a common intellectual ground between the believer and the unbeliever on the other.\u00a0 He is generally accepted to have originated a distinctive apologetic method during his career.[232]<\/a>\u00a0 Significantly, Van Til broke categorically with the evidentialism and rationalism of Enlightenment apologetics that had come to be identified with Protestant orthodoxy, even within the conservative schools.<\/p>\n

    Traditionally, this model of apologetics had come to treat theology as a \u201cscience\u201d\u200a[233]<\/a> and was concerned with the \u201cfacts\u201d of apologetics, e.g., the unaided reason of a man or woman should be able to evaluate \u201cevidences\u201d for God\u2019s operation in the world and by the shared human rational process be convinced by argumentation to a place of belief, vis-a-vis the \u201ctheistic proofs.\u201d\u00a0 Such an approach was implicitly based on a natural theology, suggesting a common ground was available to believers and unbelievers.<\/p>\n

    In other words, on this view, also known as the classical or Princetonian view, as facts could be considered \u201cobjective reality,\u201d the existence of God was objectively provable,<\/em> with \u201cfacts\u201d shared qualitatively and quantitatively between men and men, and between men and God; their meaning is in themselves, they are \u201cbrute facts.\u201d\u200a[234]<\/a>\u00a0 Thus, apologetic philosophy provided the intellectual foundation or \u201cthe facts of\u201d systematic theology,[235]<\/a> a person must<\/em> be convinced by rational arguments before he has sufficient warrant or obligation to believe.\u00a0 The last great Princeton theologian, B.B. Warfield (1851-1921) argued against his peer, the great Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) (who had posited an antithesis between believer and non-believer resulting in two distinct sciences), that a person could<\/em> start from an unbelieving, autonomous science and be convinced with rational argument to surrender to the \u201ctruth\u201d of those arguments and then<\/em> relinquish their intellectual autonomy.[236]<\/a><\/p>\n

    On Van Til\u2019s view, which at this level accepts the basic presupposition of Kuyper in direct contradiction to the Warfieldian school, systematic theology lays the intellectual foundation for apologetics.\u00a0 As we posited in the previous section, philosophy is built not just upon the scriptures but with<\/em> the scriptures; it uses a different language than theology and might engage a different audience, but it is not discontinuous with theology.\u00a0 Thus, Van Til asserted:<\/p>\n

    \u201cPhilosophy, as usually defined, deals with a theory of reality, with a theory of knowledge, and with a theory of ethics.\u00a0 That is to say, philosophies usually undertake to present a life-and-world view.\u00a0 They deal not only with that which man can directly experience by means of his senses but also\u2026with the presuppositions of experience<\/em>\u2026Christian theology deals not only with God; it deals also with the world<\/em>.\u00a0 It would be quite impossible then to state and vindicate a truly Christian theology without also stating and defending\u2014be it in a broad outline only\u2014a Christian philosophy.<\/em>\u201d\u2009[237]<\/a> (Emphasis added).<\/p>\n

    To emphasize, Warfield had asserted the exact<\/em> opposite\u2014you establish the authority of the scriptures on a common<\/em> rational basis with the unbeliever (\u2018right reason\u2019) and that persuades the unbeliever to surrender their rational autonomy.<\/p>\n

    However, the implication of this position is that any type of proven discrepancy (or new research) might invalidate the entire corpus, \u201ca proved error in Scripture contradicts not only our doctrine, but the Scripture claims and, therefore, its inspiration in making these claims\u201d\u2009\u200a[238]<\/a>; an inductive generalization which has at its heart a logical fallacy if for no other reason that it is an inductive generalization for which there can be no logical necessity.[239]<\/a>\u00a0 However, that is a technical discussion, and there is a more basic, theological reason as to why the Warfieldian view is un-Christian which we shall examine next.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/a><\/a>3.5.5 The Impossibility of \u201cRight Reason\u201d and \u201cCommon Ground\u201d<\/h3>\n

    Van Til\u2019s transcendental critique of Warfield and Kuyper and his resulting synthesis, had the follow key characteristics:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. He accepted Warfield\u2019s basic position that Christianity was objectively<\/em> provable, and that people were not being rational when they rejected it.<\/li>\n
    2. He accepted Kuyper\u2019s basic position that the believers and unbelievers created two types of science because of their antithetical principles which produces two opposing theories of knowledge, the unbeliever was vain in their reasoning and were not able to understand the things of God\u2019s Spirit or His Word. The scripture had to be accepted with its self-attesting authority and a worldview was built upon it.\u00a0 There was no neutral, \u201ccommon ground\u201d on which both could meet and sort out their differences.<\/li>\n
    3. However, Kuyper\u2019s conclusion from his principle, that apologetic discussion between believers and unbelievers was therefore impossible because there were two, different<\/em>,<\/em> rationalities was rejected by Van Til.[240]<\/a><\/li>\n
    4. He accepted with Warfield that Christianity was the only<\/em> rational position (for to deny the Christian worldview would collapse into skepticism and irrationality) but he denied that Warfield was warranted to state that the means<\/em> of attaining rational certainty was through the \u201cright reason\u201d of the unbelieving person. This was because this principle would have had the implication that \u201cright reason\u201d had to be satisfied at any<\/em> point of objection in the future, the actions of Christ in scripture were only to be validated once \u201cright reason\u201d has been satisfied.<\/li>\n
    5. In contrast to Warfield, he insisted that it was the impossibility<\/em> of right reason because of the sinfulness of the human condition that provided our strongest transcendental argument for the necessity of the self-attesting nature of the scriptures and the call to repentance within them. This reversed the inference of Kuyper, apologetic argument was not excluded but became necessary, the sinful person was incapable of right reason (of being rational) as long as they continued in their rebellion, they destroyed<\/em><\/li>\n
    6. He concluded then, by accepting both Warfield\u2019s and Kuyper\u2019s basic propositions but rejecting their conclusions as fallacious.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Van Til\u2019s position was that the noetic effects of sin made Warfield\u2019s position untenable and inconsistent with Warfield\u2019s own Calvinistic theological work on the noetic consequences of sin.\u00a0 It also highlighted Kuyper\u2019s conclusion did not follow because only<\/em> the Christian position could be considered fully rational, and any use of rational argument meant the unbeliever was importing assumptions possible only on the Christian worldview.\u00a0 In summary, Van Til is asserting that it was possible to be objectively certain of Christian claims (with Warfield, contra Kuyper) though this was only possible on a transcendental<\/em> basis because believers and unbelievers create distinct sciences (contra Warfield with Kuyper).<\/p>\n

      Van Til thus offered the convincing proof that it was systematic theology that had to lay the foundations for philosophy and apologetic philosophy, \u201cby asserting a separation between philosophy and theology, you are destroying the foundations of philosophy.\u201d<\/em>\u2009<\/em>[241]<\/a>\u00a0 The natural person was not capable of applying their reason and climbing up to God; thus, Plantinga also \u201cit is hard to avoid the conclusion that natural theology does not provide a satisfactory answer to the question\u2026Is it rational to believe in God?\u201d<\/em>\u2009<\/em>[242]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 The implications of Van Til and Plantinga here are that an evidential apologetic is methodologically deficient to resolve issues as to the status of theistic belief and the nature of God, the transcendental approach is the only<\/em> one that remains. Thus, we can recognize that Roman Catholic and Arminian evidentialist apologetics which assert there is a neutral, common ground where believer and unbeliever can meet, i.e., a zone free of theological or philosophical presuppositions, is untenable.\u00a0\u00a0 We instead recognize that the impossibility of right reason and, as argued in previous sections, the theory-laden imperatives of a worldview would never permit an argument to be constructed that would satisfy both the atheological and the theological requirements for a common starting point.[243]<\/a><\/p>\n

      So, in summary, if we were to be asked \u201cWhy do you feel no obligation to only appeal to beliefs shared by nearly what common sense and contemporary science dictate? Do you not understand that philosophy and theology deal with differentiated domains of reality?\u201d We should no longer feel embarrassment if we have followed the arguments of this work into epistemological self-consciousness.\u00a0 The differentiation is a naturalist mist that evaporates as the sun rises. \u00a0The very structure of the world and reality on the Christian worldview is assumed in the atheological questioning and renders the question incoherent by assuming a logical structure derived from a worldview it wants to refute.\u00a0 The \u201cdifferentiated domains\u201d are not metaphysically differentiated, they are different spheres of reality rightly considered as having their own modalities, but primarily merely functionally differentiated and linguistically separated for meaningful discourse.<\/p>\n

      <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>3.5.6 Plantinga and Van Til on Apologetics\u2014Contrast and Confluence<\/h3>\n

      As we have noted in the introduction to this section, the strong claim of Van Til is made even more controversial because some Christian philosophers sympathetic to Plantinga have been extremely dismissive of Van Til.\u00a0 It should also be noted that Plantinga himself only mentions Van Til once in what is considered his most important apologetic work, and this is only to indicate the common parody of Van Til\u2019s epistemology that states \u201cthose that do not know God\u2026don\u2019t really have any knowledge at all.\u201d<\/em>\u200a\u200a<\/em>[244]<\/a>\u00a0 Yet this is not Van Til\u2019s point at all, and we can only assume Plantinga has not read Van Til in any depth (if at all).\u00a0 Van Til\u2019s point was that if the unbelievers lived consistently<\/em> with their stated presuppositions, they could have no knowledge, but they do not<\/em>, for they assume logic, causality, and coherence (however inconsistently) and borrow intellectual capital from the believer\u2019s Christian worldview to make sense of the world.\u00a0 Rather paradoxically, the context in which Plantinga quotes Van Til is in the course of making an argument that is substantially similar to Van Til\u2019s argument and the conclusion is also<\/em> similar, we do not know<\/em> as we ought, either things or ourselves without the foundation of a Christian worldview:<\/p>\n

      \u201cBut if we don\u2019t know there is such a person as God, we don\u2019t know the first thing (the most important thing) about ourselves, each other, and our world\u2026because\u2026the most important truths about us and them is that we have been created by the Lord and utterly depend upon him for our continued existence.\u201d\u200a[245]<\/a><\/p>\n

