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Christian
Civilization is the Only Civilization
– In a Sense, Of Course
A Restatement of Cornelius Van Til's Argument for Christian Theism
By Michael H.
Warren, Jr.
Last revised: 4/23/08
Table
of Contents:
• Part I
• Part II: A Critique of Specific
Disciplines and Their Christian Reconstruction
.
. . [A]ll the
theistic arguments should really be taken together and reduced to the
one argument of the possibility of human predication.
God, as self-sufficient, as the One in whom the One and
the Many are equally ultimate, [as] the One in whom the persons of the
Trinity are interchangeably exhaustive, is the presupposition for the
intelligent use of words with respect to anything in the universe,
whether it be the trees of the garden or the angels in heaven.
Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to
Systematic Theology, (1974), p.102
I am afraid we cannot get rid of God
because we still believe in grammar.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the
Idols, Ch. 2
Insofar as I had any project in mind, it
was to reconcile Trotsky and the orchids. I only wanted to find some
intellectual or aesthetic framework that would let me – in a thrilling
phrase I came across in Yeats – “hold reality and justice in a single
vision.”
. . . As I tried to figure out what had
gone wrong, I gradually decided that the whole idea of holding reality
and justice in a single vision had been a mistake that a pursuit of
such a vision had been precisely what led Plato astray [sic].
More specifically, I decided that only religion – only a
non-argumentative faith in a surrogate parent who, unlike any real
parent, embodied love, power, and justice in equal measure – could do
the trick Plato wanted done. Since I
couldn't imagine becoming religious, and indeed had gotten more and
more raucously secularist, I decided that the hope of achieving a
single vision by becoming a philosopher had been a self-deceptive
atheist's way out.
Richard Rorty, “Wild
Orchids and Trotsky” (1993)
Intellectuals throughout history
have given their views as to what the source, goal and nature of
civilization
is. The ancient philosopher Plato
described a well-ordered civilization as a three-tiered hierarchy of
philosopher-kings, the soldier class, and the merchant class. The philosophers are the kings because they
are allegedly the most knowledgeable about the ideas of justice and the
good. Hegel offered a comprehensive
philosophy of life in which he said that the state is God, and the
ideal of
civilization is for all people to become unified under the State. Freud expressed the predominate view of 20th
Century intellectuals when he said that civilization is defined by the
degree
that a culture rejects the psychological projection of a loving, divine
Father
as the explanation for the mysteries of the world and embraces
rational,
scientific, materialistic explanations of the world.
In this essay I do not examine all of the
competing explanations for civilization in detail.
However, despite all their differences, all
non-Christian views of civilization have a common point of view that
allows for
a single refutation that applies to them all and allows for a single
proof (see
the introductory quote from Van Til above) that Christian Civilization
is the
only rationally possible civilization.
Some immediate responses to such a
thesis come to mind: Christian
Civilization the only civilization?
Surely you must be joking.
Christianity is only 2000 years old.
Weren’t there civilizations before then?
Haven’t there been civilizations since then that were not
significantly
influenced by Christianity? And isn’t
the concept of Christian civilization an oxymoron?
Religion is personal, subjective and
spiritual, independent of secular areas of life like civil government
and
science. And haven’t attempts at Christian
civilization proven themselves horrendous disasters, with the witch
trials, the
Inquisition, the Crusades and other religious wars?
The separation of church and state is
necessary to preserve freedom. The
Galileo affair showed that science and religion don’t mix.
Rejection of the idea of Christian
Civilization is what keeps us from returning to the Dark Ages. Everyone knows that. Don’t
you?!
Obviously, I am aware of all these
objections. But they are either false or
irrelevant to the question of the truth of Christianity.
Despite these objections, there is still a case
to be made for Christian Civilization, indeed, as the only possible
civilization. This essay will focus on
the philosophical case. I address the
specific historical events, like the witch trials and Galileo affair
elsewhere.[1] By in large, bringing up those past events as
a rebuttal to the philosophical case for Christian Civilization amounts
to the
logical fallacy of the ad hominem argument, which is a fallacy of
relevance. For example, self-professed
Marxists have acted inconsistently with Marxism, but that does not
prove that
the Marxist philosophy is false. And if
an opponent of Marxism says that he has refuted Marxism merely by
pointing to
allegedly terrible things that Marxists do when acting in conformity
with
Marxist doctrine, like taking from the rich and giving to the poor,
then the
opponent of Marxism has committed the fallacy of begging the question. The Marxist can respond, "So what?" Just because your view of ethics is different from someone else's doesn't prove that your view is right. You must prove that the other view is unsound. Likewise, when an atheist merely asserts that Christian
ethical
standards in a specific situation are “barbaric,” “cruel,” and all
sorts of
other words of ethical disapproval, the atheist is simply begging the
question.
The twentieth century was the
occasion of the most life-transforming scientific advances in history,
and
during this time the major institutions of science, as well as all the
other
major institutions of Western civilization, were dominated by
secularists.[2] For secularists this is extremely persuasive
evidence that the truth of Christianity is not a necessary foundation
for the
possibility of civilization. Words like
“progressive,” “science,” and “reason” are virtually equated with
secularism in
their minds. But if the transcendental
argument that I present is sound—that the existence of God is
necessary for
the possibility of science—then the fact that many atheists have
contributed a
great deal to scientific advances only shows that these atheists were
acting
inconsistently with atheism and were operating on stolen capital from
the
Christian worldview.[3] Athiest philosophers of the Twentieth Century labored mightily to account for science, but they have failed, as some leading philosophers of science have admitted.
The Historical
Universality of Christianity
What about the fact that
Christianity began only 2000 years ago?
How is that consistent with the claim that Christian
standards of
rationality and ethics apply universally, at all places and for all
history? First, while the earthly life
of Christ was an extremely important event in the history of the
religion that
now bears His name, there is an important sense in which Christianity
is a
religion that existed long before Christ’s incarnation.
Christ did not present Himself to a people
who practiced a completely alien religion from the one He proclaimed. Christ was a Jew who came to the Jews first
and Gentiles second (Matt. 23:37; John 1:11; Rom. 1:16).
He appeared to a people who had been
separated from the other nations as a nation of God’s own possession
from the
time of Abraham. The God of the Hebrews
was the same God that Jesus proclaimed.
He, in fact, claimed to be that God (John 8:56-59)! Christ came in fulfillment of prophecies that
extended back to the beginning of time (Gen. 3:15) and grew more
specific as
His appointed time approached (cf. Isa. 9:2-7).
Moreover, according to Biblical chronology, there has been
no moment in
history in which there has not been some people who worshipped the God
proclaimed by Jesus.[4] The incarnation of Christ did result in the
institution of many discontinuities from the Old Testament religious
system in
the way God was to be worshipped, but the discontinuities should not
blind us
to the many fundamental continuities.[5] As a non-Christian, you don’t believe all
that stuff that the Bible teaches about ancient history, but at least
you need
to confront Christianity on its own merits, rather than assuming the
unbiblical
view that Christianity arrived in history completely de novo
2000 years
ago.
Yet, there is a more important claim
to universality that Christianity makes than having adherents
throughout
history. Christianity has eternally
existed and is universal in the sense that the God of Christianity has
always
existed, has created everything that exists, and directs the entire
course of
history. It is the nature of God as
He is in Himself that is the unique doctrine of Christianity that
establishes
its truth as necessary for the very possibility of human rationality,
and thus
as necessary for the possibility of human civilization. If there exists a personal and universal God,
then one would expect Him to intervene into human affairs to engage in
personal
fellowship with His creatures. But the
existence of God is not dependent on people believing in Him. The God defended in this essay is
self-existent. He has life in
Himself. Even if no one in the world
acknowledged God’s existence, God would still exist, and His signature
on every
fact in the world would be evident to any who would want to see it.
Defining the Positions: Faith, Reason, and
Rational Faith
Another popular misconception about Christianity that must be corrected in order for my argument to be understood is how faith and reason are defined. The faith/reason distinction, as
popularly understood, as understood by atheists, and even as understood
by many
Christian theologians throughout history, is incompatible with the
nature of
God that I defend here. For the atheist,
even to make the distinction between faith and reason is to make the
case for
atheism, or at least the case for religion being nothing more than
emotional
subjectivism. Faith and reason are
completely distinct from one another.
Faith is a leap beyond reason. So
faith must be irrational, right? Mark
Twain said that “Faith is believing what you know ain't so.”[6] Friedrich Nietzche derided Christianity by
saying, “‘Faith’ means not wanting to know what is true.”[7] U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens defined religion under the U.S. Constitution by quoting Clarence Darrow: "The realm of religion . . . is where knowledge leaves off, and where faith
begins." [8] Immanuel Kant said that “I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.”[9] More recently, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have written popular anti-Christian books in which they set reason and faith in opposition to each other. But where does this way of defining faith and
reason come from? Do these definitions, favored by opponents of traditional Christianity, reflect an examination of Christianity on its own merits?
