Inrecent years, James Anderson, David Reiter, and other scholars have showninterest specifically in TAG, the transcendental argument for the existence ofGod. This philosophically rigorous discussion overlooks the fact that in thecontext of van Til’s apologetic, the transcendental argument amounts to theclaim that Christianity is true, and everything contrary to it false. There is noindication in van Til’s writing that he had any interest in formaltranscendental argumentation apart from positive Reformed, Christianpresuppositions. I think Lane Tipton is correct when he says, “van Til neverviewed his transcendental method as operating outside of a trinitarian theologyand a corresponding ‘revelational epistemology.’ To construe van Til’s approachas attempting to establish his theology on the basis of philosophicalargumentation is simply to misunderstand his approach at a very basic level.This would be to grant a priority to philosophy that van Til’s system inprinciple prohibits” (Lane G. Tipton, “The Triune Personal God: TrinitarianTheology in the Thought of Cornelius van Til” [Ph.D. diss., WestminsterTheological Seminary, 2004], 170).
N. Shannon, “Christianity andEvidentialism: Van Til and Locke on Facts and Evidence,” WTJ 74 (2012).
i) So philosophicalargumentation is, by definition, non-Christian? Whatever happened to “takingevery thought captive”?
ii) Didn’t Van Til say thingslike: “there is an absolutely valid argument for the existence of God and forthe truth of Christian theism,” “the argument may be poorly stated, and maynever be adequately stated. But in itself the argument is absolutely sound”?
Doesn’t this suggest Van Tilwas convinced that there was, in principle, a rigorously formulatable versionof TAG? Doesn’t he present this as a hypothetical ideal which Christianapologists should aim for, even if they fall short?
iii) Does TAG merely “claimthat Christianity is true, and everything contrary to it false”? A claim incontrast to a reasoned argument? So it just comes down to competing claims?What about the claim that atheism, Buddhism, Mormonism, Islam, Scientology, orHare Krishna (fill in the blank) is true, and everything contrary to it isfalse?
iv) Likewise, suppose Tiptonand Shannon are correct in their interpretation of Van Til. So what? Is thepurpose of apologetics to stay faithful to Van Til, or to defend the faith? Theattitude of Tipton and Shannon reminds me of the Old Calendarists, who felt itwas impious to deviate even slightly from Russian Orthodox tradition.Apologetics is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. The objective ofapologetics is not to defend Van Til’s methodology, but to defend Christiantheology. Van Til is not theobject of faith.
v) They haven’t learned thelesson of the Peter Enns affair. His claims can’t be allowed to gounchallenged. They need to be directly rebutted. How well did the Tipton/Shannon/Oliphintstrategy work at out at WTS? How would invoking “covenantal apologetics” beeffective?
vi) I skimmed Shannon’s blog(the entries from 10/11-2/13). From my admittedly cursory review, Shannonappears to be preoccupied with methodological purity. In that respect he fallsinto a trap all-to-common among Van Tilians: he devotes nearly all his time totalking about how to do apologetics rather than doing what he talks about.Leaves without fruit (Lk 13:6-9).
It’s like designing the perfectracecar, when you have no intention of ever racing the car. The car is alwaysin the garage, as you keep refining your technology. Something to look atrather than drive. Something to admire. Buff and polish. But heaven forbid youshould ever do anything with it.
v) Van Til talked about themetaphysics of knowledge. James and Greg are turning that programmatic claiminto an actual, full-fledged argument. Redeeming the IOUs. That makes asignificant advance in Van Tilian apologetics.
They are rewarded for their effortsby aghast expressions. How could they be so presumptuous as to stray beyond VanTilian flash cards to unpack the claim and furnish supporting arguments!
Now I’m going to comment onShannon’s recent “Necessity, Univocism, and the Triune God: A Response toAnderson and Welty.” (I simply copy/pasted excerpts from a PDF. This resultedin some transcriptional infelicities, but I won’t take the time to tidy thatup.)
To put it another way, aproposition is essentially 'about' something, as AW note; propositions areessentially intentional (333-5). (This quality of intentionality or 'aboutness'serves AW as the link between propositions and personal minds.) So aproposition is essentially parasitic on whatever it is about. Apart from the thingit is about, a proposition has no referent and no meaning and thus cannot beartruth-value.6 The law of identity is an attribution, a de dicto sort of thing,of de re necessity to the state of affairs A=A, but the attribution itself—thelaw, the proposition—can have only de dicto necessity.
