Christian Theory of Knowledge Quotes

“I see induction and analytical reasoning as part of one process of interpretation. I would therefore engage in historical apologetics. (I do not personally do a great deal of this because my colleagues in the other departments of the Seminary in which I teach are doing it better than I could do it.) Every bit of historical investigation, whether it be in the directly biblical field, archaeology, or in general history, is bound to confirm the truth of the claims of the Christian position. But I would not talk endlessly about facts and more facts without challenging the unbeliever's philosophy of fact. A really fruitful historical apologetic argues that every fact is and must be such as proves the truth of the Christian position.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“How then, we ask, is the Christian to challenge the non-Christian approach to the interpretation of human experience? He can do so only if he shows that man must presuppose God as the final reference point in predication. Otherwise, he would destroy experience itself. He can do so only if he shows the non-Christian that even in his virtual negation of God, he is still really presupposing God. He can do so only if he shows the non-Christian that he cannot deny God unless he first affirms him, and that his own approach throughout its history has been shown to be destructive of human experience itself.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“Of course as a Christian theologian Dionysius speaks much of creation and redemption. And he says that as Christians we must not say anything about the Godhead 'except those things which are revealed to us from the Holy Scriptures.' But the whole story of redemption from creation to consummation of history is soon pressed into the framework of the scale of being. Above all other reality is the 'Super-Essential Godhead' of which we must not dare 'to speak, or even to form any conception.'...The principle of plentitude, to which Dionysius is committed, takes care of both the idea of utter negation and, as correlative to it, of communication. For the superessential Good 'while dwelling alone by itself, and having there firmly fixed its superessential Ray, it lovingly reveals itself by illuminations corresponding to each separate creature's powers, and thus draws upwards holy minds into such contemplation, participation and resemblance of itself as they can attain even them that holily and duly strive thereafter...' If there is any help in the person and work of Christ for the salvation of man, it is because of his identity with the superessential. It is from this, the superessential, that he emanates. It is not for anything that he has done for men by suffering for them on the cross and by rising for their justification from the dead but rather by virtue of his pointing them to the superessential being that he saves them. It is this superessential being that is a 'Principle of Illumination to them that are being enlightened; a Principle of Perfection to them that are being perfected; a Principle of Deity to them that are being deified and of Simplicity to them that are being brought unto simplicity and of Unity to them that are being brought unto unity.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“It is readily seen that in the formulation of this Logos theology, the Apologists were largely influenced by Greek modes of thought. The question for them was how they could protect the deposit of faith against those who were real heretics while they were themselves so largely controlled in their thinking by false modes of thought. Here were the Gnostics; they thought of God as the featureless beyond. They brought this featureless beyond into contact with the world of space and time by means of a series of impersonal emanations...The apologists, on the other hand, according to the deposit of faith, thought of the creation or emanation of the Logos as a voluntary act on the part of God. But how would they be able to defend either their doctrine of God or their doctrine of the voluntary procession of the Logos from the personal God against the equivalent teachings of the Gnostics so long as they themselves admitted that God needed an intermediary to make contact with man? If they really held to the God of the Bible there was no room for such an intermediary and if they really held to the personality of God and to the exhaustively personal character of his work with respect either to himself or to the universe, then they would have to renounce their rationalistic efforts...The problem of harmonizing the teaching of the Rule of Faith with the speculations of Greek philosophy would therefore, in the nature of the case, tend to become the problem of defending the deposit of faith against the encroachments of this speculation.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“The Christian knows the truth about the non-Christian. He knows this because he is himself what he is by grace alone. He has been saved from the blindness of mind and the hardness of heart that marks the 'natural man.' The Christian has the 'doctor's book.' The Scriptures tell him the origin and of the nature of sin. Man is dead in trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1). He hates God. His ability to see the facts as they are and to reason about as he ought to reason about them is, at bottom, a matter of sin. He has the God-created ability of reasoning within him. He is made in the image of God. God's revelation is before him and within him. He is in his own constitution a manifestation of the revelation and therefore of the requirement of God. God made a covenant with him through Adam (Rom 5:12). He is therefore now, in Adam, a covenant-breaker. He is also against God and therefore against the revelation of God (Rom 8:6-8). This revelation of God constantly and inescapably reminds him of his creatural responsibility. As a sinner he has, in Adam, declared himself autonomous.