      We can mitigate the conflict further by recognizing that there could hardly be a greater contrast in their respective methods and their vocabulary which lends itself to the obfuscation of Van Til\u2019s views when approached with an analytical philosopher\u2019s perspective.\u00a0 On this basis, some have even refused to recognize Van Til as a philosopher\u200a[246]<\/a> with very little willingness to work through Van Til\u2019s language that is reminiscent of idealism.\u00a0 Van Til also writes on occasions where it is clear English was not his first language, was rather unsystematic in presentation\u2009[247]<\/a> and can assume a lot of philosophical knowledge in his readers which can make his presentations seem obscure or overly compact.\u00a0 As we have already noted, he also had a penchant for using terms which had a long history in philosophy but with a distinct sense that frequently caused misinterpretation of his views.[248]<\/a>\u00a0 However, this hostility I believe obscures an otherwise great and neglected concord between the positions, and it is in the understanding and explication of their concord which helps us progress in epistemological self-consciousness.<\/p>\n

      Firstly, we have already seen a similar conception of the role and practice of philosophy that it should be Christian <\/em>not just as some kind of end but in method and premise.\u00a0 Secondly, we have already seen how Plantinga had disarmed his philosophical<\/em> opponents by considering their arguments and invalidating them on their own terms.\u00a0 Thirdly, Anderson makes the important assessment of the concord between their work whilst recognizing the distinctiveness, but he notes that it is in the transcendental direction of some of Plantinga\u2019s arguments where his apologetic force was greatest and where he approximates to the method of Van Til.[249]<\/a>\u00a0 Consequently, we will concentrate increasingly from this point onwards on the distinctiveness of Van Til\u2019s transcendental and presuppositional apologetic approach as integral to epistemological self-consciousness, only mentioning Plantinga in revision and where we notice a confluence or contrast between their views.<\/p>\n

      <\/a><\/a>3.6 Summary and Conclusion<\/h2>\n

      We began this chapter by considering the specifics of the philosophical categories we had established as the basis of our research in the previous chapters: metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.\u00a0 First, we considered first metaphysics, the theory of reality, and noted how it had frequently become speculative, obscure, and distant from sensible accounts of the universe; we contrasted such accounts with the scientifically orientated metaphysics.\u00a0 We acknowledged that metaphysics was important to ground and give philosophy a context; we noted how significant intellectual movements had denigrated metaphysics to seek a scientific view of reality but had collapsed into a scientistic view, rarefying vast swathes of human experience as meaningless or in having emotive meaning only.\u00a0 We noted that the social consequence of the denial of meaning or purpose in the universe, was that of social dissipation, eroticism, and nihilism; we noted it was \u2018science\u2019 freed from metaphysical moorings that had provided the rationale for the totalitarian variations of Nazism and Communism, noting that naturalistic science could provide no critique of such brutality. \u00a0We contrasted this with the experience of a survivor of Auschwitz who argued that a metaphysical awareness of one\u2019s purpose and value was the essence of being and becoming even when confronted with the worst of humanity and the worst of existence.\u00a0 We then concluded that metaphysics was essential in providing both an ethical and interpretative framework for science and by providing organizing categories and transcendentals for human experience generally.<\/p>\n

      We then examined epistemology as the theory of knowledge.\u00a0 We clarified our terminology around what we understand by \u201cbelief,\u201d \u201cfact,\u201d \u201cevidence,\u201d and \u201ctruth\u201d as these are central to most theories of knowledge. \u00a0We noted that both Quine and Kuhn as the most influential of the 20th<\/sup> century philosophers of science had argued for the theory-laden nature of these concepts that reflected an interconnected web, constituting a worldview concept.\u00a0 Such a concept becomes useful to us as the basis for a key element of our own epistemology, but we examined in some detail as to why their naturalism was untenable.\u00a0 It was demonstrated as self-vitiating as a theory of knowledge by considering its various dependencies on tautological evolutionary thought, physicalism, and induction.\u00a0 We noted their conclusions were relativistic, scientifically in the case of Quine and sociologically in the case of Kuhn because they lacked a metaphysical basis, and a sceptic could reject them as arbitrary.\u00a0 We then revisited this issue of skepticism and by identifying that skepticism was predominantly psychological in character, that permitted us to largely mute its central claims.\u00a0 We recognised we need to wait to a future chapter on transcendentalism to expunge it more fully at a logical level, but we introduced the transcendental vocabulary<\/em> at the pertinent point which allowed us to map out the contours of our theory of knowledge as a practical imperative.<\/p>\n

      We examined why the Platonic Justified True Belief (JTB) thesis was inadequate as a theory of knowledge and how it must be supplemented and reconstituted using a concept named warrant<\/em>.\u00a0 Whereas justification in the JTB thesis was internalistic, Plantinga argued that warrant was externalistic, derived from proper functioning faculties in a conducive epistemic environment, following a design plan, aimed at truth. \u00a0By refining and improving upon the Reidian basis of this thought, he demonstrated convincingly that Christian knowledge claims will have warrant if<\/em> they are true; but we noted that Plantinga considered it beyond the capability of philosophy to demonstrate that truth to the satisfaction of all parties.\u00a0 We noted that Plantinga, although providing a naturalistic account of warrant, admitted that only assuming the Christian metaphysic would validate the truth claim. \u00a0In response, we then considered Butler\u2019s criticism of Plantinga\u2019s terminus as inadequate as a Christian<\/em> theory of knowledge, concluding at best that it was theistic, and how he posits that we need to move beyond Plantinga\u2019s theory of knowledge into the theory outlined by Van Til to demonstrate that Christian knowledge claims are necessarily<\/em> true.\u00a0 Yet, despite this final dissonance between the theories, we noted that to a large degree there was substantial agreement between the two, the apparent difference being mitigated to a large degree by the distinct aims and methodologies of the philosophers; Plantinga was an analyst dealing with detailed arguments and demonstrating the inadequacies of their logical underpinnings, Van Til was a transcendentalist dealing with worldviews and general principles of coherence.<\/p>\n

      We noted that Van Til proposed the way forward was to consider the issues of factuality, evidence, warrant, and justification in a transcendental manner using a transcendent transcendental framework. \u00a0Thus, we find that both Van Til and Plantinga posit the essential and central role that the Christian conception of God must play in our epistemological self-consciousness, providing a context for those definitions that the sceptic could only refute by implicit self-contradiction.\u00a0 Both men could thus be seen as emphasizing the same metaphysical context and concluding that the failure of human thought was an ethical failure.\u00a0 We then considered more broadly the topic of ethics as a theory of value, focusing on the interconnections and interdependencies with our metaphysical and epistemological position.\u00a0 We noted the centrality of the scriptures and emphasized the commentary within the scriptures on the principles stated in the Commandments which provided an overall theonomical context for our worldview.\u00a0 The important conclusion was that theonomy remained of central importance as a basis for ethics in a Christian worldview.<\/p>\n

      We noted in our discussion of worldview that the Christian philosopher operated in a Christian context and was perfectly warranted in approaching philosophical issues from a Christian perspective rather than limited to using presuppositions that were universally shared by all or by nearly all involved in the debate.\u00a0 Both Van Til and Plantinga recognized the incommensurable nature of worldviews and that there is not necessarily<\/em> neutral epistemological ground upon which we can meet opponents and engage in a Socratic dialogue.\u00a0 We found Van Til was far stronger than Plantinga here, asserting that transcendental logic requires<\/em> the Christian worldview if human predication is to be intelligible at all; systematic theology had to lay the foundation for apologetic philosophy and not vice versa.\u00a0 This was understood as a restatement of the Augustinian assumption of the priority of faith in the faith-reason debate.\u00a0 We noted how Van Til\u2019s position was a synthesis between the Warfieldian and Kuyperian accounts, with him accepting their basic insights but rejecting their final conclusions as fallacious.\u00a0 It was possible to be objectively certain of Christian claims (with Warfield, contra Kuyper) though this was only possible on a transcendental basis because believers and unbelievers create distinct sciences (contra Warfield with Kuyper).<\/p>\n

      Thus, in the positive sense, we have argued in this chapter that Christian worldview philosophy is<\/em> epistemologically self-conscious by definition<\/em>.\u00a0 You cannot have a comprehensive knowledge of the world unless you can give a general account of the world both in terms of its objects, the relationships between them and the moral imperatives to which they are subject.\u00a0 There is an implicit coordination and interdependence between our metaphysics, our epistemology, and our ethics. \u00a0This has been recognized within the secular academy by naturalists such as Quine and Kuhn who argued in the context of a holistic theory of nature. \u00a0As \u00d3 Murchadha also argues, anything short of a complete account on its own terms<\/em> is no account at all because it defers in the final analysis to an external source of authority to validate it.[250]<\/a>\u00a0 Christian<\/em> worldview philosophy must be articulated and defended in a manner consistent with the presuppositions of Christianity conceived of as its normative, scriptural tenets.<\/p>\n

      Both Plantinga and Van Til agree that unless<\/em> philosophy is done on a Christian basis, it ceases to be authentic or coherent because it can give no rational justification for its own foundation; that is, its worldview<\/em> is transcendentally the foundation for its coherence. \u00a0Thus, in the next chapter three chapters we examine in more detail the transcendentalist basis of a truly Christian philosophy by considering transcendentalism in general, identifying how Christian presuppositions shape a distinctively Christian transcendentalism and then to give precise expression to the Van Tillian transcendental argument for God.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      [1]<\/a> As Bahnsen notes, some atheological apologists believe that a statement is not to be considered scientific unless<\/em> it assumes naturalism.<\/p>\n

      [2]<\/a> Kuipers, Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, backmatter.<\/p>\n

      [3]<\/a> Ladyman, \u201cOntological, Epistemological and Methodological Positions,\u201d 303.<\/p>\n

      [4]<\/a> As, for example, in many forms of Hinduism and Buddhism where the aim is to intuit<\/em> the oneness of all being.<\/p>\n

      [5]<\/a> Mumford, Metaphysics,<\/em> 100.<\/p>\n

      [6]<\/a> Mahner, \u201cDemarcating Science from Non-Science,\u201d 515\u201375.<\/p>\n