Does it accurately represent the Christian
view of faith? No. You can find self-professed Christians who find some agreement with these defintitions, but they are in opposition to the view of Christianity that I am defending here.
To attack Christianity by attacking faith as
a leap beyond reason is to attack a straw man. When
a Christian appeals to faith, he is not
appealing to the non-rational or irrational, but to an absolutely
rational
God. Christian faith is not a leap
beyond reason but a leap to, a trust in, the absolute rationality of
God,
rather than a trust in the frail, finite, and often sinful reasoning of
the human mind.
[10]
If the view of faith as a leap
beyond reason does not come from Christianity, where does it come from? Freud described the origin of religion as a
product of humanity’s evolutionary past in the “primal horde.”[11] These memories from humanity’s childhood have
been inherited by later generations like instinct has in other species. Freud claimed that a primal violent father
drove the sons out of the clan to claim exclusive possession of the
women; then
the sons killed the father, ate him, and took possession of the women. Once the father was gone the sons began to
feel guilty about their deed. From the
grave the father became a figure of fear and honor.
This honor of the unseen father then developed
into the projection of a wish by the primitive humans, facing a
mysterious,
frightening impersonal world, that a loving Father be in control of
nature. But as humans have investigated
their world and gained greater understanding of it, the need for a
divine
Father has been reduced proportionately.
As science and human civilization progress, the need for
religion fades
away like the smile on the Cheshire Cat.
Is this the Biblical view of human origins?
Of course not. Freud’s
explanation begs the question of the
naturalistic, evolutionary worldview. In
other words, when Freud characterizes religion as a leap beyond reason,
he
is describing an irrationalism that is inherent in the atheist
worldview. Faith that is a leap
beyond reason is
atheist spirituality, not Christian spirituality.
It is the atheist that believes that the universe is ultimately non-rational, that finite minds are the most advanced minds in the universe; thus when a human
believes something that his finite mind does not fully understand, he must be making
a leap
beyond reason. (Some atheists believe alien minds are the most advanced; but that's irrelevant to my point. The most advanced mind is still finite, leaving the universe ultimately determined by non-rational forces.) This is the opposite of the Christian view, in which an absolutely rational mind ultimately
controls
the universe, and thus appeals to faith are appeals to absolute
rationality. Christians may be said to make a leap of faith beyond human reason to a degree, but not beyond reason in an unqualified sense.
 There are formal similarities
between Christianity and atheism. Both
appeal to mystery and faith when
something is not fully understood by humans.
Both may say that they believe in a spiritual aspect of
life. But the content of these terms is
completely
different for the two worldviews. For
the atheist, faith is in “faith,” an unknowable beyond.
For the Christian, faith is faith in an
objective, absolutely rational person who makes Himself known to humans through propositional language. Unfortunately, many modern theologians have
been confused by the formal similarity and have characterized
Christianity in a
way that accepts the atheist content of these terms.
“Christianity” then becomes atheism dressed
up in the Christian terminology of “faith” and “spirituality.”
The truth is that the difference in
content between Christianity and
atheism could not be more striking:
Christianity believes in the ultimacy of the rational, and
atheism
believes in the ultimacy of the irrational.
Christianity represents the dominion of the Logos (John
1:1,14), the
Word, the Reason. The Logos is the
object of Christian worship and complete devotion.
Worship of any lesser rationality is
condemned as ignorant idolatry (Rom. 1:22-23; Rev. 19:10).
Atheism believes that history moves from
Mythos (religion, the irrational) to Logos (reason), making the
irrational the
ultimate source of all that exists.
Christianity believes that the Logos, an absolutely rational mind, stands behind the whole course of history, from beginning to end. The historical fall into
irrationalism and immorality after creation is eternally predestined by the Logos, and the remedy is provided by the Logos, so that creation moves
back into
harmony with the Logos through the power of the Logos.
Historical progress is possible only because
the Logos, an absolutely rational mind, stands behind the whole
process. Christianity is the most rationalistic philosophy imaginable. An absolutely rational mind controls whatsoever comes to pass.[12]
The difference between Christianity
and atheism turns out to be just the opposite of what atheists have
understood
it to be. Christianity is not trust in
the irrational while atheism is trust in reason. Rather,
Christianity represents an ultimate
rationalism, while atheism represents an ultimate irrationalism. In the atheist worldview, rationality and
ethics are the anomalies that require explanation.
In the Christian worldview, irrationalism and
evil are the anomalies. At the very
least, atheism, not Christianity, has the up-hill battle in explaining
how the
existence of human rationality makes sense in their worldview. But the atheist’s ultimate explanation for
anything can be only one thing, the irrational.
Therefore, in terms of the atheist worldview there can
never really be a
rational explanation for anything. On the basis of the wholly
irrational the
existence of rationality cannot be rationally explained.
Cornelius Van Til offers a vivid description
of the futility of atheism’s attempt to explain human rationality by an
appeal
to the non-rational:
Suppose we think of a man made of water
in an infinitely extended ocean of water. Desiring to get out of water,
he
makes a ladder of water. He sets this ladder upon the water and against
the
water and then climbs out of the water only to fall into the water. So
hopeless
and senseless a picture must be drawn of the natural man’s methodology
based as
it is upon the assumption that time or chance is ultimate. On his
assumption
his own rationality is a product of chance. On his assumption even the
laws of
logic which he employs are products of chance. The rationality and
purpose that
he may be searching for are still bound to be products of chance.[13]
Human irrationalism and evil are the
difficult things
to explain in the Christian worldview, but the Christian can live with
such
mysteries because the only alternative is to renounce all meaning, to
begin
with atheism’s ultimate irrationalism.
“Good,” “evil,” “reality,” “illusion,” and every other
human word would
be meaningless if atheism were true and the world were ultimately
meaningless. The atheist believes that
error and imperfection in the world imply the non-existence of a
perfect,
absolute God.[14] Rather, error and imperfection in the world require
a perfect, absolute God, because such concepts as “error” and
“imperfection,”
whether in the fields of mathematics, ethics, logic or science, would
be
meaningless without a perfect, absolutely rational standard by which to
identify occurrences of imperfection, and without an ultimately rational structure to the world which allows concepts, whether positive or negative, to be applied, whether rightly or wrongly, to the changing realm of human experience. If God did not exist, it is not
merely
personal, psychological feelings of having a meaningful life that would
suffer,
but rational meaning would suffer.
Now that the tables are turned and the
atheists are
pegged as the irrationalists and the Christians as the defenders of
reason,
many atheists will protest, “But we don’t believe in the ultimacy of
the irrational,
just the non-rational. Matter is
not mind, but matter can be rationally understood.”
In response, I say that it is fine by me if
you want to characterize your position that way. But
the conclusion of my argument is that a
universe that is ultimately non-rational cannot give rise to
rationality, and
in that sense atheism is ultimately irrational.
Kant was far more consistent with the implications of
atheism than many
atheists are willing to be when he openly identified the source of
sense
experience (the “noumena”) as irrational, as something that is
impossible to be
an object of human knowledge. Kant was
awakened from his dogmatic slumbers and compelled to develop a
philosophy that
would save science as a result of reading David Hume’s failed attempt
to build
a theory of knowledge purely on the basis of sense experience of
“non-rational”
matter. I believe that Kant also failed
to save science, and that Christian Theism is the only philosophy that
can save
science, but at least Kant deserves commendation for pursuing greater
logical
consistency in defense of atheist philosophy than other atheists have
had the
courage to do.
The One
and the
Many
Now that Christian Theism and its most obvious foil, atheism, have been properly defined, it's time to spell out the argument for the exclusive rationality of Christianity in more detail. One might object that there are more positions than just materialistic atheism and Christianity, but in the argument below, I will define an issue (the one and the many) and cover all the possible positions on that issue, so that for this issue, the scope of the argument is universal, even though it does not
settle all details of all possible worldviews. As Eckart Förster explains:
"A transcendental argument . . . in order to establish a particular condition
of knowledge or experience, proceeds by considering an alternative, that is, the
negation of the condition and, subsequently, demonstrates its internal
incoherence. Clearly, this exhausts the field of possible alternatives to
this condition. For although one may, perhaps, imagine different
philosophical positions or conceptions based on the negation of the original
condition, this would not add to the number of alternatives to it."[15]
The case for Christianity depends on its ability to answer
the problem of the one and the many. By considering the Christian position of the equal ultimacy of the one and the many and the negation of that position (the one and the many being originally in abstraction from each other), I have covered all the possible alternatives to this particular foundational Christian position.
 Whether unity or multiplicity is the ultimate
determiner of the nature of the world is an
ancient philosophical debate.
