Robert D. Knudsen's Calvinistic Philosophy lectures (Disk 22)

This is a continuation of the class lectures on Calvinistic Philosophy given by Robert D. Knudsen at Westminster Theological Seminary.  As before, the information in the audio recordings have not been validated for accuracy (use at your own risk).

Van Til, part 2 (Disk 22)

MY NOTE: Here Knudsen gives a very complex answer to a question asked before the audio started.

Van Til does not have the aversion to antinomie that Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven. An antinomie will have a logical contradiction in it, but more than just a contradiction. It arises due to a transgression of the bounds of the cosmos. Van Til has never used the principle of the exclusion of the antinomies.

Some say Van Til did not have a workout idea of the boundary as Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven did. But Van Til did have a strong creator/creature distinction. MY NOTE: this boundary may be implicit but not explicit. It is also in his view of revelation.

Is Van Til closer to Bavinck? According to Van Til, yes and Van Til is closer to Stoker than Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd.

Van Til does not develop the idea of the cosmonomic structure that Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven have.

MY NOTE: picking up from disk 21 here:

The idea of the concreteness, all of the items are present from the very beginning. The concrete idealist was one who was aware of the context in which he was starting and have everything there from the beginning and see everything in its unity and aware of its presuppositions. Hegel introduced time into logic itself in an attempt to overcome Kantian's notion of the thing in itself. Van Til says they failed in this attempt.

The idealist says the God of theism must be replaced by the absolute. Van Til questions that and he admits that the idealist is correct in the idea of the unity of thought and being. He (the idealist) is correct in rejecting pragmatism and the idea of ultimate contingency. However a close examination the concrete idealism shows that its presumed absolute cannot embrace all of the facts and remains abstract. Absolute idealism degenerates into pragmatism and pragmatism has already show to be impossible.

Van Til is quite content to insists that Christianity is a rational belief and has grounds for it and is content to enter into argument and we begin with experience (MY NOTE: not sure what he means here).

There is a certain formal agreement with idealism in that there is value in the concrete approach as far as identifying presuppositions and he says that it is impossible to argue directly for God. If you argue directly for God you are doing what the idealists does, that you have to be able to get an idea/essence of God before you can use it as a principle of interpretation and that you have it under control.

For Van Til the transcendental argument is negative argument. You have to presuppose God (the God of the Scriptures) and apart from whom your experience in unintelligible and that would include this notion that if we have presupposed God we are no longer in the situation where it is incumbent on us to define God before we can use God as the ultimate principle of interpretation. All of our thinking has to presuppose the creator/creature distinction.

If there is any predication at all you we have then to be able to unite, to gain a meaningful unity of our experience but apart from Christianity there is no meaningful unity, then we are left with brute, uninterpreted fact.

A form of the argument (as Knudsen has interpreted it) that if you abandon the true transcendent viewpoint a process is set into motion in which one shows that he can get a unitary view of things. Bavinck argued along these lines. If you miss then the true God of the Scriptures, you are bound to worship the creation rather than the creator.

Van Til has attempted to construct a consistent reformed apologetic. He has moved then into a line of transcendental argument. What does that mean? There will be this negative type of argumentation, we argue for the impossibility of contrary. If then one loses the transcendent standpoint and we cannot get a unified position and this inability is an indirect proof of the true starting point.

If you are going to have an apologetic, you must have a point of contact (anknupfunspunkt). The expression in Romans 1 of having known God. The knowledge of God and of ourselves are correlate. We are always in a position of accepting the revelation or we suppress the revelation (covenant keeping or covenant breaking). We are either obedient or disobedient. There is no tertium quid. All these things are involved in Van Til's idea of the analogical relationship between God and man.

Robert D. Knudsen's Calvinistic Philosophy lectures (Disk 21)

This is a continuation of the class lectures on Calvinistic Philosophy given by Robert D. Knudsen at Westminster Theological Seminary.  As before, the information in the audio recordings have not been validated for accuracy (use at your own risk).

