It seems to me that presuppositionalists claim that revelation is necessary for knowledge; if there is no revelation, there is no knowledge.

Why is that?

__________________
Steven Nemes
Phoenix, AZ

Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy must be answered - C.S. Lewis

Could it be that all truth is God's Truth?

It is from revelation that God, and thus Truth, is known. It is from reason that God, and Truth, becomes knowable.

AMR

__________________
Patrick
Member, PCA
Chandler, AZ
ReformedTheologyInstitute.com

I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.

I agree.

John 17:17 ESV
17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

__________________
David
PCA
Richardson, Texas

Saving faith is an immediate relation to Christ, accepting, receiving, resting upon Him alone, for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of God's grace.
--C.H. Spurgeon

Read Calvin's Institutes, book 1.

__________________
Patrick
MDiv, RTS Jackson
Pastor, Grace Presbyterian Church (OPC), Lisbon, NY

"He does well, that discourses of Christ; but he does infinitely better, that by experimental knowledge, feeds and lives on Christ." Thomas Brooks.
"Let us not please ourselves that we have deep understandings, but let us shew our understandings by our practice." Richard Sibbes

That's not really an answer. I can believe things that are true but not know them.

How are non-revelational epistemologies impossible or deficient?

This is another example of why definitions matter.

Can you explain what you mean, specifically, by:

"I believe X is true"
"I know X"

Thanks.

Understand that presuppositionalism, at least of the Van Til variety, does not limit "revelation" to "special revelation" as you seem to have.

__________________
Todd K. Pedlar
member, First Congregational Church, (CCCC) Cresco, IA
http://inprincipiodeus.solideogloria.com
http://puritanwisdom.blogspot.com

"As God did not at first choose you because you were high, He will not now forsake you because you are low."
John Flavel in Keeping the Heart



Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

Well there are two definitions of "know" that I am aware of.

S knows p just if (1) S believes p, (2) p is true, and (3) S is justified in believing in p.

That seems to be a common definition. Another would be:

S knows p just if (1) S believes p, (2) p is true, and (3) p has sufficient warrant for S.

Either of those definitions would work; I'm not stuck one way or the other.

And as for believe:

S believes p just if S holds that p is true.

Steven,

Under either definition, though, I would not be justified in stating that there is a computer in front of me. Why? Because I am not absolutely certain of it.

This is why I define knowledge as S knows p if 1) S believes p enough for practical purposes 2) S has some justification for believing p 3) p appears to correspond to reality

__________________
Philip
Potomac Hills Presbyterian Church (PCA) Leesburg, VA
Attending Reformed Presbyterian Church, Lookout Mountain, GA
Student Covenant College

The Importance of Being Orthodox

You don't have to have certainty to be justified in believing something. I don't know why anyone would accept that.

What I'm suggesting, though, is that correspondence to reality has less bearing on whether I can claim to "know" than has traditionally been suggested because I will never have absolute certainty. This is why I say that p must appear to correspond to reality.

I'm not sure that I understand your point.

A requirement for knowledge is not that a person know certainly that his belief is true; it is rather just that his belief is true.

I might not know that my belief that God exists is true. Yet, if I believe that God exists, and he does, and I have justification/warrant, then I can be said to know that God exists.

Knowing that you know is not necessary for knowing simpliciter.

I honestly don't know what this has to do with requiring revelation or not, which was the original question, Steven.

What's your objection to the presuppositionalist requirement that all knowledge is revelational? (special and general both, as I pointed out earlier) Surely you're not trying to construct some sort of apologetic built on "neutral ground"?

I am asking why non-revelational epsitemologies are deficient. It seems to be the presup argument that if God does not exist and (therefore) nothing is revealed to man, then man cannot know anything.

You should get this book:



Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended, Greg L. Bahnsen

Besides being an absolutely superb book overall, in the first appendix, Bahnsen deals explicitly with this question.

Thanks for your recommendation!

I have a book by Bahnsen called "Always Ready" and I did enjoy reading. I don't think I'll be able to buy any books any time soon, though, as school has started and I'm low on money.

Could you briefly summarize his points, if you have the time?

I've only briefly skimmed the appendix (I'm still in chapter 4)

His argument begins with the discussion of self-sufficiency in knowledge. Non-revelational epistemology requires self-sufficiency of at least two knowers. Revelational, only one.

Thus he begins by demonstrating that there can be only one, and this by the following sequence: a) it is impossible to deny that there is at least one such knower. (because the only one who can deny it with certainty is a self-sufficient knower) b) there cannot be more than one such knower (because if there were two, then neither could be certain he wasn't being fooled by the other). So we cannot deny a self-sufficient knower - but there can be only one, if there is one.

Bahnsen then argues that there are only three other possibilities - solipsism, skepticism or revelational epistemology. Bahnsen doesn't spend time on solipsism, since it's so stupid as to require no direct assault as a concept. Skepticism, Bahnsen argues, is denied by the fact that it is equivalent to a denial of a self-sufficent knower (which he's already shown to be impossible).
He is left, then, with the result that a single self-sufficient knower is required. All non-autonomous (non-self-sufficient) knowers require revelation for grounding truths and knowledge (and further that knowledge will thereby be analogous, rather than autonomous knowledge) As such, reasoning and knowledge is only possible in the revelational framework.

That's my poor attempt at summarizing the first part of his first appendix. Hope it helps.

S knows p just if (1) S believes p, (2) p is true, and (3) S is justified in believing in p.

Steve,

That would seem to be an inadequate definition of knowledge. Consider,

Belief: It is approximately 12 noon
Justification: Clock on the wall
True: It is approximately 12 noon

Does one have knowledge if the justification is based upon a clock that stopped working twelve hours earlier (at 12 midnight)? Certainly the person would have been justified in his belief. Accordingly, “justification” must have more veracity than a rational inference. Not only must the person have a justification for his belief, there must also be a justification for the truth. Be careful though, having a justification for both belief and truth does not mean that knowledge only obtains if one is able to defend his justification and belief. For instance, the person who has never been confronted with Scripture indeed believes the truth “God exists”. God has justified this belief of the truth to all men everywhere through conscience, creation and providence; yet apart from special revelation (Scripture) man cannot produce a justification for the truth he believes about God. Though we need God’s spoken word to justify knowledge, we need not have this revelatory word to have knowledge.