In the famous painting by Raffael, The School of Athens,
Plato
and Aristotle stand side-by-side in the center of many other famous
Greek
thinkers. Plato is pointing one
finger
up to the abstract unity of ideas, and Aristotle is opening all the
fingers on
one hand, palm down, toward the diversity of the material, empirical
world. Some philosophers, like Plato,
have emphasized the one as ultimate.
Others, like Aristotle, have emphasized the many as
ultimate. Still others, like Immanuel
Kant, have tried
to give equal credit to both the one and the many, saying that they
begin
abstracted from each other, and then are combined by the human mind to
create
knowledge.
The Christian view differs from all of
these. Even though the object of Christian
worship
is the Logos, this does not mean that Christians side with Greek
rationalists
against empiricists. The Greek Logos was
a unity abstracted from all diversity.
Plato, for example, regarded the material, changing world
of history as
the object of mere opinion, whereas the world of the abstract Forms was
the
only true object of knowledge. That is
not the Christian view. A God that is an
impersonal, abstract principle of unity is the God of the philosophers,
not the living, historically-active
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Christianity does not deprecate the
material and
historical as inherently evil or illusory.
To state the obvious, the Bible teaches that God created
the material,
historical world, and it was good (Gen. 1).
God inspired human prophets in the midst of history to
deliver His
words. God established laws and
ordinances pertaining to everything from sex, to economics, to politics. He performed miracles in the midst of history. He guides the entire course of history, down
to the smallest detail of the number of hairs on your head (Matt.
10:30). The Logos Himself even became
flesh and lived
among us (John 1:14). Christ offered
observable evidence for his claims to those who doubted (Matt. 11:2-6;
John
20:24-30). Peter and Paul appealed to
eye-witness testimony in support of the fact that the resurrection was
a
historical event rather than a “cleverly devised myth” (2 Peter 1:16; 1
Cor.
15:3-11), and Paul argued that if Christ were not physically
resurrected from
the dead, then the Christian faith is futile and believers are to be
pitied
above all men (1 Cor. 15:12-19).
Christianity is, without a doubt, a historical religion. But as with the historical universality
mentioned
above, the most important fact for our present purposes is not any
particular
intervention of God into history, but the nature of God as He is in
Himself
that allows His contact with the historical.
The Greek view, held in common by
Aristotle and Plato
and others, was that matter is the principle of individuation, the
source of
diversity in the world; and it stands on the other end of “The Great
Chain of
Being” from Being or Form. Matter tends
toward the non-being end of the chain.
Being is the principle of unity in abstraction from
diversity (see diagram).
Christianity rejects this abstraction of
the one from
the many. The Christian view is that
unity and diversity are equally ultimate. They are eternally related to one
another in
God, the source of all the unity and the diversity of the world. This is clearly reflected in the orthodox
view of the ontological Trinity.[16] There are three distinct persons, yet they
are the same God. The plurality of
persons cannot be reduced to modes of a more basic unity.
Nor is the unity destroyed by the diversity.
Furthermore, the unity of God’s personhood
involves a unity of knowledge of all particular facts, both within His
own
being and in His creation. God is
eternally omniscient, which means that His concepts relate to all the
particular facts that have ever existed or ever will exist. All facts outside of God originate as a
creation of God according to His eternal, comprehensive plan. The meaning of every fact and its
relationship to other facts is imputed by God.
He determines the denotation and all the possible
connotations of every
fact. Because of God’s eternal
omniscience, particular facts never exist in complete abstraction from
universal concepts.
Historian Charles Norris Cochran explains
the
uniqueness of Christianity compared to the philosophy of Classical
civilization, which Christianity defeated:
The revelation of Christ was the
revelation of the
Divine Nature as the Trinity.
Accordingly, in the Trinity, Christian wisdom discovers
that for which
Classicism had so long vainly sought, vis. the logos or
explanation of
being and motion, in other words, a metaphysic of ordered process. In so doing it does justice to the element of
truth contained alike in the claims of classical materialism and
classical
idealism; while, at the same time, it avoids the errors and absurdities
of
both.[17]
Unlike
Classicalism, in which the one and the many begin abstracted from each
other,
in the Christian logos there is an equal ultimacy of one the
and the
many in their many expressions: being and motion, order and process,
idea and
matter. This logos was not
an escape from history into pure subjective emotionalism, but was a
comprehensive philosophy of life. To
quote Cochran again:
[The Christians’] revolt was not from
nature; it was
from the picture of nature constructed by classical scientia,
together
with its implications for practical life.
And what they demanded was a radical revision of first
principles as
presupposition to an adequate cosmology and anthropology.
The basis for such a revision they held to
lie in the logos of Christ, conceived of revelation, not of
‘new’ truth,
but of truth which was as old as the hills and as everlasting. This they accepted as an answer to the
promise of illumination and power extended to mankind and, thus, the
basis for
a new physics, a new ethic and, above all, a new logic, the logic of
human
progress. In Christ, therefore, they
claimed to possess a principle of understanding superior to anything
existing
in the classical world.[18]
As defended in this essay, this unique
principle of
understanding for all of life, the Christian-theistic view of God, can
be
described as the “Concrete Universal” or the “Absolute.”
Hegel used these terms to describe the ideal
toward which humanity evolves as abstract unity (the universal) and
abstract
diversity (the concrete) become synthesized.
The historical process is one of “God” (which Hegel
identified as all
the world including humanity) gradually achieving self-consciousness as
the one
and the many are synthesized. Hegel’s
ideal is one that is achieved only in the distant future.
In contrast, the Christian Concrete Universal
has always existed. He has been fully
self-conscious from all eternity. Unity
and diversity have been synthesized from all eternity in God. Since God is the source of all the unity and
all the diversity that exists, we can use the term “absolute” to
describe God’s
eternal nature. If any sort of unity or
diversity of the world could arise independently of a being, then that
being
cannot properly be called absolute. For
the remainder of this essay I will use “concrete universal God” and
“absolute
God” interchangeably to designate the distinctive view of God that I am
defending.
The Heart of the
Argument
In terms of the one and the many, all the
different
views can be reduced to only two possibilities.
Either unity and diversity are eternally related to one
another, or they
originally exist abstracted from each other.
In terms of the second choice, there are three
possibilities: (1) Only an abstract
diversity originally
exists, (2) only an abstract unity originally exists, or (3) abstract
diversity
and abstract unity both originally exist, only later to become
positively
related (synthesized) to each other. But
regardless of which of these latter three options one chooses, there
are only
two basic worldviews: (I) The Christian
worldview, which, affirms an eternal concrete universal – God, and (II)
the
non-Christian worldview, which denies it, and thereby affirms an
abstract one
and/or many as the ultimate determiner of the world. 
So which view is true?
The problem with the abstract one and many
view is that neither an abstract one nor an abstract many can be an object of
knowledge, and the abstract one and the abstract many cannot become
positively
related to one another to become objects of knowledge because they each
exclude
the other by hypothesis. Trying to add a
blank (abstract unity) to chaos (abstract diversity) to create
knowledge and an
intelligible world is like trying to add two zeros together to
produce a
positive number.[19] The rational cannot be derived from the
wholly irrational. It is as futile as
trying to string an infinite number of beads that have no holes
(abstract
particulars) onto an infinite string that has no ends that can be found
(abstract unity).[20]
The proof for the existence of God is that
God’s existence is necessary
for the very possibility of rationality.
Inescapable evidence for God’s existence is found in every
fact of experience and every statement uttered by man. Without God, predication is impossible, "with respect to anything in the universe, whether it be the trees of the garden or the angels in heaven."[21] Predication is when properties are attributed to objects. If all is one, then all properties could be attributed to all objects. That would lead to irresolvable contradictions. It would be just as true that an object is black as it is white, at the same time and in the same respect. Any distinctions would be meaningless.[22] Hegel criticised this view that "all is one" as a "night in which, as we say, all cows are black -- that
is the very naïveté of emptiness of knowledge."[23] Two plus two would not equal four. Everything would equal one. Everything would be a pure blank.
On the other hand, if diversity were ultimate, no properties could be attributed to objects because there would be no relationship between any two facts. There would not even be a relationship between the human mind and any other fact:
It is clear that upon pragmatic basis, and for that matter upon antitheistic basis in general, there can be no object-object relation, i.e., there can be no philosophy of nature, so that the sciences become impossible, and no philosophy of history, so that the past cannot be brought into relation with the present nor the future with the present. Then there can be no subject-object relation, so that even if it were conceivable that there were such a thing as nature and history,
I would be doomed to ignorance of it. In the third place, there can be no subject-subject relation, so that even if there were such a thing as nature and history, and even if I knew about it, I could never speak to anyone else about it. There would be Babylonian confusion.[24]
If the past, present and future could not be related to each other, there would be not even be unity of the subject (the individual person) over time. Therefore no person could rely on memory; there would be no communicate within the person. This would be a world of pure chaos.
