1

OUTLINE OF FUTURE COURSE OF THE HISTORY OF

PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

{Developing Outline Notes for Future Teaching of the Course}

Notes taken while reading Frame’s History of Western Philosophy and Theology in Hoffler font, 11 point (some
details inserted from past) and listening to Anderson’s lectures: notes in Didot font, 10 point.

Anderson’s Questions for Lesson 1

1 What is the difference between philosophy and theology? Is there any overlap in study?
2 How does the study of philosophy enrich or aid the study of historic and systematic theology?
3 What is the difference between metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics? How do you suppose
these distinctions will aid in studying various philosophies?
4 What are the differences between Christian and non-Christian worldviews? Why is it important to
recognize these differences?

I. Philosophy and the Bible

A) Defining our terms.

1. Philosophy. There is a subjective and objective sense of this term.1 It stands to reason, because
of the nature of philosophy, that there “the most formidable adversaries of the gospel”2 will be
found. The easy way out is anti-intellectualism.

Anderson points to the etymology — “the love of wisdom” (as did Frame) — but speaks of the earliest
philosophers gaining knowledge and wisdom to live a good life: not simply knowledge as an end in
itself. But, from the 1 Corinthians 1 passage, one’s man wisdom is another’s foolishness. An upshot
definition he gives is: the pursuit of truth, understanding, and meaning; or the critical analysis of ideas, or art of
clear thinking. Postmodernism has taken a turn from this traditional path. The purpose of the critical
analysis is not merely to tear down others’ ideas but to accept or reject ideas for valid and sound
reasons. We could also define philosophy as the attempt to find answers to the big questions: Where did the
universe come from? Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Is the world of sense experience
real or illusion? Is there a God? If there is a God, what is he like and how does he relate to us?

1 Frame conflates the two from the outset and so consigns the study to the sinful performance of man, in spite
of the fact that he gives a more “Christian” two-part definition to it just below (page 2), probably conflating the
first half with theology and the second half with apologetics.
2 Frame. 4
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What do philosophers do? 1. They define terms; 2. They develop arguments; 3. They ask meta-questions
— i. e. one that goes beyond the usual questions of academic disciplines; 4. They examine our pre-
philosophical intuitons; 5. They try to solve problems, resolve paradoxes (e. g. “This statement is false.”);
6. They engage in critical dialogue with one another and with those of other disciplines; 7. They identify
presuppositions (e. g. “A sentence3 is either true or false”); 8. They develop worldviews — so the better
philosophers construct and do not merely critique.4

Five reasons to study philosophy: 1. the pursuit of truth, knowledge, and understanding; 2. the
importance of critical thinking: the ability to do so; 3. the benefits of a rich “conceptual tool-kit” which
advances all of our areas of study; 4. understanding the influence of philosophy on Christian thought,
both positive and negative; 5. the need to critically engage with non-Christian thought.

“The history of philosophy is largely the attempt to either answer questions about God or to answer
questions without God.” — Anderson, Lect. 1

2. Theology. Classical theology defined this as a science: the study of God. Frame defined it as
“the application of the Word of God, by persons, to every aspect of life.”5

Anderson briefly says this “falls under metaphysics.” I wonder what Frame would say to that.

3. Religion. Frame defines this as “the practice of faith.”6 His grounding for his definition is more
useful for apologetics: “All systems of thought include a belief in something that is self-sufficient,
not dependent on anything else.”7
4. Worldview or Metanarrative. The former is the Enlightenment version and the latter the
Postmodern version of the same: one’s ultimate account of the way the world is.

B) Objective Philosophy — i. e. as an intellectual discipline

1. Metaphysics. The study of being and essence: chiefly ontology, which is the study of being as
being. But this certainly includes questions about substance and accidence, universals and
particulars, causality, form and matter, etc. Many people will speak of aesthetics and logic as a
fourth and fifth sub-discipline within philosophy, but I prefer to categorize the former

3 Anderson includes under “sentence” a statement. Does he question that a statement is either true or false? Or
does he draw the line at the word “propositions”?
4 It seems as if both Anderson and Frame rate Kant and Hegel as high as Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas at least
in terms of building systems.
5 cf. Frame. DKG. 76-85
6 Frame. 5
7 Frame. 6
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within metaphysics and the latter within epistemology, since “beauty” and “form” are real things
with natures, and since logic is really a measure of right reasoning and therefore a criterion for
truth justification.

Anderson calls this “the study of reality … What kinds of things are real and what are the most real
things?” What is God? What am I? Am I today what I was twenty years ago?

2. Epistemology. The study of truth criteria, this addresses the question: How do I know that I
know? Note that this is more than simply “How do I know?” Epistemology is after objective
knowledge.

Anderson calls this the study of knowledge, its nature, structure, and sources. Questions like What is
truth? What is knowledge? What is reason and what is reasonable? How do we know truths? Can we
know any truths at all? Anything apart from sense experience? Can we know God? How can we? What
all do I know?

Frame’s initial definition is not bad, but when one knows how his triperspectival approach will
interpret this, objections may easily be brought. For him epistemology involves three points:
“the subject of knowledge (a person), an object of knowledge (what he knows), and some sort of
rule that determines whether the subject knows the object.”8 But is this subjective way of
describing the rule the ultimate goal of epistemology? Is not the purpose of the rule to discover
whether the knowledge claim is in fact true, quite independent of the subject’s ability to grasp it
as knowledge?

3. Ethics. This encompasses both objective moral right in society and value theory. However, if
value theory is disconnected from being and essence, then is this not conceding that good and
evil, right and wrong, the beautiful and the ugly, are entirely subjective?

Anderson calls this the study of morality or values. This focuses on the nature, origins, and dictates of
morality. What is good or even what is The Good? How do we determine what is right or wrong? What
makes what is right “right”? Are there moral duties, goals, and virtues we should pursue? Are they
objective or subjective? Does it depend on God? If so, how? What then should I do?

4. Biblical Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics. A biblical view of being and essence begins with the
Creator-creation distinction. On this point the Van Tillians will not be at odds with classical
theism. What meaning, though, do we pour into the words?

8 Frame. 11
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Frame concludes that the three main sub-disciplines of philosophy “presuppose one another and
influence one another.”9 We might agree with this in one sense. But what does Frame mean by it? He
places the three at the three perspectives on his usual triangle: epistemology at the top (normative),
value theory at the bottom right (existential), and metaphysics at the bottom left (situational). What is
this communicating? For one thing, it begins to morph the meaning of epistemology into a one-
dimensional meaning of subjective authority: i. e. “What is my ultimate authority?” which comes to
mean “Who (or what) will I believe?” This is certainly an ultimate question for faith. We had better
have a right answer to it. And I personally agree with Frame’s answer!

However when triperspectivalism functions as a philosophy, it replaces the objective with the
subjective as an ultimate epistemology. It follows the pattern of all Western philosophy after Kant.
In terms of the triangle itself, this fractures reality into a Hegelian thesis - antithesis between subject
(inside of me) and object (now only “outside of me” in the world, notice), which is then overcome by
the normative perspective of the Word of God. That this norm is what we mean by the Word of God
(and not Hegel’s “Absolute”) may be significant in some ways, but it is simply not a sufficiently
biblical philosophy. All three — Word, world, and self — are reduced to finite perspectives with no
“bedrock”10 truth to adjudicate between them. Frame believes that to appeal to anything else would
be elevating that fourth thing to a status above God’s Word. But we maintain that objective truth
criteria never “judges” reality, much less does it judge God or his Word, but rather judges our thoughts
and statements about God, his Word, and his world.

In addition to highlighting the notion of antithesis, and the Transcendence - Immanence balance,
Frame touches upon how Christian philosophy “evades both realism and nominalism.”11 Frame does
so by describing realism and nominalism as if they both reduced all of reality to the ontological
status of universals. This could be charged to nominalism. However the debate is primarily about the
ontological status of universals. Realism need not imply that “all of reality” is timeless and abstract.
That would be true to say of Parmenides, but hardly any historical realist.

Frame reduces “revelation” to special revelation only and then conflates ethical authority (object of
obedience) with epistemological laws (truth criteria). By doing this he can make subjecting logic to
God’s word sound like the choice is between subjecting all truth to logic and submitting to God’s
revealed truth.12 But again, logic belongs to general revelation (thus revelation) and logic judges our
propositions about God’s word and not God’s word itself.

9 Frame. 13
10 Frame. DKG.
11 Frame. 29
12 Frame. 31 — cf. especially footnote 43.
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Anderson’s second lecture is called Christian and Non-Christian Worldviews. This tells us his
approach. What is a WORLDVIEW? A worldview is a complex of fundamental presuppositions —
metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical presuppositions —which makes a person’s perspective on all of life and
reality. It also functions as a conceptual framework and guides action in response. It is an overall system
of thought, especially for those who consciously reflect upon their worldview. Everyone has one.
Christians have a particular responsibility here: to have a God-honoring worldview; cf. Deut. 6:4-9, Matt.
22: , Rom. 12:1-2, 2 Cor. 10:4-5. Worldview thinking can help us to understand where philosophers have
gone wrong in the past, how later ones were influenced by previous thinkers and thought streams.

Christian worldview. We cannot be indifferent. We all have biases, but we must ask whether these are
good or bad. What does the Bible teach in each of the above areas of philosophy?

METAPHYSICS. God is a perfect being. He has no limitations. He is also the personal-absolute Being.
He cannot be relativized by anything outside of him. God is Trinity — both one and three — ultimate
unity and ultimate plurality. God created the world ex nihilo. God is ontologically distinct from this
world. God is both transcedent and immanent with respect to the world. God is the sovereign Lord of
the creation — cf. Frame on the three Lordship attributes: authority, control, presence. Anthropology is
included. We were created in his image and therefore are to be creative. But we are finite and fallen
beings.

EPISTEMOLOGY. It will be founded on revelation — both general and special. If we could know
anything apart from revelation, then God would not be absolute.13 Our reason is limited, fallible, fallen,
but is also redeemable. What is the relationship between faith and reason? Faith is reasonable but
submissive to revelation. Faith is not built on reason alone. Unregenerate reason cannot lead us to God.
It will suppress the truth (Rom. 1:18). Where reason ever goes up against God’s word, then reason must
yield. What about the relationship between theology and philosophy? Philosophy exists to serve
theology, in submission to God’s word.

ETHICS. The distinction is often made between the standard, the goal, and the motive. There is an
objective moral standard: again, general and special. The goal is eternal life and the motive is the glory
of God, manifest in our love for God. The upshot is that we are obedient to God’s law out of love for
God.

Summary. One’s doctrine of God effects the whole of the worldview. Van Til once said that “Christian
philosophy is just Christian theology with a different vocabulary.”

13 Thisis critical. The ultimate necessity seems to be to shore up a dogma. We can agree with this logic.
However it is not the most fundamental logical dilemma for the unbeliever who would deny revelation. What
does an unbeliever care whether or not God is absolute? If denying revelation is consistent with (and implies)
the denying of the absolute status of God, then the unbeliever has comfirmation, not reason to be uneasy.
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Non-Christian Worldview. The idea of a personal-absolute is rejected. If there is an absolute, it is not

personal. If there is personhood, none of those persons are absolute in nature. Profound errors and
disasters follow. If there is no ultimate Person, it is impossible to account for why there should be any
objective and absolute moral standards binding on all people. The problem of the one and the many
also remains. Either these views tend toward a Monism (unity is ultimate) or else Atomism (plurality is
ultimate), but in either extreme there is no unity that brings meaning to the diversity of things we see in
the world. There is also the Transcendence-Immanence issue. They exist on the extremes of Hyper-
Transcedence, in which the ultimate being is unknowable, inaccessable, indescribable. But then what
difference does he make at all and is there any meaningful way to say that he (it) exists? On the Hyper-
Immanence extreme, why speak of the divine at all? Are we not just speaking about the universe? What
difference can such an ultimate being make? It would be constrained by all of the same limitations of
the changing universe and suffering human beings. Another tension look out for is that between
Rationalism and Irrationalism, or an unstable mixture of the two. This is about the capacity of human
reason to understand the universe. The former believes everything can be understood apart from divine
revelation. The latter denies that anything can be understood one way or the other. The former tends to
see the unity of things, looking for meaningful patterns, predictable order, etc. The latter tends to see
the diversity of everything: all is disorderly, unpredictable, chaotic. The dilemma is then over
autonomous reason. The former says that the human mind is the ultimate standard, and the latter
denies any ultimate standard. Van Til called this the “rationalist - irrationalist dialectic,” and supposed
that it exists in all other views besides the genuinely biblical view. On the faith and reason tension, one
is exalted at the expense of the other in unbelieving systems. So there is either rationalism or fideism.

Anderson’s Questions for Lesson 2

1 Is it possible for the Milesians to develop an ethical system based on their metaphysics? Why or
why not?
2 What is Heraclitus' doctrine of the logos? How does this differ from the Christian concept of
logos?
3 Briefly, how do you think a Christian might respond to the views of the Eleatics?
4 Who were the Sophists and to what did they hold? Where do we find similar elements or forms
of this in contemporary culture?

C) The First Philosophers

Again, Frame sees antithesis decisively outweighing synthesis. However, in rejecting “pagan ideas”
are we not surrendering the meaning of words and concepts precisely to those pagans who “got there
first”? Think of Plato’s immortal soul or Aristotle’s four causes. Were these ideas wrong?

First Philosophers. Adam was really the first philosopher. But we really have to begin with the Greeks
because of the written record. To the degree that their concern was physics, they were more like
“armchair scientists.” Their starting point was that there were four basic elements: air, earth, fire, and
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water. With that presupposition, which one was supreme? Could they be reduced to the others (or one
of the others), or was there something even more fundamental?

1. The Melesians: Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander. The first said “All is water,” the second that “All
is air,” and the third that “All is indeterminate.” Frame makes a good point here: namely, that the
quantifier “All” does not belong to inductive observation. It is a sweeping philosophical
statement. It is always an a priori commitment. So these naturalists did not come to their view of
the fundamental thing by scientific investigation.

Miletians. Why did Thales choose water? Water takes different forms and we see those forms everywhere.
Anaximander said all is “indefinite substance” — in itself is boundless, but more fundamental than the
traditional four. But this thing has no form. It must be completely mutable: like a “cosmic play-doh.” He
was also the first known proponent of biological evolution: all living forms in nature had developed
from earlier forms. Anaxemenes went back to natural substance: air. Differences are qualities are caused
by differences in quantities. Air is contracted or expanded. One gives you heat the other solidity. What
tendencies overall do we see in this school? There is only material explanation: never an appeal to a
transcedent or personal cause. Epistemologially they are empiricists and reductionists (in that they are
reducing the amount of explanations to the smallest number of categories). But ultimately they are
doing metaphysics and not epistemology or ethics. Big Idea: Everything in the world is reducible to one
kind of “stuff.”

2. Pythagoras. Because of their mysticism, the search for the supreme arche in matter gave way
to “All is number.”

Pythagoras. He is famous for his theorem: The square are the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the
squares of the other two sides (a2 + b2 = c2). He uses “points” in the same way that the atomists would
use atoms. Everything was made of numbers. The human soul is immortal and it passes into other
bodies at death. Matter is an unlimited thing, and the form is that which limits it. Matter can be formed
in different ways. Each things is a combination of form and matter. This would anticipate a part of
Aristotle’s philosophy; but it would much more influene Plato because of the priority given to
abstraction and immortality. How he used points may be naive concerning chemical composition, but it
could be conceived as identical to the multi-dimensional thought of contemporary physics.14

3. Heraclitus and Parmenides. For Heraclitus, the only thing constant was change. At least that is
the popular reading of him. He spoke of “strife” or even “fire” as the fundamental force. He was
said to be the first to use the logos concept as an ordering principle. Even Heraclitus had to
explain why we can speak of constant “things.” Parmenides was on the opposite end. He was also
from Elea and saw the world in terms of eternal form. He said “Everything that is is.” Non-being

14 cf. Copelston on how Pythagoras builds the forms of multi-dimensional objects from these points.
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cannot be. And that implies that the sources of change, from without and within, must be
illusory. For him, the philosophy of Heraclitus was as devastating to truth as it was to morality.
So he swung the pendulum to the other extreme. Frame calls Parmenides “the most consistent
rationalist in the history of philosophy. He said that there is no difference between ‘what is’ and
‘what can be thought.’”15

Heraclitus. Fire is the basis of the unity. He was especially focused on change: everything is in “flux.”
Although his famous “You cannot step into the same river twice” was really a mistranslation. His point
was only that the same material substance has passed, yet there is still a general “river” in some sense
“there.” Change is fundamental to reality. They are not illusory, but there is some stability given by the
logos. He denies an infinite-personal God by appealing to the eternality of change.

Elatics. Xenophanes was more of a poet and social critic than a philosopher. But what he criticized was
Greek mythology. He especially thought its anthropomorphism was irrational. He favored something
more like a Monistic and Pantheistic concept. It was the oneness that characterizes this larger school in
Elea. Some have seen an early monotheism in him. Parmenides is really the big thinker from this
school. He is the “anti-Heraclitus.” He said “Being just is.” His argument is that if there is a change, then
it either has to be from non-being to being, or from being to being. The former is clearly impossible, but
the latter is not real change. Why then does it look like things change? He says that it is a confusion of
appearance with reality. This distinction between appearance and reality becomes a theme in Greek
philosophy, most clearly in Plato. Now if there is no change, then being must be eternal, immutable,
indivisible, indestructible, and homogeneous (the same throughout). He connects this metaphysic with
his epistemology, that contrasts the way of belief (opinion based on surface appearances) with the way of
truth (based on reasoning). How is Parmenides answer even more radical than the Milesians? It is still
pantheistic, monistic.

Zeno is famous for his paradoxes, especially Achilles and the Tortoise. He was not arguing that Achilles
really would not catch the tortoise.

Pluralists tried to find a third way between the extremes of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Empedocles is
categorized here rather than with the Atomists. He said that being really is indestructible, eternal,
invisible and so forth, but being is not one. There is a plurality of being. Objects are composed of a
plurality of elementary particles; and these particles themselves are changeless. They are being. But the
objects are brought about by the mingling of particles. In this sense he was an Atomist. There was a
force of attraction (love) and a force of repulsion (hate) explain all of the change. There was a basic
conflict between these. When the former prevails all things tend toward unity, while the latter split
things apart, yet both are “how the world go round.” Anaxagoras is significant for being the first to

15 Frame. 57
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clearly distinguish between mind and matter. Mind (nous) explains how matter becomes ordered. Mind
separates matter and forms them into objects. He could be called the first Intelligent Design theorists,
but his view was not of a personal mind. So Anderson groups these thinkers more specifically than does
Frame.

4. Atomists. These included Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucipus, Democritus, and Epicurus.

Empedocles held to an original oneness of things, but the opposing forces of love and strife set
things in motion, separating all things into four basic elements. Anaxagoras held to nous as the
essential organizing principle. Yet according to Socrates this nous never rises above the physical
mechanistic explanations. Frame calls Empedocles and Anaxagoras “qualitative atomists”
because the basic elements remain themselves, with unchanging qualities. There is a shade of
Parmenides’ view retained. Whereas the rest were “quantitative atomists.” For them reality
consists of only atoms and empty space. All atoms have the same quality. For Epicurus these
atoms had weight and thus all moved “downward.” Yet these atoms also frequently “swerved” in a
way that was uncaused, causing anomalies: even explaining free will. Frame locates the Epicurean
ethical outlook, with its pleasure principle, here rather than in lat Greek philosophy.16

Atomists. The word “atom” literally meant “indivisible” and so splitting the atom in modern science
reveals that these are really misnamed. But the Atomists believed that these were infinite in number:
they were solid, indivisible, indestructable, etc. Earth, air, fire, and water can be reduced to these atoms.
The Atomists’ Big Idea is that everything is reducible to the interaction between material particles.

5. Sophists. He calls them “traveling educators … teaching young men the skills needed for success
in public life.”17 The practical problems of “real life” began to eclipse the questions of
fundamental essence. Metaphysics gave way to ethics, such that ethics became disconnected
from metaphysics. The “real world” came to mean “against the nature of reality.” Hence the
Sophists were relativists. Frame’s summary of Socrates’ case against this relativism appeals
squarely to objective truth. One wonders why this way of speaking about objective truth does
not persist throughout Frame’s writings. He points out that Protagoras’ maxim—“Man is the
measure of all things”—begins as rationalism but amounts to irrationalism. The mind of man is
the criterion, but this implies that “Reality is what any man thinks it is.” Again, Frame is
recognizing this relativism (this subjectivism) as irrationalism. With Socrates the dialectic (the
method) and introspection went together, and may have remained mystical. In fact, Frame
points out, it could be just as subjective as the Sophists. It took Plato to draw forth the
connection between this life of the mind with ultimate reality outside of us.

16 Frame. 59
17 Frame. 61
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Sophists. This school represents a cynical, skeptical reaction. The Greek word sophia means wisdom. The
Sophists is one who “does wisdom,” but only in the sense of making money off of it. Sophistry means
using specious reasoning for some agenda. They were skeptical about knowledge and truth, and moral
relativists. They taught rhetoric not to pursue truth, but to increase one’s political or legal persuasive
ability. The three famous Sophists were Protagoras, Gorgias, and Thrasymachus. It was Protagoras who
said that “Man is the measure of all things — of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that
are not, that they are not.” But which man? Knowledge is person-relative. Ethical judgments are culture-
relative. Gorgias expressed an even greater skepticism: 1. There is nothing; 2. If there is anything, it
cannot be known; 3. If anything can be known, it cannot be communicated. Thrasymachus shows up in
The Republic. His approach was that we should pursue self-interest rather than justice, since the latter is
elusive. If there is justice, then this is really the advantage of the stronger. Socrates shows him that even
he is relying on some standard. The Sophists’ Big Idea is that there is no objective truth or knowledge, so the
goal of philosophical argument is the interest of power.

SUMMARY. (1) What are these first philosophers trying to accomplish? The most pervasive question is
What is the ultimate thing? But also, why is there change and how is that other things are permanent?
Finally there is the problem of the one and the many. (2) Where and why do they fall short? There is an
unargued assumption that matter is ultimate. But their method is reductionistic. And finally they lack
the categories to explain how there can be reason and order. They do not consider the personal cause.

Anderson’s Questions for Lesson 3

1 What are some similarities between Socrates' philosophy and a Christian worldview? What are
some differences?
2 Compare both Plato and Aristotle's views of Forms and Universals with similar elements in a
Christian worldview. In Christianity, where would a thing's form come from (i.e. What determines
what something is?)?
3 What does the concept of predication mean (e.g. Aristotle's category of "substance")?
4 What are the differences between Plato, Aristotle, and a Christian cosmogony?
5 Compare the views of Plato and Aristotle regarding metaphysics and epistemology.

II.Platonism
The brevity of Frame’s sections on Plato and Aristotle is unsurprising.

A) Plato’s Epistemology
1. Senses limited. We can learn very little from our sense organs.

2. Knowledge is gained by dialectic and recollection. In the Meno it is established that since the
simplest person can know certain a priori concepts, like shapes, this knowledge exists in the
mind before any sense experience. Following Pythagoras, the reason that this knowledge exists
beforehand is that the soul had experienced them in a previous life. The fact that reincarnation
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is present in Plato’s theory is a convenient way that many have found to dismiss the whole
notion of a priori ideas. But this doctrine cannot be reduced to the mystical elements that Plato
attached to it.

3. Knowledge is justified true opinion. In the Theaetetus the matter of how someone knows that they
know is explored.

B) Plato’s Metaphysics
1. The Forms. They are “perfect, immaterial, changeless, invisible, intangible objects.” Their
upshot, according to Frame, is twofold: “The world of Forms, therefore, contains not only
formulae for making objects, but also norms defining the purposes of objects.” Frame
understands all of the Forms as “abstract” in the sense of “not-concrete” and therefore “not-
specific,” which is a short step away from “not being.” But this would have been a great surprise
to Plato and Realists everywhere. But the upshot, as Frame shifts back to theology is crucial:
“Such is the consequence of trying to understand goodness as an abstract Form rather than, as in
biblical theism, the will18 of a personal absolute.”19

2. Knowledge of the Forms. They are known by intelligence alone. But they are the conclusion to
something like a conditional proof that involves “If there are just acts, then there is Justice” (A ⊃
J). So a just act must be posited first. Unfortunately, we only know if an act is in fact just by
discovering the essence, or form, of justice.

3. Plato’s disconnect between ‘god’ and world. If the Demiurge made the world on the basis of the
Forms, then why is the material world so defective? And if this being is subordinate to the
Forms, in what sense do abstract entities exert a causal influence over him (or over anything at
all)?20 Frame at least compliments Plato in that he realized the connection between the Forms
and the world had to be personal, not impersonal.

C) Plato’s Ethics
1. The Form of Justice. The famed Euthyphro dilemma is only a dilemma for the worldview that
has a plurality of ultimate reference points. “His metaphysics and epistemology are all a prelude
to his ethics and political theory. Yet it is in these areas that he is most disappointing.”21

18This is a glimpse of what Dolezal means by theistic personalism. The other name Dolezal gives for this is
theistic mutualism. In this statement by Frame, we do not witness explicit mutuality between Creator and
creation; however in the dichotomy between nature and will there is the wedge driven between Realism and
Voluntarism. At this point it is enough to say that the attributes of God are not abstract generalities. They are
the divine nature on the basis of which God does everything ad extra.
19 Frame. 65
20 Lloyd says these were Aristotle’s basic criticisms of his master — cf. Aristotle:
21 Frame. 67
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SOCRATES.

Aristophanes and Xenophon are the only other sources we have other than Plato’s dialogues. What was
his agenda as a philosopher? He was very critical of the Sophists, although the Athenians often mistook
him for one. He had a high view of pursuing truth and knowledge through critical analysis. This is
especially true about the nature of goodness and justice. He wanted to go beyond the questions of
examples of goodness, etc. to the question of the essence of goodness. He advocated the dialectical
approach (Socratic Method), or clarification through dialogue. Two or more people discussing an issue
can get closer to the truth than one on their own. He places great emphasis on definitions and
questions. The philosopher is an “intellectual midwife,” helping the mind to give birth to conclusions.
The movement is typically from particular things to universals: e. g. from what actions are just to what
justice consists in. Socrates had a very teleological view of nature. All things have functions, that are a
purpose. How something ought to behave depends upon its ultimate nature. Of human beings, we are
rational beings. Moral failure is therefore a result of ignorance, and to that extent involuntary. No one
knowingly does what is wrong since irrationality is fundamentally self-destructive. One would be
rebelling against their own nature. He holds that we possess a soul that survives the death of the body.

Socrates was called a “gadfly”— the kind that bites livestock — so one who keeps annoying with his
questions. He thought the Athenians should be grateful for such instruction. The two charges brought
against him was criticism of the gods (“atheism”) and corruption of the youth. Interestingly, Russell was
dismissed from the City College of New York for radical views on sexuality and politics, and he held that
he was being charged with the same two crimes as Socrates. It was in the Apology that he said that “the
unexamined life is not worth living.”

Is Socrates a model philosopher? One weakness might be that he never reaches ever firm conclusions.
One can see where he wants to wind up, but he is never dogmatic. On the other hand it is not virtuous
to be dogmatic where one cannot. The use of questions to arrive at truth in a way that makes one’s
audience own it for themselves is commendable and very effective. “His method is one of autonomous
human reason … We see this tension between rationalism and irrationalism.” The former in his method
and the latter in that constant sense of aporia. Socrates’ Big Idea: We should pursue truth and clarity
through this method of dialogue and questioning.

PLATO’s METAPHYSICS & EPISTEMOLOGY

Plato was really the first “worldview philosopher” in that he attempts to develop one coherent picture
encompassing metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, answering all the big questions. He tries to resolve
 13

the problems of his predecessors, taking the best of them. Plato was not his real name. The word means
“the broad,” and some theorize this was from his shoulders from a former young life in wrestling. He
was inspired by the example of Socrates, though he was clearly also influenced by Pythagoras and
Parmenides. He founded the Academy in 387 BC, which continued for over 300 years. Usually there are
about thirty-six works included in his collected works, usually developed into three periods. The early
writings appear to be relatively accurate renderings of Socrates’ dialogues: e.g. Apology, Crito, Euthyphro,
etc. The middle writings tend to use Socrates as a mouthpiece, but perhaps more for Plato’s own ideas:
e.g. Phaedo, Meno, and Republic. The later writings drop Socrates out altogether. These become more
reflective, even more religious than the former works.