With respect to “sufficient warrant”, whether one has knowledge or not would depend upon what is meant by the term.

As for your original query, even the law of contradiction, apart from general revelation, would reduce to inductive inference since nobody has tested every instance of the law. Yet even induction is only irrational to maintain if God has revealed the uniformity of nature. Accordingly, all worldviews that do not begin with revelation fail. They cannot account for univeral laws of logic or rational, inductive inference. One would have to be omniscient to know or even rationally infer anything. You might begin by positing something that can be known apart from revelation.

Best,

Ron

__________________
Ronald W. DiGiacomo / Ruling Elder
Christ Presbyterian Church (OPC)
Elkton, Maryland

http://reformedapologist.blogspot.com

Howdy Ron!

I agree with your case that justification is not enough. I said earlier that I don't lean one way or the other, so it doesn't matter what definition one uses.

I think I understand your argument. You are claiming that all beliefs reduce to induction if God doesn't exist, because all beliefs are formed on the basis of experience.

Induction is this:

1. At t1, X was the case.
2. At t2, X was the case.
3. At t3, X was the case.
...
4. At tn, X was the case.
5. Therefore, X is always the case.

But obviously not all beliefs are like this.

What about my current belief that I am in a room? I believe I am in a room; it appears to me that I am, I don't have any reason to think I am being deceived, and so on; I am not experiencing cognitive dysfunction; I happen to actually be in a room. Therefore I know I am in a room.

That seems easy, and no need of anything to be revealed to me.

Or perhaps this. I currently believe I have been sitting here for more than 5 minutes. I don't see any reason to think my memories are unreliable, any reason to think that the world was created 4 minutes ago, and so on; I am not experiencing cognitive dysfunction; I kept a timer next to me and watched it for the whole of what appears to be 5 minutes 10 seconds. It actually is the case that I have been sitting here for more than 5 minutes. Therefore I know I have been sitting for more than 5 minutes.

Steve,

For starters, your conclusions that begin with "therefore I know" go beyond the scope of the premises, making all your syllogisms invalid. Moreover, having "no reason" to believe contrary to what you believe is hardly sufficient for knowledge. Remember the clock example? (I have “no reason” to think the clock on the wall is not working is hardly sufficient for knowledge.) Even your attempt to predicate presupposes a reality that a non-revelational epistemological worldview wouldn’t afford you. After all, apart from revelation, on what basis do you suppose that the there can be any fruitful connection whatsoever between your immaterial thoughts and the material world? Unless a sovereign God stands behind your mind and the mind-independent stuff outside your mind, you would have no rational basis for believing that anything you think about the outside world affords you any truth about how things actually are in the world. You’d simply be imposing arbitrary categories of thought upon otherwise unintelligible, chaotic matter in motion - even without accounting for your use of a priori knowledge. At the very least, how, being finite, would you know that you are not being tricked by a wicked sovereign? You are assuming way too much, like there can be truth after all. As Jesus said to cynical pagan-Pilate, what is truth?

Please appreciate that there is enough in my first post and now this one to challenge your theory; so I would implore you hold off on responding for a while, at least until you’ve had time to deal with what has already been said. At the very least, do keep in mind that you assumed the law of contradiction in everything you wrote, but not having universal experience you wouldn't know that the law is valid unless God implanted you with that knowledge.

Most sincerely,

Ron

Steven -

Also, if you have Van Til's Apologetic by Bahnsen, his chapter 4 on epistemology and apologetics addresses the issue of knowledge and revelation.

Also, if you have Van Til's Apologetic by Bahnsen, his chapter 4 on epistemology and apologetics addresses the issue of knowledge and revelation.

Todd,

Great suggestion! IMHO, that is the chapter in the book. It alone is worth the cost of admission!

Ron

Hello Steven,

You asked...

Let me make some distinctions between this claim and TAG. TAG argues that knowledge, rational inquiry, morality, etc..., require an appropriate ontological foundation of which only God supplies. This is expressed in statements like...

K: "If God does not exist, then there is no knowledge."

Now, what is being said in the quote at the beginning of this post is different than K. What is being said is along the lines of...

R: "If God does not communicate to His creation, i.e., provide revelation, then there is no knowledge."

R is a fundamentally different claim than K in that R seems to be some type of epistemological foundation rather than ontological. Also, K seems to be independent of R. That is to say, it seems K can be true when R is false. As such, one can be a presuppositionalist and reject R, which I do. Here is why...

My awareness of my mental states (like "I am feeling pain") is considered knowledge. This awareness does not seem to depend on general or special revelation. It seems to simply depend upon God creating me with the appropriate mental faculties. For those who assert R, God creating me with the appropriate mental faculties is not sufficient for me to gain knowledge through those God given mental faculties. They say revelation is needed. This seems absurd when you consider that revelation must come through those God given mental faculties in the first place - even if that revelation is immediate! In other words, if my God given mental faculties cannot give me knowledge, then God's revelation to me (both general and special), even if immediate, cannot be knowledge because it must come through those very mental faculties. But the Bible contradicts this. The Bible says that my mental faculties are sufficient to know general revelation. As such, I suspect R is false.

Sincerely,

Brian

__________________
Brian Bosse
Faith Community Church
Tucson, Arizona

i'm enjoying this...

from a autonomous point of view you really can't know you're in the room right now, sure you say you have no reason to believe you're being deceived but that is the nature of deception. you could be dreaming, you could be in a coma and some scientist are probing you brain for stimulation.

if you dropped your pen would it go down or up? past experiences tell you down but you have no reason to believe that next time it will go down, the laws can change.

according to philosophy without divine revelation, we should be a skeptic about everything because we can't lay down the basic foundation for knowledge, we cannot know if the laws of logic we are used to reason are accurate or not.