Even making the statement “God
does
not exist” would be impossible if God did not exist. No statement can be made
about chaos, abstract plurality. Without
any order to the world, words would never have a consistent meaning. “This is x” would be equivalent to “This is not x.” “God does not exist” would be equivalent to
“God does exist.” The words “God,”
“does,” “not,” and “exist” would suffer the same possibility of becoming
their opposites, or anything else; nor would there be any relationship between any of the words. To
say that God does not exist is to make a universal negative claim, yet on the
basis of
a plurality that excludes all unity, universal claims are not possible. On the other hand, on the basis of an
abstract unity as ultimate, no words would have any content. Once again, "is" would be equivalent to "is not." All would be a blank. God,
as a concrete universal, must exist in
order for the statement “God does not exist” to be intelligible. Antitheism presupposes theism.[25]
As a finite product of a changing world,
man himself is in constant
flux. From this standpoint, man has no
basis for knowledge of any universal that would allow him to predicate
“This is
true” concerning anything. As Van Til
explains,
If
man is made the final reference point in predication, knowledge cannot
get
under way, and if it could get under way it could not move forward.
That is to
say, in all non-Christian forms of epistemology there is first the idea
that to
be understood a fact must be understood exhaustively. It must be
reducible to a
part of a system of timeless logic. But
man himself and the facts of his experience are subject to change. How
is he
ever to find within himself an a priori resting point? He
himself is on
the move. . . . Every effort of man to
find one spot that he can exhaustively understand either in the world
of fact
about him or in the world of experience within, is doomed to failure.
If we do
not with Calvin presuppose the self-contained God back of the
self-conscious
act of the knowing mind of man, we are doomed to be lost in an endless
and
bottomless flux.
But granted that man could get started on
the way to
learning by experience on a non-Christian basis he could add nothing
new to
what he already knows. There would be nothing new. If it was known it
would be
no longer new. As long as it was new it would be unknown. Thus the old
dilemma
that either man must know everything and he need ask no questions, or
he knows
nothing and therefore cannot ask questions, remains unsolved except on
the
basis of the Reformed Faith. . . . By
presupposing the God of eternal self-affirmation man can get on the way
to
learning because he knows God when he first appears upon the scene. He
has
knowledge of self for what he really is. He also can add to his
knowledge since
the new facts that he learns about are already known and not new to
God.
Therefore they are related to what man already knows in true coherence.[26]
If any fact were known, if the absolute
statement
“This is true” were attributed to the fact, it would no longer be part
of the
flux but be part of the abstract oneness of timeless logic, in which
case the
fact would be timeless, not new, and no longer an individual fact, but
an
abstract universal. Abstract
individuality would be sacrificed to abstract unity.
As Goethe said, “When the individual speaks
it is, alas, no longer the individual that speaks.” And more precisely,
such a
fact made a part of timeless logic could not even be known then because
it
would be a completely empty concept. For
there to be any intelligible facts, the particulars of experience must
be
originally related to an exhaustive system of logic.
There must be the absolute mind of God in
back of man’s mind and the world. The
universal concepts in the mind of God must be eternally and
exhaustively
related to all the particulars of history. Without
God, explaining human rationality
becomes as futile as the man made of water in an infinite sea of water
trying
to escape the water on a ladder of water.
Beginning with man as a product of particulars existing in
abstraction
from rational unity, logic could never be applied by man to the world: “If you have a bottomless sea of Chance, and
if you, as an individual, are but a bit of chance, by chance
distinguished from
other bits of chance and if the law of contradiction has by chance
grown within
you, the imposition of this law on your environment is, granted it
could take
place, a perfectly futile activity.”[27]
God is the missing link between the object an subject of knowledge (the thing known: the object; and the knower: the subject). Philosophers who have tried to ground "objectivity" in the empirical facts to the exclusion of any rational interpretation have become lost in a meaningless chaos of unrelated particulars. Philosophers who have tried to ground "objectivity" in unchanging laws of logic in order to avoid
the untamed flux of experience have lost all connection with the empirical world and are left with a timeless emptiness. The better ones have recognized the need for both to account for knowledge, but cannot bring the two together because they begin with them in abstraction from each other. The Christian view of the concrete universal God is the only way to give both the object and subject a constructive role in human knowledge, and consequently the only way for there to be human knowledge. The
object of human experience and the human mind are able to have fruitful contact because they both have their origin in God, in whom facts and concepts are exhaustively linked from all eternity.
In summary, the Transendental Argument for the Existence of God is as follows:
A.1. Either unity and diversity are related from all
eternity, or they are not originally related.
A.2. If
not, either (1) abstract unity is ultimate, (2) abstract diversity is ultimate, or
(3) they are both ultimate in original abstraction from each other.
B. Predication
is the application of attributes to objects.
C.1. Predication is
logically consistent with unity and diversity being eternally related (i.e. all predication is eternally determined).
C.2. Predication is logically inconsistent with
unity being ultimate because all attributes would be attributes of all objects,
even attributes that are inconsistent with each other.
C.3. Predication is logically inconsistent with
diversity being ultimate because without unity, no attributes could apply to
any objects.
C.4. Predication is logically inconsistent with
the unity and diversity in original abstraction from each other because
abstract unity excludes all diversity, and abstract diversity excludes all
unity, and each of these is logically inconsistent with predication per C.2.
and C.3.
D. Unity and diversity being related from
all eternity describes the God of the Bible (by the Calvinist interpretation),
who has determined the relationship of all objects to all attributes from all
eternity.
E. From C and D, the existence of the God
of the Bible is necessary for the possibility of predication.
QED.
Christ v. Kant
Kant recognized that, abstracted from each
other, the
one and the many cannot be objects of knowledge in his famous statement
that
“Concepts without percepts are empty, and percepts without concepts are
blind.”[28] (“Percepts” being the abstract diversity
arising from sense perception.)
But he mistakenly believed that the two abstractions could
be combined
by the autonomous human mind to create the intelligible world. As many have recognized, at the very least,
Kant’s view results in solipsism (that you are the only person that you
can
know exists) and is self-refuting in that it requires Kant to make
knowledge
claims about the noumenal realm (realm of pure abstraction), which,
according
to Kant’s own view, cannot be an object of knowledge.
But the basic problem, as noted above, is
that since an abstract one and abstract many exclude each other by
hypothesis,
they cannot relate to each other except in terms of a head-on collision.
The Christian view can be understood as
the mirror
image of Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” that placed the human mind at
the
center of the universe as the autonomous, original source of knowledge. The autonomous God, rather than autonomous
man, is placed at the center of the universe as the original source of
knowledge.[29] The Christian view is solipsistic in the
sense that there is no other autonomous mind except God’s. All other minds exist because of God’s ex
nihilo creation of them, and thus are completely dependent on Him
for their
existence and functioning. On the
Christian view, the one and the many are eternally related in the mind
of God,
whereas on Kant’s view the human mind creates knowledge from the raw
(i.e.
irrational) material of abstract unity and plurality.
On the Christian view, the human mind is receptively
reconstructive of God’s original knowledge.
Humans are to think God’s thoughts after Him, applying His
absolute word
to particular situations. On Kant’s
view, the human mind is originally constructive of knowledge,
trying to
create a rational world from the infinite sea of irrationalism from
which it
has been generated.
That God’s mind is the only autonomous
mind and God’s
world the only world, nevertheless, overcomes the problem of solipsism. God can communicate with man because man is
created in God’s image. The mind of man
is created to be able to receive communication (revelation) from God. Humans can communicate with each other
because they have a common Creator.
Humans can gain knowledge of the facts of the external
world as the
facts truly are, “in themselves,” because the facts are the creation of
an
absolutely rational mind, in whose image man is created.
The facts of the world and the mind of man
are fitted to one another.
Hume:
Why You Should be a Christian (or The Warfare of Science with Atheology)
An example of the irrationalism to which a
philosophy
based on abstract particularity leads is the empiricism of David Hume. Hume is widely known for his arguments
against Christianity, and his empiricist approach to knowledge is the
received
view among modern atheists. But Hume
should also be credited with demonstrating the absurdity of atheism,
or at
least an atheism that begins with the abstract particularity of
experience as
the ultimate source of knowledge. Hume
noted that, based purely on experience, nothing can be said to exist
but the
discrete moment. That there are
cause-and-effect
relationships between various perceptions cannot be known from
experience. Any necessity that
might connect
various perceptions is not itself a perception.
Abstract concepts like law, logic and identity are applied
by the human
mind to perceptions, but they themselves are not perceptions. They all involve continuity over time, but
bare experience gives us nothing but the discrete moment.
Or put another way, since we have no
experience of the future, experience itself provides no basis for
believing
that the future will be anything like the past.