      [7]<\/a> There is some question as to how \u201crevolutionary\u201d we should consider Quine\u2019s approach.\u00a0 For all the disdain that was heaped on Aristotle, his behaviorist <\/em>theory of knowledge was, like Aristotle\u2019s, a psychological<\/em> solution to the problem of knowledge construction.<\/p>\n

      [8]<\/a> Quine, \u201cOntological Relativity & Other Essays,\u201d<\/em> 69\u201390. \u00a0Although this never appeared until 1969, Quine in the introduction makes it clear that he had already formulated and presented this view by 1965.<\/p>\n

      [9]<\/a> Quine, \u201cOn What There Is,\u201d 1\u201319.<\/p>\n

      [10]<\/a> Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, 168ff.<\/p>\n

      [11]<\/a> The informed reader might smell a Kuhnian emanation at this point, his concept of a \u201cparadigm\u201d as a hermeneutic tool to interpret science and especially the progress of science.\u00a0 Kuhn will play a significant role in our future discussion.<\/p>\n

      [12]<\/a> Taylor, Metaphysics,<\/em> xv\u2009ff.\u00a0 Like P.F. Strawson, Taylor asserted he was being descriptive rather than attempting a theory<\/em> of metaphysics.\u00a0 However, both men undoubtedly advanced metaphysics as a theoretical discipline, Taylor in his arguments regarding fatalism (52\u201362) and Strawson\u2019s use of transcendental arguments in Individuals <\/em>set off the debate about the merits of transcendental arguments which is an argument form leveraged later in this book.<\/p>\n

      [13]<\/a> Lawson-Tancred, \u201cIntroduction,\u201d<\/em> loc. 158.<\/p>\n

      [14]<\/a> Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, 307\u2009ff.<\/p>\n

      [15]<\/a> Fitelson & Sober, \u201cPlantinga’s Probability Arguments,\u201d 115\u201329.<\/p>\n

      [16]<\/a> Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function, ch.12.<\/p>\n

      [17]<\/a> Lewis, Miracles\u2014A Preliminary Study.<\/p>\n

      [18]<\/a> Reppert, C.S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea.<\/em> Reppert clarifies and refines Lewis\u2019 argument.<\/p>\n

      [19]<\/a> In medieval conceptions of philosophy, it was orthodox to consider philosophy as the \u201chandmaiden of theology.\u201d\u00a0 The only legitimate practice of philosophy was to support Church dogma.\u00a0 Similarly, for the post-positivists and many who favor an empiricist flavor to their metaphysics and especially for their epistemology, they see no purpose for philosophy other than in the explication of science.\u00a0 We might call this part of the worldview of scientism,<\/em> and we can see some characteristics of a religious commitment on the part of the believers.<\/p>\n

      [20]<\/a> Russell, History, 789.\u00a0 Russell\u2019s exact words were \u201cphilosophy does not cease to suggest and inspire a way of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

      [21]<\/a> Huxley, Ends and Means<\/em>, 267, 273\u2009ff.<\/p>\n

      [22]<\/a> See Macneil, Wittgenstein and Religious Language.<\/p>\n

      [23]<\/a> Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung\u2014<\/em>tr. \u2018the scientific view of the world.\u2019\u00a0 This was title of the 1929 manifesto of the Vienna Circle which also fed into the first Humanist Manifesto (1933).<\/p>\n

      [24]<\/a> Rom 13:4, NAS.<\/p>\n

      [25]<\/a> See Sookhdeo, The New Civic Religion.<\/p>\n

      [26]<\/a> Explored in a distinctive fashion in Murdoch, Metaphysics. <\/em>Although Blackburn describes her \u2018religious\u2019<\/em> thesis as \u201cimplausible,\u201d<\/em> this reflects Blackburn\u2019s anti-religious prejudice, Murdoch\u2019s work was<\/em> serious and provocative on this subject.<\/p>\n

      [27]<\/a> Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.<\/p>\n

      [28]<\/a> Russell in his youth described his sexuality as \u201cun-Victorian,\u201d rejecting Christian ethics of virtue with many likeminded young intellectuals of the period such as Huxley. They embraced sexual \u2018freedom\u2019 which translated for Russell as many affairs, and four marriages.\u00a0 This was a significant factor in his immediate dismissal from City College in New York in 1940, where after protests he was judicially judged \u2018morally unfit\u2019 and was unable to take-up his appointment.\u00a0 However, he (like Huxley) markedly tempered the excesses of his lifestyle in later life. \u00a0As Irvine, Russell<\/em> noted, he believed sex, though a basic need (and thus not confined to the boundaries of monogamy), should not be removed from \u201cserious emotion and from feelings of affection.\u201d<\/em> \u00a0In a particularly moving piece of writing at the end of his life, he described his life as one of seeking for love (and eventually finding it) with one of his daughters also noting that most basic need in her father.<\/p>\n

      [29]<\/a> Frankl, \u201cLogotherapy in a Nutshell,\u201d 101\u201336.<\/p>\n

      [30]<\/a> The Nazis would make documentary style films within the ghettoes demonstrating the inhumanity of Jew to Jew.\u00a0 This was especially so in the activity of Jewish collaborators.\u00a0 This helped provide the \u2018logic\u2019 for their later extermination in the camps.<\/p>\n

      [31]<\/a> This question of moral sense is explored deeply by Iris Murdoch in Metaphysics<\/em>.\u00a0 She was known for both her literary accomplishments, her keen sense of aesthetics and her moral philosophy.\u00a0 She wrote much about metaphysics and demonstrated how metaphysics enriched the philosophical landscape.\u00a0 She interacted with existentialism and wrote various critiques eventually seeking a firmer foundation for moral philosophy, see Existentialists and Mystics,<\/em> a collection of those essays and shorter articles.<\/p>\n

      [32]<\/a> It was somewhat ironic that the Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung<\/em> of the Vienna Circle had such an effect on Nazi ideology as most of the members of the Circle were Jewish and left for the US during the 1930s.<\/p>\n

      [33]<\/a> Heidegger was to write (1935) that his initial involvement with the Nazis was because he saw in the \u201cinner greatness of the movement\u201d<\/em> a chance for the \u201cregeneration of the people.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 This was not just for the German Volk<\/em> but a technological overhaul of Being of all humanity. \u00a0This was properly religious<\/em> in intent (Heidegger went onto to influence theology.)\u00a0 He was not alone, many Germanophone intellectuals, including Jung, were fellow travelers for a time before admitting they \u201cgoofed.\u201d\u00a0 Wheeler, Martin Heidegger,<\/em> provides an excellent summary of the complexities of this argument.<\/p>\n

      [34]<\/a> Plantinga makes this argument in Where the Conflict Really Lies,<\/em> Lewis in Miracles.<\/em><\/p>\n

      [35]<\/a> Mumford, Metaphysics,<\/em> 99<\/p>\n

      [36]<\/a> Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals.<\/p>\n

      [37]<\/a> Historically, \u201cnaked facts\u201d as a concept was associated with the empiricism of Locke.\u00a0 The mind is viewed as the \u201ctabula rasa\u201d<\/em> upon which experience creates simple ideas, grouping into complex ones, eventually coalescing into the understanding.\u00a0 This is now generally described as \u201cna\u00efve\u201d empiricism and has few contemporary defenders.<\/p>\n

      [38]<\/a> Ladyman, \u201cOntological, Epistemological and Methodological Positions,\u201d 303.<\/p>\n

      [39]<\/a> Foley, In A. Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function,<\/em> backmatter.<\/p>\n

      [40]<\/a> Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic<\/em>, 159.\u00a0 Bahnsen notes that Wittgenstein rejected this view, asserting that knowledge and belief were distinct categories.\u00a0 Few have followed Wittgenstein in this view, it is difficult to dismiss that connection between belief and knowledge established by Plato, problematic as it has been.<\/p>\n

      [41]<\/a> Bahnsen, Van Til\u2019s Apologetic, 160.<\/p>\n

      [42]<\/a> Institutes of the Christian Religion<\/em>, Bk.1, Ch.4, Sec. 1.\u00a0 Here Calvin uses the term \u201cmanifest\u201d in the terms of the natural revelation in creation rather than implying a natural theology<\/em> which posits positive evidential inference from nature to God.<\/p>\n

      [43]<\/a> Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,<\/em> 111\u201334.\u00a0 This became known as simply Structure <\/em>in conversation.\u00a0 It is difficult to underestimate Kuhn\u2019s influence and impact at the time of publication. \u00a0Though a philosopher of science, his legacy was primarily in other disciples (especially non-scientific ones) who felt his work de-privileged science as a unique, objective enterprise.\u00a0 That is, Kuhn struggled to escape the relativist implications of his work and ran into problems with his more general thesis of the incommensurability of scientific paradigms.\u00a0 Thus, although an extremely important milestone in the philosophy of science, he was by no means the last word.<\/p>\n

      [44]<\/a> For example, it is common in Information Theory to distinguish between \u2018information\u2019 and \u2018data.\u2019\u00a0 \u201cInformation\u201d is conceived of as \u201cdata\u201d that has been organized in some way.\u00a0 If sensory data or \u2018stimulus\u2019 is where we start (as in Quine, From Stimulus<\/em> to Science<\/em>), we have already imposed a preunderstanding on our \u2018facts.\u2019<\/p>\n

      [45]<\/a> \u201cParadigm\u201d first appears in Kuhn\u2019s Structure<\/em> on 11 and is what he called \u201cnormal science,\u201d a stable iteration of a particular science.\u00a0 Kuhn was originally a physicist, and paradigms were easy to discern in physics\u2014Baconian, Newtonian, Einsteinian quantum physics and the Quantum Field Theory (QFT) of Hawkings\/Penrose.\u00a0 Ian Hacking in his introductory essay to the 50th<\/sup> anniversary edition thus questions how applicable his model is generally to the other sciences but does not question the basic concept of a governing paradigm which became influential far beyond the sciences.<\/p>\n

      [46]<\/a> Nagel, Knowledge,<\/em> 116.<\/p>\n

      [47]<\/a> See Macneil, Feeling Good About Truth,<\/em> for an in-depth examination of truth, particularly its ethical dimension.\u00a0 See Audi, Epistemology,<\/em> 245\u2009ff. \u00a0for an account of the coherence and correspondence theories of truth.<\/p>\n