Van Til, part 1 (Disk 21)

Cornelius Van Til born 1895 (MY NOTE: As of this recording, Knudsen states that Van Til was still living and a frequent visitor to the campus).

As he undertook his attempt to develop a consistently Biblical and Reformed apologetic and found (initially) a welcome ally in the Christian philosophy developed by Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd (MY NOTE: Van Til would later become critical of the philosophy school, but that will be covered later).

Early on his name appeared alongside Dooyeweerd, Vollenhoven, Stoker, etc. in the Philosophie Reformata.

MY NOTE: Here bio information is given on Van Til. This can be found other places on his education credentials.

1928 – 1929 he was an instructor of Apologetics at Princeton Theological Seminary.

From 1929 he was professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary.

The development of Van Til's apologetics is based upon his criticism of Idealism (the topic of his doctoral dissertation). The central idea of his thought is that of analogy.

Van Til has sought to carry on Kuyper's work of bringing the kingship of Jesus Christ should come to expression in every area of life. The sovereignty of God is central (along with the others in the school) and radical.

He assumed a double stance to idealism. Here is where Van Til is different. Van Til was faced with a situation where he heard that Christianity and Idealism were unified in their opposition to pragmatism and advocated a view of God and the absolute of idealism was really a better expression of the Christian idea of God. Van Til's position was that the God of Christianity did not square with Idealism.

Van Til did appreciate the concrete approach of absolute idealism where everything refers back to an ultimate starting point. Van Til's method is Transcendental. Van Til concluded that the starting point of idealism was a false one.

Idealists after Kant understood that it was necessary to view the facts under an ultimate principle of interpretation and attempted to go beyond Kant to overcome brute, uninterpreted facts still remaining in the thing in its self (Ding an sich). They attempted to avoid uniting the facts of our sense experience and abstract principle of unity in an external fashion. An attempt was made to arise to a new height to discover a concrete absolute with a reconciliation of fact and logic. Hegel went to the extreme of introducing time into logic.

Van Til was asking is this absolute of the idealist is it really an improvement on the Christian idea of God? The idealists have more of an eminence of God over against the Christian view. Van Til insisted that this absolute had been developed to overcome the split between facts and logic, you're idealists principle is in effect abstract. The idealists has the notion that he has to be able to get an idea of the essence of something before he can use it as a principle of interpretation. If he is going to use God as a principle, then he must have penetrated into the essence of God and define who God is. Van Til regards that as an expression of the autonomy of thought and under such a scheme the only God you can get a hold of is an extension of your own experience. This is a characteristic of idealism that Van Til wants to avoid, the autonomy of man where he denies the creator/creature distinction.

In Van Til's intent there is a scriptural idea that he wants to make foremost. There is the idea of God and Cosmos and the boundary between them. Van Til expresses a thought that is extremely Calvinistic, you cannot grasp in your thought the essence of God or God as he is in himself and you must be content with God as he has reveled himself in revelation.

If instead of truly being the concrete absolute union of principle and sense experience (fact and logic), the concrete absolute is not really concrete and so there is always a residue of brute fact and so there is a contingency that remains and that in idealism there is a direct road to pragmatism where all reality is confusion and brute fact rules and unity is not possible.

Robert D. Knudsen's Calvinistic Philosophy lectures (Disk 19 and 20)

This is a continuation of the class lectures on Calvinistic Philosophy given by Robert D. Knudsen at Westminster Theological Seminary.  As before, the information in the audio recordings have not been validated for accuracy (use at your own risk).

MY NOTE: These lectures appear to be from the Fall of 1980.  Knudsen eluded to the concession speech by President (Jimmy) Carter who lost the 1980 Presidential election to Ronald Reagan.

Dooyeweerd, Part 5 (Disk 19)

Stoker continues more in the line of Bavinck than did Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd (as does Van Til).