Hume resorted to custom and habit as explanations for our
belief in the
regularity of nature, but custom and habit themselves presuppose
continuity
over time, and discrete experience can provide no basis for continuity
over
time.
Knowledge of the self is undermined
because presumably
the self is a thing that persists through great lengths of time, but
there is
no one perception that lasts as long as the self is supposed to. Consequently, not only does naturalistic
empiricism undermine knowledge of the future, it undermines knowledge
of the
past. Knowledge of the past depends on
the continuity of memory and personal identity. But since the discrete moments of sense experience do not
provide a
basis for continuity over time, knowledge of the past, including one’s
own past
existence, is inconsistent with the claim that all knowledge is through
sense
experience. Hume’s atheism reduces to
absurdity. On the basis of it he can
have knowledge of neither the external world nor himself, neither the
past nor the future. His view of knowledge does not allow for laws of nature, confirmation of theories by predicting future events, or repeatability of experiments. Although Hume’s views are
standard among modern atheists, it provides no basis for human
rationality, science, or
the advancement of civilization. The
outcome of his philosophy was despair, ignorance, and “the deepest
darkness,”
not intellectual enlightenment. Hume
lamented:
Where am I, or what?
From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what
condition shall I
return? Whose favour shall I court, and
whose anger must I dread? What beings
surround me? and on whom have I any influence, or who have any
influence on me?
I am confounded with all these
questions, and begin fancy myself in the most deplorable condition
imaginable,
inviron’d with the deepest darkness, and utterly depriv’d of the use of
every
member and faculty.[30]
Kant
tried to save science from Hume’s skepticism, but philosophers widely
acknowledge his failure, as explained above.
Atheists have no claim on principle for being the
guardians of
science. The famous atheist Bertrand
Russell
wrote:
That scientific inference requires, for its validity,
principles which
experience cannot even render probable is, I believe, an inescapable
conclusion
from the logic of probability. . . . To
ask, therefore, whether we "know" the postulates of scientific
inference is not
so definite as it seems. . . . In the
sense in which "no" is the right answer we know nothing whatsoever, and
"knowledge" in this sense is a delusive vision.
The perplexities of philosophers are due, in a large
measure, to their
unwillingness to awaken from this blissful dream.[31]
The application of laws (unity) to facts
(diversity) is only possible on the assumption that the concrete
universal God
exists. Christian-theistic science is
the only possible science.
The Intellectual Fool's Deal with the Devil
 Atheists think that they have
struck a deal with
religious believers. They have said, “Go
ahead; have heaven and the afterlife, whatever one can know about such
things. We will take the earth, science,
and the kingdoms of this world.” Any
religion that would make such a deal is not true Christianity. In reality, atheist rationalists have struck
a deal with atheist irrationalists, though the latter may call
themselves
Christians and use Christian terminology.
But by rejecting the kingdom of God,
the kingdom of an absolutely rational God, the atheists have lost
heaven and earth,
faith and science. God owns all that
exists. The Father gave Christ all
authority “in heaven and on earth” (Matt.28:18).
The meek[32]
shall inherit the earth (Matt. 5:5), to a great extent prior to the
Last
Judgment (Rom. 11:12,15) and completely after it (Rev. 21). By trying to explain the world without God,
atheists, though “professing to be wise, they became fools” (Rom. 1:22). Or as it may be translated, “The more they
called themselves philosophers, the more they became stupid.” And as the Apostle Paul observes elsewhere,
“Where is the wise man? Where is the
scribe? Where is the debater of this
age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom
of this world?” (1 Cor. 1:20). Atheism
was well-described by Shakespeare’s character Macbeth when he says life
is
nothing but “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying
nothing.” Atheism reduces to
absurdity. “The fool has said in his
heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1).
Atheism cannot account for knowledge of anything, whether
in heaven or
on earth. God rules over all.
In becoming a Christian, one does
not make a blind leap beyond reason.
Salvation is not just a ticket to heaven.
It is not merely moral transformation.
It is deliverance from ignorance and
darkness, from the “futility in their mind, being darkened in their
understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance
that is
in them” (Eph.4:17-18). “The fear of the
Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1:7), for in Christ “are
hidden all
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3).
To escape irrationalism, to escape the
darkness, to escape atheism, you must pray for mercy from the Light of
the
world, and your mind will be renewed unto knowledge.
The Irresolvable
Rationalist/Irrationalist Dialectic Tension
Viewing the world in terms of unity and
plurality being abstracted from
one another, the atheist is trapped in an irresolvable dialectic
tension
between rationalism and irrationalism.
In terms of his ultimate beliefs about the one and the
many, the
atheist’s descriptions of the world, in every statement that he utters,
cannot
be but flatly contradictory on its own premises.[33] Predication and knowledge require both
the
one and the many, but since the atheist views these as abstracted from
each
other, he must be a rationalist (appealing to abstract law) and an
irrationalist (appealing to abstract, isolated particulars) at the same
time.
The irrationalist must be a rationalist because nothing can be said
about a
purely indeterminate reality. And the
rationalist must be an irrationalist because nothing can be said about
a
timeless, blank unity. Van Til explains:
The Sophists are as able to refute Plato
as Plato is to refute the Sophists. For Plato’s highest law, his
absolute
universal is a purely empty form. If
anything is to be said of it this must be done by making this form
correlative
to the idea of pure contingency. If Plato speaks he thereby becomes a
relativist. He has then taken pure contingency into his pure absolute.
He, as
well as the Sophist, must, if he speaks at all, contradict himself in
every
word that he speaks. To make an appearance of justification for their
predication on any subject the Sophist and the Platonist must take in
each
other’s washings. Pure form and pure
“matter” or pure contingency are correlatives to one another. . . . But as to logical priority neither can “make
peace with the law of contradiction,” neither can offer a positive
foundation
the basis of which the law of contradiction can be employed at all. It
is only
if the Christian position, with its teachings of the triune God as the
creator
and redeemer of men be one’s starting-point that one can speak without
contradiction. Only in Christianity is skepticism answered.[34]
When the atheist speaks directly about
ultimate matters, the
contradiction at the basis of his thinking becomes evident. As an irrationalist, emphasizing the many,
the atheist will claim that we cannot know anything about ultimate
reality. But even in that statement, the
atheist is relying on the most extreme form of rationalism, for he is
making a
universal, negative claim about the nature of ultimate reality – that
it is
unknowable and that Christianity cannot
be true. He has been known to say,
“Christians
are wrong because nobody knows ultimate truth.”
He is making an absolute statement that there are no
absolutes.
As a rationalist the atheist will make the
absolute, universal claim
that the Bible has been proven wrong by science, allegedly the source
of all
genuine human knowledge; and then as an irrationalist say that, because
science
is based on a piecemeal gathering of finite experiences, humans can
never know
absolutes. The atheist may try to get
around this contradiction by saying that science proves that the Bible
is probably
not true; but he fails to realize that probability depends on a
universal claim
that limits the number of possibilities.
We can calculate the probability that a certain number
will be rolled
with dice only because we do not live in a world of chaos, in which
dots might
appear, disappear, or become something other than dots with each roll.
On the one hand the atheist will say that
he is an opened-minded
scientist and that anything can happen in nature, but then will say
that nature
operates according to unbreakable laws so that supernatural
intervention into
nature could never happen.
Likewise, the atheist believes that he has
free will, but also believes
that nature, in which he is wholly immersed, behaves according to
unbreakable
laws. But since this “freedom” is an
absence of order, a pure contingency, and nothing can be said about
pure
contingency, the atheist is free only in so far as he has no knowledge
of his
freedom; and to the extent that the atheist knows himself, he cannot be
free.
In defense of “freedom” the atheist will
denounce moral absolutes and
the “judgmental” people who appeal to them, not recognizing that the
pronouncement “Do not judge” is itself an absolute moral command and
condemnation of those who judge. At one
moment the atheist is denouncing judgementalism, and the next moment
condemning
capitalists and killers of a rare species of sucker fish with words of ethical judgment as
absolute
as those delivered by Moses from Mount Sinai. The rationalist-irrationalist tension of
atheism results in the perpetual charade of atheists on university
campuses,
who, in pursuit of the cause of diversity and open-minded inquiry, try
to
silence Christians and invent a new code of moral absolutes currently
known as
“political correctness.”
Atheism’s rationalist-irrationalist
dialectic tension is the Mother of
All Contradictions because it undermines the very possibility of logic. Given that logic is unintelligible except on
the assumption of the truth of Christianity, even to identify that
atheism is
self-contradictory on its own premises requires one to presuppose the
truth of
Christianity. Atheism presupposes
Theism.