      [48]<\/a> Quine, Theories and Things<\/em>, 22\u201323.\u00a0 For Quine a \u201cfact\u201d was not even an epistemological issue, it was an issue of fundamental ontology, i.e., you do not argue over the definition of a fact, the collection of facts is just what constitutes science.<\/p>\n

      [49]<\/a> This was the background Rorty sketches in introducing his second major book Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.<\/em><\/p>\n

      [50]<\/a> Found in an extended fashion in Blackburn, Truth<\/em>.\u00a0 Rorty acknowledged the force of his criticism (at one point) in a footnote.<\/p>\n

      [51]<\/a> Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope<\/em>.\u00a0 This was a collection of essays during the 1990s during a period just after the zenith of his success.\u00a0 He could never live consistently with the almost nihilistic implications of his views (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity<\/em>, xv) and in the decade after spent a lot of time arguing about \u201cethics\u201d in attempting to tame the postmodern monster he had unleashed.<\/p>\n

      [52]<\/a> \u201cRichard Rorty:\u00a0 The Man Who Killed Truth\u201d\u2014was broadcast on BBC4 on Nov 07, 2003.<\/p>\n

      [53]<\/a> Bahnsen, Van Til\u2019s Apologetic, 37\u20138.<\/p>\n

      [54]<\/a> Scriven, \u2018The Presumption of Atheism,\u2019 345\u2009ff.<\/p>\n

      [55]<\/a> Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Bk.1, Ch.6,<\/p>\n

      [56]<\/a> For example, Barbara Thiering (1992) in an academically \u201crespectable\u201d higher-critical thesis, asserted that Jesus did not actually die, but was buried in a cave, revived by the magician Simon Magus, married, had three children with Mary Magdalene, divorced, and finally died in Rome.\u00a0 Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief<\/em>, 102\u20133 gives us some other choice examples.<\/p>\n

      [57]<\/a> We examine this \u201cworldview\u201d thinking more closely in \u00a7\u20093.5.<\/p>\n

      [58]<\/a> A classic statement of this problem is found in Chisholm, The Problem of the Criterion,<\/em> 3.<\/p>\n

      [59]<\/a> Quoted in Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic,<\/em> 9 n15.<\/p>\n

      [60]<\/a> Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 1\u201324.<\/p>\n

      [61]<\/a> Rom 4:17 (NAS), emphasis added.\u00a0 There are interesting exegetical issues with this verse as discussed in the NET notes for it, though they are slightly unclear as to the difference in the renderings.\u00a0 The literal Greek is \u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u03bf\u1fe6\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c4\u03ac \u03bc\u03ae \u1f44\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1 \u1f61\u03c2 \u1f44\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1 (\u201ccalling the things not existing [or not being] as existing [being]\u201d),<\/em> which has the interesting philosophical issue regarding the ontological status of non-existing objects, i.e., what is implied in using the sign \u201cthing\u201d; something which was discussed much in linguistic philosophy by Russell, Quine, the positivists and was revisited by Plantinga also.<\/p>\n

      [62]<\/a> Ladyman, \u201cOntological, Epistemological and Methodological Positions,\u201d 303.<\/p>\n

      [63]<\/a> The biblical reasoning of Paul is identical in 1 Co 15:32, \u201cIf the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.\u201d\u00a0 Paul on many occasions expresses a similar thought, \u201cIf we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.\u201d\u00a0 Paul was certain of his metaphysics and his claims to knowledge, \u201cFor this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day\u201d (2Tim 1:12).\u00a0 The perfect tense of \u201cbelieve\u201d in the Greek emphasizes this was a life-changing decision and encounter for Paul.<\/p>\n

      [64]<\/a> Both Sartre and Camus subscribed to what might be called versions of absurdism<\/em>, see Aronson, Albert Camus.<\/em><\/p>\n

      [65]<\/a> A profound, controversial, and provocative account is provided by historian Paul Johnson in Intellectuals,<\/em> which is a salient, rabid deconstruction of the intellectual caste.<\/p>\n

      [66]<\/a> Strawson, Skepticism,<\/em> 2\u20133.<\/p>\n

      [67]<\/a> Plantinga does note that there is a minority view of Hume that he was not a sceptic at all and that his conclusion was best described as a pragmatic one\u2014we must<\/em> live ignoring our skepticism.\u00a0 However, there is little doubt that he was (and is) the putative progenitor of the skeptical clan.<\/p>\n

      [68]<\/a> Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic,<\/em> First Edition Preface.<\/p>\n

      [69]<\/a> Clark, \u2018The Wheaton Lectures,\u2019 25\u2013124.<\/p>\n

      [70]<\/a> Nash, \u201cGordon Clark’s Theory of Knowledge,\u201d 125\u201375.<\/p>\n

      [71]<\/a> A general account is provided in Penelhum, Fideism<\/em>.<\/p>\n

      [72]<\/a> Clark and his followers had argued to distinguish \u201cdogmatism\u201d from fideism, but Clark in his final book Three Types,<\/em> 104, did<\/em> finally describe his position as fideist, accepting dogmatism was<\/em> a form of fideism. \u00a0Clark was a competent logician and held to a neo-platonic view in the early part of his career.\u00a0 His confidence in logic was absolute, \u201cIn the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic was with God and the Logic was God\u201d<\/em> (his translation of John 1:1 in his Logic.<\/em>)\u00a0 He commits the etymological fallacy here; Logos<\/em> was not used in the sense which \u201cLogic\u201d was used until a number of centuries after John wrote those words.<\/p>\n

      [73]<\/a> Clark, Historiography, 337.<\/p>\n

      [74]<\/a> Clark, Three Types of Religious Philosophy, 8, 139.<\/p>\n

      [75]<\/a> These were centered around Trinity Divinity School which is still the main source of Clark\u2019s material under the auspices of the Trinity Foundation.<\/p>\n

      [76]<\/a> Nash, op cit.<\/p>\n

      [77]<\/a> Bahnsen, CVT and Gordon Clarke.<\/p>\n

      [78]<\/a> Butler, Plantinga<\/em>.<\/p>\n

      [79]<\/a> Clark taught at Trinity Divinity school for many years, and it became the focus for opposition to Van Til\u2019s apologetic when Van Til criticized Clark for failing to recognize the Creator\u2013creature distinction which led to a bad-tempered argument during the 1940s which culminated in Clarke leaving the OPC.\u00a0 Trinity Divinity School still has zealous Clarkians to this day who still take exception to Van Til\u2019s criticism of Clark\u2019s position and evidence that Van Til was \u201cneo-Orthodox.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 As Bahnsen, CVT and Clarke,<\/em> indicates in clarifying the political, theological, and philosophical issues around that controversy, it would have been most peculiar for Van Til to be caricatured as neo-orthodox by the Clarkians when he was the most forceful exposer of that movement as heterodox and no friend of evangelical Christianity, even being complemented on that fact by some of his most forceful apologetic opponents.<\/p>\n

      [80]<\/a> Bahnsen, CVT and Clarke<\/em>. \u00a0The final 10 minutes of this presentation are a forceful rebuff of what Bahnsen see as the ultimate problem with Clarke\u2019s position.\u00a0 This audio presentation follows the contours of Bahnsen, Van Til\u2019s Apologetic,<\/em> 669\u201372.<\/p>\n

      [81]<\/a> Huxley, Ends and Means<\/em>, 273.<\/p>\n

      [82]<\/a> Huxley, Ends and Means<\/em>, 274.<\/p>\n

      [83]<\/a> Einstein\u2019s early quantum theory predicted that the photons of light which he said made up a light wave <\/em>(it was normative in the contemporary physics of his time to consider an entity to be either a wave or<\/em> a particle; it would be a logical contradiction to be both), having a nominal mass, would be bent by a gravitational field.\u00a0 He predicted a detectable delay in comparison to the Newtonian equation in viewing an eclipse of Jupiter because of the slight bend of the light would become significant because of the vast distances involved between the Earth and Jupiter.\u00a0 It was confirmed with a remarkable degree of accuracy to 10 decimal places.\u00a0 Previous microscopic \u201cquantum\u201d effects such as this, which were so small they had been dismissed when measuring on the macro-scale, were found to be present when researchers revisited previous datasets where they had dismissed the aberrations as limitations of the measuring apparatus.<\/p>\n

      [84]<\/a> Nagel, Knowledge,<\/em> 55.<\/p>\n

      [85]<\/a> Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 219 n.\u200929.<\/p>\n

      [86]<\/a> In fairness, it should be noted that not all philosophers will accept the legitimacy of the transcendental mode of argument, which is why we will consider it in a chapter on its own.<\/p>\n

      [87]<\/a> Rorty, in an interview with a sympathetic interviewer as reported in the posthumously published An Ethics for Today<\/em>,<\/em> had pointedly refused to condemn such a guard, \u2018moral condemnation is too easy here.<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n

      [88]<\/a> This argument is elegantly made by Blackburn in his critique of Rorty and postmodernism at numerous places in Blackburn, Truth<\/em>, e.g., \u00a7\u00a7\u20096.8,\u20098.6.\u00a0 In criticizing Rorty\u2019s position he pushed very hard on this point, recalling Aristotle\u2019s maxim that if \u2018our ethics permit murder, there is something wrong with our ethics\u2019;<\/em> an observation Wittgenstein had also reflected on when he asserted that philosophy must be lived and thus judged through the processes of life itself, it is our \u201cform of life.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 Blackburn took very seriously Rorty\u2019s quip \u201ctruth is what your contemporaries let you get away with,\u201d<\/em> and as he noted \u201cit is shocking enough to be something Rorty\u2019s contemporaries wouldn\u2019t let him get away with,\u201d<\/em> (op cit., 31).\u00a0 Blackburn\u2019s critique of Rorty and postmodernism in general was perhaps the most sustained and thorough one in the literature, see also https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/richard-rortys-iconoclastic-deconstruction-of-philosophy\/<\/a> .<\/p>\n