In Stoker we find an emphasis on principles as the presuppositions of our life and thought. Principles serve to give us archai. Then they give us guidance establishing an area or sphere in which they hold. A sphere would be established according to the principles of it. The spheres have a cosmological character. As we act we are already involved in the spheres. These spheres would also have to do with method. Reflecting an idea that was very much alive in Kuyper's day you would have sets of principles and according to Stoker the principle that apply to a particular area have to do with the method. Method has to apply to the particular sphere which pertain to it. It is the principles that are universal and fundamental in contrast to fact or what eventuates (actual). In addition we have value when a fact answers to a principle.

3 major categories

1. principle
2. fact
3. value

In classifying the sciences he distinguished between principle sciences and factual sciences.

Stoker was never so critical as Dooyeweerd was of the substance idea. Do we have to eliminate the idea of substance. Dooyeweerd tried to eliminate the idea of substance. If you define substance as something that exists in itself, which God alone is existent in himself. In contrast Dooyeweerd said the entire cosmos IS meaning. The idea of meaning is set over against substance all the cosmos is meaning and substance only pertains to God. The creation is meaning and this meaning is not symbolic but it refers to the lack of self sufficiency of everything within the cosmos. Something is only in reference to God and the origin, only in its reference to the self as the concentration point and the coherence of things. There is a complete dependence upon God in the created order.

Stoker attempted to retain the substance idea and the cosmos HAS meaning.

What are some of the consequences:

If everything is meaning then by no means can you think that there is then something in the cosmos that is independent from its relationship to God.

Stoker had set his notion of the philosophy of the creation idea over against the idea of revelation of Bavinck and the philosophy of the cosmonomic idea. Creation is the archimedean point. He accepted Law as archimedean point if it is not formal (everything in the cosmos is meaning).

Stoker held it (creation idea) depending on Genesis 1:1 as that which gives us the formal unity of the cosmos. The cosmos then is the creation of God and God is the sovereign creator. The peculiar thing about Stoker's position is that the cosmos is more than revelation it is more than being subject to the law. It is best spoken of as creation.

H. Stoker (Disk 20)

Stoker held that his view can account more for the abnormalism and the vicarious death of Christ. In this idea it is revealed God's actual will and his love of God without exclusion of the wisdom of God or the theoretical will (law principle).

MY NOTE: At this point Knudsen expresses puzzlement at some of the ideas of Stoker. Knudsen does not provide any answers.

The cosmos is subject to God but also dependent upon God. Knudsen is hypothesising that Stoker is given some nuanced meaning to 'subject.'

God preserves the cosmos.

Stoker believed that the creation idea was all inclusive that included all the others (others who held to WdW). He continues to say that the service to God is also meaningful subjection to law but according to ones own sphere.

Knudsen objects to this due to the freedom of man being set over against the law of God.

MY NOTE: Knudsen is doing a lot of Q/A at this point.

Stoker also spoke of the diversity of the cosmos. There is sphere sovereignty and there is also a freedom within the sphere. This principle is the same as sphere sovereignty but applied to another dimension of reality than that of quality and meaning. If one has freedom in own sphere, then it has a sort of self identity which is a fundamental gift of God.

MY NOTE: Knudsen is continuing his perplexity with Stoker.

When Stoker took the idea of creation, he tried to make it relevant philosophically in a way that is impossible. We have our religious stance with all the pattern's of it. This is not philosophical but religious understanding. Stoker attempted to take creation and make it philosophical and equal to the law and an archemedian point.

The idea of creation was associated as a guarantor of an area of freedom. Why? It gives better account to being more than subject to law. There is free activity with ones own sphere of competency.

What is this more than? To what is Law conformity to be contrasted? Can that to which it be contrasted have meaning apart from Law conformity? Law conformity is just as much created as freedom in contrast to Law conformity. It seem that the idea of creation becomes meaningless in this respect. This does not provide us a philosophical criteria for the development of concepts.