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“Immanuel Kant has taught the theologian as well as the philosopher and the scientist to give up the old metaphysic which applied logic to Reality. One cannot speak conceptually about a God who is eternal and unchangeable in all his attributes. All that man can speak of conceptually is that which he himself has, by the forming process of his mind, molded into such categories as space and time, substance and cause: categories which exist in the mind but which may, or may not apply to Reality. Man may indeed continue to speak about God as 'transcendent' but then he must realize that he is not speaking conceptually, but only symbolically, he is using words about that of which he knows nothing. So then modern theology, modern philosophy and modern science alike assert that nothing can be said conceptually about a God who is above what Kant calls the world of the phenomena, the world of experience. But even when men thus claim to be able to say anything about God, they are, by implication, saying everything about God. They are, in effect, making universal negative propositions about God.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“With Calvin I find the point of contact for the presentation of the gospel to non-Christians in the fact that they are made in the image of God and as such have the ineradicable sense of deity within them. Their own consciousness is inherently and exclusively revelation of God to themselves. No man can help knowing God for in knowing himself he knows God. His self-consciousness is totally devoid of content unless, as Calvin puts it at the beginning of his Institutes, man knows himself as a creature of God. There are no atheistic men because no man can deny the revelational activity of the true God within him. Man's own interpretative activity whether of the more or less extended type, whether in ratiocination or intuition, is no doubt the most penetrating means by which the Holy Spirit presses the claims of God upon man... His conscience troubles him when he disobeyes; he knows deep down in his heart that he is disobeying his creator. There is no escape from God for any human being. Every human being is by virtue of his being made in the image of God accessible to God. And as such he is accessible to one who without compromise presses upon him the claims of God.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“Accordingly I do not reject 'the theistic proofs' but merely insist on formulating them in such a way as not to compromise the doctrines of Scripture.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“The idea of the analogy of being compromises the biblical doctrine of creation. It tends to reduce the distinction of God as Creator and man the creature to that of the Greek notion of man's participation in being as such. According to the Greek view of reality, especially as set forth in the philosophy of Aristotle, called 'the philosopher' by Thomas Aquinas, all being is ultimately one. All individual beings are being to the extent that they participate in this one ultimate being. According to Aristotle, God has the fulness of being. As such he is pure Act. At the lower end of being, not found in any actually existing thing that man can know, is pure potentiality of being. Man exists between pure actuality and pure potentiality of being. There is, therefore, a continuity of being between man and God. Man may increase in his participation of God as pure act. There is also discontinuity of being between man an God. Man is near the realm of pure non-being,. He participates, as it were, in non-being as well as in being. It is thus that for Aristotle the principle of potentiality and actuality control the relationship between God and man. This relationship is therefore one of process. It is activistic. It is the natural working out of the principles of continuity and of discontinuity of a general being.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“It was this principle of inwardness of plentitude as represented so well by Plotinus that was brought into synthesis with the principle of Christianity by St. Dionysius the Areopagite and by Erigena. And surely it seemed as though the Photinian myth was to swallow up the testimony of the Word of the self-attesting Christ. In neither St. Dionysius nor in Erigena does there seem to be much left of historic Christianity. To be sure, there is the verbal commitment to the self-attesting Christ. But then there follows immediately a reduction of his word and work in terms of the principle of plentitude.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“Of course as a Christian theologian Dionysius speaks much of creation and redemption. And he says that as Christians we must not say anything about the Godhead 'except those things which are revealed to us from the Holy Scriptures.' But the whole story of redemption from creation to consummation of history is soon pressed into the framework of the scale of being. Above all other reality is the 'Super-Essential Godhead' of which we must not dare 'to speak, or even to form any conception.'...The principle of plentitude, to which Dionysius is committed, takes care of both the idea of utter negation and, as correlative to it, of communication. For the superessential Good 'while dwelling alone by itself, and having there firmly fixed its superessential Ray, it lovingly reveals itself by illuminations corresponding to each separate creature's powers, and thus draws upwards holy minds into such contemplation, participation and resemblance of itself as they can attain even them that holily and duly strive thereafter...' If there is any help in the person and work of Christ for the salvation of man, it is because of his identity with the superessential. It is from this, the superessential, that he emanates. It is not for anything that he has done for men by suffering for them on the cross and by rising for their justification from the dead but rather by virtue of his pointing them to the superessential being that he saves them. It is this superessential being that is a 'Principle of Illumination to them that are being enlightened; a Principle of Perfection to them that are being perfected; a Principle of Deity to them that are being deified and of Simplicity to them that are being brought unto simplicity and of Unity to them that are being brought unto unity.