      [89]<\/a> Blackburn, Truth<\/em>,<\/em> 220.<\/p>\n

      [90]<\/a> There is a major Darwin correspondence project due to complete collation of his correspondence (numbering in excess of 8500 letters), see https:\/\/www.hps.cam.ac.uk\/research\/projects\/darwin-correspondence<\/a> .\u00a0 Darwin had been impressed by the work of Comte as his naturalism strengthened later in his life.<\/p>\n

      [91]<\/a> Zuiddam, \u201cWas evolution invented by Greek Philosophers?\u201d <\/em>68\u201375.\u00a0 I feel Zuiddam never quite expunges the thesis of the origins of naturalism (and hence evolutionism) with the Presocratics which was blatant by the time of the post-Socratic Epicurus.\u00a0 His \u2018retrospect\u2019 at the end of the paper and its footnotes perhaps admits as much but the paper is a provocative and cautionary read.<\/p>\n

      [92]<\/a> Bahnsen, Evolution (Scientific and Theistic)<\/em>.\u00a0 In this recording, Bahnsen gives a rigorous and thorough critique referring to the paucity of the empirical evidence.\u00a0 Darwin only offered two instances in his Origins<\/em>.<\/p>\n

      [93]<\/a> It was only with Huxley, Evolution:\u00a0 The Modern Synthesis,<\/em> that an attempt was made to reconcile Mendel with Neo<\/em>-Darwinism.\u00a0 By this point \u201cclassical\u201d Darwinism had been quietly shelved.<\/p>\n

      [94]<\/a> Aldous Huxley was his grandson, as was famous biologist and synthetic evolutionist Sir Julian Huxley.<\/p>\n

      [95]<\/a> Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, 755\u201364.<\/p>\n

      [96]<\/a> Gould discusses this very interpretation in Evolutionary Theory,<\/em> Appendix A.<\/p>\n

      [97]<\/a> Gould wrote one of the best critiques of socio-biology in his Mismeasure of Man<\/em> which was a direct assault on a genetic basis for reducing intelligence and the potential for human improvement to a single measure (the IQ). \u00a0The later edition containing a critical response to Murray and Herrnstein\u2019s The Bell Curve<\/em> which equated social inequality with intelligence measured using similar assumptions.\u00a0 He also intersected with religious themes in a serious, non-trivial way.\u00a0 Gould\u2019s thinking was far more nuanced and capable than his theory of punctuated equilibrium would suggest with his work describing extremely thoroughly the inadequacies of Darwinism and the imperative for its revision, it was just his own theory was equally as inadequate and philosophically bankrupt.\u00a0 He, like Dawkins, had a level of commitment to evolution as fact, in his own words \u201ca metaphysical assumption,\u201d<\/em> which could only be described as religious,<\/em> defining \u2018religious\u2019 as the dominant presupposition in one\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

      [98]<\/a> Such is the religious and dogmatic zeal of the evolutionists that the mere attempt<\/em> of a major exhibition at a National History Museum in 2019 to highlight some problems with the theory caused a national level debate, accusations of religious fundamentalism and right-wing conspiracy theories undermining serious science.<\/p>\n

      [99]<\/a> Gould, Evolutionary Theory<\/em> attempts a metaphysical analysis at various points during his explication of his revised theory.\u00a0 His tome runs to almost 1500 pages, and it is to his credit that he recognizes the underpinnings of evolutionism in its major forms are always metaphysical and pretheoretically so.\u00a0 What is so vivid in his exposition of his revised theory is how thoroughly he discards competing theories of evolution such as Dawkins\u2019 Selfish Gene<\/em> thesis (calling it a \u2018fallacy\u2019), Lamarckian \u2018myths\u2019, and a detailed refutation of individual innovations through the 20th<\/sup> century by just about every significant evolutionist up to the late 1960s.\u00a0 He first proposed his theory in 1972 and was totally committed to its inevitability and correctness as a matter of historical determinism.<\/p>\n

      [100]<\/a> The exchange between Dawkins and his allies with Gould and his allies was (and remains, even after Gould\u2019s death) particularly caustic.\u00a0 The important substance of the debate, however, is found accessibly in Sterelny, Dawkins vs. Gould<\/em>.\u00a0 Gould was \u2018happy\u2019 to return in kind Dennett\u2019s ill-tempered rubbishing of his work. \u00a0It is of note that Sterelny is a philosopher and in the final summary at the end of the book we sense that clearly; this debate is about the presuppositions of a worldview,<\/em> not about the \u2018evidence.\u2019<\/p>\n

      [101]<\/a> Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, 24.<\/p>\n

      [102]<\/a> Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, 24.<\/p>\n

      [103]<\/a> Dawkins once interviewed a senior Bishop who had no interest in contesting Dawkins basic claims about evolution as a fact, in paraphrase \u201cnone of us believe that creation story now [that silly Babylonian creation myth].\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 Dawkins\u2019 contempt for such intellectual capitulation I cannot help but find myself in agreement with, even though I have refused to pay my television license after the BBC aired that same 2012 series, owing to the lack of balance in it overall.<\/p>\n

      [104]<\/a> This is questionable.\u00a0 See https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/evolutionary-theory-and-probability-theory\/<\/a> .<\/p>\n

      [105]<\/a> Quoted in Plantinga, Where The Conflict Really Lies<\/em>, 28\u2009ff.<\/p>\n

      [106]<\/a> For example, Dawkins, The God Delusion<\/em>, Ch. 2.<\/p>\n

      [107]<\/a> Lewis, God in the Dock<\/em>, 244.<\/p>\n

      [108]<\/a> Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, 38.<\/p>\n

      [109]<\/a> Rarefaction was considered a merit by the logical positivists and in its putative successor, the naturalist programme.\u00a0 Indeed, rarefaction meant<\/em> making it congenial to a naturalist, scientistic account. \u00a0Interestingly, Huxley in Ends and Means,<\/em> esp. Ch. XIV and XV, writing at the zenith of logical positivism, completely rejected this rarefaction though he had once been enamored by the scientific and humanistic worldview.\u00a0 Huxley never signed the first Humanist Manifesto that was published just as he released his Brave New World<\/em> in 1932.<\/p>\n

      [110]<\/a> A phrase for which we thank Kant who used it when discussing the traditional arguments for God\u2019s existence.<\/p>\n

      [111]<\/a> Quine & Ullian, The Web of Belief,<\/em> 88\u201389.\u00a0 Quine in this passage is referring explicitly to the influential work by Nelson Goodman Fact<\/em>, where he challenged an evolutionary explanation of why certain inductions would have survival value.\u00a0 Quine is honest enough to admit there is no satisfactory solution to what Goodman has argued that is not begging the question.\u00a0 As Gould spoke of his own pretheoretical commitment, Quine demonstrates the same metaphysical commitment to some<\/em> version of evolutionary theory.<\/p>\n

      [112]<\/a> Lewis helped found the Socratic Society at Oxford which hosted some of the liveliest debates of the era.\u00a0 The Anscombe\u2013Lewis debate is the subject of much misrepresentation, see https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-lewis-and-anscombe-debate<\/a>.\u00a0 Anscombe complimented Lewis on his revised argument.<\/p>\n

      [113]<\/a> Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function, 237, n.28.<\/p>\n

      [114]<\/a> Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function, 216\u201338.<\/p>\n

      [115]<\/a> Lewis, Miracles\u2014A Preliminary Study, ch.2.<\/p>\n

      [116]<\/a> Audi, Epistemology, i.<\/p>\n

      [117]<\/a> See for example Chisholm (1973, 1989) who spent most of his career trying to resolve the problematics surrounding it.\u00a0 In his own words, he was \u201cobsessed with the problem.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

      [118]<\/a> Clifford & James, The Ethics of Belief \/ The Will to Believe.<\/p>\n

      [119]<\/a> Gettier, \u201cIs Justified True Belief Knowledge?\u201d, 121\u201323.<\/p>\n

      [120]<\/a> A significant epoch in this literature was its documentation by Shope, The Analysis of Knowing<\/em>.<\/p>\n

      [121]<\/a> Nagel, Knowledge,<\/em> 61.<\/p>\n

      [122]<\/a> This was a famous example by Bertrand Russell in 1948.\u00a0 Other examples are provided by Nagel, Knowledge,<\/em> 46\u201349; 58.<\/p>\n

      [123]<\/a> Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function, 32.<\/p>\n

      [124]<\/a> Nagel, Knowledge,<\/em> 55\u2009ff., 114\u201316., ch.4.<\/p>\n

      [125]<\/a> It should also be noted that Plantinga showed that others had already posited specific scenarios which would be recognized as examples of \u2018Gettier\u2019 problems long before Gettier was even born, e.g., Russell\u2019s clock (1912) and Meinong\u2019s (d.1920) conditioned auditory hallucinations (Gesamtausgabe,<\/em> 398\u20139.)\u00a0 There were also examples in ancient Indian and Chinese philosophy.\u00a0 However, Gettier managed to summarize concisely the problem.<\/p>\n

      [126]<\/a> After Thomas Reid, who in Plantinga\u2019s view, was a \u201cmuch neglected\u201d<\/em> contemporary of Hume.\u00a0 In his preface to Warrant and Proper Function,<\/em> Plantinga acknowledges his debt to Reid.\u00a0 Nichols & Gideon provide an excellent overview of Reid\u2019s work and influence.\u00a0 There is substantial extant communication between Reid and Hume who were Scots contemporaries.<\/p>\n

      [127]<\/a> For example, in modern \u201cpluralistic\u201d or \u201cmulticultural\u201d societies, each ethnic community will probably have its own conception of \u201ccommon sense\u201d or what is normative and acceptable behavior.<\/p>\n

      [128]<\/a> Plantinga (1993a, b).<\/p>\n

      [129]<\/a> In Warranted Christian Belief,<\/em> 218\u201327.\u00a0 Plantinga effectively exegetes Reid\u2019s critique of Hume and exposes what Plantinga calls the \u201cscandal of skepticism\u201d:<\/em> \u00a0we rely, assuming the reliability of the faculty of reason, to reach our skeptical conclusion about<\/em> reason.<\/p>\n