Plato’s Metaphysics. He is a dualist. He sees reality divided into two distinct worlds or realms. The lower
realm contains the obejcts of sense experience; the visible, changing, transient, material, and particular.
This the world of appearances (and, as we will see, instances). These objects do really exist, but they are
imperfect examples. The upper world contains objects of the intellect. They are the Forms or Ideas.
These are invisible, unchanging, permanent, eternal, immaterial, and universal. This is the world of the
way things really are: the essence of things. These objects also really exist, and their existence is greater
than the existence of those objects in the lower realm. Plato uses the world “participation” to refer to
the sense in which a circular thing in this world (for example) reflects that perfection of the nature of
circularity. Red things, like a rose, are participating in Redness. Likewise the rose is participating in
Rose-ness. The Forms are paradigmatic for particular instances of them. Justice and Beauty would be
higher forms and the perfect horse or perfect circle, even, would belong to the lower forms.

These Forms are not simply “ideas” in the sense of mere subjective concepts. That would suggest that
they are products of finite reason or the imagination. If we say that “Socrates is wise,” we are saying that
Socrates is participating in the essence of wisdom. Why should we believe that Forms exist to begin
with? Something like them is necessary when we say things like, “Justice should be promoted.” This is
not refering to a particular instance. Does this not presuppose that justice exists in some sense? What
accounts for the fact that things like the tire and the compass are similar in ways that the pyramid and
the box are not? Plato would say that they share a universal. We do not gather things in groups
arbitrarily. A third reason for positing Forms is that when we make value judgments about things being
more or less perfect, then we are assuming a standard by which we discern the more and the less. A
Realist believes that universals actually exist.

However this has problems: (1) Does everything have an ideal Form? “Is there is an ideal stink?” “Is
there a perfect dirt?” (2) How did the copies of the Forms arise in the first place? (3) The “third man”
objection: Say you have three particular men: Peter, James, Andrew. What do they have in common.
Plato would say “the Form of Man.” The dog does not participate in this. This implies an infinite regress
though because the fourth man is in turn, like them, implying a fifth.
 14

The soul survives death and is reincarnated. The soul has three aspects to it: 1. rational, 2. spirited, and
3. appetitive. He uses the analogy of a charioteer and two winged horses. The charioteer has to control
them by the reigns. He corresponds to the intellect that has to guide and steer the other two: which can
often pull in two opposite directions.22

Paul versus Plato. Anderson cited the idea that the NT is influenced by dualism; but there are differences.
In the NT the end game is both soul and body. It holds to a complete person. For Plato the soul
preexists, whereas for the NT it is specially created by God. Origen did argue that the soul was
preexistent. For Plato the highest aspect of the soul is the intellect. Anderson does not think that the NT
teaches the primacy of the intellect. But he means “treating it as more important than” the emotions,
volition, etc. This is a potential equivocation.

Plato’s Epistemology. He is a rationalist, which is only to say that he is not an empiricist. But he is
certainly skeptical of the Sophists relativism. Plato would say that the truest knowledge comes directly
through the intellect. This too is dualistic, correlating with his metaphysics. He divides human beliefs
into two categories: opinion (based on sense experience) and knowledge (based on rational dialectic). It
is the intellect that grasps the Forms.

In the metaphor of the Divided Line,

where is “opinion”? Geometric forms
are “lower forms” because they are of
shape, which is instantiated in
material objects of the world.

Notice that Plato’s epistemology

matches up exactly to his
metaphysic. This accounts for his low
view of art. Paintings were very base
things because they were products of
imaginations: a mere copy of a copy.
It is twice removed from the real
world.

A second insight into his epistemology is of another piece of imagery he uses in The Republic, and that
is his allegory of the cave. His point is that we need to ascend out of this world of crude replicas, and we
need to use our intellects to gain insight into the Forms. The Philosopher must be every person who

22 Frame sees the spirited as the charioteer steering between the rational and appetitive (67).
 15

chooses the Good Life to rise above the shadows. Socrates is immediately the “freed prisoner.”
Philosophy is enlightenment, but it can get you killed. Education is liberation almost in religious terms.
It is a liberation from the captivity of the shadow world. The philosopher is a rebel: a freedom fighter.

Finally, in the Meno, there is his doctrine of recollection. Socrates interviews one of Meno’s slaves,
questioning him, and shows Meno that this slave understands certain geometric principles without ever
having been taught them. This is meant to support that the knowledge of the Forms is ultimately innate:
at least of the lower Forms. This could not have come from sense experience, since it was abstracted by
the questions. What we call learning is really recollecting understanding that was already there. When
the soul enters the body, it is imprisoned and is darkened. It’s knowledge becomes obscured. Prior to
this the soul resides in the upper realm of the Forms. The philosopher, acting as an intellectual midwife,
brings to remembrance this prior knowledge of the Forms. So his epistemology is connected to his
anthropology.

PLATO’s ETHICS & COSMOGONY

He is also critical of the Sophists’ morality: private and public. In the famous Euthyphro Dilemma,
Socrates’ set up the dilemma is a problem for polytheism. In the modern world people have mistakenly
ascribed this problem to theism as such. Is thing X good because God desires it or does God desire X
because it is good? If we take the first horn of the dilemma, this suggests that morality is capricious, and
yet if the second horn, then God seems to be conforming to a standard outside of himself, that X is
independent of God’s will. Sometimes this is cast in terms of commands. Does God command honesty
because it’s a good thing or is it a good thing because God commands it? This dilemma must become an
issue again for theistic mutualists who pit Realism against Voluntarism. At any rate, how do we defeat
the dilemma? We “go between the horns” by stating the third option of biblical-rational monotheism in
which God’s “storehouse” of moral natures by which he wills and commands are his own attributes.
Hence the moral desire, or command, is neither capricious nor independent of God.

Plato and Virtue. Four virtues correspond to parts of the soul. Wisdom aligns with the rational part,
courage with the spirited, temperance with the passionate - appetitive, and the soul as a whole is
concerned with justice. Justice in the individual is first the harmony of the soul. The goal of life is to
know the good (Book VI, Republic). We can see how ethics is also being cast in rationalistic terms.

Plato’s Cosmogony. This is one’s theory about the origin of the universe. Plato has two problems to solve.
First, what is the relationship between the Forms and the material world? How do these entities connect
with the cause of the particulars? Second, what about the existence of evil? If the world of the Forms is
perfect and original, how did the defects of the lower world arise? Plato offers a creation myth in the
Timeaus as a “likely story.” First, there is matter: an eternal, unformed, preexistent, “stuff.” It is
 16

indeterminate. Second, there are the Forms. Third, there is the receptical: an unstructured space or void
in which everything takes place, almost like a space-time dimension. Fourth, there is the Demiurge, who
is characterized as a finite craftsman.

Ronald Nash once explained Plato’s myth with the analogy of a kitchen. Someone is making cookies
with different elements: mixture, cutters, oven, and cook. These correspond to the four elements in
Plato’s Timeaus. Put in these terms, it becomes clear that a good bit of Aristotle’s causes were already
latent in Plato.

How does this address the problem of evil? Plato says that the cosmos is the product that of two things:
(1) impersonal necessity and (2) reason. He cites a principle of recalcitrance: matter is resistent to be
formed into things. This explains the presence of imperfection in the caused things. This is a resistence
to reason. Clearly this Demiurge was not very omnipotent. So is the Demiurge playing the role of
Ultimate Being or is it the Form of The Good? Anderson opts for the latter, which I think is right. It is
the highest reality when one reads the whole of Plato’s work.

Assessment of Plato. He is a truly impressive thinker. Whitehead said that all Western philosophy after
him was a series of footnotes to Plato. Emerson said that Plato is philosophy and philosophy is Plato.

What is positive in Plato? His rejection of relativism and his affirmation of this realm of universals. How
we conceive of them may differ. Anderson describes himself as “a Realist, but not like Plato.” This is
good. There needs to be a Liberator to lead us out of darkness (inclusive of intellect, but not exclusive of
the rest of the soul and body), so that this would be not be “a Philosopher.” And obviously Plato is
rejecting materialism and hedonism. He is also puts strict limitations on sense experience and
acknowledges innate knowledge (though his origins of that knowledge is problematic).

What goes unresolved? Both the origins of evil and the causal connection between Forms and their
material particulars go unexplained. Where did this Demiurge come from? There is an implicit dualism
between good and evil. If evil is a result of matter, and matter is eternal, then evil is eternal. Thus there
is no eschatology here; no progress, no hope. There is an overemphasis on the intellect. We don’t
balance anti-intellectualism by reducing all virtue and life-worth to intellectual performance.

How does Plato’s philosophy reflect rationalism-irrationalism tension? Rationalism in that everything is
explicable in terms of reason, and that all good reduces to it. The human intellect can access the Good.
Irrationalism exists in his cosmogony. The Demiurge and Forms split apart what goes together in the
real First Cause: both the personal agent and the ultimate standard. Are souls universals or particulars?
They are individual. And yet they properly reside in the realm of the universals. How so if they are
particulars? Anderson calls this “cheating.”
 17

Plato’s Big Idea: the objects of sense experience are not the ultimate reality. They are merely copies of the
abstract, immaterial, eternal Forms.

III. Aristotelianism

Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.) studied at The Academy for twenty years under Plato, and was commissioned
by Philip of Macedon to tutor his son, Alexander the Great. Aristotle would eventually begin his own
school, the Lyceum.

The first thing to note is Aristotle’s rejection of Plato’s dualism — not only his larger dualism of two
realms, but also its implications for the soul. Frame says, “Aristotle demythologizes Plato.” The pupil
thinks that the realm of the Forms is too distant to explain the connection between the two realms.

A) Aristotle’s Metaphysics
1. Matter and Form. Every form has it’s matter. So not a separate realm or world for Aristotle.

Anderson summarizes by saying, “There are no uninstantiated forms,” so there would be no “form of a
horse” unless there were actual, individual horses running around down here.

2. Substance. This word means “any individual thing.” This is one of Aristotle’s ten Categories, the
other nine being the qualities of individual things, which make up the predicates of ordinary
statements.

Aristotle’s ten categories are ways of speaking about a thing. Obviously the substance is the most
foundational: the particular thing itself. He distinguishes between two kinds of substances — a primary
substance, which is a particular thing, a thing which cannot be predicated of anything else; a secondary
substance is a more universal thing that can be predicated (e. g. man, grammar, liquid). The subject of a
sentence would be a substance, and the predicate would be kinds of things that are true about the
subject. Predicates, in a sense, belong to a subject. But a predicate is also a universal term that can be
shared by many particulars. Both primary and secondary substances can take a predicate, but only the
latter can be a predicate.

Anderson asks “Where does the term substance appear early in Christian theology?” It was the Nicene
Creed that said about the Father and the Son that they were the same substance (homoousios). In the
Latin it is consubstantial. So he continued, “Would this be closer to primary substance or secondary
substance?” If we deny the first, then we deny that they are the same particular being (substance); but if
we deny the secondary kind, then we deny that the same divine substance is shared by the Father and
 18

Son as two particulars. The extremes of Tritheism and Modalism are at either guard rail. What about
with the person of Christ? With the Person of Christ we must say he is particular, so the primary
substance. When it comes to the nature, the divinity is more difficult to see (as the example of the Trinity
shows), but with the humanity it is very important to insist on the secondary kind of substance. One
reason is that it is this the Son shares with us.

Back to strict philosophy, a substance is a form-matter combination. Its form is its unchanging essence:
that which we mean when we define “what it is.” This view is referred to as hylomorphism due to two
Greek words meaning “matter” (hyle) and “form” (morphe). Forms are still universals, for Aristotle, since
they are shared in common by particular instances. Yet these forms subsist in particular things, having
no independent existence from the particulars.

Each substance has two kinds of properties. An essential property cannot be lost or changed without
that substance ceasing to exist; whereas an accidental property may be lost or changed without the
substance ceasing to be.

3. Prime Matter. Since every substance has qualities, and since each qualities is itself a lesser (or
“smaller”) thing, it follows that this process must either go on ad infinitum, or else be reduced to
something which is purely potential: a matter with no qualities. But Aristotle never resolves this.
He knew that this would imply that something is non-being, which would violate his logic.

4. Potency and Act. A thing not yet in its final form is potentially that final form, whereas that
same matter can be actualized into its final form. This process of change can only be “reduced”
to its motion by a third thing, namely, a “substance-in-act.” Now the “form directs the matter to
realize its potential”23 (see teleology below).

Here is a key definition of Aristotle’s: Change is movement from potentiality to actuality. This is a
movement from what it could be to what it is. Potentiality is no less real than actuality. Everything
possesses both qualities. Broadly speaking, form corresponds to actuality and matter corresponds to
potentiality.

5. Four causes. These are the efficient, end, material, and formal. Aristotelians later added a fifth:
the instrumental.

Aristotle is interested in causes because he is interested in change. His four causes are a broader sense
of cause. It encompasses “reason” and “explanation,” in a way that we often do not mean it. When we
think of the cause of a thing, we usually have in mind only the efficient cause. Anderson used the
example of the man making an idol spoken of by Isaiah.

23 Frame. 72
 19

6. Teleology. Matter always taking form implies a tendency. Tendency implies intention. All things
are therefore directed to an end. The form of a thing is not merely descriptive; it is what that
thing ought to become. It is its purpose.

The entelechy of something is the final form to which something develops. It determines the direction of
the change in any particular thing.

7. Man, the Rational Animal. The soul is the form of the body. This implies that they are
inseparable, and would further seem to imply that man is not immortal (though this last point is
debatable).

Aristotle has a more holistic view. The soul is the cause of the thing in three senses: 1. efficient, 2. final,
and 3. formal. Can such a person survive physical death? Even if one appeals to reincarnation, is it is the
same substance: the “You”? Not on Aristotle’s view. This presented a challenge to Christians and
Muslims who wanted to adapt their theologies to Aristotle’s overall view.

8. Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover. The above process of a prior substance-in-act, itself driven toward
an end, cannot go on to infinity. Thus Aristotle’s cosmological argument and his Prime Mover.
Yet since the cosmos was eternal, this Mover did not create, but only sustains all motion at every
point. Nor can this ultimate being be moved by the world, so cannot be affected by it.24 As to
how such a being causes motion in the world, Frame sees Aristotle’s answer being the supremely
attractive nature of this being. Could this be influenced by Empedocles or others’ view of the
attractive versus repulsive forces?25

In this light, Anderson says this being is “more of a puller than a pusher.” Here we have a precursor to
the Cosmological Argument. However, Aristotle only tried to explain motion in the world, not that he
was seeking the essence of God. In spite of the eternality of the universe, on his view, there still must be
a final cause that explains motion and change. Such a Prime Mover must be “pure activity and no
reactivity,” and so Pure Actuality and no potentiality. That futher means that it is pure form and no

24At this point it is not difficult to see why Frame pits attributes like impassibility against God’s personal
attributes in relation to the world (73); although his Systematic Theology and Doctrine of God should be checked
for this so that he is not unfairly pegged by Dolezal or others.
25 When Frame goes on to give Aristotle’s answer to what the Prime Mover does, the answer of which is
thinking, Frame wonders why he gives an answer that ascribes personal attributes. So far Aristotle has proved
nothing but an impersonal being. Here again we see the difference of emphasis. To the classicalist, proof is
objective. Could it be that Aristotle has actually proven much that he did not set out to prove?
 20

matter. So this is Aristotle’s one exception to form always having its matter. This means that this Mover
is pure transcendence and no immanence.26

9. Parallel ironies. “As Plato believed that philosophers should be kings, Aristotle believes that his
god is a philosopher. Further, though, Aristotle’s deity reduces to a tautology … a thought of a
thought of a thought, or, to put it differently, a thought of nothing in particular.”27 So neither
Plato’s Demiurge nor Aristotle’s Prime Mover have anything very divine to look at.

B) Aristotle’s Epistemology

Knowledge comes through both reason and sense experience.

1. Two Givens. First principles — whether logical laws or a priori general truths — and substances
that are presented to the senses. These do not yield apodictic certainty. They are starting points.

We have an early articulation of the correspondence theory of truth. This is nothing else than rational
sanity. His definition incorporates the law of non-contradiction in it. A statement is true if and only if
what it says is in fact the way things are. Now this does not elaborate what it means for thoughts to
correspond to external states of affairs. But it is a common sense realist view of truth.

His development of formal, syllogistic logic is foundational for Western thought. According to Aristotle,
only 19 of the 256 comibations are valid. The number 24 is used by texts. Aristotle has been challenged.
Some arguments cannot be argued. Singular terms cannot be accounted for. But “Socrates is a man,”
may be expressed as “All Socrates is a man.” This may be a kind of limitation, but it is most certainly not
invalid.

2. Inductivism and Moderate Realism. The above “givens” imply that we start with particulars on any
question of gaining knowledge. The intellect is passive with respect to sensation, yet active in
analyzing its data on the basis on principles of the mind. Thus his was not a “pure inductivism.”
And yet, with Plato, true knowledge is ultimately about form, and not matter.

For Aristotle, the active intellect may have been immortal. He said this in De Anima, and it caused many
later devotees to salvage a form of immortality from this.

C) Aristotle’s Ethics

26 This is a non-sequitur per se. It may have been an implication that Aristotle drew, but if they attempt to impose
this on Thomas, they are barking up the wrong tree.
27 Frame. 74
 21

His ethics are entirely teleological — always directed toward its ends. The task of the ethicist is to
discover our ends and then deduce what is the best way to pursue those ends. An intrinsic end is an
end in itself; whereas an instrumental end is one pursued in order to pursue the more intrinsic end.
The ultimate end is happiness. He claims that everyone agrees on this.

1. The Life of Reason. If (1) “each being should act in accordance with its form,” and (2) human
beings are rational animals, then “the good life is the life of reason.”28 It may be circular to say
that reason commends happiness as the ultimate goal of a person, because we find out that
happiness consists in contemplation.

So this is not some hedonistic definition of happiness. Since reason is what distinguishes us from
animals and plants, this nature will determine both our ends and means.

2. Tripartite soul. Like Plato, Aristotle divided the soul into three: rational, sensitive, vegetative,
also assigning to the parts of the souls corresponding virtues. He takes the same four virtues as
Plato, calling courage, temperance, and justice “moral virtues” and prudence an “intellectual
virtue.”

All in all, the irrational parts need to be subjected to the rational. On this there is full agreement with
Plato. Wisdom and understand would go in the same place as prudence: intellectual virtues. These are
concerned with the pursuit of truth. These serve the higher end of truth and reason. That does not
devalue the moral virtues, but these serve the Philosopher’s Life above all.

Ethics is concerned with cultivating virtue: meaning a good character trait, thus disposing one to
behave in a good ways.

3. Virtue and Habit. How do we become better? Aristotle said that we must practice what we
would become. The trouble is that a practice can only emerge from a sufficient nature. Frame
points out that this makes moral improvement and habituation circular in Aristotle.

The external act will translate into the internal disposition. Anderson cites the “bootstrapping problem”
to say the same thing Frame is by there being a circularity here. Not yet having the virtue of courage,
how can one expect to produce that which is abscent?

4. Golden Mean. Wit is the perfect balance between frivolity and humorlessness. Does this always
work? Frame asks about robbing one bank as a mean between robbing too many or else none.
Clearly sometimes, the extremes are right.

28 Frame. 75
 22

5. Man as the political animal. The State is the end for which individuals and families are units. The
collective interests trump the individual’s. Most men are born to be slaves, rather than Greeks.

If one is going to have a teleological view of the whole cosmos, not only ethics, then how does one not
go all the way and presuppose the most obvious necessary piece — an Absolute Person! How does
Aristotle’s view reflect the rationalist-irrationalist dialectic? Rationalism exists in the form-focus of the
form-matter unity. Matter is intrinsically irrational. It is rationality that brings order. Every substance
contains the dialectic within, and it is the Prime Mover that direct is all by Mind. For all of that,
however, what does the Prime Mover know about anything beyond its own thoughts? Nothing! So
rationality makes the whole world go round, and yet it knows precisely nothing.

Frame’s closing statement on Aristotle is one of the more troubling things I have read in his works
yet. It shows not only a fundamental misunderstanding of what natural law is (leaving aside his
approving appeal to Hume to refute it), but tears at the heart of Christian ethics.

Aristotle assumes that we can learn our moral obligations simply by observing our
own natures and what makes us happy. This is the root of the ‘natural law’ tradition
in ethics. But as David Hume pointed out, one cannot derive moral obligations from
natural facts. One can’t infer what we ought to do from statements of what is the
case; we cannot derive ought from is.29

IV. Late Greek and Roman Philosophy

Anderson’s Questions for Lesson 4

1 How do both Epicurean and Stoic systems of metaphysics compare with a Christian worldview?
2 How does a skeptic philosophy undercut the possibility of a valid epistemology or ethical
system?
3 Explain the concepts of "being" and "the One" in Plotinus' metaphysical system. How does his
system differ from a Christian metaphysic?

A) Epicureanism

Epicurus (341-271 B.C.) was an atomist as we have seen; but this is “atomism with a twist.” Atoms have
weight and thus are continuously falling. There is a basically regular motion, so resulting in an
essentially deterministic system. But occasionally the atomic paths “swerve,” which explains movements
of the will that we would call “free.” Late modern philosophers have attempted to cite quantum events
that cause free will in a similar way. How this is an improvement on conscious free agency is anyone’s
guess. At any rate, Epicurus denies the existence of forms or human souls or any higher beings.

29 Frame. 76
 23

Epistemologically he is an empiricist. But he is most famous for his ethic, which is basically hedonism.
We should pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Although this is a bit more sophisticated than the “crude
hedonist” on a popular level. We should aim for the highest forms of pleasure: a qualitative hedonist. We
should aim for long-term pleasures rather than short-term. Again this cashes out as the good life of
contemplation. This is also egoism because right and wrong is determined by one’s own pleasure
principle.

Rationalist-Irrationalist dialectic: Order is still sought, but chance is the source of our will to find it.

B) Stoicism

Zeno of Citium (in Cyprus), not to be confused with Zeno of Elea, who taught at the Stoa, which was
something like a “porch.” Cicero, Seneca, and Marcus Aurellius were Stoics.

1. Materialism. Like all Greeks, the Stoics believed that matter was ultimate, but human beings
were “refined matter.” This would make virtues material as well.

Anderson calls it Pantheistic-Physicalism, so “All is god and all is matter.” Everything that exists is
embodied. The world is governed by the rational soul of the world. That is the logos. But this too has to
be material, which explains how the “divine spark” can be “in” everyone. The Stoics were empiricist as
well.

2. Fatalism and Resignation. Since all things have an interlocking nature, there is an inevitability to
all that happens and meaninglessness if one does not accept this. This “everything that is is,
therefore one ought to accord with what is”30 Frame sees as the root of natural law theory.

This resignation to Fate, they believed, should not lead to passivity. Aligning ourselves with “natural
law” will set us in the right current. But their metaphor is about actors in a play. Each must play his part
well. Epictetus says that you are an actor in the drama “such as the Playwrite wants it to be …” but who
is the Playwrite? So the metaphor breaks down. Correlative to this is the imperative to avoid emotional
disturbance.

C) Skepticism
1. Skeptics in the Academy. From Plato’s own school emerged some of the most formidable skeptics
of Antiquity — Pyrrho, Timon, and Arcesilaus.

30 Frame. 78
 24

2. Middle Platonism (100 B.C. - 270 A.D.). This was a “time of world-weariness” ripe for escapist
philosophy. Mystery religions allowed one outlet. Plato’s philosophy began to take a more other-
worldly turn than it already contained. Moreover no materialist philosophy could halt the
disintegration of the Roman Empire.

D) Neo-Platonism
1. Plotinus. He lived from 205 to 270. His metaphysic describes a “chain of being,” from the
supreme being that he simply calls “The One,” down through Mind to Soul to finally the
material world. Unlike Aristotle’s Prime Mover, this One communicates itself to the lower
creatures by “emmanation.” Yet just like Aristotle’s ultimate, this One can do no other. The One
is bound by necessity: not free.31

2. Neo-Platonist Metaphysics.

Prime matter is nothing or non-being or “darkness,” the last stop on the scale of being. Frame has a
few things to say about this scale of being in his other writings as well. No doubt we will disagree
with the Neo-Platonists. But there is a bit too much conflating of the pagan notion of scale of being,
on the one hand, and how the “analogy of being” was handled by medieval Christians.

As with Plato, being is good and non-being is bad. At the second level of Mind is where we start to see
some diversity. There is a higher level of Mind, which is essentially the mind of the One. Here is where
the Forms reside. In the lower Mind realm we see our own minds, lesser minds, and yet they are
connected to the higher Mind in some way. In the third level there is the Soul, and this is divided into
three. In the first level we see the World Soul that drives all the motion in the world; the middle soul is
where part of our souls exist (the upper part) where rational reflection occurs. It is connected upward to
the level of mind. The lower aspect of our souls is the third and lowest level. It connects downward to
the level below through our bodies. That lowest level is matter. It is at the bottom of this lowest level
that we find Primary Matter: the “very tip of non-being.” Non-being is evil.

Privation view of evil — evil is not a thing in itself, but the absence of goodness, and thus the absence of
being.

How does this metaphysic shape ethics? You might either disdain the body, suppressing bodily desires,
or you might abuse the body, excusing any bodily desires. In either case, there would be an emphasis on
the mind or the spirit. The importance of the body will be downplayed.

31Once again it become evident that Frame associates these “static” dichotomies (he reads out of Plato’s
Demiurge, Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, and Plotinus’ One) between necessity and freedom, between
transcendence and immanence. Frame draws his chart of the biblical view alone encompassing both
transcendence and immanence, but it is clear that Frame reduces this transcendence to make it fit what he
restricts to that balance.
 25

What was Plotinus’ anthropology and soteriology? He said that human souls are divine, in a secondary
sense. The soul serves as an intermediary between the realms of the mind and the body. This soul is
always united to the World Soul and this is what accounts for its immortality. The problem is that the
body pulls the soul downward toward the undignified realm of matter. Salvation in this scheme involves
freeing the soul from its captivity of bodily pleasures. Rigorous intellectual disciplines will bring the
soul up to mind and away from matter. However a final unity with the One cannot be accomplished by
the intellect alone since the One is beyond the intellectual categories, so there needs to be a final
mystical experience.

Problems. Anderson says, “If being is good, then everything that exists is good.” Not to defend Plotinus,
but this does not seem to be thorough look into what this idea could allow. As far as the rationalist-
irrationalist dialectic, the metaphysical framework is clearly rationalistic. But then he separates the One
from any rational categories so that it is unknowable. In fact, the One “goes beyond” both being and
non-being. The Neo-Platonic salvation follows this into mysticism.

In what crucial ways does Christian theism differ from Neo-Platonism? In the Christian view, matter is
not evil. God created all things good. We would also say the God in incomprehensible and yet knowable.
In Neo-Platonism we still see a salvation by works — intellectual and mystical works. Also in the
Christian view there is a sharp distinction between Creator and creation, whereas here we see a
continuum on the scale of being.

V. Early Christian Philosophy

Anderson’s Questions for Lesson 5

1 How did Platonism and Neoplatonism influence early Christian philosophy?
2 How do Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Augustine differ in their views of
faith and philosophy?
3 Briefly, how would you assess Augustine's theological apologetics against each opponent-
group? What would you say is either good or bad, and why?
4 How does Augustine's metaphysics compare with that of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus?

A) Apostles and Apologists

1. The Apostles on Philosophy. We have already seen similarities and differences between Plato and
Paul. Frame points out how the New Testament recognizes philosophy as an arena of spiritual
warfare: citing Acts 17:16-34, 1 Corinthians 1-3, 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, and Colossians 2:8.

Philosophy and Scripture. The NT is not a “philosophy textbook,” but there is a philosophy in it, even
presupposed. That is remarkable statement for a presuppositionalist to make (and which I agree
 26

wholeheartedly with)! But just let it sink in for a moment. The Bible — which is the norming norm, the
authority over all others — presupposed worldview elements.

NT Metaphysics. There is a triune God — Absolute Personhood — and a strict Creator-creation

distinction. Man is made in the image of God. We are unity of body and soul; it does survive the death of
the body, but it isn’t meant to be divorced. Immortality comes through resurrection. There is a strong
view of a personal divine providence. This rules out chaos (impersonal indeterminism) but also Fate
(impersonal determinism). Either of these extremes eradicates human choices. Sin is what is wrong with
the world, not matter nor any other “mistake” made by the First Cause. Evil is not finitude, nor
ignorance (which is merely intellectual finitude). Creatures are naturally finite. Their perfection is always
a creaturely perfection. Sin is a willful rebellion against God. Mere education then cannot reverse sin
the heart or evil in the world. On a Christian view history is both linear and finite. In other views,
history is either circular or eternal (and usually both). God directs all things to a certain end. This end
perfects the already good creation. It ends better than the first. Salvation is not merely epistemological.
It is gained through fellowship with God through Christ’s redemption. In the eternal state we do not
become “one with” God, but are united to him in fellowship. Divine grace appears nowhere but here in
the Christian gospel.