As finite creatures, we inevitably face
contradictions that are merely
apparent rather than real, but which we cannot resolve because of our limited
knowledge, such as light having the properties of both a wave and a
particle,
and God being one person in a sense and yet three persons in another
sense.[35] We can live with these contradictions. They don’t undermine the possibility of
rationality because we assume that there is no ultimate contradiction. The mysteries are simply the product of our
limited knowledge. The Christian can
live with apparent contradictions because there is an absolutely
rational God
in whom it is possible to resolve logical problems that exceed the
abilities of
finite minds. Atheism’s
rationalist-irrationalist tension undermines the possibility of
rationality
because, by hypothesis, there is no absolute mind in which logical
problems
could find their resolution.
Consequently, though the unbeliever often makes ad hominem judgments about the hypocrisy of Christians,
it is the
unbeliever who is Janus-faced in all his ways, psychologically,
epistemologically, and morally.
The non-Christian’s hypocrisy here is not
a matter of failing to conform
to their professed philosophy, but a matter of conforming to it,
because
logical contradiction is inherent in their philosophy.
The atheist boldly makes the universal claim
that God does not exist. The agnostic
tries to be more modest by saying that God probably does not exist, or
we
cannot know if God exists. But the
agnostic is still sneaking in universals:
1) The universal that we live in an orderly universe which
allows the
calculation of probabilities, or the more blatant universal that we cannot know if God exists, 2) either of which entail the universal claim that a certain type of God does not exist: A God who is inescapably known through every fact in creation,
both in the
observable world as well as in each person’s own consciousness, i.e. the Christian God. Van Til explains the hidden, inherent
contradictions in the agnostic’s thinking:
[Agnosticism] is, in the first place,
psychologically
self-contradictory upon its own assumptions. Agnosticism wants to hold
that it
is reasonable to refrain from thorough epistemological speculations
because
they cannot lead to anything. But in order to assume this attitude,
agnosticism
has itself made the most tremendous intellectual assertion that could
be made
about ultimate things. In the second place, agnosticism is
epistemologically
self-contradictory on its own assumptions because its claim to make no
assertion about ultimate reality rests upon a most comprehensive
assertion
about ultimate reality. . . . [T]he alternative is not between saying
something
about ultimate reality or not saying anything about it, but that the
alternative is rather between saying one thing about it or another.
Every human
being, as a matter of fact, says something about ultimate reality.
It should be noted that those who claim to
say
nothing about ultimate reality not only do say something about it just
as well
as everybody else, but they have assumed for themselves the
responsibility of
saying one definite thing about ultimate reality. They have assumed the
responsibility of excluding God. We have seen again that a God who is
to come
in afterward is no God at all [i.e. a God that is not sovereign over all existence – M.W.]. Agnosticism cannot say that it is open-minded
on the question of the nature of ultimate reality. It is absolutely
closed-minded on the subject. It has one view that it cannot, unless
its own
assumption be denied, exchange for another. It has started with the
assumption
of the non-existence of God and must end with it. Its so-called
open-minded
attitude is therefore a closed-minded attitude. The agnostic must be
open-minded and closed-minded at the same time. And this is not only a
psychological self-contradiction, but an epistemological
self-contradiction. It
amounts to affirmation and denial at the same time. Accordingly, they
cancel
out one another, if there is cancellation power in them. . .
Incidentally, we may point out that, in
addition to
being psychologically and epistemologically self-contradictory, the
agnostic is
morally self-contradictory. His contention was that he is very humble,
and for
that reason unwilling to pretend to know anything about ultimate
matters. Yet
he has by implication made a universal statement about reality. He
therefore
not only claims to know as much as the theist knows, but he claims to
know much
more. More than that, he not only claims to know much more than the
theist, but
he claims to know more than the theist’s God. He has boldly set bare
possibility above the theist’s God and is quite willing to test the
consequences of his action. It is thus that the hubris of which
the
Greeks spoke so much, and upon which they invoked the wrath of the
gods,
appears in new and seeming innocent garb.[36]
The Christian worldview does not face the
dialectic tensions of atheism
because it rejects the abstraction of the one from the many. The Christian worldview admits mystery, but
only for man, not God. The finite human
mind is not given the impossible task of being the ultimate judge of
truth
while being surrounded by ultimate mystery.
Thus, while the atheist must say “I know” and “I don’t
know” at the same
time, the Christian can say “I know to the extent my thinking reflects
the
thinking of God, and I don’t know to the extent that my thinking does
not
reflect God’s thinking.”[37]
The Transcendental
Argument and Traditional Arguments: Different but Similar
This transcendental argument for the
existence of God that I have
defended here should not be confused with the traditional cosmological,
teleological and ontological arguments.
The failures and criticisms of those arguments (infinite
regress, etc.)
have no relevance to the transcendental argument. However,
the transcendental argument is an
explanation for “being and motion,” as Cochrane says.
It is a type of a cosmological, teleological
and ontological argument all rolled up into one. Van
Til explains:
God has continued to reveal himself in
nature even
after the entrance of sin. Men ought, therefore, to know him. Men ought
to
reason analogically from nature to nature’s God. Men ought, therefore,
to use
the cosmological argument analogically in order thus to conclude that
God is
the creator of this universe. Men ought to realize that nature could
not exist
as something independent. They ought to sense that if anything
intelligible is
to be said about nature, it must be in relation to the absolute system
of
truth, which is God. Hence, they ought at once to see nature as the
creation of
God. Men ought also to use the ontological argument analogically. Men
ought to
realize that the word “being” cannot be intelligently applied to
anything
unless it be applied to God without limitation. They ought not, as is
usually
done in the case of the ontological argument, first assume that the
word
“being” can be intelligibly applied to this universe in order then and
thereafter to conclude that it must also be applied in an unlimited way
to a
still higher being than ourselves or this world. The better theologians
of the
church have constantly sensed the fact that the theistic argument must
not be
used univocally. They have sensed something of the fact that all the
theistic
arguments should really be taken together and reduced to the one
argument of
the possibility of human predication. Intelligent predication about
anything
with respect to nature or with respect to man were impossible unless
God existed
as the ultimate reference point of it all. God, as self-sufficient, as
the One
in whom the One and the Many are equally ultimate, is the One in whom
the
persons of the Trinity are interchangeably exhaustive, is the
presupposition
for the intelligent use of words with respect to anything in this
universe,
whether it be the trees of the garden or the angels in heaven.
Accordingly, men ought to reason that the
order of
nature is due to the providence of God. This providence is actually
displayed
there. Men ought to reason that natural laws cannot exist in
themselves. They
ought to reason that the conception of law could never have been
applied by the
mind of man to the phenomena of nature unless there were a God who is
in
himself absolute order or absolute system, and who has therefore
implanted
order upon his creation.[38]
For Van Til, to reason analogically means to use words in recognition
that the human mind and the order and diversity of this world are finite
reflections of God’s transcendent, exhaustive system of unity and
diversity. Univocal reasoning is an affirmation that the human mind can apply universal concepts to the world, but without those universals coming from a transcendent God. The human mind is in touch with these universals by somehow participating in the same being that ultimately determines the nature of the world, whether that be called God or something else. (See diagram of One Circle
People vs. Two Circle People.) This
affirmation can be somewhat explicit, as with Thomas Aquinas’s adoption of the Greek view of being.[39] But often univocal reasoning is less
obvious.[40] Christians often assume that a
certain area of knowledge is unaffected by the existence of the Christian God,
but they don’t attempt to construct a metaphysical system to support this
religiously neutral area of knowledge. They think that they can identify particular facts or employ logic as areas of
religiously neutral common ground between the Christian and the
non-Christian. These Christians reason
that because the facts or laws of logic are neutral common ground, the non-Christian
will readily accept them as a starting point in the argument that will
eventually lead to proving God’s existence.
But at most, a finite god would be proven by this method. Since the premise is that the facts or laws of logic are
independent of God, the premise is inconsistent with the conclusion that an
absolute God exists, a God from whom nothing is independent. If the Christian
apologist assumes that causality is intelligible whether God exists or not, and then
tries to prove that God exists using causality, then he can’t validly get to the
conclusion of an absolute God because the premise already assumes that there is
an area of life, causality, that is independent of God. Again, the premise is only consistent with a finite
god.
If logic, causality, design and being have their origin in an absolute
God, then they will reflect the nature of this God. They will not make sense in a world without
God. For their intelligibility, they all must have their origin in a concrete universal. In terms of the alternative option of a dialectic
tension between the one and the many, principles of unity, such as
cause-and-effect relationships, order, and being would have no connection to
the diverse individual facts that they are supposed to unite. In terms of
this dialectic tension, there would be no cause-and-effect relationships to
observe, no order in the world to observe, no being or reflections of
perfection to observe in the phenomena of this world. There would only be
the mutually exclusive realms of pure chaos and blank unity. A First Cause is not, in itself, defensible. Unless the First Cause is a transcendent, concrete universal, it is either an isolated particular or an empty universal, both of which are inconsistent with causal unity between particulars and, more generally, undermine the intelligibility of experience. (For problems is with an immanent concrete universal see note [12], and "Creation" under "From Theism to Christiainity," below.)