      [130]<\/a> Nagel, Knowledge<\/em>,<\/em> 61.<\/p>\n

      [131]<\/a> Nagel, Knowledge<\/em>,<\/em> 66.<\/p>\n

      [132]<\/a> Plantinga (1993a, 1993b, 2000.)<\/p>\n

      [133]<\/a> Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief.<\/p>\n

      [134]<\/a> Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate, 10\u2009ff.<\/p>\n

      [135]<\/a> Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief, 30.<\/p>\n

      [136]<\/a> Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief, 89.<\/p>\n

      [137]<\/a> Foley in Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function,<\/em> backmatter.\u00a0 Foley.<\/p>\n

      [138]<\/a> Butler, Plantinga<\/em>.<\/p>\n

      [139]<\/a> Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function, 237.<\/p>\n

      [140]<\/a> Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief<\/em>,<\/em> 35; the full account is found in Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function,<\/em> chaps. 3\u20137.<\/p>\n

      [141]<\/a> Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief<\/em>,<\/em> 30\u201335.\u00a0 This is the highly abridged version of the full argument found in Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief<\/em>, 167\u2013356.<\/p>\n

      [142]<\/a> Plantinga, \u201cSelf-Profile,\u201d<\/em> 55\u201364.<\/p>\n

      [143]<\/a> Van Frassen, known primarily as a philosopher of science, is very provocative on this point, asserting that a robust definition of naturalism is extremely problematic to formulate.<\/p>\n

      [144]<\/a> Quoted by Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief,<\/em> 227.\u00a0 Bas van Frassen is known for his seminal work in the philosophy of science and his theory of constructive empiricism,<\/em> which was an anti-realist conception of science, positing that a scientific theory aims to be empirically adequate only.\u00a0 Van Frassen is also of note for being an advocate of transcendental arguments which will be considered later in this book.<\/p>\n

      [145]<\/a> Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism,1.<\/p>\n

      [146]<\/a> Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics<\/em> and Always Ready<\/em>.\u00a0 The former is the more academic development of the latter, which was only rediscovered posthumously by Bahnsen\u2019s family clearing out his office after his premature departure from heart failure.<\/p>\n

      [147]<\/a> Berkhower had criticized him on this basis and CVT responded directly acknowledging the fault in his Festschrift Jerusalem and Athens<\/em>, 203\u20134.<\/p>\n

      [148]<\/a> Plantinga, \u201cSelf-Profile,\u201d<\/em> 33\u2009ff.<\/p>\n

      [149]<\/a> Butler, Plantinga<\/em>.<\/p>\n

      [150]<\/a> A further discussion of the development of Plantinga\u2019s \u2018middle period\u2019 is found in Reformed Epistemology<\/em>.\u00a0 As noted already, our discussion here moves past this period, to his most mature work which bears the slightly awkward Extended A\/C (Aquinas\/Calvin) designation.<\/p>\n

      [151]<\/a> Plantinga, Knowledge,<\/em> 113\u201314.<\/p>\n

      [152]<\/a> Plantinga, Knowledge,<\/em> 113\u201314.<\/p>\n

      [153]<\/a> Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, vii.<\/p>\n

      [154]<\/a> Butler, \u201cReligious Epistemology Seminar,\u201d MB208\u2013MB210.<\/p>\n

      [155]<\/a> Jeffreys, \u201cHow Reformed Is Reformed Epistemology?\u201d, 419\u201331.<\/p>\n

      [156]<\/a> The \u2018theological\u2019 question is much more whether Plantinga has a biblical<\/em> defense of his position.\u00a0 As Bahnsen provided the detailed exegesis for Van Til, it may be required that Plantinga\u2019s thought would need the attention of a theologian to defend it (if possible).<\/p>\n

      [157]<\/a> Calvin, Institutes,<\/em> loc. 795.<\/p>\n

      [158]<\/a> Van Til was characterized (accurately, I believe) by Bahnsen as \u201cusing the vocabulary [and] logic of idealism but in a way that the idealist logicians could not because of their own non-theistic presuppositions.\u201d\u00a0 Van Til expounds this in Systematic Theology, Ch.2.<\/p>\n

      [159]<\/a> Anderson, Cornelius Van Til and Alvin Plantinga and If Knowledge Then God.<\/p>\n

      [160]<\/a> Prov. 26:4\u20135 (NET); cf. Plantinga, Self-Profile<\/em>,<\/em> 33.<\/p>\n

      [161]<\/a> Van Til said as much in response to a question as to why he did not apply detailed historical criticism of his opponents, he answered it was because his colleagues in other departments had the expertise to do it much better on an historical basis than himself.\u00a0 His skill and gift were in philosophy, and he would proceed on that basis.<\/p>\n

      [162]<\/a> Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 499; Knowledge and Christian Belief, 126.<\/p>\n

      [163]<\/a> Knowledge and Christian Belief, x.<\/p>\n

      [164]<\/a> I detect a hint of Kierkegaardian existentialism in Plantinga here, a \u201cleap of faith\u201d<\/em> seems to be required.\u00a0 Both of his 1958 published papers (his first) dealt with existentialist themes though he was always a rigorous analytical philosopher in method.\u00a0 See https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-fideistic-leap\/<\/a> for a broader discussion of Kierkegaard.<\/p>\n

      [165]<\/a> Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief, 126.<\/p>\n

      [166]<\/a> Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 499.<\/p>\n

      [167]<\/a> Butler acknowledges in early assessments (1997) the substantial contribution of Plantinga and his criticisms of unbelieving philosophy.\u00a0 In later work, he seems far more ambivalent towards Plantinga though still acknowledging his status, accomplishment, and contribution, see Butler, Biblical Presuppositional Apologetics<\/em>.\u00a0 In his latter presentations he was frustrated that Plantinga had not progressed in his understanding of Van Til over a period of 20 years.<\/p>\n

      [168]<\/a> Bahnsen, Van Til\u2019s Apologetic, 715.<\/p>\n

      [169]<\/a> Butler prefers to consider ethics as a subheading of a wider theory of values, with aesthetics as a sister category.\u00a0 As Wittgenstein noted \u201cEthics and aesthetics are one\u201d<\/em> (Tractatus<\/em>, 6.421) and I will mean both.<\/p>\n

      [170]<\/a> Ramsey, Christian Ethics<\/em>.\u00a0 This is an older but an excellent quality primer by some of the most influential ethicists of the early post-positivist period where philosophical thought regarding ethics was again expanding beyond the confines of verificationism and psychologized ethical discourse.<\/p>\n

      [171]<\/a> Blackburn, Being Good<\/em>, 1.<\/p>\n

      [172]<\/a> Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 74.<\/p>\n

      [173]<\/a> Willard, The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge, viii.<\/p>\n

      [174]<\/a> Zak advances the thesis that the hormone \u201coxytocin\u201d explains our moral behavior, \u201cAm I actually saying that a single molecule\u2026accounts for why some people give freely of themselves and others are cold-hearted bastards\u2026?\u00a0 In a word, \u2018yes.\u2019\u201d (Zak, The Moral Molecule, 11).\u00a0 He remains an entrepreneur and a professor in good standing, still pioneering this new \u2018science\u2019 (neuroeconomics, immersion neuroscience), see https:\/\/pauljzak.com\/<\/a>; he claims the full authority of twenty years of \u201cpeer reviewed\u201d research.\u00a0 As a philosophical exercise, this field provides great examples to test against Mahner\u2019s Demarcating Science from Non-Science criteria for distinguishing science from pseudo or non-science.<\/p>\n

      In view of the \u201cpeer reviewed\u201d<\/em> status of this research, I would be amiss to omit the general point that \u201cpeer review\u201d<\/em> is not always an objective process but reflective of far wider interests, sometimes informal censorship of dissident scholarship, sometimes reflective of the kudos gained by publishing your \u2018revolutionary\u2019 paper, sometimes purely of your corporate buying-power, sometimes as a means of political control.<\/p>\n

      [175]<\/a> Here the references are to Aristotle\u2019s division in the Complete Works; <\/em>Aristotle\u2019s principal ethical writings are also found in The Nicomachean Ethics<\/em> which has a helpful contextualizing introduction.<\/p>\n

      [176]<\/a> Blackburn, Being Good,<\/em> sect. 8\u20139.<\/p>\n

      [177]<\/a> Sachs, \u201cAristotle: Ethics.\u201d<\/p>\n

      [178]<\/a> Schlick, Problems of Ethics, 1.<\/p>\n

      [179]<\/a> Watson first presented his theory in 1913 in an article in Psychological Review<\/em> and established a distinct school of psychology that viewed human behavior as governed by scientific laws and thus being entirely deterministic.\u00a0 Quine was to recount how impressed he was in reading Watson and his influence on Quine\u2019s rejection of mentalistic accounts of language and his general psychologized perspective on naturalizing epistemology and ontology cannot be underestimated.<\/p>\n

      [180]<\/a> Skinner presented his utopian vision in his novel Walden Two<\/em> (1948) and the philosophical statement (or \u2018post-scientific\u2019 justification) of his programme in Beyond Freedom and Dignity<\/em> (1971).\u00a0 See https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/skinners-utopia\/<\/a> .<\/p>\n

      [181]<\/a> Much more could and should be said on the imperative for freedom and liberty as central to the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, see my Politics<\/em>.<\/p>\n

      [182]<\/a> Bahnsen, \u201cThe Theonomic Position,\u201d 52.<\/p>\n

      [183]<\/a> Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 74.<\/p>\n

      [184]<\/a> Sometimes in biblical studies \u201cthe Law\u201d<\/em> is taken to just refer to the Pentateuch (the Five Books of Moses); similarly, \u201cthe Law and the Prophets\u201d<\/em> describes just the collection of the Pentateuch and the prophetic books.\u00a0 However, in the theonomical sense, \u201cThe Law\u201d<\/em> is just a shorthand for all<\/em> of scripture as is often the case in the Christian scriptures, especially in the writings of Paul (who was also an expert in \u201cThe Law\u201d<\/em> in the narrower sense).<\/p>\n