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“Tertullian uses the notion of a common human nature. His principle of discontinuity would not entitle him to this. According to it, he should attribute to each man afresh a total independence of his fellows. But must maintain some slender connection between all men. This slender connection by way of common human nature presupposes at the back of it a commonality between man and God. And it is this assumption of a common nature or being which, since it is participant in divinity, is said in some measure to be always good even in the midst of evil. The result of all this for Tertullian's view of the nature of sin is that its biblical character of ethical alienation from God is not fully appreciated. Tertullian's notion of sin is still largely controlled by the idea that sin is the metaphysical opposite of the good. It is, as it were, lower in the scale of being than is the good. Sin is however inevitably, or almost inevitably, present in human nature on account of the slenderness of being that is man's character.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“It is readily seen that in the formulation of this Logos theology, the Apologists were largely influenced by Greek modes of though. The question for them was how they could protect the deposit of faith against those who were real heretics while they were themselves so largely controlled in their thinking by false modes of thought. Here were the Gnostics; they thought of God as the featureless beyond. They brought this featureless beyond into contact with the world of space and time by means of a series of impersonal emanations...The apologists, on the other hand, according to the deposit of faith, thought of the creation or emanation of the Logos as a voluntary act on the part of God. But how would they be able to defend either their doctrine of God or their doctrine of the voluntary procession of the Logos from the personal God against the equivalent teachings of the Gnostics so long as they themselves admitted that God needed an intermediary to make contact with man? If they really held to the God of the Bible there was no room for such an intermediary and if they really held to the personality of God and to the exhaustively personal character of his work with respect either to himself or to the universe, then they would have to renounce their rationalistic efforts...The problem of harmonizing the teaching of the Rule of Faith with the speculations of Greek philosophy would therefore, in the nature of the case, tend to become the problem of defending the deposit of faith against the encroachments of this speculation.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“The basic reason why Justin Martyr is unable to set the Christ of Scripture clearly as a challenge over against Greek philosophy lies in the fact that he has, himself, no adequate biblical view of man. The Greeks assumed that man is free, i.e., autonomous. Justin should have challenged this idea in terms of the biblical teaching with respect to man's creation by God. But Justin is afraid to do this. The Greeks will then, he fears, charge him with holding to determinism or fate. So he virtually admits that he, as well as the Greeks, starts with the idea of man's freedom as the ability to act or not act, to act rightly or wrongly, without regard to the plan of God. Virtually committing himself to the same sort of freedom as that to which the principle of discontinuity as that to which the Greeks are committed, i.e., pure contingency.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“...intellectual argument will not, as such, convince and convert the non-Christian. It takes the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit to do that. But as in the case of preaching, so in the case of apologetical reasoning, the Holy Spirit may use a mediate approach to the minds and hearts of men.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“The Christian knows the truth about the non-Christian. He knows this because he is himself what he is by grace alone. He has been saved from the blindness of mind and the hardness of heart that marks the 'natural man.' The Christian has the 'doctor's book.' The Scriptures tell him the origin and of the nature of sin. Man is dead in treaspasses and sins (Eph 2:1). He hates God. His ability to see the facts as they are and to reason about as he ought to reason about them is, at bottom, a matter of sin. He has the God-created ability of reasoning within him. He is made in the image of God. God's revelation is before him and within him. He is in his own constitution a manifestation of the revelation and therefore of the requirement of God. God made a covenant with him through Adam (Rom 5:12). He is therefore now, in Adam, a covenant-breaker. He is also against God and therefore against the revelation of God (Rom 8:6-8). This revelation of God constantly and inescapably reminds him of his creatural responsibility. As a sinner he has, in Adam, declared himself autonomous.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“If one does not make human knowledge wholly dependent upon the original self-knowledge and consequent revelation of God to man, then man will have to seek knowledge within himself as the final reference point. Then he will have to seek an exhaustive understanding of reality. Then he will have to hold that if he cannot attain to such an exhaustive understanding of reality, he has no true knowledge of anything at all. Either man must then know everything or he knows nothing. This is the dilemma that confronts every form of non-Christian epistemology.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge

“The two systems, that of the non-Christian and that of the Christian, differ because of the fact that their basic assumptions or presuppositions differ. On the non-Christian basis man is assumed to be the final reference point in predication. Man will therefore have to seek to make a system for himself that will relate all the facts of his environment to one another in such a way as will enable him to see exhaustively all the relations that obtain between them. In other words, the system that the non-Christian has to seek on his assumption is one in which he himself virtually occupies the place that God occupies in Christian theology. Man must, in short, be virtually omniscient. He must virtually reduce the facts that confront him to logical relations; the 'thingness' of each thing must give up its individuality in order that it may be known; to be known, a thing or a fact must be wholly known by man.”
― Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge