Van Til On The Rationality / Irrationality Problem Of Those Who Eliminate God

“The rationalists and the empiricists were quite wrong in thinking that man could reach out beyond sensuous experience and attain to knowledge of God conceptually. To solve the problem of uniting the facts of existence (matter) to the principles of rationality (form), Kant found it necessary to say that these principles are a priori forms of the human mind . As forms these principles need the purely non rational stuff of sensuous experience for their filling . By combining this purely abstract form of rationality and the equally abstract principle of pure contingency , Kant sought to save science. He sought by means of this combination to attain to the universality and objectivity of scientific knowledge .

Obviously this universality is, on this basis, located in the knowing subject . And this subject is certainly not God . For by definition there is no theoretical knowledge of God at all. The ultimate reference point for all knowledge is therefore placed in man. If then there is any relation of necessity in nature and any relation of order in history , these relations spring ultimately not from God but from man. Therefore, if God is to be revealed to man in nature or in history, he must be wholly revealed in it and wholly penetrable by the theoretical reason . And thus positive or statutory religion must become identical with natural religion . The incarnation must become the abstraction of ideal humanity .

However , on this view man himself too would be swallowed up by nature as nature in turn would be swallowed up by man . In other words , the only way by which man can retain his freedom or assert his autonomy , an autonomy in terms of which the whole of nature and history has to be constructed , is by means of pure negation . As autonomous and free , man must be as little known by his own conceptual reason as is his God , for if man were known to himself by means of this theoretical reason then he would no longer be he . He would then be reduced to nature . It is for this reason that Kroner’s phrase, “ethical dualism,” expresses so accurately Kant’s conception of the negative relation of nature to the human self .”

CVT
Christianity & Barthianism – p. 406

1.) In order to get form in touch with matter … in order to put concepts and precepts in relation to one another there is only one way to do so and that is by presupposing the God of the Bible and His Word. Man, who starts with man to reason his way to God will always reason his way to a God who is but man said loudly. Man cannot even know himself unless he presupposes God. Neither can man know nature or its law unless he presupposes God who alone can give man a working definition of both what man is as the presupposer and what nature is as that which is being presupposed.

2.) When CVT writes;

The ultimate reference point for all knowledge is therefore placed in man. If then there is any relation of necessity in nature and any relation of order in history, these relations spring ultimately not from God but from man.

He is fairly close to the point that Thomas Kuhn’s was making in “Structures of Scientific Revolutions.” Kuhn, by demonstrating how science isn’t particularly “scientific” in the way we commonly think of science as being just the collection of objective facts, and Van Til by demonstrating that the reason that is so is because man, apart from the God of the Bible, is the one subjectively determining what science will and will not be, are both making the point that the objective world isn’t necessarily objective. Van Til only pipes up to say that, contra Kuhn, that the world can be objective if the God of the Bible is the one presupposed in all our thinking.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

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