These traditional arguments are sometimes expressed as providing probable proof of God's existence, while the premise of the argument itself is held with certainty or close to it. The premise has a firmer foundation than God, therefore it must have a foundation that is independent of God. Such an argument cannot
prove an absolute God or even provide one plank in a broader argument for God's existence because the premise logically excludes an absolute God. If God probably exists, then there is some probability that He does not exist, which entails that some facts would be intelligible even if God does not exist. But if the transcendental argument is right — that the intelligibility of all facts and the concept of probability necessarily presuppose God's existence — then it cannot
be accurate to say that some facts show that God's existence is merely probable. [41] The transcendental argument for God's existence is an argument for God's certain existence because 1) it is a deductive argument, so if the reasoning from the premise to the conclusion is valid, then the conclusion necessarily follows from the premise; and 2) as transcendental, it is not arguing from one particular fact to a conclusion, but arguing
from the nature of facts themselves to the conclusion. Since it encompasses all facts by arguing from the nature of facts, as long as the premise is correctly stated and the deductions from the premise valid, the argument cannot be overturned by some newly-discovered individual fact.
“Neutrality” toward God is actually a negation of God
because we are talking about an absolute God.[42] If an absolute God exists,
one who is the source of all unity and diversity in the world and whose
existence is necessary for the possibility of rationality, then there can be no
area of life, no fact, that is religiously neutral. And by choosing a starting point that is logically
inconsistent with the desired conclusion of the existence of an absolute
Creator, the Christian is unable to defend other doctrines that are logically
dependent on an absolute God, such as absolute ethical standards, moral defect
as rebellion against God, salvation from sin being exclusively provided by
Christ, an infallible Bible, and others (see From Theism to Christianity,
below).
The Christian believer does have common ground everywhere with which to reason
with the unbeliever, but it is not religiously neutral
ground. All facts are God-created, God-interpreted facts. Thus
every fact in the world is revelatory of God. Every fact proves God’s existence. The Christian can begin his argument for
God’s existence with cause, order, being, or any other facts of creation, but
the intent must be to show how the starting point requires an absolute God.
Christians and non-Christians share metaphysical, ethical and epistemic
common ground, but differ in terms of their ultimate philosophy in these three
areas:
1) Believers and unbelievers have metaphysical common ground.
Unbelievers live in God’s world, despite their denials. Believers
and unbelievers differ in their philosophy of being, particularly in
terms of the ultimate being that is said to determine the nature of the
universe.
2) Likewise, believers and unbelievers share ethical principles by which
they ought to live. Unbelievers ought to serve God, despite their
denials. They differ in their philosophy of ethics, particularly in terms
of the ultimate ethical standard.
3) Believers and unbelievers have much knowledge in common, even
knowledge of God (though unbelievers suppress that); but they differ in their
philosophy of knowledge, their epistemology, particularly in terms of ultimate
interpretative principles. All facts are God-created facts, but
unbelievers want to interpret them as non-created facts.
Because
unbelievers are inconsistent in applying their ultimate, God-denying
presuppositions they are able to learn much that is true about the world. But
by refusing to acknowledge that all ground is God’s ground, the unbeliever has
no justification for being able to utter a single word in affirmation or
negation of anything, including words concerning cause, order, and being.
Explaining Virtuous
Pagans and Their Civilizations
Now we are to the “In a Sense, Of
Course” part of the title of this essay.
Given the necessity of the Christian God for the
possibility of
rationality, how could there have existed any civilizations that were
not explicitly
Christian? This is another version of
the old question of explaining the virtuous pagan given the exclusive
moral
claims of Christianity. But in keeping
with the argument for Christianity above, the issue of knowledge must
be added
to that of morality. And since morality
and knowledge are necessary for there to be such a thing as
civilization, we
may ask, given the exclusive moral and epistemic claims of
Christianity, how
are pagan civilizations possible? Just
as it would be absurd to deny that there are many non-Christians who
act
ethically in many ways, and absurd to deny that non-Christians possess
knowledge in any sense, so it would be absurd to deny that there has
ever been
non-Christian civilizations. For the
following reasons, the existence of non-Christian civilizations does
not
contradict the position that there is a sense in which Christian
civilization
is the only possible civilization:
A.
Unbelievers
must be logically inconsistent with their unbelief because to live in God's world, they must live by God's common grace, the non-saving grace that God gives to unbelievers:
1) Natural Revelation:
a) Aquired natural revelation: Unbelievers, despite their denials, are
still created
in the image of God and live in God’s world.
Consequently, the knowledge of God is inescapable,
regardless of whether
one has heard of the Bible or not.
“Since the creation of the world,” God’s existence has
been “understood
through what has been made” (Rom. 1:20).
Every fact, being a creation of God, is revelational of
God, even the
unbeliever’s consciousness. As long as
they live in God’s world, unbelievers cannot help but to conform their
behavior
to God’s standards to some degree. Like
a fish who tries to convince himself that he is a bird and can escape
the
water, he still must remain in the water in order to breathe and
continue
living, belying the truth about his nature. Cornelius Van Til has
described the
unbeliever as like a child who must sit on his father’s lap in order to
slap
his father in the face; he is relying on God to attack God. Since the existence of God is the
precondition for rationality, any time the atheist uses intelligible
words,
science, etc. to attack God, the atheist is, in fact, relying on God to
attack
God. The atheist uses stolen capital
from God’s kingdom in his futile attempt to build the Kingdom of Man.
Being God’s creatures in
God’s world, unbelievers must be logically inconsistent with their
unbelief. Atheists can be great
scientists and great mathematicians, but they are being inconsistent
with their
atheism in their involvement in these studies, given that science and
math (and
every other fact in the world) cannot be explained apart from God. What the unbeliever claims to be the ultimate
determiner of the nature of the world is inconsistent with the
existence of
math and science and all other rational human activities.
As Van Til has put it, unbelievers can count,
but they cannot account for their counting.
b)
Innate natural revelation: Not only ought men to reason that
God exists
from the facts of creation, but God implants a knowledge of Himself in
the
minds of men. If God did not give men a
concept of Himself, we could no more come to know Him just through the
facts of
creation than, as Hume argued, we could come to know the concept of
causality
merely through sense impressions. And if
God revealed Himself only by a direct concept of Himself implanted in
the minds
of men, then God would either be a finite God, one who did not create
the
individual facts of experience, or the facts of experience would have
to be
regarded as illusory, as in Plato’s philosophy. The
innate and acquired modes of natural
revelation are thus mutually interdependent.[43] God is the God of reason and matter, the one
and the many. Therefore in conjunction
with God’s revelation of Himself through the facts of creation, the
ineradicable innate knowledge of God in the heart of every man leads
men to act
inconsistently with their God-denying philosophies in varying degrees. Unbelievers who have never heard of the law
of Moses nevertheless show “the work of the law written in their
hearts” (Rom.
2:15).
2)
Influence of Special Revelation: Not only are non-Christians influenced by
the natural
revelation of God, they are deeply influenced by the special revelation
of
God. There have been non-Christian
cultures that been exposed to special revelation throughout history,[44] but the world-wide spread of Christianity has made this much more
extensive. Western nations are much less
influenced by Biblical teachings now than when they were known as
“Christiandom,” but the fact that they are historically Christian cultures
is still
a very influential, if unrecognized, factor.
The idea of linear time, of progress in history, was
unknown prior to
the spread of Christianity (see History below).
Marxists, Darwinian evolutionists and other liberals who
envision
unending scientific and moral progress for human civilization are
operating on
stolen capital from a previously more Christian culture.
Another example is modern liberalism's concern for the
poor; though often misguided by statism, it owes a great debt to the Christian
influence on Western civilization.[45]
3)
Restraining Grace: Unbelievers are restrained by God’s common
grace. If unbelievers were fully
consistent with their unbelief they would be completely unproductive,
with no
reason to live or to die. By restraining
the full manifestation of their sinful nature, God allows unbelievers
to be
useful enough to accomplish His higher purposes. Common
grace does not necessarily lead to
special, saving grace; but the unsaved serve a role in the great drama
of
history – God’s salvation of the elect (cf. Rom. 9:17).
However, if non-Christians persist in their
unbelief, God’s restraint is eventually removed and that civilization
is tossed
into the dustbin of history (cf. Gen. 15:16; Romans 1:24, 26, 28). The rise and fall of civilizations is to be
explained by the motif of idolatry and judgment, not by Marx’s economic
stages,
or chance, or any other nature-centered or man-centered motifs.[46]
B.