NT Ethics. It is supernatural in source and character. Knowledge of godliness comes through God’s
word. Holiness is attained by divine grace, not human effort. For the Greeks, to be moral is to be
rational, whereas in the Scriptures, to know God is to obey God. So to think well is to submit to what
God has revealed. Sin is not ignorance, but rather ignorance is a consequence of sin.

Philosophy is not the answer to man’s problems. Salvation is actually easier for the lowly than the wise.
This is a complete reversal: cf. Matt. 11:27, 1 Cor. 1.

2. Context: Four Opponents. The Jews, Romans, Greek philosophy, and Gnosticism were the four
antitheses to the Christian argument in the second century, according to Frame. To grasp what
the Apologists were saying, we need to understand these opposing forces.

3. Gnosticism. The origins of Gnosticism predate the full flowering of Neo-Platonism, certainly
prior to the version of Plotinus. So though there are affinities with Plato’s mystical side, scholars
are largely downplaying the Eastern influence in their axe to grind against “Greek thought.” At
any rate Frame summarizes: “Neoplatonism and Gnosticism are particularly good examples of
the transcendence-immanence and irrationalism-rationalism dialectics.”32

32 Frame. 89
 27

Early Apologists. Anderson is going to have roughly the same four-fold breakdown of opponents as
Frame does: Jews, Romans, Greeks, and Christian Heretics. How did they respond to each?

To the Jews: Appeal to the OT that Jesus was the fulfillment of the types and prophesies. To the
Romans: Our kingdom is not of this world and so we are the best citizens. To the Christian heretics:
Define orthodoxy by means of councils and creeds, appealing to Scripture, liturgy, and received
tradition.

Justin Martyr. After studying Greek philosophy he is converted and teaches in Rome. He appeals to the
Roman emperor and senate on behalf of persecuted Christians. He responds to Marcion’s error about
the OT deity being “evil” and amending the NT on that basis. He also argues with Trypho the Jew
concerning Christ. Polycarp is alleged to have called Marcion “the firstborn of Satan.” To Justin, Christ
was the ultimate Philosopher. He aimed to demonstrate the harmony between Christian doctrine and
the best of Greek philosophy. It was Justin who famously theorized that Plato got his ideas from Moses:
in other words through exposure to the Hebrew Scriptures.

As to Justin’s doctrine, he developed an early idea of “simple foreknowledge” and something like
libertarian free will. It should be noted that he was reacting very strongly against the Stoic doctrine of
fatalistic determinism. The Big Idea is this: Philosophy is good and Christianity is the best philosophy.

Tertullian. He also was engaged with heretics: against Gnostics, Marcionites, Docetists, and others. He
wrote his Apology defending Christians against persecution — “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of
the church.” Against Praxeus was a defense of the Trinity against a form of Modalism and, in specific,
Patripassionism. Here is where we see the first usage of trinitas. Tertullian is less enthusiastic about
Greek philosophy, as he said, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Anderson sees this as an
antithesis, similar to Van Til, and that the maxim has been misunderstood and pressed to the extreme.

Tertullian appealed to a “rule of faith,” which scholars are split on its meaning. This is at least a minimal
statement of the Christian faith. He also called it the “reason” or “order of Scripture.” This would serve
as a guard against doctrinal deviations. But the important point is that he appeals first to supernatural
revelation rather than using philosophical arguments. His criticisms of Plato were partly influenced by
similar critiques from the Stoic authors. The soul was at least partly physical and sense experience is at
least partly valuable for gaining knowlege. His Big Idea: Great philosophy is no match for Scripture and
Apostolic tradition.

Clement of Alexandria. He takes a very different approach than Tertuallian. For him, philosophy is the
ally of Christian theology. There is no fundamental opposition. Philosophy was a kind of covenant. It
was his covenant with the Greeks, whereas his covenant with the Jews took the form of law. On that
 28

basis, it is valuable for viewing Christianity. He doesn’t think philosophy can produce faith, but it can
support it. Faith necessarily precedes philosophy — faith as in a first principle, unproven (presupposed).
He was opposed to the Sophists, and held Plato and Aristotle in high regard. He advocates an
“apophatic” (negative) theology. We can only say what God is not. God is connected to the world
through mediators: shades of Neo-Platonism. He too placed much emphasis on human free will. His Big
Idea: Greek philosophy is Christianity’s ally.

Origen. He was the first notable Christian “synthesizer,” taking two different outlooks and really
combining them. He does this with Neo-Platonism. Against Celsus was a defense of Christianity against a
Platonist philosopher. On First Principles was an early work of systematic theology. And there were many
works of biblical criticism and commentaries. He takes a high view of revelation, but he advocates a very
allegorical view of interpretation. The deeper spiritual meaning is found in symbolism. This was
especially the case about OT stories.

At 39:40-50. Anderson reads off a series of divine attributes: perfect unity, simple, immaterial, spiritual,
immutable, etc. and then says “Where have we seen this before? It’s Plotinus, isn’t it.”

The logos becomes the utimate bridge between Creator and creation. He is also the rational principle
behind order in the world. So the Greek idea is now Christenized. The logos is ontologically subordinate
to God here. God the Father is seen as the original divine being and the logos is derivative. In this he is
still trying to work out a Trinitarian theology. God is one ousia but three hypostases. He is struggling to
maintain the unity of God but the distinctness of the Father and the Son. So they are both divine, the
latter being an emmanation of the other, the former being the original. This inevitably results in an
ontological subordinationism that would later fuel the Arian heresy: If the Son is really subordinate to
God, then he cannot be the same God: the same divine essence.

Origen’s anthropology is that human souls are pre-existent. This leans heavily on Plato. Moreover the
fall occured in some pre-creational realm rather than in ordinary space-time. Salvation was theosis:
specifically divinization through education. Christ’s life and death was exemplary if anything. He held to
a universalistic eschatology. Even the devils would be reconciled to God in the end, although he held
out the possibility (due to free will) to go through another fall. Origen’s Big Idea: Neo-Platonism can help
us understand and defend Christian doctrine.

Anderson asks these questions: How successful were early Christian apologists at defending the faith?
Generally speaking they were too sympathetic to pagan thought and thus paved the way for deviations.
In this sense, Tertullian sets a better example. But we have to cut them some slack. They existed in the
early stage of theological development. They had to do a lot “from scratch.” They could have done better
with the logos concept. More Greek ideas were poured into this concept than biblical ideas. What is
 29

particularly lacking here is the idea of noetic depravity: that human reason is fallen and in opposition to
God.

B) The Nicene Fathers

1. Frame has next to nothing good to say about the earliest Christian apologists. He is
complimentary of Tertullian, recognizing that the Van Tillian principle of antithesis was present,
unlike in Justin (at all) or in Irenaeus (only moderately). Frame does not address the possibility that
this particular angle on antithesis in Turretin may have had something to do with his affinity for an
experiential sect like the Montanists. Frame does defend one of Tertullian’s other famous sayings, “I
believe because it is absurd.” He was being intentionally paradoxical to make his point, perhaps in
the same way Paul was in 1 Corinthians 1 about “the foolishness of God” and so forth.

Athanasius. He is a “theological reformer” who countered the fallout of Origen’s synthesis. His response
to Arianism, On the Incarnation of the Word, affirmed the unity and simplicity of God. The Arians
affirmed that much. But he pressed the Creator-creation distinction. Because of this there is no need for
meditators (as Origen had derived from Neo-Platonism). The logos has to fall on one side or the other:
the Creator or creation; but God at some point has to deal directly with the creation. If salvation comes
through a creature, then we are not reconciled to God. And if Christ is created, then to worship Christ
is idolatry. So Arianism has unacceptable theological implications.

Cappadocian Fathers — Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus. They are noteworthy for
bringing Semi-Arianism back into orthodoxy and away from their mediate position. They argued for the
deity of the Holy Spirit as that was under attack around 381 culminating in the Council of
Constantinople. Gregory of Nyssa uses an analogy of three men: if there is three men, there is a sense in
which there is one as well. This assumes something like realism; but if taken literally, it is obviously
Tritheism. But neither were these three rationalists. The other Gregory’s Orations on God and Christ
appealed to mystery and humble theology.

C) Augustine’s Theological Apologetics

Augustine’s Influence. He is arguably the single greatest influence on Western Christian thought. He is
made a doctor of the Roman Catholic Church. Catholics and Protestants prefer different things from
him. Warfield said, “It was Augustine who gave us the Reformation.” His biography is intertwined with
his theology and philosophy. Influences on him include his mother Monica, the Manicheans (a Gnostic-
Dualistic religion), the Skeptics, the Neo-Platonists, and then finally Ambrose of Milan. Anderson draws
attention to his conversion as having influence on his view of grace. Augustine was not seeking, but was
sought.
 30

Augustine against Manicheanism. He came to reject this view because of its Dualism and its Fatalism. In
these writings we see a libertarian view of freedom, but we have to understand this writings in reaction
to a kind of determinism. He defends the biblical doctrine of creation: matter and spirit are both part of
one good creation. Evil should be understood as a privation of good, whereas in Manicheanism, evil has
its own substance. Light and darkness are equal opposites. But Augustine insists that it must be
deprived goodness. Evil is parasitical on goodness. Some people use the analogy of the donut. Evil
would be like the hole. The hole isn’t imaginary, but the hole is still dependent on the donut. On the
other hand, evil is a moral problem and not a metaphysical problem. In the Manichean view, evil is a
metaphysical problem. Both good and evil are equally kinds of things. Augustine says, in effect, that
good and evil are defined by the personal God and in relation to God’s personal laws. He insists on a
historical fall. Evil could not be part of the original creation.

Augustine against Arianism. He gives a very balanced exposition of the Trinity. He holds to Nicene
orthodoxy. All three Persons are one substance. He must avoid both Modalism and Subordinationism
(particularly Arianism). He does use analogies but not to prove anything about the divine nature.

Augustine against Pelagius. Pelagius was very concerned with the moral decline that he saw contributing
the fall of civil society. There was a line in the Confessions: “Give what you command, and command what
you will.” This implies that we cannot do God’s will unless he gives us the grace to do so. Pelagius
believed this would encourage immorality. Instead, responsibility must imply moral ability: “If I ought,
then I can.” In Pelagius’ view, Adam had left a bad example, but every human being is born into the
same state (both legally and naturally) as Adam was originally. Augustine argued for the doctrine of
original sin as well as predestination. He distinguishes between a few conceptions of free will: (1) liberty
of spontaneity - the freedom to act according to your desires; (2) liberty of indifference - the freedom to act
one way or the other in any circumstance. Augustine held to the former, Pelagius the latter. The reason
one is still held morally responsible in the former, one is still doing exactly what they want, no matter
how inevitable the outcome was. This breakdown becomes compatibilism and libertarianism within the
modern debate. The former view was famously defended later on by Martin Luther in The Bondage of the
Will and Jonathan Edwards in The Freedom of the Will.

In this same context, Augustine identifies four states of man33: (1) created man who has the ability to sin
or not sin; (2) fallen man who is not able not to sin; (3) redeemed man who is able to sin and not to sin; (4)
glorified man who is not able to sin.

D) Augustine’s Philosophy

33 cf. Turretin’s section on this. It is identical.

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1. On the origin and nature of evil. Frame acknowledges that when Augustine equates evil to non-
being, he is at least partly motivated by the biblical teaching that God only makes good things.34 Not
all things that “are not” are bad. Boys don’t have wings; but this is not bad because humans are not
“winged things.” But some boys are born with no legs. And that lack is what Augustine means by
“privation.” So “it was not enough to identify evil with nonbeing as a Neoplatonist would have
done”; evil must also be “personal rebellion against God’s commands.”35 Frame applies this to the
problem of evil by divorcing a “metaphysical evil” from a “moral evil,” so that evil is explanable in
terms of personal rebellion and not in terms of the essential nature. He then says that Augustine
eventually learns to replace such speculation with God’s sovereignty over all things.

Augustine’s Metaphysics. He corrects Manicheans and Neo-Platonists on what God must be like. Rather
than a finite craftsman, God is an all-powerful creator who does not need to appeal outside of himself
for the best way to make things. Space and time, no less than matter, are created ex nihilo. Universals are
ideas in the mind of God. Even these ideas are, in turn, based upon his attributes. This monotheistic
realism has the advantage of explaining the contingency of the created effects and the moral order of
the universe as well. Intelligent purposes and moral obligation can now come from the Ideas because
they are ideas of the Absolute Person. Because God has a will, the act of creation can then solve the last
problem of Plato’s forms — the point of contact, in cause and effect, between the Forms and the created
world. Augustine teaches a substance dualism: human beings have both the immaterial and material
aspects, soul and body. But the body is not a prison that soul must escape. So he steers between Plato
(immortality has to do with surviving death and relating to God, eventually with the body as well) and
Aristotle (the human being is not a form-matter composite such that the substance is eliminated when
the two are separated).

Evil is not equal with good. It entered the world through the fall. Now here is where Frame is wrong on
pitting metaphysical explanation against moral explanation. Adam (like any other creature) was created
good but not incorruptible. Only God is incorruptible. Note that this is a metaphysical distinction. This
inability to sustain one’s own good nature is precisely a limitation of being: which of course speaks of a
kind of being. The only piece of the puzzle left is how exactly God operated upon this nature. If we say
that God must have acted upon Adam’s inability permissively rather than creatively, all we have done is
retain what is already contained in the biblical data — cf. Isaiah 45:7, Romans 8:20. Then Anderson asks
at the end, “Is this (privation theory per se) a good explanation?” Someone asked how this accounts for
the personality of Satan. Augustine would say that the being of Satan is good in that he is, as God
upholds him, but this “good” is not a moral evaluation primarily, but a metaphysical distinction. When it
turns to moral evaluation it says, “It is good that God x.” Anderson says that the privation theory is
limited in what it can explain. How is this privation principle introduced into Adam in the first place?

34 Frame. 110
35 Frame. 110
 32

How does he come to the point of that first sin? At this point Anderson returns to the same place as
Frame. How do we reconcile privation (metaphysical) and with rebellion against law (moral)? But this is
a false dilemma. And, he says, it doesn’t get God off the hook. But what if that is not its point? At what
point has God asked us to “get him off the hook”?

Augustine’s Epistemology. He had to overcome skepticism in his own journey. He says, “Even if I’m
mistaken, I must exist; since I must at least be in order to be mistaken.” Descartes would use self-
existence, and thus self-knowledge, as a foundation for the rest of his knowledge. Augustine does not do
that. He is only refuting skepticism. Faith is trust in the testimony of God’s authority. Faith is a
necessary precondition for understanding. Thus credo ut intelligam really speaks of what is
psychologically necessary and not some willful ignorance that brings faith in to “plug up” what one
cannot explain. Augustine enumerated three intellectual powers: intellection is the highest form of
knowledge: of God and metaphysical essence; cogitation is knowledge of physical objects on the basis of
universal truths; and then sensation is only direct awareness of physical objects. Animals possess this
third power. He does hold to the reliability of sense experience (against Plato), but also subordinated
sense data to higher truths (against Aristotle). What about knowledge of the Forms? Not by sense
experience, since the Forms are not material — so Romans 1:20 is not saying by “in the things that have
been made” that the matter are the things principally thought about — but rather by analyzing concepts.
We have to have the knowledge of some Forms prior to experience (a priori), yet since the soul does not
pre-exist, we are still deriving much of the “material” from experience (a posteriori). And what is a prior
comes from divine illumination. Augustine uses an analogy to a light source to say this. The Forms can be
“reflected” in the human mind, so a derivative light showing back the immediate illumination. Anderson
stresses at this point that Augustine’s theology is entirely informing his epistemology. God is the
Absolute Mind and so at every point the finite mind has limited access to comprehend the mind of God.
This action is an act of grace and revelation.

Augustine’s Ethics. He grounds ethics in the character of God. God is the summum bonum, the greatest or
highest good. Every ethical system needs such a Good. Augustine says in the Confessions, “You have
formed us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” The doctrine of love
becomes the center of this system, which reflects the Greatest Commandment. He defines love as the
fastening of the affections on an object. Love is a natural urge in us, though we do not fix it to the
proper object in our sin. All created things are legitimate objects of love, but since evil is privation,
everything, even in this cursed world, has some good in it. So one can love that goodness which is in
each thing. But love must be ordered to the right thing for the right reason. For example, physical
objects cannot substitute for persons: not because bodies are bad, but because persons are more than
bodies. Disordered love leads to disordered persons, and then on to disordered communities. So when
he says, “Love God and do as you please,” he does not mean to relativize the pleasure to anything
 33

outside of God, but to God. Our desires, so ordered, now callibrates our pleasures to God’s will. It is
exactly the same idea as Psalm 37:4.

Augustine’s Philosophy of History. He writes the City of God in response to the sack of Rome and the
charge from many that Christianity made the Empire weak and thus led to its decline. Also the loss of
Rome is, literally, not the end of the world. It is no blow to the City of God. Even Rome is just an
example of the city of man. At any rate, this is a Christian philosophy of history. Against the Greeks,
history is not circular, but linear. History has meaning. It is given direction by God. History is a playing
out of the tension between these two cities. These two cities do not correspond to church and state,
contrary to modern “two kingdom” views. Anderson nails it here! There are in fact several overlaps. The
church, for example, has believers and unbelievers in it. Ultimately, the reason for the collapse of the
earthly city is that their hearts are not fixed on that which is eternal.

Anderson sees in Augustine a biblical departure from the over-emphasis on Neo-Platonic ideas in the
earlier apologists. But we must still note the influence. It is claimed that Augustine is nothing but a
Christianization of Plato or Neo-Platonism. No doubt there is influence in that he is conversant with
them, but he is also consciously transcending their views and even refuting them at important points.

VI. Medieval Philosophy

Anderson’s Questions for Lesson 6

1 Concisely explain Anselm's ontological argument. Does this work as a viable apologetic in any
way? Why or why not?
2 How is Anselm's atonement theory a positive doctrinal move in the history of Christianity? In
what ways is it lacking?
3 Do you think the debate concerning universals (i.e. realism, nominalism, conceptualism) is
relevant and meaningful? Why or why not?
4 What is the difference between univocal predication and equivocal predication?
5 How would you go about explaining Thomas Aquinas' way of speaking about God to an
agnostic who claims that we cannot know anything about God because He transcends nature?

A) Medieval Christian Philosophers

One of the central concerns of medieval philosophy was the relationship between theology and
philosophy. Another was this: Can the two ever reach different conclusions? And if they disagree, do we
resort to synthesis, parallel tracks, or decisively choose one over the other?

1. Boethius. Both his translation interests and language show a favoring of Aristotle that
anticipates Thomas Aquinas. What he wanted to was to reconcile the views of Plato and
 34

Aristotle into a greater Christian synthesis. His definition of eternity is paradigmatic: “the
complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life.”36 Frame’s summarizes the
implications: “finite creatures lose part of their lives as their experiences fade into the past.
But God never loses any part of his life.”37 He was not only a philosophical synthesizer. He
would seek to give greater definition to the Creed and greater unity between East and West
“by defining person as ‘the individual substance of a rational nature.”38 In this way the Latin
persona and the Greek hypostasis might no longer be a point of departure. The trouble is that
this implies three substances with the one substance of the divine essence.

According to Anderson, the three main influences on medieval philosophy were Aristotle, Augustine,
and Boethius. Starting with Boethius we see a shift from Platonism to Aristotelianism. For him,
philosophy and theology are harmonious with each other, but independent from each other.

Boethius’ definition of eternity is admirable. His use of it to allow for something like libertarian free will
is not. Whether we put God in a different time scheme, encompassing all moments, does not resolve the
matter of whether God’s decree (presumably informed by that same omniscience) is causal, or, in other
words, whether God’s knowledge as well still implies the fixity of the objects of that perfect knowledge.
Now on a compatibilist definition, this dilemma never arises. Every free choice is foreordained, so the
two go together.

2. Pseudo-Dionysius. There was a Syrian who was converted by Paul mentioned in Acts 17,
but scholars have universally reasoned that this is a later forgery: hence the name. Whoever
he was, he was Neo-Platonist. As Frame moves through the elements of this mysterious
work, it is made plain again that he sees any scale, or even analogy, of being to imply
pantheism.39 This recalls Van Til’s debate with Clark. On the surface, the disagreement is
epistemological. “What does God mean by A versus what man means?” But what is being in
itself — whether meant or otherwise? It would seem that when Frame reads a thinker to be
comparing an attribute of God to that same attribute in the creature, that he sees the
Creator-creation distinction being violated.

He attempted to synthesize the Neo-Platonist doctrine of emanation with the Christian doctrine
creation. How did he do that? Only by adding stricter gradations between each level. Goodness and
being are one in God, so naturally his view of evil was the same, roughly, as Augustine. God can be

36 Frame. 124
37 Frame. 124
38 Frame. 124
39 Frame. 126
 35

known in two ways: (1) ascribe to God all perfections; (2) deny to God any created categories. These two
ways have influence on Aquinas. But Pseudo-Dionysius is like many of the other early Christian
thinkers in this apophatic way, which Anderson said, tends toward agnosticism. He treated philosophy
and theology as complimentary, but it is an unequal partnership, because “Neo-Platonism is in the
driver’s seat and the Bible is in the passenger seat.” He was also very influential to the Eastern Orthodox
tradition.

3. John Scotus Eriugena. The latter name means “Ireland-born,” and often he is called
“John the Irishman.” It was he who took the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius to later western
Europe.

He was comissioned to refute Gottschalk on his Augustinian soteriology. There was a significant
movement that wanted to distance themselves from Augustinianism. Eriugena’s theology was clearly not
as orthodox as Gottschalk’s in several other areas, which should have prevented the majority party from
appealing to him. For example, he denies that there is any sharp distinction between Creator and
creation. He is really either a panentheist or pantheist. All of reality, he said, is divided into four
categories: (1) Nature that creates and is not created; (2) Nature that is created40 and creates — the divine
ideas; (3) The world of creatures — created and do not create; (4) That which is not created and does not
create — God as the goal of creation. Two questions situate these: Was it created or not? Does it itself
create or not? What implications of this metaphysic might there be on salvation? Universalism seems
inevitable. His view of the relationship between theology and philosophy is as monistic as the rest of his
view. They must be indistinguishible. The other problem that causes this, according to Anderson, is his
allegorical approach to interpretation.

4. Anselm of Canterbury. He embraces faith seeking understanding. So faith preceedes

reason, but reason can support and illuminate the faith we have.

Anselm’s theory is not strictly a penal theory — not about breaking a law which incurs a legal penality,
but rather is set in the terms of honor and dishonor, but at least with respect to an authority whose
worth is intrinsic and infinite. So it is a precursor to the Reformers. Anderson adds that the theory is
somewhat rationalistic. Anselm himself says in the introduction that he is replying, whether to infidels
or believers, to show by natural reason, even if Christ had never been heard.

In the Monologion he offers three arguments for God’s existence. They rely in part on Neo-Platonist
metaphysical assumptions. For example, on a chain of being there must be a highest. Being dissatisfied
with these, he offers a “simpler” argument in the Prosologion. It is entirely a priori. All we need to do is

40 Wouldthis second category not make the Word (if he incuded the Word in these Ideas) created and so it is
Arianism?
 36

to reflect on the definition of God to know that he exists. God is that being “than which none greater
can be conceived.” This is a stipulative definition. Some reject it on that ground: “Oh, yes, if you define
it that way.” But whether such an “it” is what you like to call “God” or not, is such an it? Anderson
interprets this the same way I do. Anselm is implying a contradiction: The “fool” is saying that he can
conceive of a being greater than the being than which none greater can be conceived. So God exists as a
logical necessity. He is really saying that God exists by definition. To repeat the above in different order:
“The GCB exists in the mind alone and not in the mind alone at the same time and in the same
relation.”

Gaunilo writing on behalf of the fool, lays down two criticisms: 1. the definition is beyond us; 2. a
perfect island may be necessarily proven on the same grounds. Anselm’s reply to Gaunilo is twofold: 1.
if you could not grasp the definition, you would not have understood the argument to begin with.
Besides we can extrapolate the perfect from gradations of the imperfect in this world; 2. (Anderson says
his response is obscure, but…) he seems to suggest that an island is a material thing, and therefore a
limited thing. The concept of God is unique in this respect. With an island there’s no “intrinsic
maximum” (e. g. one more dancing girl, one more pineapple, fifty feet more beach, etc.)

What is the ontological argument supposed to accomplish? It was never designed to persuade an atheist
anyway. Rather he formulated it within the context of the Christian faith: a philosophical meditation on
faith in God. It is natural theology for believers. It confirms and strengthens faith. Anderson says, “At its
best it doesn’t prove God from neutral premises, but what it does show is that the God who exists must
exist necessarily. A contingent God is inconsistent.” But if there are no actual atheists anyway … ?
Anselm’s Big Idea: Philosophy can help Christians understand their faith better.

5. Peter Abelard. He was a French philosopher-theologian.

Skipping over his personal issues, he is useful for logic and universals. At this time, there was Realism,
Nominalism, and now Conceptualism. Realism held that universals were real essences that existed
independent of the particulars which participated in them. William of Champeaux followed Plato in this
respect. We can know the universals, but they exist independent of our minds as well. Nominalism held
that universals were nothing more than names that we apply to things. The word “dog” applied to two
particular dogs do not refer to a common, transcendent thing. This was championed by Ruscellinas.
Abelard sought a middle way that became Conceptualism — namely that universals really exist, but arose
in the mind. So the meaning is supposed to have objective status.

This debate has theological significance. First with respect to the doctrine of the Trinity, we have three
distinct persons. Now what unifies the three persons that they share something? Ruscellinas thought
that realism would lead to Modalism. So if you say that the thing shared is a real thing, then that thing
 37

(that fourth thing) is the real God. The unity would be more fundamental than the persons. On the
other hand, he was accused of being a Tritheist because he was forced to imply that there was nothing
shared by the three persons.

How satisfying is Abelard’s proposal going to be? The divinity of God is then made to depend on us. For
example, if there are no human minds and universals arise from human minds, then God’s attributes
(and the three persons’ divine essence) depends upon the mental activity of human minds. But beyond
that, it is just a momentary cultural agreement to pretend we are not nominalists! The moment anyone
comes along to challenge that particular linguistic arrangement, on what ground beyond the
arrangement can we argued that the words correspond to things? So it is a failure both theologically
and philosophically.

With Abelard, we see a movement toward theological rationalism. He himself is not a full-blown
theological rationalist, but we see him reversing Anselm’s approach. We shouldn’t accept an article of
faith unless it satsfies the human intellect. His most enduring work was Sic et Non, in which he applies
logic to a number of theological disputes. The title suggests that he doesn’t come down either way. It
could be argued either way, but the upshot is that reason is the way to settle it. The method counts more
than the content. In this sense he was prototypical of the modern or liberal theologian.

B) Non-Christian Medieval Philosophers

Other influence for late Scholasticism comes from Jewish and Muslim philosophers. The shift from
Plato to Aristotle was still under way, and the Muslims were viewed as the translators of Aristotle.

1. Avicenna. He was an influential synthesizer of Aristotle and Neo-Platonism in support

of Islam.

He argued that the creation was eternal and necessary. Everything that exists that isn’t necessary needs
a cause, and it must terminate in the necessary being. This is a version of the Cosmological Argument,
but uses the language that would become Thomas’ third way. He also spoke of the difference between
the existence of something (what-ness) and the essence of something (that-ness). A Pegasus has the latter
without the former; none can have the former without the latter. God must have both. Avicenna has a
unique way to show the law of non-contradiction: “Anyone who denies the law should be beaten and
burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as to not to be beaten, and to be burned is not
the same as not to be burned.”

2. Averroes. He too was a synthesizer, eventually known as The Commentator by

Thomas, just as he referred to Aristotle as The Philosopher.
 38

He saw theology and philosophy as two different roads to the truth. He distinguishes three groups of
people: 1. the common masses who do not live by reason at all; 2. the theologians who use reason to
support their religious beliefs; 3. the philosophers who really on reason alone. There is a not-so-subtle
implication? Philosophers are the best of the bunch. Ultimately there are two ways to truth: revelation
(theology) or reason (philosophy). He believes the latter is superior, though theology is not a bad thing.
It makes truths understandable to non-philosophers, through metaphorical or pictoral forms. But
supposing the two come into conflict? Now there can be no real conflict, only paradoxes. He argues that
any apparent conflicts between the two can be resolved by interpreting the Koran allegorically. We saw
this with Origen and others. This notion of Two Ways of Truth was further developed by his followers as
the “Theory of Double Truth,” holding to two distinct realms of truth that do not intersect. Here
something different is being said: They do not really conflict because they aren’t talking about the same
things anyway.