In an attempt to make them morelike the sorts of objects that can have necessity, AW affirm that the laws oflogic exist; but this is irrelevant. Real existence, particularly mental,intentional real existence, does not change the fact that the modality ofpropositions, just like their truth-value, is derivative and dependent upon astate of affairs distinct from any proposition 'about' that state of affairs.Quite the contrary. Affirming the mental existence of propositions in factemphasizes the intentional and thus derivative nature of propositions andconfirms that the modality of a proposition is merely de dicto.
Suppose God thinks to himself, “I am omnipotent,” or “I amthe Son of the Father.”
Are divinely self-referential and/or intratrinitarianpropositions derivative, parasitic, de dicto entities? Do they lack de renecessity?
If there is no possible worldin which the law of noncontradiction is false, it does not follow necessarilythat the LNC is true in all possible worlds. For to not be false, a propositiondoes not have to exist; a proposition might not exist at all and still be notfalse. But to not fail to be true, it must exist.
What does it even mean to say“a proposition might not exist at all”?
According to the doctrines ofdivine simplicity and aseity, God's mind and thoughts are identical to hisbeing; the only necessarily existing thing, because God did not have to create…
Actually, isn’t the theory ofdivine simplicity in tension with divine freedom? Doesn’t divine simplicitymake it difficult to finesse a principled distinction between necessary truthsand contingent truths? Between intrinsic and extrinsic relations? Between whatGod is and what he wills?
…is God himself; thus Goddoes not necessarily think anything other than himself. No thought content canbe imputed to God essentially, in the possible world which is only God, shortof implying that the thought content is identifiable with the being of God. Neither the proposition inquestion, nor any of the laws of logic, are part of the essential being of God:they are not God.
But that’s a false dichotomy,for possible worlds can be a subset of God’s self-knowledge. God knows what Godcan do. Possible worlds are variations on divine omnipotence.
Univocal mind. Univocal termsimply unitarian ontology.
How does that implicationfollow? Does the Father have a univocal concept of the Son? If so, does thatimply unitarianism rather than Trinitarianism?
Wouldn’t it make more sense forShannon to claim that univocal terms imply a pantheistic ontology? Of course, Idon’t think that’s correct, but if he’s saying univocity blurs theCreator/creature distinction, wouldn’t pantheism be the corresponding category,rather than unitarianism?
AW use “mind,”“thought,” and “proposition” univocally. In their argument, all of these terms,familiar to us in the created realm, in the context of our knowledge andfamiliarity, are applied univocally to the mind and being of the uncreated God.When we say “a thought requires a mind,” what do we mean by mind? If nodistinction appears, the use of the term suggests that there is one kind ofmind; and of that kind, AW argue, there must be at least one which exists in allpossible worlds, but that 'necessarily existing' mind is essentially of a kindwith minds that exist in only some possible worlds.
He’s committing the word-concept fallacy. The fact that thesame word is used doesn’t mean one can’t draw conceptual distinctions betweenthe nature of God’s mind and the nature of man’s mind. At the same time, theyshare some things in common–which makes them both mental.
The problem with couchingpossible worlds in terms of logical necessity should be obvious: it is tautologousto say that the laws of logic are true in all possible worlds, and it is purestipulation. It clearly indicates that we have reached the explanatory limitsof this explanatory category.
i) To begin with, what’s wrongwith reaching explanatory bedrock? Isn’t that inevitable at some point in theanalysis? The only question is whether we stop prematurely.
ii) Moreover, it’s nottautologous, but linear. It’s not saying the same thing in different words, butexplicating and grounding one thing by reference to something else.
In other words, possible worldsdelineate, by pure stipulation, the boundaries for metaphysical speculation. Wewho use them for that purpose endorse this surrender to the laws of logic as the most basicand non-negotiable principles of intelligibility; we agree to play by thoserules because we can neither find nor imagine any less controversial ones.
James and Greg aren’t treating the laws of logic as the mostbasic and non-negotiable principles of intelligibility. Rather, they arenesting the laws of logic in the mind of God. So there is an underlyingexplanation. Again, we need to distinguish between the metaphysical level atwhich the laws of logic subsist and the explanatory level.