__________________
"Bible knowledge without repentance, will be but a torch to light men to hell. -Thomas Watson
United Through Christ
Ricky Heeb
Grace Reformed Church (RCUS) Lancaster, CA

K: "If God does not exist, then there is no knowledge."

Now, what is being said in the quote at the beginning of this post is different than K. What is being said is along the lines of...

R: "If God does not communicate to His creation, i.e., provide revelation, then there is no knowledge."

Brian,

I actually had typed out that same nuance but decided to delete it from my second post. Let me comment though since you raise the distinction. Steve had written after his first inquiry: “It seems to be the presup argument that if God does not exist and (therefore) nothing is revealed to man, then man cannot know anything.” For sake of time I assumed that Steve would agree with K, that if God does not exist then there can be no knowledge. The reason being, I trust he agrees that apart from God nothing would exist, including knowledge. Accordingly, I decided for the sake of time to interpret no relevant distinction in his use of words, thereby assuming he wanted to deal only with claim R, that knowledge presupposes revelation.

You said: “it seems K can be true when R is false.”

Indeed, K does not imply R, but of course (and as you appreciate), that does not imply that R must be false.

You further wrote: “As such, one can be a presuppositionalist and reject R, which I do.”

I guess one may choose to define “presuppositionalist” any way one likes, but I would suggest that Clark, following Augustine on this matter, as well as Van Til were not as all-encompassing as you might have us to believe. Maybe you have other presuppositionalists in mind, but I find it a bit passing strange that you would assert that one can be a presuppositionalist while denying “knowledge, therefore, revelation” since both Clark and Van Til agreed on that point (and many others). First consider Van Til: “We may characterize this whole situation by saying that the creation of God is a revelation of God. God revealed himself in nature and also revealed himself in the mind of man. Thus it is impossible for the mind of man to function except in the atmosphere of revelation. And every thought of man when it functioned normally in this atmosphere of revelation would express the truth as laid in the creation by God. We may therefore call a Christian epistemology a revelational epistemology.” Yet you demur: “For those who assert R, God creating me with the appropriate mental faculties is not sufficient for me to gain knowledge through those God given mental faculties. They say revelation is needed.”

Maybe Van Til was wrong (though I don’t think so), but there is no doubt that he affirmed that it is impossible for the mind of man to function without revelation. Accordingly, revelation was necessary for a functioning mind and if so, for knowledge too. Yet you would have us believe that presuppositionalism makes room for the idea that “appropriate mental faculties” apart from revelation is sufficient for one to gain knowledge. Consider Clark, following Augustine. Clark not only believed that apart from revelation there could be no knowledge; his view of knowledge had all the marks of revelation. Not only was all knowledge predicated upon revelation for Clark; it was also revelatory in and of itself. Clark states:

“With consideration such as these Augustine was able to explain the learning and the teaching process. The teacher in the classroom does not give his students ideas. The ideas or truths are discovered by the student in his own mind; and as he contemplates the truth within the mind, it is not a product of the student. The truth is not individual, but universal; truth did not begin when we were born, it has always existed.

Is all this any more than the assertion that there is an eternal, immutable Mind, a Supreme Reason, a personal, living God? The truths of propositions that may be known are the thoughts of God, the eternal thoughts of God. And insofar as man knows anything he is in contact with God’s mind. Since, further, God’s mind is God, we may legitimately borrow the figurative language, if not precise meaning, of the mystics and say, we have a vision of God.”

Clark, following Augustine, appreciated that man is not autonomous and that any knowledge received can only be by God’s quickening of the human mind, as opposed to reception by way of autonomous pursuit. Accordingly, any eternal truth man knows is, as Van Til put it here (and as Clark said even more clearly and consistently in other places), “… true if it corresponds to the knowledge God has…” This knowledge available to men is not possible apart form the mind of man functioning “in the atmosphere of revelation” (Van Til), and not apart from receiving a “vision of God” (Clark).

Clark and Van Til agreed that knowledge presupposes truth and those otherwise unintelligible brute particulars, unorganized by a Divine Mind, cannot be known. God must preinterpret the particulars and grant knowledge of their unified relationship. When a man with “appropriate mental faculties” (as you put it) gains knowledge, he receives knowledge that is not a product of the student (Clark). The student discovers truths, yet not new truths to God. The student receives as it were “a vision of God”, a piece of God’s eternal knowledge. He receives and embraces truth that God has been pleased to conceal until a predetermined time when the concealment is unveiled. That unfolding of concealed truth for Augustine, and I would suggest Clark as well, has all the marks of revelation if it is truth at all, for all truth is concealed in the Omnipotent One until he determines to release it; it does not exist in nature as intelligible in and of itself. To suggest that “appropriate faculties” are sufficient for the apprehension of God’s truth would seem to imply the possibility of autonomous pursuit of brute particulars – apart from God’s determination to grant / reveal that which can be known of that body of truth that is contained in the Mind of God. Moreover, if appropriate faculties are sufficient, then why don't men with appropriate faculties have all the knowledge they'll ever have upon having such faculties? Obvously, there must be at least another variable in the equation, like God's determination to enlighten, which is peculiar to a revelational epistemology.

At the very least, given that God alone is omnipotent and is alone the source of all truth, any truth that can be known must be due to God's sovereign unleashing of those truths to the minds of men. Whether we call it revelatory or illumination, it is the work of God, which the non-revelational epistemology denies is necessary. That's the point.

It may also be worth repeating what I said to Steve, "you assumed the law of contradiction in everything you wrote, but not having universal experience you wouldn't know that the law is valid unless God implanted you with that knowledge." Accordingly, even if you don't accept the implications of Clark, that all knowledge is in a sense revelatory in that man simply acquires by God's sovereign fiat what God already knows, I would hope you would agree that all knowledge presupposes the law of contradiction, which cannot be arrived at by a posteriori means; yet rather requires a general revelation, which you might be including in your view of sound mental faculties. Accordingly, if every bit of knowledge presupposes the law of contradiction that is only available through revelation, then by extension all knowledge presupposes at least that bit of revelation.

Yours,

Ron

Hello Ron,

I appreciated your post. I do not have time to interact with it right now, but will try to post something by tomorrow.