The Latin Averroists were Western Christians who were influenced by Averroes’ approach and had
adopted it as their own in the Christian universities. This created much controversy.

3. Moses Maimonides. His goal was to reconcile the philosophers, particularly Aristotle, to
the Hebrew Scriptures.

He served as a model to Aquinas, who nicknamed him as well: “Rabbi Moses.” He saw philosophy and
theology as two harmonious spheres of knowledge. There will be no final conflict between them. One
does not need to prove a doctrine, philosophically, in order for the doctrine to be held in accord with
reason. Natural theology is knowledge of God based on natural reason or a reflection on natural
revelation alone. Maimonides developed several arguments for God’s existence. Three of Thomas’ ways
can be traced back to these. He also held to a negative theology: knowledge of God by what he is not.
We can say that God is but not what he is.

C) Thomas Aquinas

1. Thomas background. He became a Dominican, studied at Naples, then at Paris inder Albert the Great,
then he teaches there. His two most important works were the Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa
Theologica. Aquinas is not merely Aristotilean, but has some influence from the Platonic strand. The
analogy of being is one example of the hybrid. His general method: to appropriate Aristotle in the
service of Christ.

To Anderson, philosophy and theology relate, in Aquinas, in terms of the nature - grace scheme. This is
a distinction between two realms of knowledge and two senses of ability. In the realm of nature, there
 39

are certain things man can accomplish apart from God’s grace. Above the realm of nature is the realm of
grace. here represents things that can only be accomplished by God’s grace. Natural reason can give you
philosophy, while special revelation is needed for theology. This is sometimes called the nature-
supernature scheme, and it was not unique to Aquinas. What lies behind Thomas’ appropriation of this
scheme? He has to answer the question how the Christian can use unregenerate Aristotle in this service.
Theology and philosophy are harmonious. So there is no need for the Averroists’ theory of double
truth. Natural reason can discover many significant truths about God and the world. There are some
doctrines that can be known by both. But then there are others than can only be known by “revelation.”
In this category we can know about the Trinity and creation ex nihilo.

In order to prove that something exists, don’t you have to know something of what it is? This may play
into the presuppositionalists’ antipathy to the five ways. They see his arguments concluding in a mere
“that.” This is further made complex by Thomas’ doctrine of simplicity because that and what are always
together. But Anderson recognizes Thomas saying that if there is a conflict, theology trumps philosophy,
or special revelation trumps our view toward general revelation.

2. Scholastic Method. The goal is to attain the clearest understanding of — not to come up with — the
doctrines of the faith. It is a systematic application of reason to the doctrines of the faith. They were
arranged by disputed questions.

3. Thomas’ Theology and Metaphysics. Thomism is Christian theism cast within the framework of
Aristotelian metaphysics. His natural theology is answering the question: What can we know from
“natural reason” alone? He rejects a priori argument, so that rules out Anselm. First observations need
to be made from the creation, so there must be an empirical component. His five ways — especially the
first three — are very similar. First, there is the argument from motion (or change). Nothing moves
unless moved by another. Change is a reduction from potency to act. And there cannot be an infinite
regress in movers. There must be a Prime Mover, and this we call God. Second, from efficient causes,
that every effect requires a cause. Third, there is an argument from contingency. There is in the world
things possible to be and not to be, but every contingent being depends on another. If at any time it was
possible for things not to be, nothing would now be. Now of beings necessary, their necessity is either in
themselves or in another. This too cannot go on forever. Fourth, we see things better and worse,
gradation in things, which implies a perfect. Fifth, in nature things are arranged in a certain way,
tending toward a specific end. Anderson thinks this would better be called an argument “from
direction” rather than “from design.” And I think some Thomists would agree with this, especially Feser,
who seems to take issue with Intelligent Design advocates, going back even to Paley. What these all have
in common is that it is unreasonable to posit an infinite regress in explanations. He is not saying that an
infinite regress is inconceivable. Rather an infinite regress does not actually explain anything. It only
defers the explanation.
 40

Anderson speaks of how Thomas’ Five Ways are considered the “gold standard” for natural theology.
Even Dawkins has to deal with them. What kind of a God do these ways lead us to? This God must be
perfect, simple, pure actuality, immutable, eternal, impassibile, and the source of all being. Creatures
have being but God is being itself. We merely participate in being. This doctrine of participation show
some Platonism. The effect of anything must participates in its cause.

Analogy of Being. God’s being and ours are in some way alike. Aquinas isn’t adopting the Neo-Platonic
idea of emanation, but our being is derivative of (not identical to) God’s being. So neither is our being
completely different than God’s being. How could they be and the statements still make sense. This is
not merely a linguistic analogy, but a metaphysical analogy.

God is a simple and necessary being. God is not composed of parts, and cannot be divided. In God,
existence is identical to essence. All that is in God is God. For creatures, it is not part of our essence to
exist; but with God alone essence and existence cannot be separated. Indeed they cannot be
distinguished (metaphysically) except in our understanding (ad extra). If he had a definition like
Anslem’s it would be: “God is that being in whom essence is to exist.” This is a central component of
Aquinas’ philosophy. and theology. He relies on Exodus 3:14 — “I AM who I AM.”

We cannot even say that “God is one of a kind,” since there is no potential for other members of his class.
Omnipotence means that God can do anything that is logically possible. We see this show up again in
Lewis’ The Problem of Pain. Omniscience includes all things, possible and actual, and is not merely
aware of the future, but is also causal; so he takes an Augustinian line on foreknowledge, etc. Why must
this be so? It is because God is pure actuality. He cannot be acted upon by future events. For God,
everything is action and never reaction.

God is the primary cause of all things without violating or rendering insignificant secondary causes.
How does he reconcile human freedom. A human act is free if it is not coerced by anything else in the
world, but even one’s own finite will is a proximate (secondary) cause. But many debate whether or not
he was a compatibilist in the same way as Augustine or Edwards.

He follows orthodox Trinitarianism, but makes the point to say that this is a truth of faith, not one that
can be proven by reason. The three persons are constituted by relations within the essence of God. If
God cannot be divided into parts, how can we speak of three distinction persons? Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit relate to the divine essence — not merely distinguished by the relations: the persons are the
relations. Not just relations between the persons, but the relations are the persons. This is an attempt to
reconcile orthodox Trinitarianism to the doctrine of simplicity.
 41

His anthropology is a modified Aristotelianism. Everything is a form-matter composite: hylomorphic

dualism. This means that human beings are essentially corporeal. Contrast this with Augustine, who
would say that the soul could exist without the body. The rational soul is the essential form. For him that
was the only soul (for some Greeks there were three). The soul and body are reunited at the
resurrection, so the soul does continue after physical death. So how does Aquinas reconcile the
Scriptural view, which he wants to retain, with this idea? He says the human substance ceases to exist at
physical death; nevertheless the human continues as a subsistent form — not a “substance,” not a full
human being, but can subsist. How does this square with the biblical teaching?

Transubstantiation. Naturally he will utilize Aristotle to defend this. The substance changes because the
form is changed, but the matter remains the same. Why then does it look the same. The accidens have
not changed though the substance does. So the properties that are accidental, like look and taste and
scent and feel, can remain the same. Different substances can have the same accidens. Redness is in a
rose and a kick ball. “Very unbiblical, but very clever,” Anderson says.

Thomas’ Epistemology. Anderson agrees with Clark: He is basically an empiricist … “not the crude sort”
as we see today. We have an active intellect, abstracting the form from the material particulars. He says
that we do not have a priori knowledge of God. This is one reason that he rejected Anselm’s ontological
argument. In order to know God, we must know him through the senses, through knowledge in the
world. But there is a basic problem: If one is an empiricist, then knowledge comes via the senses. But
God is not a sensory object. But this is not a problem for Aquinas because we cannot know God’s
essence in itself. Remember that God is not a being, but is being as such. Yet there are two ways we can
know God: (1) the way of negation — known by means of what he is not; (2) the way of analogy —
known by way of inference from his effects. Standing behind this is that doctrine of participation. There
is an imprint of the cause on the effect, so that one can reason from an effect to its cause. That which
participates in of the same nature as the cause in some way.

All of this rests on Thomas’ theory of language. How can terms be used of both God and creatures?
When we say that “God is wise” and “Solomon is wise,” how can those two predicates mean the same
thing, when God is infinitely wise and Solomon is not? These terms can be used univocally, equivocally,
and analogically. By now it should be clear that Thomas opts for the third. To mean the terms univocally
would make God and the creature identical; if they were equivocal then there would be no common
meaning between the two senses. With analogy there is a partial similarity of meaning. The terms apply
perfectly to God but only imperfectly to the creature. God is ontologically prior to his creation, but he is
epistemologically posterior to the creation (first knowing our or the world’s attributes).

The way that we know God is determined by the way that we relate to God. So the analogy of being is
foundational to the way of knowing.
 42

Thomas’ Ethics. This is basically a form of virtue ethics. So once again we have a modified
Aristotelianism. Human life has a goal. It is happiness. But Aquinas goes further and says that this
happiness can only be found in God. Morality and ethics, then, is a matter of cutivating virtures by
acting (habituating) in according with them. He distinguishes between cardinal virtues (natural) and
theological virtues (supernatural) — the natural being prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude, and
the supernatural being faith, hope, and love. But we have a mixture of Scripture and nature here.
Aquinas has a particular understanding of the conscience, with two levels: one that grasps general
principles of morality: you shall not murder, etc., but then a second level that infers concrete
applications from the general principles: therefore abortion is also evil.

This also explains why there is so much disagreement on moral issues: that second level. How does this
comport with his “empiricist epistemology.” This seems to imply a priori moral knowledge. He made
distinctions in law: eternal, natural, human, and divine. 1. Eternal represents the decrees of God that
govern all of creation - ultimately archetypes in the mind of God; 2. Natural represents laws for humans
that are derived from human nature and written on the heart (cf. Rom. 2:14-15), concerned with man’s
natural ends; 3. Human (or Positive) represents the civil law that human governments make; 4. Divine
represents the law as it is in Scripture; it concerns supernatural ends. Thomas includes that one ought
to receive the sacraments in this fourth category. Anderson seems to say that arbitrary and unjust law
results from abandoning natural law and leaving us only with positive law. Incredible for someone in
the Van Tillian strand! How does he reconcile original sin with that second level of conscience? The
answer seems to be that he allows that the reasoning goes wrong, and yet Anderson says he probably
has an optimistic view about the unregenerate to know and understand that natural law than, say, the
Reformers would.

Assessment. Of the nature of God, we can agree about God’s sovereignty, providence, immutability,
omnipotence, etc. He has a very strong doctrine of natural revelation which we might mostly agree with.
His theory of analogical language is “along the right lines when you think of the alternatives.” He
distinguishes without divorcing between faith and reason. His defense of orthodox Trinitarianism is
commendable at least in that he was trying to eliminate all of the known errors. On the negative side, he
seems to minimize sin toward the same direction that the Greeks did. Anderson would say, “It really
goes back to this nature-grace scheme, which seems to deny the doctrine of total depravity.”
Presuppositionalists read Aquinas as denying the fall of the intellect while confessing it of the will.
There is an assumption that the knower can be neutral to the thing known. So he is not doing justice to
the antithesis betwee unbeliever and God’s truth. Methodologically, although Thomas does occasionally
disagree with Aristotle, nevertheless it is as if Aristotle and the Bible are treated as equal authorities —
one in philosophy and one in theology. Big Idea: Aristotelian philosophy shows that Christian theology is
reasonable and may be defended on that basis.
 43

D) John Duns Scotus

The Subtle Doctor. He champions voluntarism. This is any position that gives precedence to the will over
the intellect. Scotus applied this particularly to God. God’s commands are good merely because he wills
them. This differs from Aquinas, who held to the primacy of the intellect. For Thomas God’s will is
subordinate to his intellect: his commands grounded in his good reason. Taking the voluntarist position
privileges special revelation and faith over natural revelation and reason. If God does not reason what
he commands, much less can we. He also championed man’s strong freedom following from God’s
freedom.

He takes issue with Aquinas over analogical language. Scotus championed univocal meaning. God and
creatures exist in precisely the same sense. Accordingly he also rejects the existence-essence equation in
God. He said that isn’t coherent, as we cannot conceive of something without conceiving of it existing.
So Thomas’ analogical ontology was being displaced with Scotus Duns’ univocal ontology. But the latter
seems to imply Pantheism. Being and being on par in this view. Analogical meaning presupposes
univocal meaning. At some point Thomas has to explain the analogy — A is like B — then you must be
able to specify in what respects. You cannot simply have an infinite regress of “likes.” This is a clever
attempt to refute analogy.

Scotus tends to see philosophy and theology as separate spheres, and he has “less enthusiasm” for
natural theology than Aquinas. He does offer a few natural theology arguments, but he doesn’t put as
much weight upon them.

E) William Occam

Or William of Ockham. Anderson thinks he gives us something more like conceptualism than the
nominalism that is often attributed to him. But he says Only particulars exist. Now when we use terms
like beauty, justice, goodness, redness, oneness — these do not refer to any individual existents beyond our
minds. They refer only to abstractions which are concepts in human minds. There are two motivations
for this: (1) Voluntarism — that God’s will, not intellect, is supreme, and we are what we are because of
God’s will and not because of God’s ideas: some archetype. That means that our human nature must
originate in God’s will and not his intellect. Anderson asks, “Why must we choose between them?” As if
God does not prefer what he thinks! (2) Occam’s Razor — Do not multiply entities beyond necessity. This
is also called the principle of parsimony. Simply saying, “Always choose the simplest explanation for
anything” is not most helpful, but rather Always choose the simplest sufficient explanation. He thought
that the realist idea of universals was “extravagant” and “non-economical.”
 44

He really saw philosophy and theology as separate spheres. This is a trend that continues. I would say,
with the decline of realism comes the increasing divorce between nature and grace, reason and faith,
philosophy and theology. William agreed with Thomas on one thing: the doctrines of the faith really are
matters of faith. But he roots that in his voluntarism. But he sets the stage for modernism because one of
the cardinal characteristics of modernism is that philosophy and science are autonomous in their
relationship to matters of religion. So how do we reconcile the claims of philosophy and theology?
William of Occam would say, “We don’t. We keep them separate where they really are.”

It is not quite true that Scotus and Occam “ruined everything,” but they certainly didn’t help. When
some of the Reformers learned realism, they learned it from Scotus defending it by univocity and
William attacking it as if he were attacking the universal of Romanism. Protestant Scholasticism in
many ways salvaged enough of realism to keep Reformed orthodoxy in some state of repair for a few
centuries, but alas, in the twentieth century, even the revival in Calvinism called “New Calvinism” is
essentially nominalist and therefore committed to irrationalism in its philosophy. Blessedly there are
sparks of recovery even from out of the wasteland.

VII. Renaissance and Reformation

Anderson’s Questions for Lesson 7
1 How did various developments within the Renaissance influence the Reformation?
2 How does Luther view the relationship between theology and philosophy as compared with
early apologists and medieval theologians? Do you think this is a balanced corrective? Why or
why not?
3 How might having a full understanding of Calvin's epistemology aid one in defending the faith
without any formal training in Christian apologetics?

A) Renaissance
Frame describes it as “not … a time of notable achievement in philosophy.”41 Platonism was
back on the rise, though skepticism (via Montaigne) would be the end result. That and a
growing rejection of the Scholastic Method for a modern modern “stream of consciousness”
philosophizing. Machiavelli would deny absolute morality as the foundation for politics in
his Prince. There was one development that would contribute to the Reformation. The cry
ad fontes, which Frame places under the class of Antiquarianism rather than a more generic
humanism, included the original meaning of the biblical text in its quest for the sources of
all literary traditions.

Frame is in agreement with Schaeffer about another element of the story. Humanism per se
does not necessarily imply the secular humanism of the modern era. Rather there is a

41 Frame. 165
 45

“serious Christian preoccupation with man as God’s image.”42 On the other hand Schaeffer
gets his reader to look at the theology “up north” versus “down south” among the Italians
and one will see the contrast between God being at the center versus man being at the
center. At any rate, the Renaissance brought man back to earth. This was reflected in the art
that was no longer a mere escape from the prison of matter. Frame’s analysis of the two
different directions that antiquarianism and humanism push is worth consideration:
“antiquarianism toward the past, and humanism toward the present and future.”43

Anderson defines the Renaissance as “a cultural movement characterized by a return to classical texts
and classical ideas.” Arguably this begins in the fourteenth century just as Scholasticism was beginning
to decline. So there were already internal criticisms. But the cry “ad fontes” was a return to the Greeks
and Romans more than any particular metaphysical construct appropriated by Augustine or Aquinas.
There was a focus on the liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, poetry, and other arts. So this humanism was all
about the humanities. But there were also developments in science. With this comes a gradual shift
from telelogical organism to a naturalistic mechanism. What may be described was also seen to be
increasingly impersonal. The end cause was being “demystified” in the minds of many. There is also a
shift from reliance on divine revelation and divine grace, in favor of what the powers of man’s intellect
and will could accomplish. With this came a questioning of authority and traditions.

Erasmus. He was Dutch humanist and scholar. He produced his critical edition of the Greek New
Testament in 1516 in order to reconstruct, as best he could, the original text. Many subsequent
translations are indebted to this. He also produced a “cleaned up” version of the Vulgate to get his own
Latin translation. In so doing he lent much credibility to the increase in Hebrew and Greek studies. He
was very critical of the Church in his satire, In Praise of Folly (1509). He saw himself as an independent
scholar and yet internal reformer of the Church. At first he was approving of the Protestant movement,
but because of his inflated sense of practicality his ecumenicalism would not allow him to consider
whether or not the gospel was at stake. He entered a debate with Luther in his own work On Free Will,
to which Luther responded with The Bondage of the Will.

Copernicus. He published On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres (1543) in which he argued that the
earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around. His method was now inductive: observing the
motion of the celestial bodies: sun, moon, stars. His theory was futher developed by Tycho Brahe and
Johannes Kepler. He was also famously defended by Galileo in his trial with the Church. But as Frame
points out, this was less a battle between the Bible and science, so much as between Aristotelian
scholars and Galileo. What followed in the popular mindset was that human beings were not “at the

42 Frame. 167
43 Frame. 167
 46

center” after all. Two skeptical alternatives existed, philosophically: either man is insignificant or else
man is significant for some other reason than religion had held forth.

Francis Bacon. He was an English philosopher and scientist. Sometimes he is called the “father of
modern science” due to his replacing Aristotle’s method with inductivism. Learning had become
stagnant, in his mind, because of our static commitment to Plato and Aristotle. Knowledge should be
based on empirical observation rather than on metaphysical speculation. He came up with four of what
he called “Idols of the Mind” that were dead ends. All in all, he is seen as the inventor of the scientific
method, at least as we know it today. Once repeated tests yield laws, those laws give us a basis for
orderly predictions, etc. From this a crude empiricism and naive inductivism was passed on. But as
Anderson points out, Bacon was assuming all sorts of truths that were foundational for inductive
reasoning, but which themselves could not be observed as empirical data.

Summary of the Renaissance. The amount and depth of scholarship, and the birth of textual criticism, are
all significant. And while empiricism goes too far, the ascendence of empirical data is a good thing. With
humanism, though, came a downplaying of the doctrines of original sin and total depravity. There is a
continued march of intellectual autonomy: a detaching of areas of thought from theology. This
particular definition of autonomy in thinking could find an endorsement from classicalists. But it is not
usually put in this way.

B) Reformation
Frame envisions the philosophical significance of the Reformation as moving “in a radically
different direction from the Renaissance … and from medieval philosophy as well.” And the
Reformers “presented alternatives in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics that had not
been seriously considered by the previous philosophical communities.”44

Ad Fontes. For the Reformers this slogan meant the Scriptures, and yet it also represented a resourcing
of the early church fathers. Augustine was privileged above the rest. So Anderson calls this “the
recovery and flowering of the Augustinian worldview.” Warfield looked at it more particularly: that the
Reformation marked “the triumph of Augustinian soteriology over Augustinian ecclesiology.” But how
were philosophical ideas touched upon during this era?

1. Luther. In metaphysics, “we see Luther here turning away from the nameless One of
Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, which had so captivated most of medieval philosophy.”45
Frame also makes it clear that classical theology is an impersonal theology, which naturally

44 Frame. 168
45 Frame. 169
 47

leads to a view of grace as an impersonal force, or substance, trickling down to the

sacraments. The soteriological systems of works necessarily follow, for Frame, a view of God
that removes his from personal relationship. In epistemology, Luther asserts sola Scriptura,
which Frame sees as at least partly influenced by Occam’s nominialism. His ethics follows
his epistemology. What God has commanded always judges what man says.

Luther. Being an Augustinian monk it is no wonder that Augustine was an influence. More obscurely,
William of Occam is often said to be an influence on Luther in particular with respect to nominalism.
His influence is said by others to come through Nicholas of Cusa. Certainly Luther was harsh against
Aristotle and at times the Scholastic Method. How would we describe his epistemology? Sola Scriptura.
At least this is true about knowing God and the way of salvation. So doctrine must be grounded in
Scripture and not rooted in the dictates of reason or church tradition. There is radical rejection of
philosophy — Anderson says this rejection is specifically of natural theology and natural law. After
handling these in a more balanced way early, at this point Anderson seems to be giving a definition to
these: natural theology as “discovering or proving truths about God on the basis of nature alone” and
natural law as “using natural reason and self-evident moral principles to figure out what the moral law is
that applies to all men.” Luther did say that “Reason is the devil’s harlot” and “Compared to theology
the study of Aristotle is as darkness is to light.” And yet at the Diet of Worms he says “Unless I am
persuaded by the testimony of Scripture or by plain reason…” Luther’s Big Idea: “Scripture alone is the
Word of God, so we can do just fine without Aristotle.”

2. Calvin. Frame sees an even more radical departure here. There is the same view of
God and grace. However the opening to the Institutes signals the departure. Frame is not
unique in this. Oliphint views it the same way in his chapter of A Theological Guide to Calvin’s
Institutes. For him the doctrine of primal knowledge directly opposes itself to “neutral
nature” and “autonomous reasoning.” So it is here, as Frame says: “he begins the Institutes
with a description of the knowledge of God: an epistemological and personal, rather than a
metaphysical, focus … Calvin does not define the knowledge of God as intellectual assent to
the proposition that God exists.”46 This seems to give us two strawmen holding hands. It
may be that Calvin’s choice to focus on two attributes alone in his theology proper —
namely, infinity and spirituality — had a polemical purpose against Roman idolatry. It does
not occur to Frame (or Oliphint) that Calvin did not write what older dogmatic texts did
because he essentially accepted their theses and had nothing to add in those places.
Different emphasis does not necessarily demand disagreement. And as to that second
statement: “intellectual assent to the propositions” was the Schoolmen’s definition of the
knowledge of God? That is a broad brush at best.

46 Frame. 172
 48

Calvin. His epistemology maintains that all knowledge comes via divine revelation. He draws the
traditional line between general and special revelation. Knowledge of God and knowledge of the self are
inseparable. The knowledge of God is naturally implanted (sensus divinitatis) in all; and there is a “seed of
religion” in all men. This may grow in good ways or bad ways. Calvin’s idea has been rigorously
defended in more recent philosophy. The existence of God is clearly and objectively manifested in the
creation itself. But Anderson quickly adds, “But the idea is not that you can just observe things in nature
and then by some philosophical proof you can deduce the existence of God, rather when you look at x,
y, and z … it should be obvious to you that God exists.” Creation just “strikes us” as God’s creation. But
this is nothing other than such a natural theological argument!

Two things are necessary for a true knowledge of God: supernatural regeneration and special revelation.
We need Scripture to correct our distortions of natural revelation. The Word and the Spirit have to
work together: so the objective signs and the subjective testimony. Does Calvin endorse any kind of
natural theology? Anderson allows that the reason this is so debated is that people have different
definitions of natural theology. That is positive. If you mean proofs based on autonomous reasoning
then No. (But why not define “autonomous reasoning” as well?). But if you mean “extra-biblical
knowledge of God that can be developed based on some reasoning, then yes, Calvin would endorse
that.” But without a definition of “autonomous reasoning,” it is not clear what difference there is
between those two propositions. What is the basis and context of natural theology? Is it natural reason
alone, or is it based on natural revelation? But if regenerate believers can do this, then what is the real
problem with theistic proofs if Christians are the ones doing it?

Calvin’s Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Ethics. The sovereignty of God is his main emphasis. He is
essentially an Augustinian here with respect to predestination and providence, foreknowledge and
freedom. Like Luther, Calvin rejects the “nature=grace” scheme of Aquinas because it is seen to conflict
with the doctrines of original sin and total depravity. At this point Anderson somewhat questions,
almost parenthetically, the idea that Thomas taught that that will was fallen but not the mind. His
section on the Ten Commandments develops his ethics. Would he have endorsed natural law? Again, it
depends on what sense it is used. Calvin is not explicit. He acknowledges what Paul says in Romans
2:14-15. But he is not going to have the optimistic view that Thomas has of it. There are interesting
thing says about civil government. The church and state are distinguished but not divorced. They work
in conjunction under the rule of God. He went as far to say that the state has enforcement
responsibilities with respect to both tables of the law. Calvin’s Big Idea: God’s nature is evident in
creation, but because of our sin, there is suppression of that knowledge. There needs to be special
revelation and spiritual regeneration.

In Summary. The Reformation contributed to philosophy a restoration of God’s word as the final
authority to human thought. Did the Reformers strike the right balance between faith and reason?
 49

Calvin finds a better balance than Luther. Calvin’s robust doctrine of common grace meant that he
could make discriminating use of non-Christian thinkers. This is the ministerial use of reason rather
than the magisterial use of reason.
VIII. Enlightenment I: Rationalism
Anderson’s Questions for Lesson 8
1 What epistemological problem are the early modern philosophers trying to solve? How would
you explain this to an average layman who has no background in philosophy? How does the Christian
solve this issue?
2 What is meant by classical foundationalism?
3 How does Descartes' epistemology affect his metaphysics and his theology? Exactly how and
why does he reason this way?
4 How do Spinoza and Leibniz differ in their metaphysics? What lesson can we learn from their
diversity concerning a rationalist epistemology?

Introducing the Enlightenment. The word “modern” is going to mean the centuries following the medieval
period. The Renaissance and Reformation serve as transitional periods. So roughly from the start of the
seventeenth century to the early twentieth century. This is commonly divided into Early Modern and
Late Modern, separated by the philosophy of Kant. The Early Modern philosophy can be characterized
by two turns: (1) the subjective turn and (2) the autonomous turn. The former represents an increased
interest in the ego as the foundation of knowledge. The “I think” became foundational. In the medieval
period the foundation for knowledge was found “out there” in God, ultimately, and then, proximately, in
the world. That changes with rationalism. Innate human reason or immediate human experience
became the two focal points. By the latter turn, Anderson means taking human reason as the ultimate
standard: self as the law. It is difficult to separate these as two different things. It may be that the notice
of the second as a distinct turn is the presuppositionalist’s attempt to understand “reason” in the
rationalist sense as something other than that subjective turn. The classical Christian would have just
called these “two mistakes” the same thing: namely, subjectivism.

But in the early centuries, reason was validated by revelation, and now, to the extent revelation is
allowed at all, revelation is now answering to reason. Faith seeking understanding is now translated to
faith seeking validation. There is also the corresponding and increasing separation between theology
and philosophy into two independent spheres. This is also true of the increasingly empirical science. It
is treated as autonomous from theology. Philosophy in turn begins to be modeled on the new
conception of the scientific method.

One product is classic foundationalism. Classical foundationalism is the view that all rational beliefs need
to have a foundation: they need to be grounded in basic beliefs with certain indubitable or incorrigible or self-
evident features. Basic beliefs cannot be based upon any other beliefs. Notice the subjective emphasis in
 50

this definition: these “self-evident” features are so because everybody assents to them, or that they are
evident to the senses. A non-basic belief is one based on another: ultimately upon those basic beliefs.
Now if the non-basic beliefs cannot be traced back to the basic beliefs, then they are not rational things
to believe. Now where will religious beliefs be found in such a structure? Supernatural things will, at
best, be found on the level on basic beliefs. They are not found either in a consensus of self-evident
axioms or as presented to the senses.