The problem of a univocalnotion of necessity comes to the fore in of apparent paradox. In 2 Kings 6 anaxehead floats; it rises to the surface of the waters of the Jordan river.
i) First of all, that would bea contingent fact, not a necessary truth.
ii) Second, how is thatparadoxical? The miracle involves changing the natural, normal conditions insome way or another. Could involve changing the properties of water intosomething that’s not water, or changing the composition of the axehead, orchanging the relationship between water and a heavier object by interferingwith gravity at that particular time and place. We could speculate on how ithappens. But I don’t think it’s paradoxical.
iii) How can he even use thatexample if he rejects univocity? In that event, what do the terms refer to?What’s an axehead?
In John 2 Jesus changes waterto wine.
i) A contingent fact, not anecessary truth.
ii) How is that paradoxical?It’s not saying water has the properties of wine. It’s not simultaneouslyascribing contradictory properties of the same object. Rather, one kind ofthing is changed into another kind of thing. Where’s the paradox? Unless we saychange itself is paradoxical, a la Zeno, McTaggart, et al. but that wouldn’t beconfined to miracles.
On a larger scale, there are the problems of freedom andelection and of providence and evil. All of these are thought to be at leastapparently paradoxical. And the reason for this perception, and for thetremendous efforts it evokes toward resolution, is that it is assumed thatnotions of logical relations and of logical necessity operate univocally; it isassumed that they apply equally to man and to God.
The alleged problem of freedomand election or providence and evil isn’t logical, but moral or metaphysical.We’re not denying the God unconditionally elects some while reprobating others.We’re not denying that God providentially governs all events. The terms are notambiguous.
It is assumed that the laws oflogic, as we articulate them and have come to understand them, obtainidentically or are equally true in all possible worlds, even in eternity past,before creation. If, however, we confess first the unique ontologicalself-sufficiency of the triune creator God, and, indeed, the (moral) authorityand (epistemological and soteriological) necessity of divine self-disclosure inScripture, then we always have ready in hand the derivative, dependent, andpartial nature of the laws of logic. There is no possible world in which aniron axehead floats; This one did.
Why is there no possible worldin which an iron axehead floats? Where’s the argument? What makes his assertioneven prima facie plausible?
This is a true or even only anapparent contradiction only if it is assumed that our logical tools existindependently of God, and apply equally to creator and creature.10
i) Who said a floating axeheadwas an apparent (much less true) contradiction? At best, it would only becontradictory if ordinary conditions obtain. But the miracle presupposes a newand additional factor: God doing something that alters the usual conditions.
ii) He also fails todistinguish between a logical proposition and a concrete object.
It's likely that the incentivefor positing these second order thoughts in the divine mind, distinct fromcontent rich first order thoughts, is largely the preservation of the purelyformal nature of the laws of logic, which is crucial to their existing (orbeing true) necessarily. God must think the laws of logic because the laws oflogic exist necessarily. So this much is clear: AW are theologizing by thesheer force of logical necessity alone.
In an attempt to maintain pureformality and sustain the notion of necessity they've built their argumentupon, AW claim that on some level distinct from his first order thoughts, Godthinks exclusively about the form of his first order thoughts. That claim dependson the separability of form and content in God's first order thoughts, which isto lean on a broken reed. For second order thoughts to be purely formal, theymust have as their content only the abstracted logical relations of God's firstorder thoughts. And if the content of first and second order thoughts isdistinct, isn't the obvious implication that there are distinct first andsecond order divine minds?13 In that case the second order thoughts and thesecond order mind, rather than the first order, are more properly said to existnecessarily, as they only are purely formal.
And so why not say that Godessentially thinks only the laws of logic, and these give form to his otherthoughts, should he have any other thoughts? What is God at this point anyway—ishe not merely logic thinking itself? Or, put it this way: what now of God'sfirst order thoughts? What are those thoughts about? What is the stuff that Godsubtracts from his thoughts in order to think about them qua thoughts? And ifonly thoughts about thoughts qua thoughts are necessary, why suppose that Godhas first order thoughts at all? Aren't these thoughts contingent? The notionof thoughts about thoughts as thoughts in the divine mind is incoherent.