Sincerely,

Brian

Here's a paper on Van Til's and Plantinga's Epistemology.

http://www.proginosko.com/docs/IfKnowledgeThenGod.pdf

I believe that Van Til believed that a man's innate knowledge of God was foundational to all his other knowledge because God is the objective all-conditioner, whose total knowledge of facts and laws defines what is.

Without God's total exhaustive knowledge e.g. of a particular object e.g. an orange, defining it objectively and being communicated to our minds via the creation, human beings could never know what it is, because our knowledge of the object is always partial and subjective.

Isn't it Kant who said we cannot know things in themselves? In a world without God this would be really true, because it is God Who not only creates and sustains things and gives moral value to human behaviour, but also defines what things really are, and thus man can have true and real knowledge of things, which is yet subjective and partial.

If the thing - e.g. an orange - was not defined in and by God's infinite mind, we could not define it in or by our finite minds.

From the above essay by James Anderson:-

A recurring theme in the epistemological arguments of both Plantinga and Van Til is
the observation that in order for us to have knowledge of the world certain conditions
must be fulfilled that cannot be fulfilled by the human mind alone (either singularly or
collectively). For example, if it turns out that human knowledge requires the
possession of cognitive faculties that are literally well designed, we cannot claim with
a straight face that we ourselves are the designers in question. Likewise, suppose it
really is the case that for anyone to have any knowledge of the world, at least one
person must have comprehensive knowledge of the world; the shortlist of human
candidates who might take the credit would be a short list indeed.

Only God can have total knowledge of the object/fact in front of you e.g. an orange, therefore only God can know the thing in itself, therefore without God's knowledge, our knowledge of all things would be subjective and partial, and would amount to no knowledge at all.

__________________
Richard
communicant member, FCoS
Perth, Scotland UK

His Name forever shall endure;
last like the sun it shall:
Men shall be blessed in Him,
and blessed all nations shall Him call (Ps. 72:17)

No Hurry, Brian. And please don't feel you have to be exhaustive in your response. If you see a main point of contention, then by all means zero in on that without getting into every jot and tittle, if you prefer.

On a more personal note, I thought of you fondly at different times this year. For one thing, I was in Arizona for Christmas at my father-in-law's place, which brought you to mind. I was not close to your area otherwise I would have tried to make contact.

Warmly,

Ron

Richard,

Thanks for the thoughts. I trust Brian would agree that for finite men to know anything there must be a deposit of all knowledge, and that such a deposit is located in the Divine Mind. Without such a deposit, for man to know anything he would have to know everything, but since God knows everything, he can grant us knowledge without our having the ability to search an infinite number of alternatives that might otherwise undermine the knowledge we might possess. What is entailed by our knowledge, however, is a justification of the truth believed. That justification (or affirmation if you will), the faculty of reason cannot supply. The affirmation of the truth is neither part of the mind, nor part of the propostion, nor found within the belief. It is a revelational justification that has its source not in our being as image bearer but in God alone.

I've made reference to the law of contradiction. Our justification for our belief in that law-truth cannot be sourced to the human mind, lest we end up being the justification of an attribute of God, logic. Folly? The justification for the law of contradiction comes to us from outside ourselves. Indeed it must. It comes from God. It is not a part of the mind, yet rather an enabler of the mind.

Blessings,

Ron

Why are you assuming Platonic idealism here? Why does there have to be a divine repository of knowledge for me to be able to know that, for example, I am sitting on a chair?

Why do I believe in the law of non-contradiction? Because it's necessarily true since the alternative is obviously false. My saying this in no way justifies it any more than Elijah calling fire from heaven justified God's omnipotence.

What you are searching for is metaphysical justification, not epistemological justification, which is, in my opinion, backwards.

Hello Ron,

Thank you for your kind words. If you are ever in the area, I would love for us to hook up.

Please feel free to zero in on anything I said below. As such, do not feel as if you have to interact with everything below.

I agree with you that we are dealing with semantics here. I was using the term 'presuppositionalist' as one who affirms K. I agree with you that Clark affirmed R. In fact, he defined 'knowledge' only as that which can be rightly deduced from the Scriptures. Nothing else for him was properly called 'knowledge'. I have argued against Clark's Scripturalism in other threads. Concerning Van Til, he too might have affirmed R, but I would like to comment on some of the quotes you provided.

When I read this, I do not see this as necessarily affirming R. When Van Til says, "It is impossible for the mind of man to function except in the atmosphere of revelation," he is simply stating that we are surrounded by the revelation of God - it is the atmosphere we breath, so to speak. As such, our mind, existing in such an atmosphere, functions within this atmosphere. This is not the same thing as saying that apart from such an atmosphere of revelation we could know nothing. It is just a picture of our created situation.

Some of this sounds more like an affirmation of K rather than R. Also, it sounds as if you are defining knowledge in a rather precise, but limited way...

Knowledge: 'X' is knowledge if and only if the knower is in touch with the mind of God.

I am not exactly sure what being "in touch with the mind of God" means. I suspect you are saying that when someone understands God's revelation, then they are in touch with the mind of God. If this is the case, then you are simply defining 'knowledge' in terms of God's revelation, i.e., it is being defind in such a way as to make R necessary. Again, I am not sure why my mental states, which do not seem to be part of what is properly called General Revelation, is not considered knowledge.

To say X is sufficient to have knowledge is not the same thing as saying X is sufficient to have all knowledge. For instance, if God does not reveal Himself to me in a saving way (enlighten me), then I cannot know those things that accompany salvation, but I still could know the truth or falsity of propositions like "I am feeling pain".

My using LNC is a function of my mental hardware - how God created me. It is not a function of general or special revelation. Now, I grant that my using LNC screams that a creator exists (in other words K is true), but this is not the same as saying that I must first have revelation to use it. If you want to define 'revelation' in broader terms to include my mental hardware, then you may do so, but we have gone beyond the normal use of what is commonly understood as revelation. For example, Clark would claim that revelation is propositional in nature. My mental hardware is not propositional. My mental hardware is the equipment that allows me to understand and judge propositions. God gave me such equipment so I could understand revelation. I cannot understand revelation without the appropriate mental hardware. Mental hardware comes before revelation. As such, for us to be able to know anything (espitemology) we have to have the appropriate equipment given to us by God (ontology).