One more transition. Medieval thinkers typically moved from metaphysics to epistemology; whereas
modern thinkers tend to move from epistemology to metaphysics — until Kant where the epistemology
barred access to metaphysics altogether. Naturally in all of these first shifts, there is a move away from
theism toward deism. Anderson divides this era between 1. rationalists, 2. empiricists, and 3. apologists.
The big rationalists were Continental and they were operating very much in the spirit of Parmenides
and Plato, as they were highly suspicious of sense experience. The basis of knowledge must be a priori.
They would emphasize general laws over particular facts. Their overall model is rooted in the
mathematical sciences.

A) Rene Descartes
Descartes’ Epistemology. It begins with a problem: the need for us to obtain intellectual certainty. He
reflected on his beliefs and understood them to be fallible. He speaks of regular books and the “book of
the world.” He tries to doubt everything, even mathematics. He imagines himself asleep and dreaming,
or being deceived, even by an “evil genius.” But there he was thinking, he recounts, and infers that in
the very act of thinking there was one thing he could not doubt: namely that he was thinking. This idea
is “clear and distinct” to the mind. Someone once tried to play the fool to Descartes as well by saying
Why not “I stink therefore I am”? But this would not work because it relies on sense experience (smell)
which he had given us reason to doubt.

1. Cogito ergo sum. Frame juxtaposes arguments that “refute skepticism” and “ultimate
ground for believing,” as he contrasted Augustine and Descartes. Both used a form of the
same proof.47

Descartes is not abandoning all of his beliefs, but rather setting them aside during the process of his
method of doubt. He even speaks about a “provisional morality” while this journey is going on. At any
rate, certain knowledge must be based upon only two things: intuition and deduction. The first level is
that basic belief that forms classic foundtionalism; the latter bring you to the various levels of non-basic
beliefs. Descartes is often interpreted as saying that one only knows something if it is known with
certainty. If this were the case, it is not only the foundational truth which must be established as certain,
but the subsequent steps as well. Even on his system, it is unclear that this is a necessary consequence.

47 Frame. 179
 51

2. Autonomous reason reborn. Frame compares the Cartesian attempt to restructure

philosophy on a new foundation to the time of the Presocratics, except that now it was
thought that was at least rooted in revelation being swept aside. On this point I think we
can find a general agreement with Frame’s assessment. He also fairly treats Descartes own
view that he was a good Catholic and his hopes that the Church would award his system the
same status that was achieved by Thomas’ synthesis.48
3. Reason now defined as subjective. On this insight we can also agree with Frame, though
we do not think he maintains this insight in other areas of philosophical assessment —
starting with the allowance that there is an objective Reason.

On the basis of his certain self-knowledge — the knowledge of his own existence — he can go on to
deduce many other things with equal certainty.

4. Descartes’ metaphysics. There are two kinds of substances: infinite (God alone) and finite
(everything else — including mind and bodies). Minds and bodies he calls “thinking things”
and “extended things,” and the order matters.

His metaphysic immediately implies an anthropology. The human being is a mind-body dualism. Since
one needs a mind in order to doubt, though not a body, we must be essentially minds. The mind is
indispensible in a way that the body is not, and the very act of doubting it shows it. Mind in itself does
not have material substance or take up space, so this is a clear rejection of Aristotle’s form-matter
composite. Matter is extended in space.

Reason is superior metaphysically as well as epistemologically. He uses the melting wax to

show that an object is fundamentally a mental object and that the physical properties are
always changing. If each of these points of space-time were “the object,” then there would
be no object in fact. How then does reason extend out and animate the world of bodies? We
are minds that have bodies. Ryle called this concept of mind “the ghost in the machine.” But
none of this is an explanation. The two “realms” connect in that “Mental substances are free
in a libertarian sense, material substances determined by a mechanistic causality.”49 So mind
is always above matter, but he thinks in a way that anticipates Newton. Of course his actual
explanation for the “point of contact” in the pineal gland was dismissed in time. This gland
is material, so its most fundamental problem is that it is a non-answer. With this failure to

48 Frame. 180
49 Frame. 181
 52

explain came a void in philosophy called the “Mind-Body Problem” or “The Interactionist
Problem.”

How does the Bible talk about this? It is not a Cartesian dualism. It is a very different, more holistic,
dualism. There is a proper distinction between mind and body, and there is a kind of supremacy to the
soul. But the soul and body are meant to go together.

Where does God fit in? God is conceived as self-existent Mind. He serves as a First Cause still. How
does he arrive there? For one thing, taking his starting point in reason, one can eventually trust their
sense experience. In fact, the world is really the communication of God and since God cannot lie, we
can have a basic reliability of sense experience. But for another, he does have his own arguments for
God’s existence, most notably his own ontological argument. (1) “God is a perfect being” (a clear and
distinct idea) and (2) “existence is a perfection.” Therefore, existence belongs to God — or, God
necessarily exists. There is another version of the argument, more clearly from the idea of perfection:
this idea either has a cause or else not. If our own idea has no cause, yet we do, then the idea is not
perfect but is defective. Thus the idea of perfection must have a cause ultimately grounded in a Mind
that has perfect uncaused existence. This is a kind of cosmological argument borrowing from the
impossibility of infinite regress.

Ultimately Descartes reasons in a circle. If he arrives at reliable sense experience because God exists
and is truthful, then why are those senses not reliable to begin with during his process of doubt? One
thing Descartes accomplishes is to disallow universal skepticism. But does he therefore provide a
necessary foundation in knowledge? Anderson sees the circularity in grounding his reasoning is his
reasoning. At best the skeptic can disallow Descartes from proving this to another mind. That is
legitimate, but this is not technically a circularity problem.

B) Baruch Spinoza
He supported his independent philosophical life by grinding lenses for glasses, telescopes, etc., sort of a
secular tent maker. He was an early defender of a more secular government. Though his Ethics was
much more about metaphysics. He proposes a geometric approach because he wants that same certainty
that Descartes did, and in fact he defended the French rationalist in another book. “Every clear and
distinct idea is a true idea.” That is his first principle.

1. To be and to be thought are equal. Spinoza deduced from rationalistic beginnings that all
of reality may be infered from an axiom. So the system is not faithful if there is not total
identity between thought and thing.
 53

2. Difference in method / order. Interestingly, while Descartes concludes with God, Spinoza
infers from God — but what kind of a deity? He is a substance: namely, “that which is in
itself and is conceived through itself.”50 Self-existence implies, for Spinoza, self-attesting and
self-authenticating, so that the first principle of being becomes the first principle of
deduction. I do not see the card trick where Frame does. He sees metaphysics turning over
to subjectivity by itself; whereas I still place the equivocation of rationalism at the word
“self ” as in self-evident. The so-called “objective” was made to answer to the finite reason,
not that Reason is itself reducible to finitude and thus made autonomous.
3. God is the only substance. From this Spinoza deduces pantheism. Why? Because if being
equals thought, then all equals all. He is back to Parmenides it would seem, except that he
more explicitly divinizes it. Thus he parts ways with Descartes division of reality into two:
thinking things and extended things. For if there were two, then these would limit each
other, and there cannot be more than one ultimate starting point to knowledge. Frame
derives from this that, “Epistemological rationalism tends to beget metaphysical monism.”51
4. Attributes are what the intellect perceives to belong to a thing. This follows from rationalism
to be sure; but is it consistent with his monism? Is there one or are there many? If the
former, then attributes must be illusions. At any rate, he says mind and body are not
seperate realms, as Descartes did, but the two basic attributes of God most knowable to us.
He resolves this by supposing that mind and body are two “perspectives” on the same reality.
5. Frontier between metaphysics and epistemology. For Spinoza the ground-consequent
relationship and the cause-effect relationship are a perfect analogy (one would think a
perfect identity from different perspectives). Both are necessary: thus he is also a
determinist.
Anderson points out that Spinoza at least has one less problem than Descartes: there is no Mind-
Problem disonnect

6. Spinoza’s ethics. Being a determinist and denying that the universe has a final cause,
how could there be much of an ethic? He denies free will to man, and God is only free in the
sense that he is not externally determined by anything. To salvage any meaning in life, he
begins in egoism, situated between pleasure and pain. Then he strangely ends in altruism by
stating that what ultimately brings the most pleasure is the good of others, and so the good
of the whole system. Happiness is gained by inquiring into the nature of things. In this sense
he copies the Greek rationalism.

C) Gottfried Leibniz

50 Frame. 183
51 Frame. 183
 54

1. Metaphysics. Leibniz moves in the opposite direction as the previous two rationalist
when it comes to what is ultimate. Whereas they looked at that which is biggest: one thing
for Spinoza, two for Descartes — Leibniz reduced everything to the smallest things. But
unlike the material atomists, he called these things monads. A monad is an intellectual thing.
So Frame prefers to call Leibniz an “atomistic idealist.”52 These monads are not passive like
matter, but they are active: “psychic force” and “programmed by God,” so everything is,
well, thinking, so that the label panpsychist could be used. It is almost like a rationalized form
of shintoism. Even the human person, with the whole body, is a “society” of these monads,
but Frame interprets Leibniz to be making the mind like the “queen monad” in charge of
the whole hive! And there is “no monad-to-monad causality,” rather each one has been
intelligently designed to carry out from its stock of possible states of affairs those ones
foreknowledge has rendered actual.
2. Rationalistic Cosmological Argument. Leibniz asserts a “principle of sufficient reason” to
argue for God’s existence. Nothing comes to be or moves without a sufficient reason.
Remember that cause and reason have been linked in identity within rationalism. For all
things there must be a sufficient reason (cause).

Anderson brings out more of Leibniz’s motive: he is troubled by Descartes’ mind-body problem and he
was even more concerned with Spinoza’s very irreligious form of rationalism. Leibniz was after all a
Lutheran in his faith.

3. Language and Logic. He is the first to distinguish between analytic and synthetic
statements, which correspond to self-supporting statements (true by logical structure) and
supported statements (their truth determined by authority, additional logical arguments, but
mainly by empirical data and confirmation). The former is a priori and the latter is a
posteriori.
4. Theodicy. Since God is infinitely wise, he can pre-program a seeming infinity of wholly
self-contained programs and yet work out all things with perfect harmony. God creates the
largest possible amount of monads, each consistent with all others, so that the world is the
best possible world. Now it was not possible for God to make such a world without evil. But
something in the way that God overcomes evil winds up equating to the best possible
outcome: an idea that Voltaire mocked. Frame sees Leibniz binding God by the necessity of
logic: especially in this theodicy. One thinks of Plato’s demiurge reaching outside of himself
to the Forms, whereas here Leibniz’s God must appeal outside of himself to logic.

52 Frame. 186
 55

See the section in Anderson’s Apologetics lectures to compare theodicies to Leibniz’s. There are
“possible comebacks” to objects that God must create a world in which all things are necessary and / or
God could not create a sinless world, etc.

IX. Enlightenment II: Empiricism

Anderson’s Questions for Lesson 9
1 Briefly explain the basis of Locke's epistemology and the conclusions he reaches from this. What
other conclusions do you suspect one might reach from this basis?
2 Why did Hume believe that there were no rational grounds for Christian theism? How did he
respond to the claims of Christianity? How did Hume's empiricism influence this and his view of ethics?
3 How do Berkeley and Hume differ in their metaphysics? What lesson can we learn from their
diversity concerning an empiricist epistemology?

These early empiricists are often called the “British Empiricists” for obvious reasons. These were closer
to Aristotle’s emphasis than Plato’s, but it was much more “down to earth.” The senses are made the key
to understanding what is real and how the world works. This will priviledge induction and particulars
over deduction and universals. They were very skeptical of the notion of innate knowledge. All is gained
a posteriori.

A) Thomas Hobbes

B) John Locke
For a time he was a medical researcher and continued on in political theory. His Essay Concerning
Human Understanding (1690) and Two Treatises on Civil Government (1689) were his most famous works.
His political work was in many ways a defense of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which resulted in a
more tolerant society. But there was also his Reasonableness of Christianity (169?) which defends the faith
on a strictly evidential basis. “No proposition can be said to be in the mind which it never yet knew,
which it was never conscious of.” An analysis of this critique of innate ideas shows that it doesn’t really
address a priori truth as such but only knowledge which “comes with the package,” so to speak. It
doesn’t deal with analytical truths or revealed truths which might come immediately and yet apart from
sensory data. Nevertheless he argues that the mind comes as a tabula rasa.

His arguments against innate ideas include that universal truths only imply that everyone has gained x
knowledge. Knowledge also implies consciousness of the idea of knowledge. Infants lack the mental
maturity to have clear ideas. Finally there is no need for innate ideas since all of the candidates for them
can be accounted for by the senses. Moreover the idea of innate ideas is actually politically dangerous. It
is unaccoutable and therefore, theoretically, cannot be challenged. History would seem to back up his
claim. They had just come out of a century of “fanatacism.”
 56

Locke’s Epistemology. All starts with sensation, and then passes on to reflection. This reflection is an
internal experience of one’s own ideas of the sensation. All of our ideas can be traced back to one of
these two: sensation and reflection. The ideas are divided into two: simple and complex. Simple ideas
are received passively through the senses: e. g. a red object gives a sensation of redness. Complex ideas
are actively formed by the mind. They are constructed out of simple ideas: e. g. a tomato forms a
sensation, which sensation forms an idea, part of which is its redness. The activity of the mind
(reflection) takes in redness, roundness, sweetness. These are called qualities. A quality is “the power
produce an idea in the mind.” So the redeness exerted a power. Qualities may be further divided
between primary qualities and secondary qualities. The former are the objective properties of things:
they exist in the thing itself — e. g. solidity, extension, texture, etc. The latter are the subjectively
ascribed to the thing — e. g. color, sound, taste — such that our consciousness generates those nearest
to or in our senses. Now secondary qualities are still explained in terms of the primary qualities. These
primary and secondary qualities correspond to the distinction between reality (primary) and appearance
(secondary). This distinction reflects Locke’s interest in the new science. He was a friend of Newton and
very supportive of his work. The primary qualities are the real attributes that hard science studies.

How did Locke decide which qualities are primary and which are secondary? Which criteria does one
use for that distinction? Consider that he is an empiricist. All comes via observation. And Locke
observes them both. Both are therefore appearances at first — so how does one remain an “appearance”
and the other graduate to the level of “reality”?

He distinguishes three kinds of knowledge: 1. intuitive knowledge is immediate, clear, and certain (e. g.
one’s own existence); 2. demonstrative knowledge can be infered from the first, and still certain (e. g. the
existence of God); 3. sensitive knowledge is merely probable inference (e. g. the real presence of a body
you just observed and turned your gaze from). So Locke advocates a form of classical foundationalism,
but it is not quite as strict as Descartes. He allows sense experience into the foundation. If he is
consistent, such sensory data has to form the “whole matter” of the foundation, even if its “shape” in
formed by inferences.

Locke’s Metaphysics. It centers on the idea of a substance. This is not the same as Aristotle’s conception.
He has a simpler definition: whatever it is that bears qualities. The may seem a distinction without a
difference, but the focus is certainly on material bodies or phenomena. We take in qualities, and we
infer the existence of their substance. But we cannot observe substances directly — not as they are in
themselves. So he anticipates Kant in this one respect. Substance in itself is unobservable: “It is
something we know not what.” How coherent is this concept of substance? It is not very coherent. If
substance in itself has no qualities at all, then how do we distinguish it from nothing at all? A knowable
substance has to at least have the quality of having qualities.
 57

His anthropology is unique. He is ambivalent about the immateriality of the soul. Perhaps it is a
different kind of material existence. So we see empiricism tending toward materialism.

Locke’s Theology. The government should tolerate diverse views that are at least Protestant. Therefore
there should be a separation of church and state. He develops the idea of natural rights that include the
right to choose one’s path of salvation. This is not speaking of pluralism, but rather of intellectual
freedom to consider which religious tradition they will follow. The conscience is not the sort of thing
that can be coerced and be left with any meaningful belief. Religious conviction therefore is not within
the “public interest.” It has been questioned how workable that is in practice. Religion effects ethics and
practices. Anderson uses the example of the Hindu practice of placing the living woman on the funeral
pyre with a dead man. So she burns alive. When the British banned it, the government was regulating
on religion. This is just one example to show that it is not that simple. What about the Jehovah’s
Witnesses’ disallowance of a blood transfusion to their dying child? And of course there is Islamic law
today.

In his Reasonableness of Christianity, he argues for a “rational theology.” The essential articles of the faith
can be demonstrated as reasonable.53 One problem: what he thinks Scripture requires one to believe is
a very small number of doctrines. But does this disprove the idea of rational demonstration in doctrine
or simply expose the problem on latitudinarianism that was already a problem before Locke came
around? At any rate, Locke is taking a classical foundationalist position that faith has to be grounded in
reason, or in his case, sense experience. Toward the end of his life, he developed sympathy for the
Unitarian position. Newton for a longer time was as well, and perhaps this is what influenced Locke.

Locke’s Big Idea: Our minds are blank slates at birth, but everything we need to know — including political and
theological truths — can be gained from sense experience and rational reflection upon it.

C) George Berkeley
He was a bishop in Ireland but wrote An Essay toward a New Theory of Vision (1709) so he was very
interested in “opticks.” Then a Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) which set
forth his epistemology, but it was not well received. He reworked it as a dialogue: Three Dialogues
Between Hylus and Philonus (1713). He vistied American in 1728 and he exerted some influence on
Edwards in spite of the fact that the younger did not study directly under him. Edwards had sympathy
with his idealism and also tended toward occasionalism.

Epistemology. All knowledge depends on sensory experience, and particularly vision which is the
primary sense. We do not perceive space, magnitute, distance, and even materiality as such. Rather what

53 “Let your reasonableness be known to all” —

 58

we see are images that we interpret as spatial, etc. Now his metaphysics explains why he is so unique
among the empiricists.

Metaphysics. He is an idealist. This will be meant in a more technical way. It means that only minds and
ideas exist. He believed this was much more consistent with empiricism than Locke’s. All of our
knowledge is mediated by our ideas. We do not know or think about anything without having an idea of
it in our minds. So we have no reason to believe that anything exists apart from such ideas. What
difference would it make to assert some object in addition to the ideas we have, or that may be had?
Nothing could be added. If it was added, we would be thinking about that thing. We cannot think about
anything that is, by definition, inconceivable. Locke left us with a “substance” that, by definition, could
not have anything attributed to it. Berekely challenges him at the distinction level: Why stop at
secondary qualities? On what basis do primary qualities have real substance? The very idea of material
objects is incoherent. “The absolute existence of non-thinking things are words without meaning.”

What about our ideas coming “through the senses”? He uses the word “perception,” and he says, “To be
is to be perceived.” He does not deny the existence of trees, animals, etc., but offers a different account
of what those things are. The tree is nothing above and beyond all of its qualities perceived. One problem
is this: Does the tree go out of existence if we all stop thinking about it? And when we perceive it again,
is it the same tree? Along the same lines, how does this escape subjectivism?

His rejection of materialism is as much theological as it was philosophical. He thought Newton’s

conception of a space-time world implies the independence of the material universe, apart from God.
Berkeley saw the “doctrine of matter” as the “pillar of skepticism … atheism and irreligion.”

Now, back to that subjectivism, we will see how he brings God in. God is indispensible as the necessary
explanation for all of the objects not perceived by any other minds. There is always someone perceiving
it. God’s mind accounts for the existence of the world: his thinking is the immediate cause of all other
perceptions. Can we go as far to say that all of our ideas are inside of the ideas of his mind? There are of
course imaginary ideas (subjective reality), erroneous ideas (objectively false) and true ideas (corresponding
to the ideas in God’s mind). The difference between fact and fiction is that fact comes from God. This
also accounts for the laws of nature, causing us to have orderly, predictable experiences of nature. Far
from destroying science, all scientific observations hold because they their objects hold in the Mind that
never sleeps or slumbers.

It does seem that Berkeley has to be an occasionalist. Johnson’s famous refutation by kicking the stone:
“I refute it thus.” Berekely would have an answer; but on the other hand, could Johnson’s foot be the
direct cause of the rock’s movement? It could not if material objects have no coherent existence. The
direction of the perceptions are flowing directly from God’s mind to our minds.
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Berkeley’s Big Idea: Reality is entirely mental. Nothing exists that isn’t perceived. And God is the absolute
Perceiver.

D) David Hume
His works include A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
(1748), An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), A Natural History of Religion (1757), Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion (1779) — that last one being published posthumously.

He begins as a thorough empiricist, being very impressed by the new science. He wanted every
intellectual discipline to be modeled on science. His radical empiricism, in the end, winds up
undermining even science. But at first he takes the position that all knowledge enters through the
senses. Hume was also somewhat impressed with Berkeley’s philosophy, while many other academics
were not.

Epistemology. He uses the word “perception” as well. But first there are impressions — vivid perceptions
caused by immediate observation; then there are ideas — feeble and fading copies of those impressions.
So he has an order, like the “assembly line” of Locke, but it’s (1) impressions and (2) ideas. It is not a
one-to-one correspondence. Our minds have the power to manipulate ideas, to create complex ideas
(somewhat similar definition as Locke on this point). But the key is this: there are no necessary connections
between impressions and ideas. So even the law of gravity, formulated from constant observation of falling
apples. However there is no necessary connection: Apples must fall downward. One observes no such
law. We may constantly perceive Type A event being followed by Type B event. So we say, “B follows A.” A
= The water is heated; B = The water evaporates. An empiricist is drawn to formulate a law: B follows A.
Hume is saying that the “necessarily” part is something that we have added rather than observed
directly. In principle it could be coincidental, or a contingent event that happens occasionally, but not
always, not inevitably.

Hume’s word for the real ground of our inference is “custom.” Being a good empiricist he still wants to
insist that the origin of real knowledge is that impression. Everything else is a mere product of the
mind. If he is consistent “necessary relation” has to be one of those inventions. That will come. But
accordingly, Hume distinguishes between two types of beliefs: (1) truths of reason that are necessary or
analytical (a priori) — grounded in words; (2) matters of fact, or synthetic or contingent truths (a
posteriori) — grounded in the world. So all reasonable beliefs must fall into one of these two categories.
This “fork” of Hume was specifically designed to disqualify all metaphysical and theological statements
as irrational out of the gate. Of course by the second of the two categories means, for Hume: known by
sensory experience.
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While he is not a universal skeptic, he is skeptical of the following: (1) causality — or at least the
necessary connection between cause and effect; (2) inductive reasoning — drawing general conclusions
from particular observations. When we justify inductive reasoning based on experience, we are arguing
in a circle, because our experience is based a uniformity that in turn generalizes upon our inductive
reasoning.54 Anderson points out that the inductive principle requires a theistic presupposition, since
only omniscience has a uniform knowledge; (3) the external world — this really follows from the first two
points. We resort to custom; we assume it to be there; (4) substance — or at least, their natures: this too
anticipates Kant, or perhaps this is the central thing that awoke Kant from his “dogmatic slumbers”; (5)
other minds — these are not observed; we infer them, or do we again assume them; (6) theological /
supernatural claims — having concluded that natural theology is nonsense, and revealed theology is
really based on natural theology; (7) miracles — this is just a species of 6. But it is always more
reasonable to believe that someone who claims a miracle is lying, decieved, or hallucinating, than that it
occurred. That is seen to be an extension of his principle that we should conform our beliefs to the
evidence. Bart Ehrman still relies on this reasoning.

Hume is somewhat disturbed himself by all his skepticism: “Where am I and from what? … I am
confounded by all these questions … environed by the deepest darkness.” But, he says, nature comes to
the rescue with some lively impression. But this is no different than the man in the first Screwtape
Letter who got up after hunger and saw the daylight and the bus and the crowded street and Viola! It
was all just a spell!

Metaphysics. There is not much to say because of the comprehensive doubt. He has more of an anti-
metaphysic. The human mind is not equipped for such. So he builds no system as the prior thinkers
had done. Logical Positivism picks up on Hume in the twentieth century with its verifiability principle
and then the misapplication of the falsifiability principle. On theology, he says that there are no rational
grounds for Christian theism. He criticized the ontological argument because all a priori arguments
have nothing to do with reality anyway. For any object x we can always conceive of x’s non-existence.
The non-existence of any particular thing implies no contradiction. The same goes for God. He then
moves to the a posteriori arguments. Hume rejects that we can known the necessity behind cause and
effect, so the core of the first two ways goes. In other words these arguments go beyond what we
actually exprience. Then with the teleological argument, Hume says that just because there are designs
doesn’t mean there’s one designer. And then there is evil and waste in the universe. What also if there is
a finite deity? Why do any of these prove an omnipotent being, and so on with other attributes?

How should a Christian respond? Where does his critique arise from? His empiricist assumptions. We
got to the root. We do not want to respond superficially to this or that point of evidence. Lewis points

54 cf. Lewis’ Miracles on this point.

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out that Hume’s critique of miracles is inconsistent with his skeptical work about induction. He said
you cannot justify expectations of the future of the scientific enterprise based on the past.

Hume says at the end of his work on the “natural history” of religion: “The whole frame of nature
bespeaks an intelligent Author, and no rational inquirer … can suspend his belief a moment with regard
to the primary principles of genuine theism and religion.” So he is more of an uneasy agnostic or
perhaps Deist than an atheist.

E) Early Modern Christian Apologetics

Anderson’s Questions for Lesson 10
1 How did Pascal and Butler both apply the concept of probability to their apologetical
approaches?
2 How does Reid justify how he knows something is true? What would be the strengths and/or
weaknesses to this epistemology when applied to apologetics?
3 What are the strengths and/or weaknesses of Paley's apologetical approach? How do you think
Calvin might have responded to this (recall Calvin's philosophy)? Would he have responded favorably or
unfavorably?

The Enlightenment had redefined human reason as the ultimate standard and therefore demanded that
Christian beliefs must be justified on that basis.

Blaise Pascal. He was a Jansenist and so sympathetic to Calvinist doctrines. As a mathematician he

develops some early forms of probability theory. His major work, the Pensees, was meant to be a work of
Christian apologetics, but was unfinished at his early death. His note inside his jacket, “Fire — God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Not the God of the philosophers.” This lends itself to many classifying him as
a fideist. At any rate, he factors his probability theory into his apologetics, most famously in his Wager.
This is a pragmatic argument. Suppose that you cannot prove that God exists and that the evidence can
go either way. It still makes sense, pragmatically, to “bet on God.” If you weight what is gained against
what is lost. If you believe and you are right—eternal life; if you believe and are wrong—you lose
nothing; if you disbelieve and are right—more earthly pleasure; if you disbelieve and are wrong—
eternal damnation. Now he is advocating a course of action that cultivates belief in God. He is aware
that one cannot choose to believe in the Pelagian sense.

His view of the relationship between faith and reason is that reason is helpful, but it has limitations:
“The heart has its reasons which reason does not know.” He is appealing to a more immediate, direct
experience of God. So he offers a different alternative to either Thomism or classical foundationalism.
But he does offer a few evidential arguments.
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Joseph Butler. He was the Bishop of Durham in the Anglican Church. His method is purely evidential, on
the basic of Locke’s epistemology. Probability is the very guide to life, since there can be no certain
knowledge. The argument from analogy is especially priviledged, thus the name of his major work, The
Analogy of Religion. His main argument was against Deism. Essentially the Christian religion as revealed
in Scripture was more than merely the “republication of the works of nature.” Revealed theology is
based on the same sort of principle; and yet it gives transcendent knowledge about salvation. He is
really a father of evidential apologetics. Lewis, Montgomery, Craig, and Habermas really stand in his
tradition.

Thomas Reid. He was one of the most significant critics of Hume and a contemporary and fellow Scot.
He was also ordained in the Presbyterian church, though not what we would regard to be in line with
the Confession. He founds a school called Scottish Common Sense Realism. This assumes that
“common sense,” both mental and sensory faculties, gives us generally reliable perception of reality.
This was influentual even on the Princeton theologians, Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, and B. B. Warfield.
Their view of natural theology relied — not totally uncritically — upon this model.

Those basic mental facultues (any of them) give us our first principles of knowledge: reason (deduction
and induction), memory, imagination, and sense perception. These we accept as a matter of common
sense. We take them for granted. These are first universally affirmed, so it is actually perverse to begin
doubting them. We need them for thought and they are demanded by our constitution. Of course all of
that is borrowing from other epistemologies. But Reid is saying that we cannot prove them (like Hume),
but he is saying that we do not need to in order to soundly use them. They are, as Anderson said,
“innocent until proven guilty,” whereas Hume says that they are “guilty until proven innocent.” But Reid
splits this difference by saying that the burden of proof is on the skeptic.