Doesn’t Trinitarianism implysecond-order thoughts? What about this thought: “I am the Son of the Father”?
It is also pure fiction, forcedupon AW by their commitment to a univocal notion of necessity, and standing inthe place where AW should have been led to consult the riches of historicaltheology in which one finds orthodox protestantism consistently denying thatGod thinks discursively, infers one thing from another, or has propositionalknowledge.14
i) Really? Orthodox Protestantism denies that God haspropositional knowledge? How did he pull that out of the hat?
ii) There is no process of inference in the divine mind. Notemporal succession. But God timelessly understands timeless implications.
iii) The standard Reformedposition is that God doesn’t learn about the world from the world. God is notdependent on the world for anything he knows. Indeed, God has nothing to learnin the first place. God knows the world indirectly by knowing his plan for theworld. In that sense, God lacks inferential knowledge of the world.
But I don’t think James andGreg deny that in their paper.
However, God's self-knowledgeinvolves God's timeless knowledge of all logical relations.
This leads to a thirdtheological concern. According to the doctrine of divine simplicity, God'sthoughts are identical to his being. Indeed, AW think this much is true of anymind: “. . . thoughts belong essentially to the minds that produce them” (336n.31). So if we think thoughts that are essential to God's being—exactly thosethoughts that God thinks about his own thoughts as thoughts—are we notparticipating in the divine essence? The same thoughts—univocal thoughts—belongessentially to our minds and to God's mind. Given simplicity, in other words,unless we deny that our thoughts are ever identical to God's, we flirt withpantheism or apotheosis.
That confuses knowing the sametruths with being what you know. Must I be a tree to know something abouttrees?
Or, hoping to maintainsimplicity and the ontological distinction between God and creation, we may saythat the laws of logic are abstract objects existing independently of both Godand man.15 In that case, perhaps God knows the laws of logic in all possibleworlds because he is omniscient in all possible worlds and the laws of logicexist in all possible worlds, not because he essentially thinks the laws oflogic.
Of course, James and Greg expressly reject that model.
Even more troubling is thisquestion: would we be able to affirm in this case that God's Word isessentially—necessarily, in all possible worlds—self-consistent andtrustworthy?
If anything, it’s it harder to maintain the trustworthy,self-consistent character of God’s word when he rejects univocity. Doesn’t thatmean the Bible is just partially logical, partially true? What we have inScripture isn’t verity, but verisimilitude.
Traditionally there are threechoices in terms of the meaning of theological language: equivocal, univocal,and analogical. AW implicitly reject the thesis that language and concepts areequivocal and say nothing intelligible about God. For readers of this journal,this is uncontroversial. Enjoying equally broad consensus in the history ofChristian theology is a rejection of univocism: when we say “God is good” and“John is good,” it is clear that the predicates are not identical.16 Orthodox protestant thought takestheological language analogically and grounded in verbal divine self-revelation.
Analogy and univocity aren’t necessarily opposed. You canhave a theory of analogical predication which allows for univocity if youcompare two things at the relevant level of generality or abstraction.
On the basis of the voluntaryself-revelation of God, we have true knowledge, and yet, since God isincomprehensible to the creature, our knowledge is never exhaustive. Add to this the metaphysics of the Creator-creaturerelationship: the creation is a contingent image of the Creator. All things arefrom him, to him, and through him (Rom 11:36, indicating aseity); andeverything that was created was created by and through the Word (Col 1:6, John1:3, indicating the triune economy of the act of creation). So we understandour theological knowledge and categories as applying to God truly butincompletely, imitatively and derivatively. So our concepts areanalogical. Not only the nature ofthe relation as analogical, but the order figures in as well: God is theoriginal or the archetype, and we—and our knowledge—are the analogue, or theectype. As in any analogy, there is an original and there is an analogue, andthe order is irreversible—in the Creator-creature analogy more than in anyother. God is the original; we and the created order are derivative. In sum,the irreducible ontological distinction between Creator and creature, andprecisely this archtypal-ectypcal or original-analogue order, give usrevelationally grounded, analogical theological predication. We have trueknowledge, so we reject equivocism; but because of the 'ontological distance'between the Creator and the creature, our knowledge is ever partial; so wereject univocism.