God has given us the appropriate mental harware when He created us. We then use that hardware to gain knowledge like those truths found in general and special revelation. If our equipment could not in and of itself provide knowledge, then we could not even know general or special revelation. Here is another way to think of it: revelation presupposes one being able to know that revelation. If this is not the case, then what do we mean by the term 'revelation'? Our being able to know comes before our knowing. This is why I think R is false.

Sincerely,

Brian

“Why are you assuming Platonic idealism here?”

I didn't know that I was. Thanks for pointing that out to me.

“Why does there have to be a divine repository of knowledge for me to be able to know that, for example, I am sitting on a chair?”

Your question seems to be, Why must God be omniscient for you to know anything? If God does not know you are sitting in a chair, then it is false that you are sitting in a chair (since God knows all truth). Conversely, if it is not false you are sitting in a chair (i.e. if it is true…), then God knows it. In other words, since you cannot know as true that which is false, God would have to know you are sitting in a chair for you to know you are sitting in a chair. This principle is universal; so we may say that God’s knowledge of what you know is a necessary condition for what you know. So at the very least, God must know everything you know. Not only is God’s knowledge of your knowledge necessary, it must also precede your knowledge (not just temporally but logically). Your knowledge is not original but receptive. You’ll know what God says you’ll know. I’ll assume I need not argue that Calvinistic point to you. With all that granted, we may safely conclude that not only is it necessary that God know what you know; his knowledge precedes yours due to the Creator-creature distinction.

Possibly it is more obvious that certain other things (other than God’s omniscience) are necessary for, and prior to, your knowledge of sitting on a chair. For instance, “I am sitting on a chair” does not mean “I am not sitting on a chair”; hence the law of contradiction is presupposed and, therefore, precedes the intelligibility of the proposition and consequently your knowledge of it. Now then, does the law of contradiction apply to internal thought, or does it apply to external things too? I trust you’ll affirm the latter; presumably we’re talking about a physical chair outside your mind. Accordingly, there must be some fruitful connection between the abstract entities of logic and Chairness, and the material world of chairs and not chairs. “I am sitting on a chair” is intelligible but only if certain other realities logically precede the proposition. You possess categories of logical, internal thought. And, there is an external world to which those categories of thought correspond. But how can it be that your knowledge is based upon that needful universal law of contradiction without you having universal experience? The only solution is that Someone who must know all things has revealed to you that the law of contradiction is universal and invariant, and that He has not been tricked by the Demiurge. In the final analyses, I would suggest to you that as creatures, we need not know all things to know some things because an omniscient, good God has granted us knowledge of some things without our having to know all things.

“Why do I believe in the law of non-contradiction? Because it's necessarily true since the alternative is obviously false.”

Your question can be written as: “Why do I believe that the law of contradiction is true?” When written out in long hand, your response becomes glaringly tautological. Your answer “because it is necessarily true" and it can’t be otherwise is simply question begging. The reason it is true is because it reflects the very thinking of God.

"What you are searching for is metaphysical justification, not epistemological justification, which is, in my opinion, backwards."

What I have tried to do is consider our knowledge in light of God’s ethics, reality and knowledge.

Cheers, Philip.

Ron

Hi Brian,

And I thought you were just going to roll over, slap you forehead and say “you’re right, Ron. How could I have been so blind?!” How naïve of me!

“I have argued against Clark's Scripturalism in other threads.”

I would think that I could very well join you in your arguments, but what I doubt is that we’d be arguing against Clark. The more I have read Clark I have become persuaded that Clarkian-Scripturalists have hijacked the thoughts of a man and turned them into a philosophy of their own making. But that’s not relevant to this discussion.

When Van Til says, "It is impossible for the mind of man to function except in the atmosphere of revelation," he is simply stating that we are surrounded by the revelation of God - it is the atmosphere we breath, so to speak.

My brother, and I kid you not, I actually anticipated the possibility of that rejoinder but figured that what preceded and followed the particular part of the quote would have given us the correct interpretation of the part you noted. Van Til, without any view toward Scripture in the quote I supplied, equated creation and revelation and concluded by saying that we may, therefore, call our theory of knowledge a “revelational” one. In other words, he wasn’t merely speaking in terms of necessary conditions as being states of affairs that had no order of logical priority. (You understand my meaning as a logician.) He wasn’t just saying, in other words, “If knowledge, then revelation” in an uninteresting, naked way. For had he been saying merely that, then he could have also said “If knowledge, then matter.” So what would be his point?

Rather, he was making a more driving point. He was implying not only the necessary condition of revelation as a state of affair that obtains when human knowledge is present. He was more importantly implying that knowledge is based upon that necessary condition, as opposed to knowledge always being in the presence of that condition. I have to read him that way; for one thing because of all the other things he wrote, but also in this particular snippet his conclusion of a “revelational epistemology” would have been of no significance at all if he did not mean necessary “pre-condition”. Nuff said; it’s as pertinent to this thread as whether Clarkians represent Clark fairly.

Knowledge: 'X' is knowledge if and only if the knower is in touch with the mind of God.

I don’t recognize that as mine. I think I spoke of Van Til’s use of correspondence of thought between the creature and the Creator as being present whenever there is knowledge.

“I am not exactly sure what being "in touch with the mind of God" means.”

I’m not sure I know either, so I’ll pass.

“To say X is sufficient to have knowledge is not the same thing as saying X is sufficient to have all knowledge.