Why do we believe this external object? The skeptic says that reason is the only judge of truth. But Reid
answers, “Why should I believe reason more than perception when they are both given to me by the
same artist?” So one either trusts both or else neither. It has been called direct realism — namely, our
minds connect directly with the objects of sensation. We need no mediating categories of reason to
justify the reality and nature of those objects to our minds. But this cultivates anti-intellectualism, as the
experiment of the Restoration Movement proves in America’s Second Great Awakening. This was the
operative philosophy on the frontier. Larger integrating categories of the mind now had suspicion cast
upon them, when Reid’s only goal was to stop skepticism in its tracks. Critics of Reid would say that it
amounts to pragmatism, and of course he is relying on a theistic metaphysic and a rational epistemology
to affirm and deny all that he does. Reid’s Big Idea: It doesn’t make good sense to doubt our common sense.
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William Paley. He was an Anglican latitudinarian. He is the author of Principles of Moral and Political
Philosophy (1785), Natural Theology (1802). The latter was to argue for evidences of God’s existence and
attributes. And of course he is most famous for the design argument, and especially his metaphor of the
watch and the watchmaker. Some have mistakenly thought that Hume’s arguments demolish Paley’s
metaphor, but Paley, writing later, is well aware of Hume’s criticisms and deals with them. He also offers
a form of the cosmological argument and arguments from miracles. He offers a basically utilitarian
argument against the problem of evil. It’s a utilitarian theodicy. He has been just as influential on
evidentialists as Butler. Classical evidentialism says that Christianity is rationally justified by the whole
of the evidence for it. Paley’s Big Idea: We infer that the universe was created by God in the same way
that we infer that a watch had a watchmaker.

The problem with these evidentialists is that they are accepting too much of their opponents
epistemology: classical foundationalism. Rather they should be challenging them. Presuppositionalists
have the idea that no one before Van Til did this, or that (even if the Classicalist grants that Augustine or
Aquinas could have done that better), the Classical conception itself lacks the mechanisms or awareness
to do this. Likewise presuppositionalists believe the Van Tillian stream is in fact doing this without
compromise. In fact the presuppositionalist starting point is not Scripture (though they mean to be), but
rather the Kantian restriction between reason and the metaphysical thing in itself. “Pure reason” is an
act that goes outside the Christian circle of revelation and therefore constitutes “autonomous reason.”
In fact “autonomous reason,” in the hands of a classicalist, is equal to “pure reason” or universal truth
claims that transcend the Bible’s ink patterns.

X. The Kantian Turn to Subjectivism

Anderson’s Questions for Lesson 11
1 How does the concept of autonomy play out in Kant's philosophical system as well as his view of
the philosophical developments of his day?
2 How did Kant's "Copernican Revolution" synthesize the views of the rationalists and the
empiricists? How would he critique the philosophies of Descartes and Hume?
3 How did Kant's views open the door for the philosophies of Fichte and Hegel?
4 What are the similarities between Hegelian philosophy and that of Karl Marx?

We are now at “Late Modern Philosophy,” which just means further consolidation toward this subjective
and autonomous turn. The fact that rationalism and empiricism was a failure did not cause people to
abandon the Enlightenment project.

Kant. This is the preeminent Enlightenment philosopher in that he insisted upon the autonomy not
only of the intellect but also the will. Later philosophers would see themselves as correcting or
augmenting Kant’s philosophy. They had to engage with him. So we can call them “post-Kantian”
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philosophers. We also see the same in theology. There was already a shift from theism to deism, but we
will quickly see the next step of deism to atheism.

Idealism in this context means that reality is fundamentally mental or mind-dependent. It is typically
opposed to materialism. We have already seen a strand in Berkeley, but these later ones are more
radical. Kant began as a rationalist following the line of Leibniz and more immediately that of Christian
Wolffe. But then he began reading Hume’s writings. The first stage of this convinces Kant of empiricist
origins, but then he caught the skeptical end of it. The impossibility of science and ethics was
disturbing to him.

Kant’s Copernican Revolution. He himself uses this term because he understands himself to be
overturning traditional epistemology. He calls his own view “transcendental idealism.” The world as we
know it is a product of the active human mind. He distinguishes between the world as we know it
(appearances) and the world as it really is (essences). He contrasts this with “transcendental realism,”
which holds that the world exists outside of our minds. He wants to solve two problems:

(1) How can we know a certain kind of truth called a synthetic a priori truth? This is a truth that can
be known partly from sense experience, but is not a trivial logical or analytical truth: e. g. the laws of
nature. These laws had to be universal and necessary, but these laws cannot be true by definition, nor
can they be true by observation. This is also the case of laws of causation, the uniformity of nature, and
geometric truths like the Pythagorean Theorem. We need to know such things, but they are neither
purely analytical nor empirical. So this is a restatement of “Hume’s fork.” Hume brought up analytic a
priori and synthetic a posteriori. Kant was raising the question about some hybrid, or truth “in the
middle”: a synthetic a priori truth.

(2) How can our scientific view of the world be reconciled with our religious view of the world? The
former is deterministic. What space is there in that world for human freedom? Or moral responsibility?
Or ultimate significance for the soul? Although Kant really identifies religion with morality. These two
realities, science and religion, are reflected in those two things that fill him with wonder and awe: the
stary skies above me and the moral law within me. How will he distinguish these two realms that appear
to be different?

The human mind is active in constructing knowledge. It is not merely a passive receptical for data.
Hume’s original view is compared to the wax needle on the oldest phonographs. Winding it backwards,
the impression made by the needle vibrates back the original sound impress. Kant thought this was the
root of the problem. Kant was saying that our minds actively do all of that. Anderson uses the analogy of
a sausage machine to describe his view. The meat comes in but the “mind” provides the shape (the
sausage). Anderson uses the analogy of Nash of conscious jelly jars. “Why does the jelly (in me) have the
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shape it does?” The answer is not that the jelly is already shaped like the jar, but is given that shape by
the jar. The jar stands for our intellectual categories. A third analogy (Anderson’s) is the address on
postcards, which are transferred to the mail sorting office, whose workers look at the address and put it
in the right place accordingly. In Kant’s office, there are no labels on them. They put labels on them.
They order them by giving them addresses. Then it can be put in its place and sorted. So there is a
sense in which he is empircist. “It is Hume’s empiricism with a twist — a twist of the mind.”

Thoughts without content are empty (empiricism); intuitions without concepts are blind (idealism).

There are two stages of mental activity: (1) the mind applies forms of sensibility: space and time — these
are not objective things out there that we perceive, but we impose them out of our mind on the data; (2)
the mind applies twelve categories of understanding: e. g. existence, individuality, causality, necessity. He
puts the human mind at the center of the epistemological center of the solar system. Knowledge isn’t
the conformity of the mind to objects, but the conformity of objects to the mind. It is a total reversal.

How is this supposed to avoid Hume’s problem of skepticism? Hume cast doubt on necessity behind
causal relationships. But if we can know our minds, then we can know causation. It is a reflection of the
structure of our own minds. But this has consequences. It divides reality into two realms: (1) the
noumenal realm — the world as it is in itself, apart from our thinking about it, which does in a sense
trigger our sensations, etc. But we cannot know anything about the thing in itself (ding an sich). (2) the
phenomenal realm — the world as we experience it through our active minds, the world of mere
appearances. However it is the only world that we know. What we know of it is so because our minds
make it so.

Now how does this solve his second problem — the world of science and the world of religion? What
does religion deal with in this set-up? God is the noumenal. So is the eternal self, a virtue, and love, and
the final judgment. So religion deals with the noumenal and science deals with the phenomenal. They
are hermetically sealed from each other. So he has made “faith safe” from modern science.

Kant says that we have to presuppose unified experience, and thus, the self being the subject of such
experience, we are presuposing the existence of the self. What he believes he has done is to identify the
limits of reason. He wants to save reason, but he has to critique it to do it. Speculative metaphysics are
futile. The reason is because human reason only applies to phenomena and not to noumena —
immanent things and not transcendend things. The phenomeonal makes sense according to reason
because it has been constructed by reason. When we try to figure out transcendent matters by reason,
we wind up with a myriad of contradictions. We cannot apply phenomenal categories to the noumenal
world. So these categories only apply to the noumenal world. Arguments for the immortality of the soul
will not be rationally successful, because we do not experience our souls with these categories.
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Metaphysical questions are irrelevant to these categories. This explains the “failure” of speculative
metaphysics. Nevertheless we must “speculate” (doesn’t want to say presuppose) certain regulating
concepts for practical purposes: the self, the idea of the cosmos as a whole, the existence of God (for the
purpose of ethics). These keep our thinking “on the right tracks” but we cannot rationally discern them.
There is an analogy to imaginary numbers: You cannot take the square root of a negative number.
However you can postulate an i (the square root of negative 1) so that if the square root is multiplied by
i. Imaginary numbers turn out to be very useful for certain calculations in engineering, but they have no
real application in material experience. It is a construct. This is analogous to how Kant was
understanding these regulating ideas. Kant thinks it is merely psychologically unavoidable to assume
these. What implications does this have for theology? God would be unknowable. It introduces such an
agnosticism into theology and among theologians.

“I have found it necessary to deny knowledge to make room for faith.” Kant believed he had insulated
religion from being either polluted or refuted by the probing lens of the scientist.

How will Kant avoid the charge of relativism? He forms the transcendental deduction to prove that
these categories do not vary from one mind to another. That is the unity of objects — these categories
must be necessary in all minds. But of course Kant is cheating at this point. He is offering us an essence
from the noumenal.

Kant’s Ethics. He thinks the moral judgments people make (1) are synthetical a priori truths and (2) need
to be based on reason alone. They have to be universal and they have to be necessary. They are not a
posteriori, coming from observation. Furthermore they must come from duty. This is deontological
ethics: right and wrong reduced to duties of one kind or another. These actions should be performed
simply because we ought to — because it is our duty, or because it is right. But is this not a tautology as
well? We ought to do such things whether we like it or not.

What is goodness? For Kant, it is a good will. But what is a good will? It is one which does things
according to duty: because it is the right thing. By alternating “right” and “good,” or by treating them
separately, far enough away from each other, he keeps the circular shell game going. No doubt the right
thing — in keeping fair scales and driving the speed limit — or doing it whether or not there are
beneficial consequences, is certainly one level better if the bad consequence is a reflection of what is
inherently wrong: e. g. “I might get caught.” So, if it is your duty to tell the truth, then you should tell
the truth whether it pays or not. This is superior to the consequences of untilitarian ethics.

If this is to be a rational system, then he must discover: What is our highest duty? there are two kinds of
imperatives: (1) hypothetical imperative — a means to a certain end; (2) categorical imperative —
unconditional and an end in itself: Keep your promises. Period. Not “Keep your promises, if you want
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people to trust you.” But Kant thinks there is only one categorical imperative. Act only according to that
maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Examples are respecting
human life, not taking your own, not stealing, and that we should treat people as ends rather than
means.

So “if keeping my promise becomes inconvenient to me, then …” but would you be able to live in a
world in which others applied this?

No doubt this is what moralistic Christians live by: not merely because of Lewis’ and Piper’s criticisms.
That is a huge aspect, but in addition, it allows no hierarchy among the imperatives because it first
denies the real metaphysics of morals: namely the reason we ought to. Duties are relative to being,
contrary to Hume’s simple-minded “is-ought” critique.

Three presupposed pre-conditions for this morality: First, a very strong view of free will; second, the
immortality of the soul for final accountability (this is inconsistent with the Categorical Imperative);
third, the existence of God as a practical postulate: a summum bonum. Many have seen this as a kind of
argument for God’s existence: a moral argument. But it is not quite, it is the assertion of a “g-o-d”
sufficient as a presupposition. But how can he know if it is sufficient if we can only know that it must be
but nothing about what it is?

To any charge that this will lead to moral relativism, he would respond that this is based on reason.
Kant doesn’t see a subjective element in that. Clearly he was optimistic about everyone else sharing his
conception of reason and goodness.

Kant’s Religion. Religion must be within the limits of reason alone. Any alleged revelation must be tried
at the bar of human reason. The “Enlightenment” is man’s emergence from this self-imposed
immaturity: his lack of resolve to use his intelligence without the aid of another. Be bold to be wise. That
is the motto of Enlightenment: “Think for yourself.”

What about his critique of natural theology? He piles criticisms on top of the ones Hume already made.
He said these arguments are impossible in principle and a failure in practice. He says that Anselm’s
argument is confused, as if existence is a property something one has. Existence is not predicate, but a
presupposition of having properties. The idea of a necessary being is incoherent because it takes
phenomenal realm categories and tries to apply them to the noumenal. So it is with the cosmological,
which he says depends on the ontological. Kant has a bit more respect for the teleological argument,
but he concludes it is still a failure. At best it can lead to a craftsman. To say more you have to
supplement it with the cosmological argument.
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It is still commonly held today that Hume and Kant together burried natural theology. Anderson says it
only follows if you start with their empiricist starting points. And there are mostly versions today that
attempt to criticize what they did but by avoiding their mistaken starting points. So better philosophers
have abandoned their critiques.

At any rate, Kant says that the revealed theology rests on natural theology. But since natural theology is
out, then so the structure based on it. Divine revelation cannot breach the dividing wall between the
noumenal and the phenomenal. At best, revelation could only be the phenomenal effect of the
noumenal, but it would be propositionally unknowable. At best, that could be behind religious
experience, but it must remain private and subjective. We see this reflected in Barth, Bultmann, and
Tillich. At a more popular level we see this among cultural critics who make pluralistic arguments that
religion has no objective place in the public square.

What of Christianity in particular? Kant considered himself to be a good Christian. He even saw himself
to be a defender of the Christian religion. Remember that he wanted to make room for faith. This
involved a radical reinterpretation. It is no longer recognizable. It must now be a moral system, and a
subjective one at that. Christian principles are reduced to practical assumptions for the guidance of the
individual life. To be Christian is to be moral: to observe the categorical imperative. He thought that
Jesus’ Golden Rule was only an application of that categorical imperative. That being an application,
Kant was really implying that he had gone beyond Jesus and given us the full principle.

His soteriology is “semi-Pelagian” at best, but even that is kind. He recognizes a kind of root evil. But on
the other hand, we are free agents, able to overcome this. Responsibility implies ability. So he comes
around to full Pelagianism. Through the right use of reason, we can discipline ourselves and root out
this evil. Human effort has to precede divine grace: God helps those who help themselves, but even this
is dubious given his unknowable deity. One Kantian scholar said, “Above all, Kant was the philosopher
of human autonomy … without divine support or intervention.”

How has Kant reflected the rationalist-irrationalist dialectic? The rationalism is there in the principles
provided for the world; though empiricism is still his starting point. Where does it leave objects that
were thought to be outside of our mind? They are consigned to irrationality. Anything beyond the mind
is unknowable. How does Kant know anything about anything? Berkeley’s critique of Locke’s secondary
qualities needs to be explicitly applied to Kant’s phenomena. On what basis does he make this
distinction? Kant’s Big Idea: the world of sense experience is a construction of the active human mind, and
anything beyond that world is strictly unknowable.

Fichte. He is something of a bridge between Kant and Hegel. Kant’s was a Transcendental Idealism
whereas Hegel’s was an Absolute Idealism (an absolute Mind). Fichte identified a glaring contradiction
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between two claims Kant made. On the one hand, Kant said the noumenal are unknowable. Categories
of the mind do not apply to the noumena in themselves. On the other hand, he says the noumena exist
and are the causes of the phenomena. But existence and cause are two categories of understand (in the
phenomenal) so how can he alone apply them to the realm that be restricted the rest of us from? There
are two ways of resolving this. One way is to concede that the noumenal realm is at least partly accessible.
But this would be significant backpeddaling back to the speculative metaphysics that Kant liberated
everyone from. The second way is to deny that the noumenal realm exists at all. Only the phenomena
are real. But since the mind is real, then everything that exists is a product of mind — but which mind?
How plausible is this? Are we to offer a “collective mind”? That would push us to Hegel.

Hegel. Anderson does not like Hegel. Part of that is the level of difficulty. He writes obscurely. Russell
said that Hegel is the most difficult philosopher to understand. William James said it was only under
the influence of laughing gas that he could understand Hegel. His philosophy can be summarized by
the two words — Absolute Idealism. The material world is entirely the product of an Absolute Mind.
This is not to be confused with Berkeley. Hegel accepted Fichte’s critique of Kant. The empiricial or
phenomenal world is the real world in the practical sense. But that Absolute Mind is a rational mind.
Fichte said, “The reation is the real and the real is the rational.” Hegel picks up on this to say that Mind
is the ultimate reality and matter is its product. This is a reversal from materialism.

What are the specifics of his system? He uses the term Geist for this mind. We get the word “ghost”
from that word. It can be translated as either Mind or Spirit. Usually “spirit” is used in translations.
Absolute Spirit is a dynamic process that drives forward the progress of human history. Hegel’s
philosophy is optimistic of this progress. The essence of this Mind is freedom: a rational freedom.
Matter is like force or gravity: downward. But Mind marches forward toward its goal: rational self-
actualization. It is coming to know itself: striving to obtain full rational self-awareness. World history is
the exhibition of Spirit in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially (this
was a bit Aristotelian). This is particularly manifested in human history and especially the history of
ideas.

The relationship between Truth and Absolute Spirit. We would say that truth is a fixed and final thing.
For Hegel, truth is not eternal and unchanging. Truth itself is a dynamic, historical process. What we
would call final or determinative truth is at the end of the process. History is the outworking or
development of Truth. For Hegel’s idealism, world history is the history of ideas: theories, or rational
concepts. Truth only emerges over time. As Absolute Spirit obtains self-awareness. Where does the
human mind connect with this? Spirit is like a single, collective consciousness: a universal subject of
knowledge. It is a Mind, but is not a person. It is an abstract, rational mind that somehow encompasses
every human consciousness. It actually manifests itself in those consciousnesses. Each human mind
participates in this process.
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The nation-state is the earthly manifestation and realization of this Spirit. There you have individual
interests are organized and come together as a kind of collective person. The new German state of his
day was seen as the supreme instance of this kind of evolved nation-state. This is a profoundly
optimistic view of the historic process. Important note: this is a rational process, not driven by material
forces.

How does truth arise? Here is where his dialectical method comes in. This means ideas that are in
opposition are synthesized into a greater contrast. There are battles of ideas in each era. The LNC says
that two negating ideas cannot both be true. The world cannot be both. Our ideas need to move forward
to escape this conflict. Thesis > < Antithesis … Synthesis. A synthesis emerges as a resolution of the
tension between the original conflict. The battle of ideas started with being. If it is empty then it is non-
distinguishable from non-being. That tension results in becoming. Becoming is a synthesis of being and
non-being. But “becoming” continues on in his history. It’s what everything does.

Plato was a synthesis of Parmenides and Heraclitus, and then Aristotle became the antithesis to Plato.
Where did Hegel place his own system on the dialectical process? Not coincidentally he saw his own
system as the apex of this development.

Hegel weighed in on theological matters. Philosophy is the highest and purest form of human thought.
Theology is the next best thing because religion represents pure philosophical truth in a metaphorical
form for the simple; and Christianity is the purest expression among them. Of course his understanding
of Christianity is a reinterpreted one to fit his scheme. The doctrines of Incarnation and Resurrection
become expressions of the dialectical process. The logos, Christ becomes a synthesis of God and man.
The cross becomes a synthesis of immortality and death, and then the resurrection becomes a new
synthesis. Not conincidentally Scripture is not taken literally.

So philosophy takes you further than theology, allowing us to shedd the metaphorical exterior — a
precursor to Bultman’s demythologizing process. Hegel’s metaphysic is a kind of panentheism. The
world is “in” God in a sense, but God still needs the world in order to self-actualize. Hegel said that God
without the world is not truly God.

The rationalist-irrationalist dialectic here: the rationalist is clear in that the real is the rational and vice-
versa. But you have an Absolute Spirit that does not have even a full knowledge of itself and that needs
the ignorant world to teach it. And how exactly does Hegel know when this Spirit has reached full
potential? How does Hegel know that his synthesis is not the next thesis, subject to revision?
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The two figures that have had the most influence on modern theologians are clearly Kant and Hegel
(with Hegel, especially the Process Theologians and Pannenberg). Hegel’s Big Idea: History is esentially
the hsitory of ideas, and it proceedes by way of a dialectical process that is the self-actualization of an Absolute
Mind.

Marx. He is characterized as the anti-idealist because he was a materialist. Marx develops his philosophy
in reaction to Hegel. The Hegelians split into two groups: the Right Hegelians, religious yet liberal; the
Left Hegelians were the anti-religious party. Marx boasted that he turned Hegel upside down because it
was now mind depending on matter. Dialectical Materialism is also a theory of historical process. For
Marx history is driven by material forces. So he takes Hegel and combines him with Feuerbach who said
that God was a projection of the human consciousness. Of course he was a strict materialist. The history
of the world is a history of a conflict over material resources: class struggles. He identifies six stages of
this, the first where everyone has everything in common (shades of Rousseau there), but then the latter
stage of a market economy, which will lead to a rebellion that gives way to a socialist state, which will in
turn give way to a government of the proletariat, till finally emerges communism: a classless society in
which there is no need for a state at all.

What Marx did accomplish was to cast a sweeping vision that captured the imaginations of many people
who were potentially in positions of influence. He addressed something that non-philosopers care
deeply about: how to put bread on the table. Marx said that the philosophers have tried to understand
the world, but they missed the point. The point is to change the world. He did that. Theologically he
influenced those of Liberation Theology that really picks up in the middle of the twentieth century.
Marx’s Big Idea: History is the story of material and economic forces and will eventually, inevitably lead to a
communistic utopia of economic equilibrium. Marx knew about Darwinism, and he thought that Darwin’s
theory supported his own system. The Origin of the Species was conceived by Marx to be in natural
history the expression of his own dialectic.

XI. Christian Responses to Modernity

The Princeton School (Hodge, Hodge, Warfield, Machen), Newman, Bavinck and Kuyper, Chesteron
and Lewis.

XII. Late Modern Continental Philosophy

Anderson’s Questions for Lesson 12

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1 Briefly explain Kierkegaard's three levels of human experience and how he views maturity
through each level.
2 How does Heidegger's concern for Dasein classify him as an existentialist philosopher?
3 How does atheistic existentialism differ from Christian existentialism? How do you suppose
Kierkegaard might respond to Sartre's existentialism?
4 What is the relationship between Sartre's existentialism and ethics?

Existentialism is one term that is difficult to define precisely. It is a diverse family of outlooks that take
individual human existence and consciousness as their starting point. Existentialists typically have a
preoccupation on the meaning of life, as it is interpreted from the individual perspective. Why am I
here? What should I do? What gives my life significance? Why should I continue to live rather than die?
In fact one writer, Camus, said the question of suicide is the basic philosophical question. Especially the
atheistic existentialists take the line that meaning is something created rather than discovered out there.
They are concerned to transcend nihilism. They are disturbed by its conclusions. But they refuse to
return to the traditional conception of God. They focus on the subjective and not the objective.
Individual freedom and responsibility are important themes as well. When it comes to metaphysics,
epistemology, and ethics, they will place most weight on the ethics side; and they express a distaste for
theory-driven systems (metaphysics especially). Authenticity comes up as well; breaking away from the
mass. Angst, or some general unease with the world and one’s place in it. Life is absurd and we have to
come to terms with that. They are much more tolerant of paradoxes.

As indicated there are two basic forms: religious existentialism (Kierkegaard) and secular existentialism
(Heidegger, Sartre, Camus). Nietzsche has been described as an existentialist, and not without reason,
but he is better classified under the heading of postmodernism.

Soren Kierkegaard. Growing up in the Lutheran Church in Denmark, he sees himself as a Christian
philosopher. He felt a conversion at age 25, which intensified a calling he already felt. His father was
depressed and felt cursed, five sibblings died young, and his fiance broke off engagement with him. So
many things shape his melancholy. There is something of a Socratic method. He rejects systems,
studying during a time when there was reaction to Hegel. Either / Or (1843) looks at stages of existence,
Fear and Trembling (1843) is his central work of fideism … As Kierkegaard sees the philosopher, our
immediate concern is our individual existence, as subjects distinct from others. There is a deterministic
spirit to Hegel’s system. That made man nothing to Kierkegaard. We are forced to come to terms with
our freedom and responsibility. While knowledge is good, it is insufficient for us to choose. Hegel and
Kierkegaard recapitulate the Thomist-Occamist debate over the primacy of the intellect versus the
primacy of the will. To live authentically requires a self-conscious act of the will. To exist is to choose. To
“the rational is the real and the real is the rational,” he responds that this is reductionism. Many things
transcend and even seem to conflict with reason.
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Kierkegaard’s Christian Existentialism. His philosophy flows out of his understanding of faith. He
maintains that true human existence consists in actualizing our essential human nature toward God. We
ought to pursue right relation to God. Genuine human existence is relationship to God. This is a bit
Augustinian mediated through Luther. But our alienation from God leads to anxiety and despair:
existential angst (a concept that is translated very differently depending on the existentialist
philosopher). The aforementioned choices will either bring you closer or tear you further from God.
Many people attempt to smother their individuality by going with the flow, hiding in a crowd and
supposing to dilute their responsibility. But this is folly: even this takes making a choice at every point.

Three stages of human existence: The first is that of the aesthetic person, a self-obsessed pursuer of
worldly pleasure. He will pursue the latest. He will avoid being tied down by permanent things or
commitments. And he thinks he enjoys the fullest amount of freedom, but he does not have authentic
existence. He chooses less because he does not own the choices proper to him. The second stage is that
of the ethical person. He is aware of duties and self-consciously chooses to observe them. They believe
that sin is due to ignorance, or to weakness of will. Thus this can be overcome by strengthening of the
will. He may have Socrates in mind, but very likely Kant as well. Such a person, if they persevere, will
become despairing their inability to live up to even their own expectations. The third stage is to take “a
leap of faith.” This is essentially a choice to live in a certain way that reinterprets one’s life. But it is not a
choice based upon reason or evidence. This leap is therefore a risk since it is done in the absence of
clear knowledge, but it presses the will due to the despair of one’s current state. The fourth stage is the
religious person, like Abraham, recognizes that God cannot be apprehended by reason alone. Anderson
says that Kierkegaard is “not a subjectivist,” but often the religous life must go against what seems right
and reasonable — e. g. the sacrifice of Isaac.

He calls this the teleological suspension of the ethical. Normal (objective) ethical rules are suspended
because God calls us to something that doesn’t fit into the current scheme. It is called the teleological
suspension because it is a higher end, a greater purpose that one cannot summarize in terms of the
mass system. All around him he sees institutional, nominal religion.

Where do we see the influence of Lutheranism from this church tradition? Faith. But both faith and
justification get a more existential twist. Resolution of guilt is pushed through by faith in Christ: it’s very
Lutheran. Faith in Christ demands embrace of paradoxes.

Is Kierkegaard really saying that what Abraham had to do was “something wrong?” Not likely.

His view of truth emphasizes subjectivity (“Truth is subjectivity”) so sharply that we need to see
something more subtle. Truth cannot be reduced to objective propositions that can be simply
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discovered. That is too abstract and too impersonal. As if our whole persons did not have everything at
stake in the whole of life! Rather truth must be passionate. A truth that counts must involved personal
commitment. The highest truth attainable is the internally enflamed whole of life lived: passion,
inwardness, and yes uncertainty in the sense that truth has to be risky. Did he advocate a subjectivist
theory of truth in the process? Anderson says No. I tend to agree, but I also wish he would have written
in a more balanced manner. Again he says, “The thing to find is a truth which is true for me to find the
idea for which I can live and die.” The first part taken in isolation would spell utter subjectivism, but read
him through.

Faith sometimes conflicts with reason. True faith cannot be grounded in historical knowledge because
that lacks certainty. Faith demands the kind of certainty that is only found in a personal relationship.
But then there is that risk. So Kierkegaard’s concept of faith carries the paradox of certainty (encounter
with God) and uncertainty (risk in obeying). Religious faith has a greater end than universal duty. There
is higher, individual calling — the particular is higher than the universal. The living God exalts the
concrete particular in bringing him to life, rising above the universal, the abstract, the cold and dead.

Christ is the absolute paradox of the Christian faith. The infinite, eternal God is manifested in space and
time. This is a paradox that cannot be resolved. Does this make him an irrationalist? These paradoxes
are only paradoxical for us, but not in some objective, ultimate sense. It is we who cannot resolve it.

Sidenote from student question: Anderson says that Schaeffer’s analysis is problematic. Schaeffer paints Hegel as
an irrationalist, but Anderson says the opposite is the case because his dialectical method presupposes the law of
non-contradicton. Address this.

Anderson thinks Kierkegaard makes too sharp of a dichtomy between faith and reason—Instead we
should say “Christian faith is reasonable on its own terms.”

Kierkegaard’s Big Idea: Authentic human existence consists in a relationship with God based on an individual
choice to exercise faith beyond reason.