There’s a sense in which I canagree with this. However, Shannon is simply using buzzwords like “ectypal” and“analogical.” He’s not giving the reader a model of analogical predication orectypal knowledge. He’s not fleshing out the concepts. And he’s skating overthe complexities and difficulties of articulating a satisfactory theory ofanalogy. He attacks James and Greg on philosophical grounds, but he doesn’tpresent a philosophically rigorous alternative. Instead, he just retreats intopious formulas. These don’t solve any problems. They are merely verbalplaceholders. All the hard work remains to be done–assuming it can be done.
So in Christian thought,triunity is more basic than either threeness or oneness…
That’s modalistic. That makes Trinitarian oneness andthreeness secondary to something more primary. A projection or epiphenomenon ofsomething more basic.
Now I’m going to comment on some statements by VernPothress, in his forthcoming book on Logic: A God-Centered Approach to theFoundation of Western Thought.
Before I comment, I’d like to say that to his credit,Poythress isn’t one of those Van Tilians who spends all his time talking aboutapologetic method. Poythress does practice apologetics in books like RedeemingScience, Redeeming Sociology, Inerrancy and Worldview, Inerrancy and theGospels.
Something similar to this argument can be found in James N.Anderson and Greg Welty, “The Lord of Non-Contradiction: An Argument for Godfrom Logic,” Philosophia Christi 13:2 (2011): 321–338. But it appears to methat this article does not take into account the presence of analogy and theCreator-creature distinction in logical reasoning about God (see chapter 24below).
If he’s saying the Trinitarian relations are merelyanalogous to logical relations, that’s a problem, for that would generate threelayers of reality: Trinitarian relations, logical relations (which are somehowdistinct from Trinitarian relations), and concreta. If logical relations areanalogous to Trinitarian relations, then they have a realty that’s distinctfrom God, without being creatures. Entities which are analogous to Trinitarianrelations, but not identical. So what's their metaphysical status?
The problem, in relation to the ontology of logic, is thattheological analogy usually involves a contrast between transcendent realityand mundane reality. And, presumably, logical relations would be on thetranscendent (=divine) side of the distinction–although they’d have concreteanalogates. If, however, logical relations are merely analogous to the Trinity,then what are they? What’s their ontological status? Are they transcendent, butdifferent from God? Are they a tertium quid? Not quite divine and not quitemundane?
If any concrete piece of reasoning is, by theologicaldefinition, an imperfect creaturely representation of uncreated logic.
Isn’t the claim that “any concrete piece of reasoning is, bytheological definition, an imperfect creaturely representation of uncreatedlogic” itself an imperfect creaturely representation of uncreated logic? So isthat claim an imperfect representation of a truth?
We need to distinguish between logical arguments, andarguments for the ontology of logic. Needless to say, Greg and James are usingectypal logical arguments, in the sense that their arguments reflect theirhuman understanding of logic; but that's distinct from what they are arguingfor or arguing about. They are arguing for or about the archetypal logicaltruths or logical relations constituted by God’s mind.
Can we have one term, father, that applies both to God andto human creatures who are biological fathers? Clearly we can. But God’sfatherhood and human fatherhood are not on the same level. So the relationbetween the two is one of analogy rather than strict identity.
One problem with this comparison is that formal logic isfact free (“topic neutral”). A formal system of entailment relations thatdoesn’t make constantive claims. Rather, it provides an abstract framework intowhich you can plug factual premises or truth-claims. Formal logic isn’tcomparing one thing with another, is it? We need to distinguish logic from whatwe do with logic. James and Greg aren’t talking about the content which we pluginto logical syllogisms, but the necessary metaphysical system of entailments.
He seems to be confusing whether logic is worldview neutralwith whether logic is content neutral? There’s an obvious sense in which theontology of logic is worldview sensitive, viz. conceptualism, constructivism,fictionalism, platonic realism. These go with different views of reality. Andyou have the whole effort at a naturalized logic, to match a naturalistic ormaterialistic worldview.
In that sense, logic is not neutral. But of course, Jamesand Greg weren’t arguing for neutrality at that level. Just the opposite. Theywere presenting a theistic foundation for logic.
Conversely, that kind of “neutrality” is very different fromtopic neutrality.
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