Your X, as defined by you, is your faculty of reason, which is a constant. You never get a new mind after all. Accordingly, when you said your mind is sufficient to have knowledge, it would have been unreasonable for me to twist that that to mean that you are saying that you will receive “all knowledge” in the world upon having that sufficient condition, your mind. But what it should imply is that all knowledge you will ever possess should be received upon that sufficient condition being met. I would argue, therefore, that when you call the mind a sufficient condition for knowledge, that given the presence of that sufficient condition you should have not all knowledge in the world, but rather all “knowledge” for which your faculties are a sufficient condition. If you want to say that the sufficient condition of your faculties will give you progressive knowledge all along life’s paths, then there must be something you need in addition to your existing mind, making the mind not as sufficient as I think you need to maintain if your thesis is to survive. (The improvement of the mind by God is not the granting of new faculties.) But let’s press on… and in doing so, please let me reach down to the bottom of the funnel and pass on most of your hardware analogy.

You say: “If our equipment could not in and of itself provide knowledge, then we could not even know general or special revelation.” That would seem to translate into: “If our faculties could not in and of itself receive knowledge [apart from revelation], then we could not even know general or special revelation with the use of our minds.” In other words, your position would seem to be: “If our faculties are not sufficient for knowing God’s revealed truth, then God cannot reveal truth to our minds through the use of our faculties.” But that would be to assert that if the mind is not sufficient, then it cannot be necessary, is it not?

“Here is another way to think of it: revelation presupposes one being able to know that revelation.”

This would seem to be a completely separate matter altogether. In the first instance you were speaking of the faculties providing knowledge (i.e. the sufficiency of the faculties), and now here you are speaking in terms of revelation presupposing the ability to know, which has to do with our faculties being necessary, not sufficient. I don’t question in the least that the mind is necessary, but that the mind is sufficient to justify beliefs about how things actually are in the face of how they appear to be is quite another matter, especially in light of the universals that are involved that transcend our experience.

At the end of the day, I think the position I am purporting, which I don’t believe is anything new or strange, becomes much more clear when we consider that the justification for our true beliefs cannot be provided by the mind; yet it is provided to the mind by the Spirit (most often times through the normal medium, or occasion, of the senses).

We’ve probably beat this long enough. If I don’t see anything substantially different in any of the future posts, I’ll elect to bow out of this thread if that’s O.K.

Grace and peace,

Ron

Quote from P.F. Pugh
What you are searching for is metaphysical justification, not epistemological justification, which is, in my opinion, backwards.

But isn't that the problerm with e.g. naturalism? It lacks a metaphysical basis for its epistemology.

Ron,

In order for me to know that God exists, I must know something first. This is why epistemology must come first because, in order to have a metaphysic, one must have knowledge upon which to base it. Epistemology must come first because I have to have a method of knowledge before I can come to a conclusion about the nature of the universe.

Now then, does the law of contradiction apply to internal thought, or does it apply to external things too? I trust you’ll affirm the latter; presumably we’re talking about a physical chair outside your mind. Accordingly, there must be some fruitful connection between the abstract entities of logic and Chairness, and the material world of chairs and not chairs. “I am sitting on a chair” is intelligible but only if certain other realities logically precede the proposition.

As stated before, you're presupposing Platonic idealism here. You are presupposing that God categorizes things the way we do and that that is what constitutes knowledge. I have two chairs in my room right now. They are two different things, but I call them both chairs because they have certain things in common that most in my culture would ascribe to "chair-ness". All this is, then, is a categorization that would not exist if we, as perceiving beings, did not perceive a certain similarity between objects. As I recall, God gave man the prerogative to name the things on the earth and to categorize them.

The only solution is that Someone who must know all things has revealed to you that the law of contradiction is universal and invariant, and that He has not been tricked by the Demiurge.

No--the solution is that the law of contradiction is necessarily true. It cannot be postulated otherwise. It may be that God is necessary to explain the fact, but first I must conclude the fact and know something before I can go on to ask why. You can't know why you know until you are sure of how you know.

Your question can be written as: “Why do I believe that the law of contradiction is true?” When written out in long hand, your response becomes glaringly tautological. Your answer “because it is necessarily true" and it can’t be otherwise is simply question begging. The reason it is true is because it reflects the very thinking of God.

1) Assume that the law of non-contradiction is untrue
2) Assuming that the law of non-contradiction is untrue leads to propositions like "I saw a spherical cube"
3) The above is unthinkable
4) Therefore the law of non-contradiction is necessarily true

What I have tried to do is consider our knowledge in light of God’s ethics, reality and knowledge.

But you must conclude that you know something before you can even consider this.

-----Added 8/31/2009 at 02:50:50 EST-----

But isn't that the problerm with e.g. naturalism? It lacks a metaphysical basis for its epistemology.

The problem is that it assumes an epistemology that contradicts naturalism.

Philip,

This will have to be my last response to you. I have other more pressing matters.

In my previous post to you I established that God’s knowledge is a necessary precondition for your knowledge. Then I established that for God to know anything, he must know everything. Rather than performing an internal critique of what I wrote, you simply barked out a few assertions. I didn’t even discern an attempt by you to deal with what was before you.

“In order for me to know that God exists, I must know something first.This is why epistemology must come first because, in order to have a metaphysic, one must have knowledge upon which to base it. Epistemology must come first because I have to have a method of knowledge before I can come to a conclusion about the nature of the universe.”

Whether epistemology must “come first” (whatever that means to you), has not been incorporated by you into any series of premises with a valid form that would in turn lead to the conclusion that there does not need to be a depository of knowledge for you to have knowledge. At very best you have been arguing by false-disjunction.

“As stated before, you're presupposing Platonic idealism here.”

The question is not what you believe me to be presupposing but whether I have offered a sound argument. Your tagging it “Platonic Idealism” might have some shock value, but it is certainly not an argument.

“I have two chairs in my room right now. They are two different things, but I call them both chairs because they have certain things in common that most in my culture would ascribe to "chair-ness". All this is, then, is a categorization that would not exist if we, as perceiving beings, did not perceive a certain similarity between objects. As I recall, God gave man the prerogative to name the things on the earth and to categorize them.”

I have little doubt that if there are two chairs in your room (and you are there to observe them) that you know that to be true. But that has very little to do with whether you could know that to be true apart from God’s omniscience. As noted before, God knows all truth and you can only know something if it is true. Accordingly, God’s knowledge of what you know is a necessary condition for your knowledge. Added to that, God’s knowledge must precede your knowledge because God’s knowledge (of those things) is based upon his pre-determination of those things. Consequently, God’s knowledge is both necessary and prior to your knowledge. Finally, for God to know anything, it must be true that he know that he cannot be wrong, which requires omniscience. Accordingly, for you to know there are two chairs in the room, God must be omniscient – since your knowledge is predicated upon His, and His knowledge of any one thing presupposes that he must know all things.