SECULAR EXISTENTIALISM

Husserl’s Phenomenology. Though not classified as an existentialist, his innovative method was influential
on later existentialists (especially Hiedegger and Sartre). Phenomenology was meant to make the
discipline more respected and rigorous like science. Differences were based on presuppositions that
went unrecognized and unargued. So this was an attempt to do a presupposition-less analysis. Once this
was done, it could be used as a foundation for other things. You simply take immediate human
experience — of phenomena — and assume nothing about it. You observe it, analyze it, and discern its
structure from that. This could be conceived as a kind of “foundationalism,” but the foundation would
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be the immediate experience. What existentialists took out of this was the starting point in the
immediate, given experience. The structure of consciousness was meant to be the lens into the structure
of reality. The existentialists didn’t take that latter step from it.

Heidegger. What is the fundamental philosophical question? For Heidegger it was ‘Being’ — its meaning.
He thought it had been neglected, ignored, ever since Heraclitus. Because it is the fundamental
question in philosophy, it is so for human existence as well. His most important work is Being and Time
(1927). At the center of his philosophy is the idea of Dasein. This is the key. Philosophy is primarily
concerned with ontology. Things differ between things, but everything has being. Philosophers started
focusing on beings rather than on being (sein) itself. Western philosophy is more confused on this
matter with its “onto-theology,” the problem being one particular being. Aquinas is the main boogey
man in a sense, though Heidegger began as a budding Thomist scholar ironically enough. Here comes
the counter-intuitive leap: To understand this Being we must understand the-being (human being). This
forms a portal into being as such. We must undertake a phenomenological analysis of human existence.
This is the part he gets from Husserl. He uses Dasein for human, or the closest we can come to literal:
“being-there” or “being-here.” This is a located existence: thrown into the world, or the “situated-ness”
of human beings. This being inquires into its own being. This he is borrowing from Aristotle whether he
considers it or not. Man is the being-reflecting animal. Not just our own being, but we do yearn to know
being as such.

Another existential theme that comes up is authentic versus inauthentic existence. Dasein has two basic
modes of existence: authentic and inauthentic. The latter is passivity, a failure to acknowledge one’s
place in the world, and the former is to live up to, to face up to existence in the world, and really a
hostile world that generates anxiety. It is to see the world in terms of the possibilities it presents to us
and to project ourselves into that world. But according to what? What is the significance of this being
and how does one know if his or her projection is right?

Heidegger is the single greatest influence on later continental philosophy. Heidegger’s Big Idea. The
fundamental question of philosophy concerns being and the answer to that question can be found in an analysis
of immedtate consciousness of human being.

Jean-Paul Sartre. He was a French philosopher, novelist, literary critic, playwright, and political activist.
Human existence, consciousness, anxiety were all themes; but his primary concern is human existence.
So it would seem more narrow than Hiedegger’s, but he develops it. Nausea, No Exit, Existentialism is a
Humanism, Being and Nothingness. This is a deliberate knock on Heidegger’s book. In that latter, his
largest book, he develops the core of his existentialism. For him the definition of existentialism:
Existence precedes essence. That is the classic existentialist slogan. This is a reversal of another ancient
metaphysical assumption: that the essence of something must precede its existence (of things with strict
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ex-istence). Plato would say that a tree is a replica of an eternal Form. The upshot is that there is
nothing that defines us in advance, independent of us. This is a liberation from eternal purpose. So it is
not the existentialism leads him to atheism, but atheism leads him to existentialism. That is clearly set
forth in that smaller, more accessible work, Existentialism is a Humanism. All in all, we define ourselves.
Anderson says that if he was going to be completely consistent, then nothing has an essential form,
even knives, which apparently Sartre used as an example.

This is not to say that there is no God in a traditional sense of atheism. It is the humans play the role of
God: self-defined. We define ourselves by our free choices. Free will is the fountain of our own essence,
and that is not finalized until our death. And yet death really is the end. So we literally are what we
make ourselves, but by the time we know who we are, we do not. We die. If God does not exist, there is
at least one being comes before its essence. That being is man: the human reality.

He further distinguishes between being for itself and being in itself. He uses the French for these. But this
follows the traditional distinction between subjective and objective. Only “being for itself” is conscious
about its own essence. We do not just have being, but we have doing — here again is a little touch of
unwitting Aristotelianism that they cannot get away from. But Sartre puts a radical emphasis on
individual freedom. Any determinism is abhorent. Whether it is God or the Cosmic Machine, he is
against it, but he has to appeal to a dualism that he cannot get his head around to set up the tension.
Ironically he cannot seem to see such a determiner in the State. At any rate, we are “condemned to be
free.” We cannot get around the power of choice. Here there are shades of Kierkegaard. But this
recognition of freedom makes one more free, but it also brings a burden, and the greater these are in
tension there is angst. Part of the burden is that when we choose, we are not merely choosing for
ourselves, but also for others. As an example, think of a general. He sends troops out. He cannot avoid
choices, and in his case, they have life or death implications for others. This is true, perhaps on a lesser
scale for others. And we cannot know in advance what are the consequences of our choices nor what
kind of influence they will have on others. Here too he uses the example of Abraham and Isaac.
Abraham was someone faced with this terrible choice, but if he thought it was a private choice he was
wrong, because here we are all talking about it. He bore the burden of being this exemplar of faith
whether he recognized it or not.

To deny one’s freedom is “bad faith,” by which he only meant an act in self-deception. There is no
escape. There is also anxiety from being observed by others. Presumably this is because there is an
implicit denial of shaping one’s own essence. Being “judged” by others. Theologians have a different
explanation for “Hell is other people.”

What do his ethics look like? Self-definition in the face of nihilism. He is very open that his atheism
implies nihilism, or at least its threat. Without God, there is no objective meaning and objective duties.
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The only “duty” we have is to live authentically and to take responsibility for one’s freedom, and the
only meaning we find is the one we create ourselves by our choices. At the outset it has no meaning
(ethically or existentially one is a blank slate). Sartre was a member of the Communist Party — but with
an existential twist. He takes Marx and rids him of the determinism.

Obviously this is a philosophy with many inconsistencies. He wants to say there are no objective duties,
but there is one. But how can one justify even this “need” to live authentically? Then there is his denial
of human nature. And yet does he not make some claims about what all human beings are? Being for
itself, being radically free, etc. There is at least a minimal human essence: free will? Then there is his
materialism, derived supposedly by objective science, and yet he wants man to subjectively transcend
that. Shades of Kant. Sartre’s Big Idea. Since my existence precedes my essence, I am free to define the
meaning of my own life. This does not escape nihilism at all.

One thing may be taken from the existentialists. A clue. They know that something about the history of
Western philosophy is going wrong. And yet they turn further inward to solve it.

XIII. Late Modern Anglo Philosophy

Anderson’s Questions for Lesson 13
1 How does analytic philosophy generally differ from earlier philosophies (i.e. in the type of
philosophy that it is)?
2 How might a Christian theologian glean some insight from Russell's logical atomism?
3 How might a Christian apologist respond to and/or utilize the insights of Wittgenstein's earlier
and later philosophies?
4 What are the points of continuity and discontinuity for the early Wittgenstein and the later
Wittgenstein?

PROCESS THEOLOGY

Anderson skips this in the lecture, but it belongs here for if no other reason because Whitehead was
one of its founders and is related to the Analytical Philosophers.

ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY

Traditional philosophy had assumed that ordinary human language was adequate to pursue truth and to
communicate to each other about it. Later Anglo philosophers began to challenge this. A special
language had to be created to eliminate ambiguity. Of course Frege and the early Wittgenstein are
examples that show that this was not simply an English movement, but the tendency was more in
keeping with the way that British and American philosophy had reacted to Kant. Thus Continental
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Philosophy and Analytical Philosophy came to be the “final product” from the two different ways of
dealing with the noumenal-phenomenal divide.

Human existence and human conscience are the bases for finding answers in Continental Philosophy.
It takes a more subjective approach. They are less ashamed to express their moral and political biases in
their writings. They are also quick to present a big picture up front. They do not want to build a system
with great detail. They personalize and generalize. By contrast, Analytical Philosophy the answers are
found by a careful analysis of the question itself. Once done, very often the answer is already there.
Other times, the question turns out to be incoherent, revealing that there is no answer. Consequently,
when we finally understand human lanuage we will have universal answers. They want to be more
scientific, but also more mathmatical, and finally more dispassionate. Clarity, precision, and system
building are the main virtues. Rather than literature being the paradigm, mathematics is the better
paradigm. It is the most objective.

Gotttlob Frege. He was a German mathematician and philosopher. He brings his mathematical mind to
issues of philosophy, and is dubbed “the father of modern logic.” He takes things beyond Aristotle. His
ambition was to uncover the foundation of mathematics. Why does 2+2=4? What are numbers? Why are
they present to us at all? What makes mathematics true? How do we know mathematical truths? He
wrote Concept Script — the English translated title — which expressed ordinary propositions with
symbols. The Foundations of Arithmetic (1894) he argues against subjectivist accounts of arithmetic: i.e.
that mathematical truths are dependent on us, that they are human conventions or “useful fictions.” His
Basic Laws of Arithmetic argued that arithmetic may be deduced from the laws of logic. For one,
arithmetic is much more vast in its rules, applications, and so forth, so it makes sense.

Philosophical understanding is obtains through formal logical analysis. Therefore he developed very
sophisticated systems of logic. Propositional and quantification logic are his products. In propositional
logic, you can build things up with T / F statements which can be connected by the logical operators. “It
is raining outside” and “The grass is wet” may be connected in a conditonal relationship — (R ⊃ W). It
makes it easier to see if one’s argument is valid. With quanitifcation logic, it makes your existence
assumptions explicit. What you are assuming is stated. There is no ambiguity. For example, “There exists
X which has Y properties.” This is significant because in Aristotelian logic it is often ambiguous: All S
are P, and so forth. Think of the statement “Some dogs are brown.” Does this imply that some dogs
exist? On the face of it it does. “Some unicorns are white,” has the exact same logical form, but does it
clarify whether or not unicorns exist? No. We could clarify about story, but the statement’s form itself
does not help us.

Frege attempted to prove that arithmetic is analytic and a priori. Kant contended that they are synthetic
and a priori. Mill argued that it is a posteriori because he was an empiricist. Frege was much more
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critical of the latter. But he wanted to transcend both accpeted views in his day. He held to logicism —
that these laws of arithmetic could be derived purely from logic. He spent so much time arguing for this
and his whole project was torpedoed at the last minute by Bertran Russell. Frege received a letter from
Russell that informed him that there were two contradictions in some axioms of his system. Frege
accepted this but was devastated. This didn’t prove that logicism was a dead end. Later on, the whole
project was sunk by Kurt Gödel who proved in formal way that in any mathematical system there are
some propositions that are true but which could not be proven to be true. Nevertheless the work he did
in order to prove it is still very useful.

He made a semantic distinction between sense and reference. People in the past talked about two bodies
in the sky — the morning star and the evening star, so named for obvious reasons. Now they both
turned out to be Venus. The two senses had the same referent. They still don’t mean the same thing. So
there is the status of the sense and that of the referent. Another popular example is the difference
between Clark Kent and Superman. There are theological ramifications. Take divine simplicity: All of the
attributes of God are identical to God. But how can this be? When I talk about God’s omniscience and
God’s omnipotence I am talking about two different things. But suppose I say that these two have two
different senses but the exact same referent?

Metaphysically, he is a kind of Platonist. He is a mathematical Platonist — numbers have to be real,

abstract objects, that exist independentally of us. This could be useful in apologetics. The naturalist
insists that nature is all there is, but if numbers are abstract entities, how does the naturalist account for
them? And if they are not objective, how does he account for those sciences that presuppose and use
quantity when those sciences are precisely that which the naturalist believes invalidates theism?

He was influential on Husserl and Russell and Wittgenstein. His philosophy doesn’t seem too relevant
at first glance to theology; but applications from his work on logic and language is highly useful. Frege’s
Big Idea: The foundations of mathematics can be uncovered with the help of formal, symbolic logic.

Bertrand Russell. He too was a mathematician-philosopher. His father was an outspoken atheist. His
godfather was actually John Stuart Mill, and Russell was very much influenced by his late classical
liberalism. His ambition was really to clean up philosophy, particularly the field of metaphysics. The
solution was roughly the same as that of Frege. He was especially disturbed by German and British
idealism: especially Hegel. Grand metaphysical claims with so much ambiguity, and more probably a lot
of hot air. He taught at Cambridge, where he was a mentor to Wittgenstein. He wrote the Principia
Mathematica (1910-13) with Whitehead, in which he attempts to derive all of mathematics from a small
set of propositions that were self-evident and other rules. Gödel was especially aiming his refutation at
their work. His other works include The Problems of Philosophy, Religion and Science, A History of Western
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Philosophy, Why I am Not a Christian (1925) in which he proved that he had not read the NT in any
serious way. On Denoting (1908) was brief but a highly influential work on proper names.

Russell was an empiricist and logical atomist. The former we have met. And Russell very much identifies
with Hume. Russell makes important distinctions: between two kinds of descriptions — definite and
indefinite. (1) A definite begins with the definite article: “The queen of England …” (2) An indefinite does
not pick out an individual in a unique way: “A monarch …” His innovative analysis of proper names is
that they are like shorthand, a placeholder for a definite description. So “Barak Obama” really means
some longer description that picks out some entity that includes all of his relevant attributes: at least
those attributes that would do the work of distinguishing that particular from others in its class.
However there is a problem with this theory. It makes the contingent properties of something essential
to it. These which, presumably, could have been otherwise (his date or place of birth, say) — but then all
that time we had been referring to “Barak Obama” we had been referring to a non-existent entity
because we had not previously assessed his date or place of birth with accuracy. This is nonsensical. So
Aristotle’s distinction between the substantial and accidental stands.

Russell also distiguished between two types of knowledge: (1) knowledge by acquaintance, which comes
from immediate sense data (my knowledge of this keyboard right now) — Russell includes properties in
this, of coruse, being an empiricist; (2) knowledge by description, that which we hear about.

His logical atomism is a result of his project to come up with an ideal language. It is the view that we can
develop a clear, precise language that will reveal the nature of the world. Ordinary, everyday language is
very messy and halts the progress in philosophy. When he reacts to Hegel or Heidegger he naturally
asks, “What are they really claiming?” Take the statement, “Charles Darwin has a big white beard.” This
statement assumes that he exists. But consider, “Santa Clause has a big white beard.” It has the exact
same form, but we can see the difference. Because of the ambiguities in ordinary language, we need one
that expresses all of the logical implications and expose the hidden assumptions in our contentions.

There are atomic facts (we see this in Bonevac’s or even Layman’s logic texts) that simply attribute a
particular property to a particular thing: e. g. “Paul is short.” or “James is the brother of John.” These are
atomic facts. From these one can build up more complex propositons by means of logical connectives.
We can now say “Paul is short and James is the brother of John.” The philosophical payoff wouldbe that
all ambiguity in language would be avoided.

Russell made an evidentialist critique of theology. This is an outworking of his atheistic metaphysic and
empiricist epistemology. He says, with British understatement, “I wish to propose … a doctrine which
may appear wildly subversive: that it is undersirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground
whatsoever to suppose that it is true.” How does he define “reason to believe”?
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Russell’s Teapot. He makes the following analogy along those lines: “If I proposed that between Earth and
Mars there was a china teapot revolving around the the sun in an elipitcal orbit, but it was too small to
be observed by the most powerful telescopes, so no one would be able to disprove it. But if I was go on
to say that since my asertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human
reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. But if the existence of it were
affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of
children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would be regarded as a mark of eccentricity and
entitle the doubter to a psychiatrist in an enlightened age and to the inquisitor in an earlier time.”

Clearly the analogy is between the teapot and God. It is not enough to shelter a thing under our
inability to disprove. We need to provide positive evidence for a thing to be considered rational. The
“flying spaghetti monster” is the more recent version of this. It was brought up by Montgomery.

Russell’s ethics were essentially classical liberalism. He was a pacifist. He advocated women’s rights and
was one of the earliest advocates of the sexual revolution. His anti-war protest during the first World
War lost him his post at Trinity College. And he was later imprisoned for the same. In 1940 he moved to
the U. S. and was going to be appointed to the City College of New York but this brought protest
because of his views on sexuality. Today no one would think twice about it. In A Free Man’s Worship,
Russell himself said, “Such in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world
that science presents for our belief, such a world if anywhere our ideas must find a home. That man is
the product … his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of the collocation of atoms … destined for
extinction in the … of the solar system. …Only on the firm foundation on the habitation of despair …”

Russell’s Big Idea: Philosophy can be cleaned up by developing an ideal logical language to express our
thoughts with precision and without ambiguity.

EARLY WITTGENSTEIN

There will be a question on Wittgenstein on the exam!

He was born in Vienna and was raised as a Catholic. He was classmates with Hitler. He came to
Cambridge to study under Russell. He served in both World Wars but after the first, he gave up as a
philosopher to take up gardening and grammar school teaching. His outlook had changed during his
time off. His publications were not great in number. Although the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921)
represents the early Wittgenstein. It was written while serving in the war and completed while a
prisoner of the Italians. It is arranged as a number of propositions, sub-propositions, and sub-sub-
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propositions. Contrast this with his later work: The Philosophical Investigations (1953), published two
years after his death. There are also various unpublished notes from the time in between.

Like Russell, the early Wittgenstein advocated logical atomism — language pictures the world in a one-
to-one corresponding way. Language functions like a photograph of the world. A painting would be
another analogy to this. Does the word “c-a-t” do this? Abstract art shows that this does not have to be
an exact correspondence. He defines “the world” as the totality of facts. These facts in turn are objects
combined in different ways. “There is a stool over there by the piano” is one such fact. This is one fact
that is the case. “The world is all that is the case.” An atomic facts is one, and the propositions pictures
the atomic fact. Atomic propositions are words together to express facts. (Paris is to the east of London).
Atomic facts are the objects combined to constitute states of affairs (Paris being to the east of London).

True propositions mirror the logical structure of the world. This is important because they believed that
ordinary language conceals the logical structure of the sentences we use. Some examples: 1. “He was over the
moon even though he was under the weather.” But this is not really picturing something in the world. 2.
“I had a great time with John Calvin today” (spoken while coming out of the library today). Same thing.
Ordinary language becomes important in his latter writings but for entirely opposite reasons.

Any meaningful sentence can be analyzed into its constituent propositions. A non-factual sentence is
one that doesn’t express any atomic facts, and thus does not really express anything about the real
world. Proposition 7 — Whereof where cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. In other words, if
something is not actually factual about the world, we shouldn’t speak it in words. The book deals with
the problems of philosophy: the method being to uncover our misunderstandings about language. The
opening says, What can be said at all can be said clearly, but where one cannot, one should not. What
does this thesis claim about itself and philosophy and general? This rules out pretty much all
philosophy before analytical philosophy. Anything abstract is out. Propositions are tied down to the
concrete. Propositions are not even meant to picture themselves. Propositions are not even meant to
describe the world, but rather to picture it. All of the propositions of the Tractatus are strictly speaking
meaningless because they are describing the logical form of the world rather than picturing it. So we
see that the overarching attempt to dispense with metaphysics — as in Hume and Kant — winds up in
self-contradiction. The propositions of the Tractatus are propositions about propositions themselves
rather than propositions about the world. So according to his own thesis, his thesis is not a meaningful
one. However, it would seem that Wittgenstein himself was well aware of this. He responds (in 6.54) —
“My propositions are illucidatory in the following way: He who understands me finally recognizes as
senseless when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them … He must, so to speak, through
away the ladder once he has climbed up it.” So philosophy really isn’t in the business of stating things
about the world at all in this view. It is more like gesturing, pointing the reader to a better position. But
he thinks this paradoxical position is unavoidable. (This is not paradox — a genuine contradiction).
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This was specifically influential on the Vienna Circle. Logical Positivism comes out of this. All
philosophical knowledge is ultimately descending from empirical experience but must precede by
rigorous logical analysis. Philosophy and the natural sciences coincide. The two are doing basically the
same thing — finding out the world by strict empiricism alone. Then comes their Verification Principle.
This is about what makes a statement meaningful. The meaning of a statement consists in the meaning
of its verfification: “What would it take to show, empirically, that the statement was true.” The final
product is this: Any statement is meaningful only if it was a tautology or can be verified by direct empirical
experience. This implies that all necessary truths must be true by definition: tautologies. But then strictly
speaking that means that necessary truths don’t tell us any-thing true. Obviously it rules out the
objectivity of theological, metaphysical, or even ethical claims. They cannot be either true or false. Such
statements “aren’t even false.” So in a sense these Logical Positivists are going further than Hume.
Hume said that such claims are unknowable; the Logical Positivists were now saying the are
unintelligible. The fundamental critique is that it is self-defeating. The Verification Principle is neither
true by definition, nor empirically observed. At a basic level, it is also counter-intuitive. People
understand the contradictory propositions “God exists” and “God does not exist.” Likewise with
“Murder is wrong” and “Murder is not wrong.”

Early Wittgenstein’s Big Idea: The function of language is to picture a world of facts, and sentences that don’t
picture the world of facts don’t tell us anything meaningful.

LATER WITTGENSTEIN

After his retirement he had come to advocate ordinary language philosophy (whether he called it that or
not). He recognized that language is actually very complex and versitile. It does many other things than
express these neat atomic propositions. Words do more than simply denote simple, or even complex,
objects. And not all words are names. The words “if” and “now” and “amen” and “Ouch”— what do
these refer to in the world? Words in themselves have no meaning — not in isolation. They take on
meaning in the context in which they are used. “For a large class of cases … in which we employ the
word meaning … the meaning of the word is its use in the language.” From this he develops the idea of
language games which serve as the context for the words we use. These are everyday linguistic activities
that grow out of forms of life. Language is interwoven with the mundane, ordinary activities of life.
Word combinations acquire their meaning from this use — not through technical definitions derived
from an elite group.

Language is part of the natural history of human beings. Words are tools (of which there are others) that
we use to solve the problems of life. So the rules of language (grammar) are like the rules of games. In
order to use the words correctly you have to play the game and play it by its conventions. He uses the
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analogy of chess. Words are like the pieces on a chessboard. To play chess successfully you have to know
the moves: what is allowable. If you transgress these conventions you’re actually not playing chess
anymore. The shape and sound of the words themselves do not matter. Does the king and bishop really
look like a king or bishop? Only vaguely. What defines the piece? How it is used and moves around. So
words only have meaning in the context of a language game. Linguistic meaning is always public rather
than private — a community thing rather than an individual things. Straw man! As if an “objective”
thing means individual, and then individual is reduced to its place of origins: i. e. an elite contriving of a
language, like the analytical philosophers had tried. And then here is the turn toward postmodernism. A
word and meaning do not get to mean whatever the individual wants them to mean. Thus we have the
foundation for de-authoritizing the author. Wittgenstein may have knocked out his previously philsophy,
as well as solipsism. But he does not even begin to touch an actual, mature view of objectivism, for the
following reason.

Many have drawn the conclusion of relativism from this. Anderson thinks this is a mistake because it
confuses the word with the concept: “the word-concept fallacy.” Now the meaning of the word — like
“truth” — may be relative to a language game; but it does not follow that the concept of truth is
reducible to that language game. Actually Wittgenstein’s theory presupposes objective truth. He believes
that language objectively cuts this way across the board: i. e. of all language games (note the plural).

Philosophy has limits. It is an activity rather than a theory. Plato and Hegel made it into a theory. I
might like to appropriate this into Christian worldview thinking, but Wittgenstein included
“metaphysics” within the concept of theory. This disallows any ultimate explanation unless it is a
scientific one. A “knot arises” in our thinking when we try to use words outside of ordinary ways. This is
exactly where Wittgenstein must mean the exact same thing as Kant meant, except instead of a
horizontal line dividing, here is a circlular boundary: each circle called a language game. The words
used outside of “ordinary” ways — Does the number 1 exist? or if we try to probe the person who says,
“The man’s name went right out of my mind.” Did it? That is a wrong question. The phrase is ordinary
and therefore unassailable by philosophy. We must always, only use language in the ordinary way. But
here again Wittgenstein contradicts himself in the same way as the early Wittgenstein. His theory lifts
itself up above any language game. He uses language, like “game,” out of the ordinary way. Thus when he
says “Therefore philosophy cannot give meaning to life,” he is at that very point assigning a meaning to
life.

He tends toward anti-realism: that there is no real world beyond language to which our language refers.
It doesn’t “map neatly” on to some external world. This is also a debated interpretation of Wittgenstein,
but it is the most like interpretation given the anti-realist tendencies of what he has said.
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Implications for theology. Religious discourse is just one language game among others. There is one for
science, sports, etc. Individual religions each have their own. Theological claims should not be
understood as literal metaphysical assertions about the way ultimate reality is. They are one of three
kinds: 1. grammatical (dogmatic, of how we should use language), 2. expressive (of our emotions), or 3.
mystical (no cognitive content at all). Natural theology is therefore misguided because metaphysics is
already discredited. It’s also unneccessary because faith statements are already justified by their own
language game. They are internally justified by their own conventions, but not externally justified. How
different is this than the warranted belief of Plantinga? I don’t think Plantinga would appeal exclusively
(if at all) to such internal conventions. At any rate, Wittgenstein would say that the language game of
reason is its own, and to “ground belief” in one language game in another — that “faith is reasonable” —
is to confuse the covnentions of two different language games. But how does Wittgenstein compare the
two using presumably the same English (or German) language? Especially, what counts as knowledge
also is allowable only in terms of the language game. Thus Wittgenstein is cheating, because he knows
presumably the attributes both of the faith language game and the reason lanaguage game, put them
both as species of one genus and then speak of their differences by means of other comparisons.

Wittgenstein is joined with Heidegger in being the two most influential philosophers of the twentieth
century. Certainly there is a heavy influence on postmodernism: post-liberalism, especially the work of
George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine. The same with fideistic and post-realist theology. D. Z. Phillips
would be of this school. See Helm’s critique of him in Faith and Understanding. And of course the
Emergent Church has drawn from sources that descended from Wittgenstein. I think Vanhoozer draws
from this too. Also “Speech-Act Theory” draws from this. Words-sentences do many things. We can use
them to state truths, but also ask questions, command, promise, vow, exclaim, and name. So language is
an activity which accomplishes things in the world.

What is the relevance of Speech-Act Theory for our doctrine of Scripture? In Isaiah 55, God sends out
his word, bringing about a desired result. The Bible is not just a collection of propositional statements.
If our inerrancy becomes reductionistic we will see all statements (or expressions) in the Scripture to be
a reduction to propositions such as the analytical philosophers. Ironically we can squeeze the very truth,
which is irreducibly abstract and personal and infinite, in our insistent that the statements are merely
atomically inerrant. What does a lamp do in Psalm 119? Or honey? This metaphorical speech is
speaking precisely about that scriptural truth. Or in Jeremiah the word is like fire and like a hammer.
These are “doing” metaphors. Even when Scripture describes itself it never merely describes but also
acts. Think also of the opening verses of the Bible. God speaks and everything stands (Ps. 33).

The Later Wittgenstein’s Big Idea: Words and sentences only have meaning in the context of a public language
game, and philosophical problems only arise when those words and sentences are removed from their native
language game.
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Anderson sees early analytical philosophy sees a continuation of the subjective turn and the
autonomous turn. It is still very much a humanistic approach. Nevertheless some of their tools can be
plundered and appropriated by Christian philosophy.

XIV. Postmodernism
Anderson’s Questions for Lesson 14
1 How did Nietzche’s philosophy lead him to his nihilistic conclusions? What was his response and
solution to this problem? How do you suppose Calvin might have responded to Nietzche (recall his
philosophy)?
2 How does Peirce’s thought compare with that of David Hume? Do you think Hume would have
agreed with Peirce? Why or why not?
3 Are Nietzche and Rorty consistent thinkers within an atheistic worldview? Why or why not?

POSTMODERNISM

How does this connect with Modernism? There are two ways to understand this: (1) as a reaction to
Modernism; a rejection of the whole Enlightenment agenda regarding certain knowledge and objective
science; (2) as an extension of Modernism — taking the same road further, pushing the Enlightenment
commitment to human autonomy to its ultimate implications.

Of course many of things rejected by Postmodernism about Modernism were actually already values of
the Classical viewpoint.

