Reformed Epistemology Quotes

“The great difference between Kant and Hegel has often been emphasized. And there was a great difference. Hegel said that Kant studied the theory of knowledge too much in distinction from metaphysics. Hence all his dualism. Kant had studied the categories only as to their subjectivity and objectivity; Hegel would study them in their own medium, the medium of pure thought, and while in action. So he sought to identify logic, epistemology and metaphysics. Thus also, he thinks to bring the land of the noumena within our ken. There is a direct bridge that connects us with the infinite. How does he seek to do this? By emphasizing Kant’s position of the creativity of the human mind. Hegel’s position is therefore in the main, one and the same with Kant’s. This is important to bear in mind. Their differences should not blind us to their unity. The late English Hegelians such as the Caird brothers, T. H. Green and others, have emphasized the difference between Kant and Hegel and found in the advance of Hegel over Kant the greatest salvation for theological knowledge. Hegel has forever banished the dualism, the Wolffian dualism of Kant, so that now God and man are brought together in intimate and genuine fellowship with one another. But what unity has thus been effected? It is a unity that leads to identification. It is a unity that leads to monism. It becomes the unity of the night in which all cows are black or the night in which all cats are gray.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Reformed Epistemology

“Coming now to discuss that form of Christian epistemology which we consider most satisfactory, we already know from the standard of criticism employed throughout the previous chapters that the Reformed view makes the claim of having alone done greatest justice to the principium speciale. 'Calvinism is Theism come to its own.' That, as so many others, was a profound and comprehensive statement of Dr. Warfield. Calvinism alone, with its doctrine of the total dependence of man upon God, a dependence which is absolute and which nevertheless does not violate but brings out the true exercise of the human faculties, Calvinism alone could develop a truly biblical theology and philosophy. Calvinism alone, with its covenant-theology could make God the interpretive category of all reality, and thus afford the necessary universal validity. Calvinism alone could offer such a metaphysics upon which a valid epistemology could be constructed. So also with the principium speciale. Calvinism alone with its doctrine of the nature of man and the image of God in man did justice to the noetic influence of sin. The full and open recognition of the loss of God’s image
in the narrower sense through sin, and the retention of that image in the wider sense through common grace could alone open the way for a valuation of the influence of sin upon the consciousness of man that should neither over nor underestimate the same.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Reformed Epistemology

“We see that in the Lutheran view of the incarnation and the sacraments, God and man are not kept properly distinct...Such being the view of the relation between God and man metaphysically, its epistemology can not be true to a genuine Christian position and the meaning of Revelation must become pantheistically tinctured.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Reformed Epistemology

“A pantheistic epistemology is suicidal. The subject-object, and the subject-subject relation implies the supernatural, and evil cannot be accounted for on any other basis.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Reformed Epistemology

“A metaphysics that leads to identity cannot but lead to an epistemology that denies error, and an epistemology that denies evil in its most universal sense cannot but identify God and man, and shuts itself in forever in a circle that cannot be broken.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Reformed Epistemology

“The criticism that is valid against Kant is valid against later idealism as well. All idealism is at a loss to interpret the phenomenon of error or evil. As was already noted earlier it will not do to limit the question of error to individual instances and ask how I may be sure that any particular thing will be true. If I am able to doubt one particular thing I thereby doubt the whole, when the whole is so related as Kant and Hegel would have us believe. We then find ourselves in an irremediable dilemma and in desperation proclaim; 'the rational is real and the real is rational,' and help ourselves out of the difficulty by saying that, metaphysically speaking, evil does not exist. Granted, but who will deny that epistemologically speaking error is very real? On what basis then can you explain or explain away that fact? Are not metaphysics and epistemology identical for you? The only alternative seems to be the pessimism of Schopenhauer or Von Hartmann.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Reformed Epistemology

“The great difference between Kant and Hegel has often been emphasized. And there was a great difference. Hegel said that Kant studied the theory of knowledge too much in distinction from metaphysics. Hence all his dualism. Kant had studied the categories only as to their subjectivity and objectivity; Hegel would study them in their own medium, the medium of pure thought, and while in action. So he sought to identify logic, epistemology and metaphysics. Thus also, he thinks to bring the land of the noumena within our ken. There is a direct bridge that connects us with the infinite. How does he seek to do this? By emphasizing Kant’s position of the creativity of the human mind. Hegel’s position is therefore in the main, one and the same with Kant’s. This is important to bear in mind. Their differences should not blind us to their unity. The late English Hegelians such as the Caird brothers, T. H. Green and others, have emphasized the difference between Kant and Hegel and found in the advance of Hegel over Kant the greatest salvation for theological knowledge. Hegel has forever banished the dualism, the Wolffian dualism of Kant, so that now God and man are brought together in intimate and genuine fellowship with one another. But what unity has thus been effected? It is a unity that leads to identification. It is a unity that lead to monism. It becomes the unity of the night in which all cows are black or the night in which all cats are gray.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Reformed Epistemology

“Kant vaguely felt that, after all, there was dualism in his epistemology. He did leave room for the possibility of a higher form of existence but did not leave room for the possibility of a genuine knowledge of that higher form. The noumena may or may not exist. At any rate we have no valid knowledge of them. Kant’s subjectivism shut him up within a vicious circle. The result of his dualistic metaphysics was his dualistic epistemology. Or should it be put the other way around? The dualism in his epistemology between intellectual and nonintellectual knowledge, it seems, is the result of his dualistic metaphysic. It was an essential rationalism that Kant fails to shake off. Such a rationalism is suicidal. It lives by the negation of non-rational knowledge. It can not allow that any but intellectual knowledge is true knowledge. It cannot allow that there can be knowledge of particulars. Then how can we get to the knowledge of universals?”
― Cornelius Van Til, Reformed Epistemology

“Kant vaguely felt that, after all, there was dualism in his epistemology. He did leave room for the possibility of a higher form of existence but did not leave room for the possibility of a genuine knowledge of that higher form. The noumena may or may not exist. At any rate we have no valid knowledge of them. Kant’s subjectivism shut him up within a vicious circle. The result of his dualistic metaphysics was his dualistic epistemology. Or should it be put the other way
around? The dualism in his epistemology between intellectual and nonintellectual knowledge, it seems, is the result of his dualistic metaphysic. It was an essential rationalism that Kant fails to shake off. Such a rationalism is suicidal. It lives by the negation of non-rational knowledge. It can not allow that any but intellectual knowledge is true knowledge. It cannot allow that there can be knowledge of particulars. Then how can we get to the knowledge of universals?”
― Cornelius Van Til, Reformed Epistemology

“Kant vaguely felt that, after all, there was dualism in his epistemology. He did leave room for the possibility of a higher form of existence but did not leave
room for the possibility of a genuine knowledge of that higher form. The noumena may or may not exist. At any rate we have no valid knowledge of them. Kant’s subjectivism shut him up within a vicious circle. The result of his dualistic metaphysics was his dualistic epistemology. Or should it be put the other way
around? The dualism in his epistemology between intellectual and nonintellectual knowledge, it seems, is the result of his dualistic metaphysic. It was an essential rationalism that Kant fails to shake off. Such a rationalism is suicidal. It lives by the negation of non-rational knowledge. It can not allow that any but intellectual knowledge is true knowledge. It cannot allow that there can be knowledge of particulars. Then how can we get to the knowledge of universals?”
― Cornelius Van Til, Reformed Epistemology