      [185]<\/a> Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 77.<\/p>\n

      [186]<\/a> Notwithstanding, it is easy to be overly judgmental regarding the attitude of Luther, Calvin, and some of the Reformed fathers to the \u201cradical\u201d reformation.\u00a0 They felt that the progress of the Reformation was disrupted by the popular agitation associated with some of the radical groups which gave the Papist kings excuse to attack the Reformed communities.\u00a0 With the eventual attempted insurrection at Munster violently crushed, it seemed their caution was warranted.<\/p>\n

      [187]<\/a> See Verduin, Reformers and Their Stepchildren.<\/p>\n

      [188]<\/a> Kant, Religion,<\/em> was his most mature piece of moral philosophy.\u00a0 It is of interest that he submitted the work via the theology faculty in case it needed to be \u201ccensored\u201d for impiety.<\/p>\n

      [189]<\/a> See https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/scripture-and-the-post-darwinian-controversy\/<\/a> .<\/p>\n

      [190]<\/a> It is thus not merely a form of crude Divine Command Theory that some 20th<\/sup> century Christian ethicists such as Wolfhart Pannenberg found \u201cso unpersuasive today.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

      [191]<\/a> Noll, America\u2019s God, 21.<\/p>\n

      [192]<\/a> Noll, America\u2019s God, 25.<\/p>\n

      [193]<\/a> This was in reaction to the admission to the Lord\u2019s supper those from covenant families just on that basis even though they had a lifestyle that showed no interest in piety or the things of God.\u00a0 See https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/jonathon-edwards-and-the-destruction-of-the-puritan-canopy-in-early-us-history\/<\/a> .<\/p>\n

      [194]<\/a> Noll, America\u2019s God, 50.<\/p>\n

      [195]<\/a> Noll has an appendix in which he addresses the issue of the historiography of the \u201cChristian Republicanism\u201d with regards to the founding of the United States.\u00a0 The issue of the role and the measure of influence of Christian thinking is a highly contested arena, often dominated by the political interests of the parties.\u00a0 His point is that Christian apologists tend to overplay or give exclusive place to the role of biblical thought, and secular authorities try to downplay or eliminate its influence.\u00a0 In many ways the debate is more acrimonious and more intense than it was when Noll wrote, particularly in the wake of the Trump era when President Trump held the door open to Christians in a manner not known since the era of Lincoln or Washington.\u00a0 A notable recent contribution to the debate based on validating contested historical accounts against the primary sources is Barton & Barton, American Story<\/em>.<\/p>\n

      [196]<\/a> Finney, The Autobiography of Charles G. Finney, 8.<\/p>\n

      [197]<\/a> Finney, The Life and Works of Charles Finney, vol. 1.<\/em> This collection includes work on systematic theology, revivalism, autobiography, sermons, and Christian ethics.<\/p>\n

      [198]<\/a> For example, owing to Machen\u2019s stringent defense of the Bible he is sometimes misidentified by critics (e.g., Barr Fundamentalism,<\/em> 165) as a \u201cfundamentalist\u201d<\/em> or a \u201cconservative evangelical\u201d<\/em> but early fundamentalists were often obscurantist and advocated withdrawal from mainstream culture and academia.\u00a0 See https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-fundamentals-and-fundamentalism\/<\/a> .<\/p>\n

      [199]<\/a> Machen, Education, Christianity, and the State, 41\u201342.<\/p>\n

      [200]<\/a> A concise summary is found in Bahnsen, Theonomic Position<\/em>.\u00a0 See https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/theonomy-in-christian-ethics\/<\/a> for further links.<\/p>\n

      [201]<\/a> See North (ed.), Foundations<\/em>.<\/p>\n

      [202]<\/a> Bahnsen, No Other Standard, 3\u20134.<\/p>\n

      [203]<\/a> The Puritan Westminster Confession is generally accepted as theonomical and as advocating civil society based on God\u2019s Law as revealed in both covenants.<\/p>\n

      [204]<\/a> Austin, Divine Command Theory.<\/em> \u00a0But see also n.\u2009547.<\/p>\n

      [205]<\/a> A highly compressed summary of the emergence of the movement and the major personalities in it is found in North & DeMar, Christian Reconstruction<\/em>, ix\u2013xxi.\u00a0 Christian Reconstructionism was also the subject of my master\u2019s dissertation, Dominion Theology<\/em>.\u00a0 There I argued (correctly, I maintain) for its orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

      [206]<\/a> In a personal exchange where I congratulated an academic theologian on his account of presuppositional apologetics, I was most surprised when he said, \u2018I am no longer a presuppositionalist as classical (Calvinist) apologetics was so Thomist [so I have reverted to it].\u2019<\/em>\u00a0 Ironically, that Thomism was precisely the heart of Van Til\u2019s objection to Warfieldian (Old Princeton) apologetics.<\/p>\n

      [207]<\/a> The Hebrew word \u05b0\u05bc\u05e8\u05b5\u05d0\u05e9\u05b4\u05c1\u0596\u05d9\u05ea (re’shiyth) refers both to being first in position and in temporality (time), similarly reflected in languages such as Gaelic where the word \u2018toiseach\u2019 has both the positional and the temporal sense (hence, the title of the Irish PM).<\/p>\n

      [208]<\/a> Alston, \u201cSome Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists,\u201d 303\u201326.<\/p>\n

      [209]<\/a> Bosserman in The Trinity<\/em> provides us with a book length exposition of this complex, but foundational aspect of Van Tillian thought.\u00a0 The pertinent level of the argument here is that only<\/em> a Triune God guarantees the unity of thought and purpose, i.e., God is good all<\/em> the time.\u00a0 Anything more than three persons could mean possible pairing to the exclusion of the others and a disunity in the composite personality of God.\u00a0 It is also interesting to consider that the psychologist Jung advocated a quaternity for this very purpose that the fourth element of \u201cevil\u201d would \u201ccomplete\u201d God whereas it would do exactly the opposite, it would fragment the unity of the divine personality.<\/p>\n

      [210]<\/a> Bosserman, The Trinity,<\/em> 235\u201336.<\/p>\n

      [211]<\/a> Col 2:3, NAS.<\/p>\n

      [212]<\/a> A contemporary of Plantinga\u2019s recommended to the APA the term \u201calvinise\u201d to describe a rigorous deconstruction of what appeared to be a simple problem into its complex parts!\u00a0 For example, the common philosophical proposition that \u201csome things<\/em> do not exist\u201d was proved in a standard way by logicians by saying \u201cPegasus was a mystical beast from a fantasy, that proves there are some things<\/em> that do not exist.\u201d\u00a0 Plantinga later rejected that view with great rigor by drilling down into what \u201cthing\u201d necessarily entails.\u00a0 Similarly, Kenny, History,<\/em> 796, pays homage to Plantinga for \u201cunsolving\u201d<\/em> the \u201csolved\u201d<\/em> philosophical problem (after Russell) of the ontological argument.<\/p>\n

      [213]<\/a> Plantinga, \u201cAdvice to Christian Philosophers,\u201d 296\u2013315; \u201cAfterword,\u201d In Sennett, The Analytic Theist, 353\u201358.<\/p>\n

      [214]<\/a> Edgar & Oliphint, Christian Apologetics,<\/em> 589.\u00a0 As Edgar & Oliphint note, this has been a controversial aspect of Plantinga\u2019s approach in Reformed circles.<\/p>\n

      [215]<\/a> Bartholomew & Goheen, Christian Philosophy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

      [216]<\/a> Greg Bahnsen, a one-time student but later close friend of Van Til recounts his visits to Van Til\u2019s home after his retirement and his habit of walking every day, \u201cevangelizing\u201d the nuns at the convent close to where he lived.\u00a0 He also sent open letters of \u201cgospel hope\u201d to various national leaders.<\/p>\n

      [217]<\/a> Butler, \u201cReligious Epistemology Seminar,\u201d MB209\u2009ff.<\/p>\n

      [218]<\/a> Plantinga, & Robbins, \u201cOn Christian Philosophy,\u201d<\/em> 617\u201323.<\/p>\n

      [219]<\/a> Plantinga, \u201cAdvice to Christian Philosophers,\u201d 297.<\/p>\n

      [220]<\/a> Plantinga & Robbins, \u201cOn Christian Philosophy,\u201d<\/em> 618.<\/p>\n

      [221]<\/a> Bahnsen, Van Til\u2019s Apologetic, 640\u20131.<\/p>\n

      [222]<\/a> This issue is examined at great length with reference to Van Til\u2019s work contrasted with other apologetic methods by Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic<\/em>, ch.8.<\/p>\n

      [223]<\/a> Van Til, \u201cResponse to R.J. Rushdoony,\u201d 348.<\/p>\n

      [224]<\/a> Neurath, \u201cProtocol Statements,\u201d 91\u201399; Neurath, \u201cFoundations of the Social Sciences,\u201d 47.<\/p>\n

      [225]<\/a> Cat, \u201cOtto Neurath.\u201d<\/p>\n

      [226]<\/a> Schaeffer, \u201cHe Is There and He Is Not Silent,\u201d 276\u2013358.<\/p>\n

      [227]<\/a> Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics\u2014Stated and Defended.<\/em>, 241\u2013260.\u00a0 Bahnsen here performs a critique of Schaeffer in which he demonstrates Schaeffer was inconsistent and incoherent in the details of his apologetic whilst respecting his general accomplishments, \u201c[F]or the most part he has done a better job of relating biblical Christianity to the whole of life\u2026Though what he has to say has not been thorough in any one area, all of his works suggest valuable insights with which no substantial difference need be taken.\u201d <\/em>(Presuppositional Apologetics, <\/em>241.)<\/p>\n

      [228]<\/a> Packer, Francis A Schaeffer Trilogy, xi\u2013xiv.<\/p>\n

      [229]<\/a> The post-modern pragmatist, Richard Rorty, pointedly refused to do this in interviews with sympathetic interviewers, \u201cmoral condemnation is too easy here\u201d <\/em>(Rorty, Take Care of Freedom<\/em>, 96\u2013103.)\u00a0 Blackburn, one of the fiercest critics of Rorty on ethical grounds, asserted (politely) this demonstrated moral bankruptcy, in Blackburn Ruling Passions <\/em>and Truth<\/em>.<\/p>\n