“No--the solution is that the law of contradiction is necessarily true.”

In your first post your “argument” could be paraphrased thusly: “Why do I believe that the law of contradiction is true?... Because it is necessarily true and it can’t be otherwise”. That, I believe, is an accurate functional equivalence of what you wrote. I pointed out the question begging and the tautological nature of your statements and you didn’t flinch. Now you say that the law of contradiction is necessarily true, which although is true, still gets you nowhere. It is necessary, just as God’s holiness is necessary. But how do you get from that premise to the conclusion that God need not know everything for you to know anything? I showed mine, now you show yours.

“It may be that God is necessary to explain the fact, but first I must conclude the fact and know something before I can go on to ask why. You can't know why you know until you are sure of how you know.”

It just occurred to me what you might be thinking, but please don’t hold it against me if I’m wrong. You haven’t given me much to work with I’m afraid. Your knowledge of X precedes your explanation of how, or even why you know X. Fine, but so what? My position is that for you to know X, God must know not only X but all things, which you deny. Accordingly, all this talk about epistemology preceding metaphysics, which by the way you have misapplied in this discussion, has nothing to do with the rather straightforward argument before you.

“1) Assume that the law of non-contradiction is untrue
2) Assuming that the law of non-contradiction is untrue leads to propositions like "I saw a spherical cube"
3) The above is unthinkable
4) Therefore the law of non-contradiction is necessarily true”

Presumably what you mean by 3 is that 2 entails a logical impossibility. Well, of course 2 is illogical, but that doesn’t get you any closer to a refutation of the thesis that human knowledge presupposes an omniscient God. And not that it really matters, but your premise 4, although true, was not cogently argued. Finally, at best all you can do after taking God out of the equation is reason inductively that the law of contradiction seems universal and invariant. But even that can only be inferred by first assuming large allowances, like the world is uniform and predication is possible. There are no freebies in philosophy, so I would ask you to account for those pre-conditions too if you care to use them.

“But you must conclude that you know something before you can even consider this.”

Concluding you know (you have two chairs…) and actually knowing (it) is not the same thing. Yet even allowing for your actual knowledge of your two chairs - that you know it prior to knowing how and why you know it has nothing to do with whether God must be omniscient for you to know anything. I’m afraid you’ve been engaged in quite a different discussion than the one you were suppose to be having.

Best of providence,

Ron

Hello Ron,

I think you are misreading him. The quote begins with him making a “characterization of the situation.” He describes that creation itself communicates something. What is that something? Van Til says it is “a revelation of God.” I am certain that he has Romans chapter 1 in mind. He goes onto state that God reveals Himself to us in two ways: (1) through creation itself, and (2) directly to the mind of man. He concludes from this the following…

Notice the ‘thus’. Van Til is drawing a conclusion from how God reveals Himself in the two ways above: (1) and (2). To make his argument go through, then it must be understood that the mind functions in two arenas: internal and external. Since God reveals Himself to our minds internally through (2) and externally through (1), then the functioning of the mind is always in an arena where God has revealed Himself. *That* is Van Til’s argument.

Now, Van Til then goes onto point out that when a mind is functioning properly within the two arenas where God reveals Himself, the mind will have thoughts that express truths regarding His revelation of Himself. This is what He calls revelational epistemology. Notice, nowhere in the quote you provided does it assert that revelation is a necessary pre-condition for knowledge. If you think it does, then please go sentence by sentence through the quote and give us your understanding of it.

Here is what *you* said, “The truths of propositions that may be known are the thoughts of God, the eternal thoughts of God. And insofar as man knows anything he is in contact with God’s mind.”

Again, Ron these are your words and not mine. You said, “An insofar as man knows anything he is in contact with God’s mind.” Assuming you understood what you meant to convey by those words, then I am not sure what you mean when you say that you don’t know what they mean.

No it's not. But you seem to be missing my point. What I am saying is that if our mental faculties are not sufficient to produce knowledge, then our mental faculties are incapable of producing knowledge from general revelation, special revelation, mental states, or any other input presented to our minds. In this regard, let me ask you a question. Since you say revelation is necessary for knowledge, then what does revelation provide that if removed would cause our mental faculties to be unable to produce any knowledge whatsoever?

Sincerely,

Brian

That's only because you didn't bother to define 'warrant'. The point of my arguments was that I can fulfill all the requirements of knowledge without reference to God or revelation at all; if you can define 'warrant', then I will adjust them as is necessary.

"Having no reason to think the contrary" was not all of what I wrote; I also wrote that the person in those situations did have positive reasons for believing as he did, and that he was not suffering cognitive dysfunction; what is more, I could easily attribute other actions to the person in the argument such that the person's belief is not "true by accident" like a Gettier case. Now, assuming all these things, and given the fact that I have not made reference to God or to revelation at all, I have shown, I think, that knowledge is possible without God's existence. (Unless "warrant" is defined in such a way as necessitates the existence of God; you haven't defined warrant, though.)

I can assume it is the case until I have reason to think otherwise. But this cuts both ways: I can't even know revelation unless I assume that what goes on in my mind connects with the world "out there". Your argument doesn't help your cause. How do you know that what you think the Bible says is really what it says? Maybe as it appears to you is not what it actually says, or something silly like that. Maybe when you see the words, "Nothing can separate us from the love of God", you are wrong; maybe it really says, "Nothing can bridge the gap of sin that separates us from the love of God." You have to assume the reliability of your senses prior to knowing revelation.

How does that follow? I don't understand this paragraph. I wouldn't even know that a sovereign God exists, or that he has revealed anything to me, unless I first presuppose the reliability of my senses, as I showed above. I have to assume that what goes on in my mind makes a connection with the outside world even if Christianity is true, prior to believing it.

