Can someone who rejects God as He has revealed Himself in Scripture be consistently rational? Cornelius Van Til, a 20th century Christian apologist and theologian, frequently demonstrated the inherent irrationalism of all non-Biblical worldviews. One of his students, John Frame, has applied this insight to many of the major philosophical thinkers and movements of western … Continue reading The Irrationalism of Rational Thought
Tag: Epistemology
Ethics is traditionally the third realm covered by philosophy. Once we know what is (metaphysics) and how we have knowledge (epistemology), it is then necessary to ask, what do we do? How does one act in such a world? If our metaphysic posits that what is real is not the physical world but the immaterial … Continue reading The Christian Worldview (4): Ethics (a)
Because we do not have exhaustive knowledge of the universe—because we do not know how any one thing relates to all other things—we will only ever know anything in part. Certainty in our knowledge must come from the One who knows all things, who can assure us that this would still be true even if … Continue reading The Christian Worldview (3): Epistemology (c)
In the last post, I identified epistemological normativity with the universals—the forms or categories that make knowing possible—yet the normative factor in epistemology is more than just the universals of objects. We need to understand objects not only in comparison to similar objects and in contrast with dissimilar ones, but in relation to the whole … Continue reading The Christian Worldview (3): Epistemology (b)
Books have been written on what the Bible says about epistemology, so I cannot hope in a few pages to provide a comprehensive epistemology. The best book in this regard, I believe, is John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God. I intend here to highlight a few salient points of a biblical epistemology based … Continue reading The Christian Worldview (3): Epistemology (a)