Month: October 2024

How I philosophized when I put philosophy before Christ

In Philosophy after Christ: Thinking God’s Thoughts after Him, I essayed an approach to philosophizing that in some ways is continuous with the way modern philosophers (and their ancient, classical, not to mention non-Western, counterparts) go about their business, but in other ways, or rather in a fundamental way, discontinuous, even offensively so to their sensibilities (when they become aware of it).

You see, they assume a stance of theoretical and ethical neutrality toward Christ’s claims, and for one who pursues Christ as the Wisdom of God (the only wisdom or sophia worth loving), such a posture is as impossible as it is unacceptable.

The typical response, even from philosophers who identify as Christians, is that I’m seriously misunderstanding the role of philosophy. They argue that I’m blurring the line between philosophical analysis and Christian apologetics.

To integrally perform the former, that is, philosophical analysis, requires philosophers, including the Christians among them, to bracket or suspend their commitments. An example of this is the “presumption of atheism” that the late atheist-turned-deist Antony Flew (not to be confused with Anthony Flood) defended: like the presumption of innocence, the “presumption of atheism” may be defeated, but only by a sound argument for biblical theism that does not presuppose that biblical theism is true.[1]

However, my position (following, if at a galactic distance from Cornelius Van Til) is that God’s existence is the precondition of acquiring true premises and relating them logically, that is, of rational argumentation. If that is so, then one rationally ought to explicitly advert to that precondition rather than pretend that it doesn’t hold. (Even the argument for this conclusion, however indirect, presupposes that the precondition is met.)

Cornelius Van Til (1895-1985)

I first tried out this idea in a post that is an ancestor of a chapter of my book: “The Problem of Philosophy” (first on November 26, 2018, then republished with links to subsequent posts, which also evolved into chapters, on July 21, 2020; the book was published June 2022).

I think that those whom I’ve failed to convince regard me as either stubborn or obtuse. This experience has persuaded me that resistance to the exposure of theoretical neutrality (and the “presumption of atheism” it seems to entail) is so sedimented into the consciousness of the modern intellectual—again, even of the Christian modern intellectual—that he or she cannot imagine an alternative to that stance. Continue reading “How I philosophized when I put philosophy before Christ”

Van Til on C. S. Lewis: man’s problem is rebellion, not finitude

Not able at the moment to cobble together an original post, but also not wanting more time to pass before I post something, I share this brief criticism of an aspect of the theology of Anglican lay theologian and evangelical apologist C. S. Lewis by the Reformed apologist Cornelius Van Til.—AGF

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963)

A position similar to that of Romanism [i.e., Roman Catholicism] is frequently maintained by evangelical Protestants. As a recent illustration, we mention the case of C. S. Lewis.[1]

Like Romanism, Lewis, in the first place, confuses things metaphysical and ethical. In his book Beyond Personality he discusses the nature of the divine trinity.

To show the practical significance of the doctrine of the trinity he says:

The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way ‘round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance.[2]

The purpose of Christianity is to lift the Bios or natural life of man up into the Zoe, the uncreated life.  In the incarnation there is given one example of how this may be done. In him there is “one man in whom the created life, derived from his mother, allowed itself to be completely and perfectly turned into the begotten life.” Then he adds: “Now what is the difference which he has made to the whole human mass? It is just this; that the business of becoming a son of God, of being turned from a created thing into a begotten thing, of passing over from the temporary biological life into timeless ‘spiritual’ life, has been done for us.”

All this is similar in import to the position of Aquinas which stresses the idea that man is, through grace, to participate in the divine nature.

It is a foregone conclusion that the ethical problem cannot be fairly put on such a basis. Perhaps the most fundamental difference between all forms of non-Christian ethics and Christian ethics lies in the fact that according to the former, it is man’s finitude as such that causes his ethical strife while according to the latter, it is not finitude as such but created man’s disobedience of God that causes all the trouble. Continue reading “Van Til on C. S. Lewis: man’s problem is rebellion, not finitude”