The unbeliever’s conformity to God’s law is outward
only. Romans 2:15 speaks of the “works
of
the law written on their hearts,” in distinction from the law, without
any
qualification, being written on the hearts of believers (Heb.8:10). There are three aspects to any completely
virtuous act: the right motive, the
right standard, and the right goal. In
the Christian worldview, the right motive for any act is the motive to
please
and glorify God. The right standard is
God’s law. The right goal is to advance
God’s kingdom. The unbeliever often
conforms his outward behavior to the right standard, but lacks the
right motive
and goal. For example, an unbeliever may
do the work commanded by God’s law by helping someone in need, but
since his
motive was not the love of God and his goal not the advancement of
God’s
kingdom, the act was not completely virtuous.
And since God’s law commands people to have the right
motive and goal,
the unbeliever has not even fully met the right standard.
Yes, Christian civilization is the only
civilization
– in the sense that the existence of the Christian God is necessary to
account
for the possibility of civilization. Non-Christian civilizations can
exist
because the God of Christianity maintains a comprehensive rule over His
creation that sustains, to one degree or another, civilizations that do
not
expressly acknowledge and obey Him. This
sustainment without acknowledgement involves, first, non-Christians
having
knowledge of God through natural innate and acquired revelation and
through
special revelation, and acting according to this knowledge rather than
being
consistent with their unbelief; second, God’s restraining grace
allowing
non-Christians to be productive for God’s higher purposes, contrary to
their
sinful nature; and third, non-Christian conformity to the standards of
true
civilization being outward only.
Since non-Christians reject that which is
the
precondition for the existence of civilization and since they conform
to the
standards of true civilization only outwardly, non-Christian cultures
can be
said to be “civilizations” in a formal sense only.
They are civilizations in a significant
sense, for their outward conformity to the true standards of
civilization
results in significant contributions to the progress of true
civilization. But they are not true
civilizations in their substance,
in their hearts, in terms of their anti-civilization presuppositions.
From Theism to
Christianity
How does one prove the infallibility
of the Bible, that Abraham once lived in Ur,
and
that Jesus was crucified, died, and was resurrected outside the city of
Jerusalem to redeem the
world from sin? I have given a defense
of the existence of an absolute God, but I have spoken of it as the
Christian
view without giving a defense of the particulars of Christian doctrine. Here is a brief explanation of how the
necessary existence of an absolute God relates to establishing the full
inventory of Christian doctrines.
I have already mentioned the Trinity
and God’s omniscience as attributes of God that are related to the
transcendental necessity of God’s existence.
For brevity’s sake, I must refer the reader to Van Til’s Introduction
to Systematic Theology for a discussion of how other attributes of
God
relate to His transcendental necessity.[47]
The following is a defense of the
basic structure of Christianity.[48] Anyone who claims to believe in an absolute
God is logically committed to believe in these doctrines as well, and
anyone
who believes in the following doctrines is logically committed to
belief in an
absolute God:
Creation: According to
Plato’s speculation, a divine
being called the demiurge added rational form to preexisting, chaotic matter to create the intelligible world. In more modern times Kant rejected the
metaphysical extravagance of a demiurge, but he gave the same task to
the human
mind of combining abstract particulars with abstract unity to create
the
intelligible world. In both cases there
is an original dialectic tension between the one and the many. The Christian doctrine of ex nihilo
creation avoids that. God did not
“create” by reforming independently existing stuff.
All the unity and plurality of the world
derives from God. There could not be
some equally eternal stuff independent of God from which He made the
world
because that would destroy the ultimate unity of the universe. The universe would be ultimately mysterious
rather than ultimately rational if there were things that existed
independently
of the ultimate mind in the universe.
Furthermore, any finite minds must be
created minds;
they must be ontologically distinct from God because God is necessarily
omniscient. God’s omniscience is necessary
for the world
not to be ultimately irrational. If God were not omniscient, His
concepts would
not extend to all particulars, leaving those particulars as irrational
abstractions.[49]
And last, the existence of moral failings
on the part
of humans requires an ontological distinction between God and humans. For God, the ultimate being in the universe,
to commit sin would require sin to be as ultimate as goodness, which
would mean
that the universe would be ultimately contradictory.
(See the Fall, next).
Fall: To the modern
atheist the Biblical account of
the historical fall of man from perfection into sin appears no more
believable
than a children’s fable. The truth is
that a historical fall is necessary for the possibility of rationality
in the
universe. If there were no fall, then
evil and irrationalism would be original aspects of the universe and
equally
ultimate with goodness and rationality.
A historical fall preserves the ultimate goodness and
rationality of the
universe. The creation must have been
originally good. There could be no evil
in God because then negation would be as ultimate as affirmation. “Commit adultery” would be as ultimate as “Do
not commit adultery.” “Is not,” at the
same time and in the same sense, would be equivalent to “is.” Obviously, such a universe would be
ultimately irrational; the law of non-contradiction would not apply to
it. Therefore sin must have been
introduced by
man.
Redemptive revelation and
redemption: Sin requires
judgment. God is life, and rebellion
against Him must result in death. The
fact that sinful humanity and the living world that sustains us
continues to
exist after the fall must mean that God has extended grace to humanity. Since God defines the good, humanity’s sin
must be a matter of turning a blind eye toward God, suppressing
knowledge of
Him. And since man is sinful, the message and the means of salvation
must come
from outside of man. Since sin, by
nature, involves the suppression of the knowledge of God, if that
redemptive
revelation is to be effective, it must be very clear and not easily
destroyed –
as in the written revelation of the Bible.
Additionally, the means of salvation would
not be revealed by general, natural revelation because, as created,
nature did
not need redemption; it was perfectly good. This redemptive revelation
would be
infallible as originally written by the prophets because 1) God, by
nature,
speaks infallibly since He is all-knowing and there is no higher
authority by which
God can be judged to be mistaken; and 2) there is no necessary
distortion in
the act of the prophet recording the revelation because the mind of man
is
wholly a creation of God, and man was originally created for the
purpose of
undistorted communication with his Creator.
Sin does not destroy man’s creaturehood.
Future judgment: Sinful
men conclude from the fact that God
has not yet judged them for their sin that they are off the hook, that
there is
no ultimate justice in the universe. But
denying that the world is run by an absolutely just God reduces all
human life
to meaninglessness. God, as an
absolutely just being, cannot allow any injustice to go unpunished
forever. What sinful men should conclude
from the deficiency in temporal judgment is that a time of grace has
been
extended to them to allow them to repent and receive salvation, but
that God’s
justice cannot sleep forever, so eventually there must be a day of
reckoning.
The basic structure of Christianity –
creation, fall,
redemptive revelation, redemption, and final judgment – can be directly
deduced
from the concept of an absolute God as defended above.
Any doctrines not so derived are established
simply by the fact that God teaches them in the Scriptures. The truth of the Scriptures is established,
in part, by the fact that they teach the existence of a God of a
particular
nature – the absolute God – and the structural doctrines that are
entailed by
the existence of such a God. These
doctrines are necessarily true as the precondition for rationality. However, whether any particular claim to
revelation is genuine also involves empirical tests like the
fulfillment of
predictive prophecy given in that revelation (cf. Deut. 18:21-22; Jer.
28:15-17) and investigation into the accuracy of transmission of the
original
inspired writings. These empirical
investigations should not be claimed to be and cannot
be
conducted from the standpoint of neutrality toward God, treating every
conceivable explanation of the facts as equally probable, as even some
Christian philosophers have argued.[50] Since the existence of God is necessary for
the possibility of the intelligibility of any fact, “God is the
presupposition
of the relevancy of any hypothesis,”[51]
whether that hypothesis concerns a claim to revelation or a chemical
reaction
in the scientific laboratory.
Conclusion
Christianity is the most rationalistic philosophy possible - not in the sense that all knowledge is from deduction, but in the sense of reason determining all things. An absolutely rational mind eternally determines whatsoever comes to pass. Any compromise with this doctrine is a compromise with an ultimate irrationationalism that destroys the possibility
of any rationality in the world. Parmenides is often regarded as the preeminent rationalist -- and he might be in terms of trying to derive all knowledge from deduction. His method was an attempt to make all of reality fully comprehensible to the finite human mind. But to make this even superficially plausible, he had to deny the reality of particulars. The only reality left was a changless blank. Christianity does not need to deny the massive, mysterious complexity of the world
to affirm its rationality. All universals and particulars find their origin in the concrete universal God. For Him, there are no mysteries. With this kind of God, we can "hold reality and justice in a single vision." With a God who is the source of the subjective and objective, and who made us in His image, we can recognize that all theory is empirically underdetermined - that all facts are interpreted facts - while still holding to an objective world of facts independent of
our minds that our minds can know. Without such a God there could be no human civilization, and the more our world self-consciously embraces God, through His redemptive mediator Jesus Christ, the more civilization will develop into the ideal of justice, knowledge and beauty.
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