      [230]<\/a> Bahnsen, Van Til\u2019s Apologetic,<\/em> 128\u201329. \u00a0According to Bahnsen who was taught by Van Til, he would challenge his students to unpack this aphoristic triplet to demonstrate that they had mastered the basic features of his apologetic philosophy.<\/p>\n

      [231]<\/a> Bahnsen, \u201cSocrates or Christ: The Reformation of Christian Apologetics,\u201d 191\u2013240.<\/p>\n

      [232]<\/a> William Edgar, \u201cIntroduction,\u201d<\/em> 3\u2009ff.<\/p>\n

      [233]<\/a> For example, see Chapter 1 \u2018On Method\u2019<\/em> in Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology,<\/em> first published 1845.\u00a0 The treatment of \u201ctheology as a science\u201d<\/em> suggests presuppositions based upon Enlightenment humanist thought rather than Reformation thought.\u00a0 Alister McGrath, Passion For Truth,<\/em> engages in a lengthy analysis of the domination of Enlightenment thought within the old Princeton and Barr pours caustic, ill-tempered scorn on Warfield for the \u201carchitectonic confidence in reason\u201d<\/em> (Barr, Fundamentalism<\/em>, 272).<\/p>\n

      [234]<\/a> Rushdoony, Van Til and the Limits of Reason, loc. 234.<\/p>\n

      [235]<\/a> Bahnsen, \u201cSocrates or Christ,\u201d 191\u2013240.<\/p>\n

      [236]<\/a> Bahnsen, Van Til, B B Warfield, and Abraham Kuyper<\/em>. \u00a0The interrelation between these men and how Van Til reconciled their apparently opposing positions with a novel synthesis, is explored in detail in an accessible fashion.\u00a0 Most of the material in this presentation is also found in written form in Bahnsen\u2019s \u201cSocrates or Christ.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 It is unclear whether the essay was updated in the later edition before Bahnsen\u2019s death in 1995; there are some indications the text as whole was updated for the reprinted edition.<\/p>\n

      [237]<\/a> Van Til, Christian Apologetics, 55\u201356.<\/p>\n

      [238]<\/a> Hodge & Warfield, \u201cInspiration,\u201d<\/em> Presbyterian Review.<\/p>\n

      [239]<\/a> How Warfield attempted to avoid this critical weakness was by asserting it was not possible to prove any error was present in the autograph (because we did not have the autographs), it had been introduced in the copying process\u2014a novel inversion of the text-critical principle.\u00a0 See Macneil, Scripture and the Post-Darwinian Controversy<\/em> for a discussion.<\/p>\n

      [240]<\/a> It should also be noted that though Kuyper formally <\/em>rejected apologetics, he nevertheless, in practice, engaged in a rigorous defence, regeneration, and application of Christian thought to the wider culture as evidenced in his Lectures <\/em>(1898).<\/p>\n

      [241]<\/a> See Van Til, Christian Apologetics<\/em> (2nd ed.), 56 n.1.<\/p>\n

      [242]<\/a> Plantinga, God and Other Minds.<\/p>\n

      [243]<\/a> Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief, x.<\/p>\n

      [244]<\/a> Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 217.<\/p>\n

      [245]<\/a> Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 217.<\/p>\n

      [246]<\/a> William Lane Craig was a case in point.\u00a0 Anderson, CVT and Plantinga<\/em> outlines this controversy.\u00a0 John Frame, a former student of Van Til, now full Professor, took issue with Craig over that assertion and it is a strange one; Van Til was recognized as an exceptional student by the noted metaphysician A.A. Bowman (then Professor of Logic) who offered him a graduate scholarship at Princeton.\u00a0 He studied Christian philosophy under Jellema (as Plantinga did) and was awarded a PhD in philosophy.<\/p>\n

      [247]<\/a> That is, many of his works were broad in scope and intent giving the impression for the uninitiated that they lacked focus.\u00a0 There were some notable exceptions to this criticism, both of his works dealing with neo-orthodoxy (1946\/1974) are recognized by friends and foes alike as systematic and rigorous critiques.<\/p>\n

      [248]<\/a> It was precisely these considerations that inspired Bahnsen to write his commentary and guide to Van Til, see Van Til, <\/em>xvii\u2009ff.\u00a0 Butler, Bahnsen,<\/em> gives firsthand testimony of conversations on this issue.\u00a0 The most explosive misinterpretation of Van Til was what he meant by \u201canalogical reasoning\u201d<\/em>\u2014for his detractors this was a retreat into irrationality; for Van Til it was a recognition of the qualitative difference in the quality of thinking between creator and creature.\u00a0 This was quite a different sense than how it had been previously used.<\/p>\n

      [249]<\/a> Anderson, If Knowledge Then God, 25\u201327.<\/p>\n

      [250]<\/a> \u00d3 Murchadha, Phenomenology of Christian Life, Preface.<\/p>\n

      \n
      \n
      \n
      \nThe Nature, Character, and Purpose of Philosophy<\/a>\n<\/div>\n
      \nBeyond Anti-Philosophy to Transcendentalism<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      3 A Christian Conception of Philosophy 3.1 Overview What we will endeavor to accomplish in this chapter is to build on the understanding of philosophy in the previous chapter and to work our way towards what a distinctively Christian conception of philosophy requires.\u00a0 From the assessment of the previous chapter, we can safely assume a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1176,"parent":1136,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1156","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\r\nA Christian Conception of Philosophy - Planet M Blog<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A Christian Conception of Philosophy - EPISTEMOLOGICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Christian Conception of Philosophy - Planet M Blog\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Christian Conception of Philosophy - EPISTEMOLOGICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Planet M Blog\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-07-25T16:12:14+00:00\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Frontmatter.jpg\" \/>\r\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1400\" \/>\r\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"2336\" \/>\r\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"137 minutes\" \/>\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\\\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\\\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\\\/\",\"name\":\"A Christian Conception of Philosophy - Planet M Blog\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\\\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\\\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/07\\\/Frontmatter.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-07-24T19:04:05+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-07-25T16:12:14+00:00\",\"description\":\"A Christian Conception of Philosophy - EPISTEMOLOGICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\\\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\\\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\\\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\\\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/07\\\/Frontmatter.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/07\\\/Frontmatter.jpg\",\"width\":1400,\"height\":2336,\"caption\":\"EPISTEMOLOGICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\\\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"THE FOUNDATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY \u2014 EPISTEMOLOGICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":3,\"name\":\"A Christian Conception of Philosophy\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/\",\"name\":\"Planet Macneil Blog\",\"description\":\"The blog of Dr Michael P\u00f2l Macneil PhD\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/78d80b09bb7f5dca3e2779fb6a2c2d33\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":[\"Person\",\"Organization\"],\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/78d80b09bb7f5dca3e2779fb6a2c2d33\",\"name\":\"Michael Macneil\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/8c23bafa3d0e8438466d9d51dd2b843fab8754f428006edc6c50c8d9b66d9fa1?s=96&r=g\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/8c23bafa3d0e8438466d9d51dd2b843fab8754f428006edc6c50c8d9b66d9fa1?s=96&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/8c23bafa3d0e8438466d9d51dd2b843fab8754f428006edc6c50c8d9b66d9fa1?s=96&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Michael Macneil\"},\"logo\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/8c23bafa3d0e8438466d9d51dd2b843fab8754f428006edc6c50c8d9b66d9fa1?s=96&r=g\"},\"description\":\"I write software and am studying part-time for a PhD in philosophy. I have an MSc in Electronic Engineering and an MA in Studies in Philosophy and Religion. I am a Microsoft Certified Professional with an MCSD. I have a teaching qualification in Physics and like most things science. Otherwise I like classic VWs, watching Rodney Howard-Browne, playing guitar and making computer music.\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/planetmacneil.org\\\/blog\"]}]}<\/script>\r\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Christian Conception of Philosophy - Planet M Blog","description":"A Christian Conception of Philosophy - EPISTEMOLOGICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\/","og_locale":"en_GB","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Christian Conception of Philosophy - Planet M Blog","og_description":"A Christian Conception of Philosophy - EPISTEMOLOGICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS","og_url":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\/","og_site_name":"Planet M Blog","article_modified_time":"2025-07-25T16:12:14+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1400,"height":2336,"url":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Frontmatter.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Estimated reading time":"137 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\/","url":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\/","name":"A Christian Conception of Philosophy - Planet M Blog","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Frontmatter.jpg","datePublished":"2025-07-24T19:04:05+00:00","dateModified":"2025-07-25T16:12:14+00:00","description":"A Christian Conception of Philosophy - EPISTEMOLOGICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Frontmatter.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Frontmatter.jpg","width":1400,"height":2336,"caption":"EPISTEMOLOGICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/a-christian-conception-of-philosophy\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"THE FOUNDATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY \u2014 EPISTEMOLOGICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS","item":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"A Christian Conception of Philosophy"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/","name":"Planet Macneil Blog","description":"The blog of Dr Michael P\u00f2l Macneil PhD","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/78d80b09bb7f5dca3e2779fb6a2c2d33"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-GB"},{"@type":["Person","Organization"],"@id":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/78d80b09bb7f5dca3e2779fb6a2c2d33","name":"Michael Macneil","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8c23bafa3d0e8438466d9d51dd2b843fab8754f428006edc6c50c8d9b66d9fa1?s=96&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8c23bafa3d0e8438466d9d51dd2b843fab8754f428006edc6c50c8d9b66d9fa1?s=96&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8c23bafa3d0e8438466d9d51dd2b843fab8754f428006edc6c50c8d9b66d9fa1?s=96&r=g","caption":"Michael Macneil"},"logo":{"@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8c23bafa3d0e8438466d9d51dd2b843fab8754f428006edc6c50c8d9b66d9fa1?s=96&r=g"},"description":"I write software and am studying part-time for a PhD in philosophy. I have an MSc in Electronic Engineering and an MA in Studies in Philosophy and Religion. I am a Microsoft Certified Professional with an MCSD. I have a teaching qualification in Physics and like most things science. Otherwise I like classic VWs, watching Rodney Howard-Browne, playing guitar and making computer music.","sameAs":["https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog"]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1156\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}