If in order to know anything, I have to know that my beliefs are true (that when I believe there is a tree, I am not being deceived by a demon or dreaming or so on, but that there really is a tree), then knowledge is impossible. But thankfully "knowing that you know" is not a requisite for knowing. It is not a necessary or sufficient condition of knowledge that you know your belief to be true; otherwise knowledge is impossible.

Assume that in order to be said to know something, I have to know that my belief is true. To know p, I have to know that p is true. But to know that p is true, I have to know the proposition "p is true" is true; but to know that... and so on ad infinitum.

If knowledge of your belief's being true is necessary for knowledge, knowledge is impossible. But why should a person believe that?

I can plainly see that the law of non-contradiction is true without experience; I can just see that it is true. It is true by definition; it is self-evidently true. I don't need experience to believe it, nor does anyone believe the law of non-contradiction on the basis of experiencing it consistently. People believe it because they can just plainly see it to be true.

I would argue that the whole discipline of epistemology is the way that we "know that we know" but at any rate . . .

I think I'll bow out here with one final comment on non-contradiction:

Admittedly, I have a weak argument, so I had to rewrite:

1) Assume that the law of non-contradiction is untrue.
2) Following that, all propositions are true.
3) The law of non-contradiction is a proposition.
4) The law of non-contradiction is true.

In other words, denying that the law of non-contradiction is logically self-defeating, leading to the conclusion that it is, in fact, true, regardless of all other factors.

I'm taking this revision as a lesson in the dangers of over-complications in philosophy.

Here is what *you* said, “The truths of propositions that may be known are the thoughts of God, the eternal thoughts of God. And insofar as man knows anything he is in contact with God’s mind.”

Brother Brian,

That was not my quote. That was from the second paragraph of a Clark quote. If you go back, you’ll see that the end of the first paragraph does not close out the quotation. The close of the quotation is at the end of the second paragraph, which is the portion noted immediately above in italics and quotes. The space between the two paragraphs probably led you to believe that the second paragraph was mine, but the punctuation rules in my favor! However, given the exact quote from Clark, I am very sure I know what he means. It’s nothing different than what Van Til so often said, which makes me wonder why the two got in their ivory towers and brought reproach on my denomination. In any case, I didn’t recognize your original paraphrase as Clark’s words because the paraphrase was a bit truncated and appeared a bit more mystically stated to me than the entire quote in its context. You spoke of the knower being in touch with the mind of God. Whereas the full quote puts “the mind of God” in the context of the creature having knowledge when he is in contact with the thoughts of God, which amplifies what is meant by the mind of God. I was not trying to be evasive. I sincerely did not recognize the quote because given the distinctions I am trying to draw, it was quite different than Clark’s meaning since mind and thoughts are not identical.

“Since you say revelation is necessary for knowledge, then what does revelation provide that if removed would cause our mental faculties to be unable to produce any knowledge whatsoever?”

First off, I wouldn’t say the mental faculties “produce” knowledge but I can work within that framework. One way to look at this is by considering that all truth is absolute and has an ethical quality to it. What makes it absolute is that all truth proceeds from either God’s absolute character or his absolute determination. What gives it an ethical quality is that all men are responsible before God to think God’s thoughts after him. (As Bahnsen rightly asserted - not to think logically is sin; for it’s a violation of the ninth commandment properly understood.)

Now let’s remove from the picture God’s revelation of himself, which is to remove the only source of absolutes and ethics from the minds of men. Without a revelation of the only basis for absolutes and truth, there obviously can be no justification for truth and absolutes. Without a justification for truth, there can be no “justified, true belief” (i.e. knowledge).

We can take this into the metaphysical realm as well. Apart from God’s revelation of himself (the only source of truth), there would be know justification for believing that the raw stuff outside our mind can be organized by our mind in any way that corresponds to anything true. At best, we would look for conceptual necessity and presuppose certain things in order to function; yet notwithstanding, without a revelation of God as the sovereign one who actually orders the universe intelligibly, we would have no rational justification for believing that all is not just impersonal, meaningless and contrary to any absolute truth.

That truly isn't how I think it would be apart from God's revelation, but I'm trying to put it on terms you might agree with. What I truly believe is that without a revelation of God, there would be matter without order since order reveals God. In other words, for God to get rid of revelation would require that God get rid of order both in the mind and the world. If that is true, then of course there could be no knowledge without revelation.

Brian, all of this is an enormous pill to swallow - especially for the autonomous fallen men that we are.
I really don’t think I can do any better with what I’m trying to convey. I would only ask that you prayerfully consider these things.

Humbly yours,

Ron

Hello Ron,

My mistake, Ron. Please forgive me. You are correct that I missed the fact that there was no closed quote at the end of the paragraph. I assumed that in the next paragraph you were commenting on the previous paragraph. Ahhhhh...!

This is good, Ron. I am going to take what I understand to be your argument, and put it into proper syllogistic form. Please feel free to correct whatever I get wrong. To capture the essence of your argument I need to use three syllogisms that all build on each other.

Argument A

Premise 1A: All men are men who do not have the knowledge of God's revelation of Himself. (This is the "for the sake of the argument" assumption we are making.)
Premise 2A: God's revelation of Himself is the only source of absolutes.
Conclusion A: All men are men who do not have the knowledge of the only source of absolutes.

This is a valid oblique syllogism. I continue with your argument.

Argument B

Premise 1B: All men are men who do not have the knowledge of the only source of absolutes. (This is the conclusion from Argument A.)
Premise 2B: All men who do not have the knowledge of the only source of absolutes are men who cannot justify their beliefs.
Conclusion B: All men are men who cannot justify their beliefs.

This is a valid standard syllogism.

Argument C

Premise 1C: All men are men who cannot justify their beliefs. (This is the conclusion from Argument B.)
Premise 2C: All men who cannot justify their beliefs are men who do not have knowledge.
Conclusion C: All men are men who do not have knowledge.

This, too, is a valid syllogism. Ron, is this a fair representation of your argument? Again, feel free to correct anything in it. Once you say it is good, then I will comment on it.

Warm Regards,

Brian