There are clear overarching (irony sold separately) characteristics. We see (1) the rejection of the
correspondence theory of truth — replaced by the coherence and pragmatist theoriest of truth —(2) the
rejection of universal reason or objective truth; (3) it is against epistemological foundationalism of any
kind (coherence or contextualist epistemologies are preferred); (4) a rejection of metaphysical essences,
or essentialism, and therefore (5) an antipathy toward metaphysical realism. Antirealism says “Either we
shouldn’t speak about reality at all, or, if we do, we should say that this “reality” depends upon us. (6)
They reject objective, fixed, textual meaning determined by the author. Instead it is interpreted by the
reader. (7) Stands against metanarratives — “big story” or a “grand story” or in other words “worldview”
— that presumes to give us a “way things are.” They do not doubt that there are metanarratives, but
rather that each one carries its own standards. There are no objective measurements to validate one or
the other. This is a “global relativism.” Anderson uses the word “global” the way I would use “universal”
or perhaps “total.” All in all, there is a total antipathy to the whole line of Western philosophy. None of
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the three main sub-disciplines are objective disciplines at all — metaphysics, epistemology, ethics —
these are all relativized.

Friedrich Nietzsche. He is an anomoly in that he comes much earlier. Some would not categorize him as a
postmodernist because “he comes too early.” However Nietzsche is often spoken of as the father of the
movement. His father and grandfather were Lutheran ministers. He was greatly enthused by his study of
ancient Greek thought, especially its mythology over against its philosophy. He was also influenced by
the pessimist atheism of Schopenhauer. He was also close friends with Richard Wagner. He was also not
very healthy, and even spent his final years in an asylum.

His writings are anti-systematic. They are designed to provoke doubt more than answer philosophical
questions. So there is a similarity to Kierkegaard in this formal respect. But Nietzsche has a fondness for
aphorisms, metaphors, and other forms ambiguity. This fits his view of truth and language. His works
include: The Gay Science (1882) — which contains his famous parable of the madman — Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (1883-85) — critical of traditional Christian morality — Beyond Good and Evil (1886), The
Genealogy of Morality (1887), and Twilight of the Idols (1888) — meant to be an accessible introduction to
his philosophy.

We need to first understand his central concept: the death of God. He does not literally mean “God
died” as in a real metaphysical being that used to be. He means the death of the belief in God: the death
of theism. So he means death in the sense of the end of credibility and social adherence. What does he
mean by “God”? He means the transcendent source of truth, meaning, value, and purpose. What is
striking here is that Nietzsche had a more accurate definition of God than many Christians do! This
death is not argued so much as it is announced. He takes the unsustainability of theism as a starting
point. It has been shown, he thinks, that natural theology has failed (cf. Hume and Kant). We are seeing
at this same time many psychological accounts for the rise of theistic beliefs in individuals and in
groups. And of course there is the rise of the natural sciences undergirding this. He is following up
Marx, Darwin, and now even Freud. He himself is very dissatisfied with the ethics of monotheistic
religions. This is his main motive: to attack the old ethic.

He is a metaphysical naturalist. His view of human nature follows. There is no soul; the body is the
product of purely material processes. The death of God, though, ushers in the advent of Nihilism.
People in his days had not really come to terms with the death of God. Nietzsche thought the world
would be better with it as an end. But he saw that people in his day were not even faintly anticipating
the initial ramifications. He draws this out with the Madman. It is like unchaining your world from the
sun or erasing the whole horizon. There will be bloody consequences at first, at least. Nietzsche will not
be gullible and hypocritical as the New Atheists. He will go all the way and tell you about it. For
example, in the Twilight of the Idols,
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Reason and language—oh, what a deceptive old female she is. I’m afraid we’re not rid of
God, because we still have faith in grammar!”

He understood that without God, literally everything was disordered. There is no objective intellectual
norms either, not just intellectual. In the Will to Power, he says the presupposition that human reason
must be justified shows this. It is naive, an after-effect of belief in God: that we have this reason that
lines up with the way the world really is. All human thought is radically perspectival. A most interesting
admission in the lecture! There are no facts, only interpretations. Scientific naturalism, he knew,
undermined itself. But if all we have is an infinite amount of equally non-authoritative perspectives on
the world, then … X, this is where he should have turned around! But he pushed through to nihilism.

And yet he is not happy about it. It is not something to be embraced. It was a threat to society and
would bring anarchism. But his alternative is not to turn back to the Christian or Platonic view of the
world (he saw those as one and the same). He roots it in the ground — to create our own meaning and
values.

Nietzsche’s Ethics. Morality should be grounded in aesthetic values. He thinks this marks the highest
expression of human existence. Kierkegaard placed the “aesthetic person” on the lowest of the stages,
presumably because they were sensual and passing. But for Nietzsche it is possible to perform an
aesthetic critique on systems of ethics. Ethical systems cannot judge each other. That would be
question-begging. he used the two Greek deities: Apollo and Dionysus. He took these two as
representing two opposing, but complementary, aspects of human existence. Apollo is the god of the
sun, but also rational thinking, order, music, and poetry, purity, and prudence. Dionysus is the god of
wine, passion, ecstatic revery (the Romans called him Baccus) — that implies irrationality. Greek culture
synthesizes these two sides. Great art requires a balance of both — Apollonarian restraint and
Dionysian passion. European culture has wrongly tried to repress the latter. The Judeo-Christian moral
vision needs to be replaced by the Greek. This leads him to a critique of biblical morality.

He distinguishes between two forms of morality: master and slave. Clearly the first is the Greek, the
preferable. This is neither a moral nor a rational critique. Rather this is an aesthetic critique. He says the
Christian idea of a universal and objective morality from on high is untennable. There are no universals,
only particulars. Thus humans are free to adopt whatever morality they see fit. The master morality is
that of power and self-glorification. This is the morality championed by Greco-Roman cultured noblity.
They are motivated primarily by power: their need to affirm their will over that of evil. “Good” means
strong, noble, cultured; whereas “bad” means weak, vulgar, common. Master morality represents a
celebration of life and the human spirit. Slave morality represents utility and self-denial. Hence
Christians were those “preachers of death,” though he lumps Jews and Christians together. This
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originated with abuse and oppression and these resent that they are on the bottom of society. They
resent life and power and glory. They are jealous, sniveling, slime. Thus in slave morality, “good” means
humble, weak, merciful, altruistic, making sacrifices for the sake of others and “bad” means ruthless,
strong, cruel, pride, and using power over others. So this weakness is really a denial of life, a loathing of
life.

One group is determining the values of that culture. Nietzsche thinks that in the course of history there
has been a “transvaluation of value,” a shift, or reversal in the previous value system. There was
originally a higher value system. But how did the slimy weak rise above the strong? At any rate, a re-
reversal is needed back to the master morality. This will be accomplished by the will to power. What
does he mean by this will to power? The basic human instant is to seek power and to express strength.
This will necessarily expresses itself in human culture. It cannot be permanently suppressed. (Here
there is a hint of Hegel and Marx — inevitability to the progression) The West has tried to suppress it:
Christianity is actually opposed to nature, as it demands that we love our enemies, which is perverse. It
is “the most fatal and seductive lie that has ever existed.” The Ubermensch (or Overman, or even
Superman) must lead the way. The most literal translation might be “The Over-Human,” since the
German for mensch is like a member of the human species.

The Overman is an ideal, to which we should now aspire. He is the creator of a new value system:
almost an atheistic savior-figure. “Nothing is true; everything is permitted. … for the notion of truth has
been disposed of.” So this takes Dostoyeski’s warning and makes it a declaration of independence.

How does Nietzsche’s philosophy reflect the rationalist-irrationalist dialectic? He actually offers a nice
tension. He is a kind of a rationalist at his foundation. He took the dispensing of God as an axiom. But
then his whole system which follows denies any transcedent standards: no universal facts, only infinite
perspectives. And then, perhaps, his trans-valuation of values becomes another rationalism where a new
system of morality is proposed. The master morality has a coherence to it, and thus becomes a system.

Nietzsche’s Big Idea: The idea of God is dead. We killed it. The only solution is the willful exercise of human
power.

PRAGMATISM

Pragmatism says that what really counts is what works. It came about because of what was perceived to
be a crisis in epistemology. There was the empiricist-materialist tradition, which represented the
scientific side of things. But it threatens skepticism and nihilism. Then the rationalist-idealist tradition,
which represented the more ethical or political form of philosophy. But it is seen as lacking scientific
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credibility. It still smacked of speculative metaphysics. Prior to this, truth was to be understood in terms
of correspondence.

There is a critique of the correspondence theory of truth that accused it of resorting to Platonism.
Another is that it threatened skepticism because it raises the question: How do you verify this relation?
How is there a correspondence between our thoughts and the facts. There seems to be needed a third
thing (outside of one’s thoughts) that verifies their relation. So a number of movements arose to provide
an alternative. Pragmatism was one of them: An idea is true and justified if it works for us. If believing
an idea and acting on it accomplishes what we are after, then this is what it means for it to be true. On
such a view, one does not need any external verification. All one needs is internal goals and experiences.

How does pragamtism pave the way for more postmodern ideas? It should straightforward, though we
tend to think of Continental thought being the main fountain of postmodernism. But again, everyone
was operating off of Kant’s final scoreboard.

William James.

Charles Sanders Pierce.

Anti-realism is the claim that we have no access to a mind-independent world out there. This is a straw man.
Why must a truth “out there” imply a mind-less object? It is only if we strip the objective of the
existence of God’s mind that we arrive at this. At any rate, coherence or pragmatic theory is what
remains. A coherence theory implies internal consistency in one’s total system. The system is true, and
even a proposition is true, to the degree that it coheres with the whole system. There is scientific anti-
realism that applies anti-realism to science. Scientific theories are not meant to be taken as literal
descriptions of reality. A theory may work to produce certain results, but this does not require that such
objects are real “out there.” Moral anti-realism maintains that there are no objective, transcendent moral
laws. All moral truths are relative to cultures. Global or Metaphysical Anti-realism says that all truths are
products of human thought. Such claims are contingent on subjects or groups of subjects.

John Dewey.

Thomas Kuhn. His major work was The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), and he was basically a
historian of science. The basic thesis was that scientific progress consists primarily through a series in
revolutions of paradigms. This is to be contrasted to the standard account, usually found in high school
textbooks, that of smooth, orderly, rational accumulation of theories, findings, and laws, each building
and well placed on what came before it. It is all very refined and dispassionate. Those theories are
always evaluated by well agreed upon rules that are disinterested and objective. There’s only a single
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scientific method as well. So the whole thing evolves and progresses closer and closer to the truth. But
Kuhn said in response: The standard account is both historically and philosophically mistaken.

He argues that this history of science does not support the normal account. The nature of scientific
research itself does not support the standard account. He offers a more accurate picture. A central
element of this account is the idea of a paradigm — a theoretical framework for doing scientific
research. There are five basic elements: (1) a basic ontology — assumptions made about the kind of
entities that science is dealing with; (2) a basic explanatory theory of how these entities fit together; (3) a
set of standard methods — assumptions about how experiments should be done; (4) a set of basic
observations —broadly accepted experimental data; (5) a set of problems to be solved.

An example of a paradigm is Neo-Darwinism. It takes Darwin’s original theory and combines it with
more recent genetic science. (1) There is a basic ontology — all living organisms. (2) There’s a basic
explanatory theory — these all developed from simpler organisms: random mutations and natural
selection. (3) There is a set of standard methods — one being searching for transitional fossils and fit
them into the tree of life. (4) There is a set of accepted observations— the fossil record. (5) There are a
set of problems — namely the gaps, where there seem to be no transitions or ambiguous cases.

A paradigm can be compared to a worldview. If its proponents are especially bad philosophers, it will
certainly be generalized into such in full. Kuhn suggests that there three basic phases in the history of
science: (1) Pre-Science in which there is no dominant paradigm. Over time the scientists gravitate
toward a particular paradigm, without any apparent rhyme or reason. (2) Normal Science in which there
is one dominant paradigm that defines and constrains what scientists do and how they do it. They focus
on solving problems within that paradigm, but the paradigm itself is taken for granted and grows into a
status of unchallengeable. But then anomolies arise: unresolved problems that, eventually, make normal
science increasingly difficult and even “anxious.” (3) Revolutionary Science in which a new paradigm
arises and replaces wholesale the old paradigm. A crisis arose in the normal science and cannot be
resolved in the former context. It is finally challenged and opened to question. One or more new
paradigms are offered and their promise is that they have either fewer anomolies or else not the same
kind. These are usually proposed by those on the fringe: they are seen as “crackpots” or mavericks and
they are ostracized and so forth. But in the end, they cannot be silenced and a paradigm shift occurs.
But only a viable new paradigm can motivate those on the sinking ship to jump off to something solid.
Obviously the cases of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein demonstrate this. Even Lyle and
Hutton’s geology culminating in Darwin’s theory shows this. Ironically, Kuhn’s idea was so resisted
precisely out of jealousy to maintain the “sea-worthiness” of Darwin’s sinking ship.

At any rate, this is the true history of science. He emphasizes that such revolutions are not orderly,
predictable, and rational. They are incommensurable — one cannot objectively compare them by some
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universal standard. Each paradigm has its own assumptions, criteria, methods, and observational data.
There is a close parallel to Wittgenstein’s language games here. There is a sense in which the theories
determine the observation itself. So the paradigmatic boudaries produce the “passive” induction going
on inside. Many people think that scientists don’t have theories. They only observe and the theories are
derived from it. Not so, said Kuhn. Observations are thus theory-dependent and theory-relative. Many
thought Kuhn was saying that “there is no objective truth in science.” Of course this complaint already
assumes (it’s a philosophical paradigm!) that only science yields truth to begin with. His point was more
specific: that those above attributes of a paradigm are not objective in the sense of transcending the
paradigm. But this offers an anti-realist view of science. I would say that this does not demand
metaphysical anti-realism. It restricts its crticism to science. This same mistake is often made about the
falsification principle as well. It was meant to be restricted to science, not to apply to metaphysical
skepticism.

How does this apply to the Intelligent Design debate? It may help to explain why many scientists refuse
to even consider ID. Certainly Kuhn’s work is part of the picture, but it can be reductionistic as well.
There is the spiritual reason. Tenaciously holding on to methodological naturalism (as Hunter, Johnson,
Moreland, and others call it) has a lot at stake.

Could anti-realism about science be beneficial to the Christian apologist? Consider the question of the
age of the earth. “A young-earther could adopt an anti-realist view of science … because it’s useful.” It
would be difficult to hold on to this without confusing it with an Averroist-like double-truth theory.

Kuhn’s Big Idea: Scientists do not follow a single, objective, disinterested, rational method; and scientific progress
does not mean that scientific theories take us ever closer to the truth.

Michel Focault. He was a French historian-philosopher and social campaigner. He identifies knowledge
with power. Knowledge is supposedly about the pursuit of truth, to which we apply universal principles
of knowledge. But really it is about knowledge. They make such claims to priviledge their group over
other groups. All knowledge claims, even about necessary truths, are really just culturally conditioned.

Jacques Derrida. He is another French philosopher and literary critic. Many secular philosophers even
saw him as a charlatan. His writings were deliberately trading on equivocation, not merely ambiguity.
One of his distinctive ideas is that written texts do not have an objective determinate meaning fixed by
the author. It is radically indeterminate. Words are always defined in terms of other words. There is
never a stopping point or anchor outside of language. So one can never pin down the meaning of any
single word. So reading a text is always about playing with the text to find alternative meanings. Hence
the name of his “subverting the text,” which is Deconstructionism. It is even better to contradict what is
assumed about the author’s meaning. The author “releases that text into the wild” so that no one gets to
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“control” it. Needless to say he is a radical nominalist who denies that there are any transcendent
standards of meaning that could ever anchor a text or rational discussion of a text. His philosophy is the
death of God applies to language (Was he most influenced by Nietzsche?).

Richard Rorty. He was an American philosopher who started in the analytical tradition. So there are
shades of Wittgenstein’s journey. He was infliuenced by Nietzsche’s nihilism, Darwin’s evolution,
Dewey’s pragmatism, and the Later Wittgenstein’s language as a culture-construction. Philosophy and the
Mirror of Nature (1979) is the one that put Rorty on the map. It was his critique of traditional
epistemology. Of course it was post-Enlightenment he was criticizing. That phrase about the mirror was
from Dewey. They thought it was naive to suppose that the mind is passively reflecting the world out
there. Consequences of Pragmatism (1982) showed he was a more consistent pragmatist than all the rest,
even Dewey. Then he wrote Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), which rounded out his
postmodernism.

In Rorty what we see is a wholesale rejection of modernist epistemology and really the whole Western
philosophical tradition as a whole. There is of course anti-realism because “there is no mind-
independent reality.” Of course it is unintelligible. But that is not what classical realism taught. He also
rejects foundationalism. There are no unavoidable or undeniable truths (except that one, apparently).
He is also an anti-representationalist. That is, he denies that thought corresponds to fact. So this goes
straight to the claims of early analytical philosophy. Knowledge is a matter of conversation and social
practice rather than an attempt to mirror nature. Here he explicitly pits pragmatism against
correspondence — so clearly pragmatism as an epistemology. This is especially true about political
beliefs. We all have social and political goals. Truth is that which helps us achieve those goals. “Truth is
no more than whatever our peers will let us get away with saying.” That is the most crass way of
equating it to social convention. Plantinga comments that this is self-defeating, because one thing your
peers will not let you get away with saying is this very thing. I think this is typical way of Plantinga
underselling the house. This is precisely what everyone wants to let them get away with increasingly!

But for Rorty, for any truth, there was a time and place (or will be) in which that truth is false. We have
simply decided on each and every convention: including all so-called “necessary” truths. Needless to say,
in order to be the most consistent pragmatist yet, he has to apply this to truths of morality as well. There
are no absolute necessities, only relative necessities — relative to our language and social practices. We
could describe the world in any number of ways (an infinite variety of ways), but no such description
had to be that way. This also has to reject coherentism, because in principle every singular description
within a more total convention would have to be able to contradict every other and that would have to
be acceptable.
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Anderson draws out that “Many people have concluded that therefore Rorty is a relativist … [but] Rorty
said, ‘I’m not even playing that game. Absolute and relativist only makes sense in that traditional game
of epistemology. I reject that whole framework.” So he denies that he is a relativist because he rejects
that language game. Does that really work? No. I would say, because we don’t play his game. We do
accept traditional objective categories and he does not get to say the substance of ideas being relative
and then turn around and deny that it is relativism. It is what it is. He denies that there are any such
things as essences or natures. We could go as far to say that he is an anti-philosopher, that he is anti-
philosophy. He himself said, “There really is no such thing as philosophy … the way that we have talked
about it” as a distinct discipline. Here is how he can say it.

Anti-essentialism. If nothing has an essence, then philosophy does not have an essence. What we call
“philosophy” is just part of the human conversation, and there are no sharp boundaries between such
parts. But again — isn’t that a nature? This has drawn contempt from the analytic tradition.

So after so much of what Rorty is against, what is he for? Ironism. That is his answer. Ironism is a
postmodernist pragmatism that has to follow the collpase of modernist epistemology. That collapse is a
given, and so if we are going to have integrity, this is the way. Part of his explanation is his notion of a
“final vocabulary.” This is a set of words by which we make sense of our experiences and justify our
beliefs and actions. Some words are more basic than others (or seem so, lest it seem that
foundationalism has anything going for it). These words are taken to reflect deep senses of essences
(even though there are no essences). These words are meant to capture necessities in the world. The
purpose is to carve up, or divide, the world in ways that allow us to categorize. But he asks, Does our
final vocabulary carve up the world “at the joints”? (As in carving a turkey) It has natural divisions
(joints). Rorty is asking “Does the world have such natural joints that correspond to our final
vocabulary?” He denies that the world has any such natural joints. That means that there is no right or
wrong final vocabulary.

Anderson points out that his view is a repudiation of the doctrine of creation. Think about the sense of
Genesis 1. It constantly speaks of “its kind.” And then this replication of kinds continues. I never
thought about Genesis 1 as a source text for natural law. Anderson is trying to show that Rorty is wrong
about those natural joints, but I wonder how much presuppositionalists will recognize what this means
about natural law. At any rate, if anything is admirable about Rorty he, like Nietzsche, is a more
consistent atheist. Rorty states that every final vocabulary is contingent and unjustifiable. These are
historical accidents. So the ironist position can be summarized in three elements: (1) he has doubts
about his own final vocabulary compared to others (he has an awareness of the weakness); (2) he
recognizes that he cannot vindicate his final vocabulary even on his own terms (so more explicitly
vulnerable than Wittgenstein’s language games); (3) he abandons the idea that his final vocabulary is
“closer to the truth” than any competitors. It becomes for him merely a prefered final vocabulary. But on
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the other hand, he recognizes his freedom to choose a vocabulary. He abandons the chains of rational
arguments based on “reality,” as is libertated to use the most effective pragmatic strategies.

There is an underlying worldview here, even if no one wants to recognize it. Remember how Darwin
influences him. Rorty acknowledges that his ironism is the outworking of a thoroughgoing Darwinian
naturalism. One can see the progression of that epistemological liberation above. If one is a consistent
Darwinian naturalist, you have to conclude about knowledge, truth, and reason, that these also evolve.
There is no objective version of any of these. These have arisen with the species. Evolution also isn’t
headed in any particular direction. It could have gone otherwise. It could have turned out in any
number of alternative ways: none of which could have been more or less valid than any other. So the
Darwinian must say that there is nothing or normative about human thought or language. The same
assessment is made by the article on Rorty in the Stanford Philosophical Encyclopedia. In a book
review toward the end of his life, Rorty said that just as Darwinianism dismissed the idea of the human
species having a moral compass that points us to Good, so we ought to be consistent that it does the
same for a rational compass that points us to Truth. So again, we can appreciate the consistency for
what it clarifies.

How else might Rorty be useful to Christian apologists? Like Nietzsche he clearly sees the implications
of atheism not merely for morality, but for reason and truth as well. If there is no God, then there is no
truth. There is no God. Therefore there is no truth. But we can turn that hypothetical argument around.
If there is God, then truth. God. Therefore truth. Postmodernism recognizes certain insights that, if
turned around, become theistic arguments.

Rorty Big Idea: Truth has nothing to do with our thoughts mirroring a mind-independent world. Truth is merely
those descriptions of the world we happen to prefer over alternative descriptions.

Human autonomy his explicit goal, one can see the Rationalist part in the middle of the obvious sea of
his Irrationalism. All of these philosophies in the Late Modern (to Postmodern) scene are examples of
attempts to come to terms with the implications of Atheism.

XV. Christian Responses to Postmodernity

Anderson’s Questions for Lesson 15
1 How have Hackett, Swinburne, and Craig revitalized the use of natural theology in apologetics in
specific ways differently than previous thinkers?
2 How do Van Til, Clark, and Plantinga differ in their philosophies from that of Calvin? In what ways
are they similar?
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3 Explain the difference in epistemologies between Craig, Van Til, and Plantinga. Do you consider
each of their approaches to be valid and useful? Why or why not?

The philosophical atmosphere by the middle of the twentieth century was not a friendly environment
for Christian thinkers. The prominent schools had rejected metaphysics altogether. There was
accordingly a general evidentialist tendency, channeling David Hume. Ethically a kind of utilitarian-
hedonistic synthesis was under the surface. Otherwise it was believed that ethical claims were reducible
to human taste. As for religion in general, it was lacking in all academic credibility, though in some
circles many could still admit that it served some subjective purpose. Natural theology had supposedly
been burried a few centuries ago now.

There is a kind of revival of natural theology at the same time.

Stuart Hackett. He was an Evangelical philosopher, teaching at Wheaton and then Trinity Evangelical
Divinity School. His most significant book was The Resurrection of Theism (1957). His approach was to
establish an epsitemology first. From those terms, belief in God can then be advocated. He called his
epistemology rational empiricism. He rejected both a pure rationalism and a pure empiricism. Both
truncated views would fail. So was he doing something like Kant? Anderson calls it a Neo-Kantianism.
All knowledge begins with the raw data of sense experience. This sense experience is ordered and
structured by synthetic a priori categories. We have these truths that are not “trivial logical” truths. We
can use them to organize our experience: e. g. existence, substance, causation, possibility, necessity, etc.
However he differs from Kant in this: These do not exist only in the mind. These cateogires are both
forms of human thought and forms of things in themselves, so there is a correspondence theory of truth
anchoring the phenomena not merely in the mind, but in metaphysical reality. Anderson asks: How do
you justify that assumption. Do they match real essences of causation, substance, etc? This seems to be a
faith axiom for Hacket. He never does justify it.

Having established this epistemological base, he procedes to natural theology. He does not endorse
Anselm’s ontological argument. Either it is a tautology or it begs the question — it tacitly assumes the
existence of God in order to prove it. But he does endorse the cosmological and the teleological
arguments. If any contingent being exists, then that implies that there must be a necessarily existent
being. Montgomery must have been influenced by this. He mentioned it approvingly in his lectures.
Hackett’s teleological argument does not appeal to empirical data. Rather the existence of human minds
and the existence of morals implies that there must exist an eternal, intelligent will. How is this
teleological rather than moral (axiological)? If God wills that things be, then he wills that intelligent
agents move toward certain goods and right action. Perhaps that is it.
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Hackett is a direct influence on later classical apologists: Norman Geisler and William Lane Craig were
both “inspired” by his work. It is not his specific arguments, but rather what he was doing at that time
was seen as a model who could pick up where he left off and improve upon it.

Hackett’s Big Idea: Nature theology isn’t dead. The existence of God can be demonstrated on the basis of a
rational empiricist epistemology.

Richard Swinburne. He taught first at Keele till 1985, then at Oxford until 2002. His works include a
trilogy on theism: The Coherence of Theism (1977), The Existence of God (1979), and Faith and Reason (1981).
In some way faith needs to be justified by reason, but it is. He moved on to focus on specifically
Christian beliefs — Responsibility and Atonement (1989), Revelation (1991), The Christian God (1994), in
which he goes against Aquinas and others that you can make a philosophical argument for the Trinity
being necessary, and he argues that the Incarnation is coherent, and Providence and the Problem of Evil
(1998). The doctrinal products that he finally defends do not quite measure up to a Reformed
understanding of some of these doctrines, but they are still worth getting. For example, he relies heavily
upon free will in that last work. The Resurrection of God Incarnate (2003) makes a sophisticated historical
argument for the resurrection.

How does Swinburne see the relationship between philosophy and theology — philosophy is
foundational to a rational theology. Anderson describes him as more rationalistic than Aquinas. A
rational theistic belief must be based upon good logic and evidence. He uses analytical philosophy and
modern probability theory in defense of the faith. He applies technical probability theory to both the
existence of God and the resurrection of Christ. He appropriates Bayes Theorem. Thomas Bayes
originally formulated it in the eighteenth century. He was an English philosopher and mathematician
and Presbyterian minister. This theorem is widely used today in evidential arguments.

The probability of A (some event), given B (some other event), is equal to the probability of B, given
A, multiplied by the prior probability of A, divided by the prior probability of B.

Or,

P(A|B) = P(A) P(B|A)

P(B)

So is B the background knowledge “event(s)” or a necessary condition, or could it be either? Could B be

plural and not just singular? He tries to establish the very high probability of a “very general theism.”
Miracles and religious experience are both objects of peoples’ claims — thus objective insofar as they
are claims about objects — are treated in that first step. Swinburne holds that God is a temporal being.
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He has always existed, but always existed in time. Because of his view of free will, then God cannot
know in advance what choices people will make. Thus Swinburne is an Open Theist. Swinburne
attaches probability estimates to each piece and level of his apologetic system. Then he plugs them into
Bayes Theorem. For example, there is an approximately 0.97, or 97%, probability that the resurrection
took place … He was mocked for such a precise number for such a thing. What he offers in response to
the problem of evil is a Greater Good Theodicy, though naturally libertarian free will is the central good
for permitting evil and suffering in the world.

Swinburne’s Big Idea. Natural theology isn’t dead. Christian theism can be shown to be very probable on the
basis of Baysian evidential arguments.

It is in keeping with the Enlightenment direction for Hackett and Swinburne to have started with
epistemology. Once we have nailed down how and whether we can know anything, then we can proceed
to positive demonstration.

Anderson says he is using the word “Reformed” in a broad sense here to move on to “Reformed
Philosophy,” influence from Calvin and so forth. Even with this qualification, it does exclude anyone
who is a classicalist.

Cornelius Van Til. Anderson declares his biases: “I am a big fan of Van Til.” He studied philosophy at
Calvin College and Princeton (under those with Kantian-Hegelian persuasions). He was quickly
recruited by Machen for the beginning of Westminster, where he taught from 1929 to 1972 and so on.
He roots his influence mostly from Calvin and Bavinck. “Kant is an influence in a sense, in that Van Til
used a kind of transcendental argument.” he also alludes to Absolute Idealism — the British Idealists in
particular spoke of all reality being coherent and rational. His thesis was written as a Christian critique
of idealism. His later book, Christianity and Idealism was rooted in this. Yet in the process of arguing to
the Idealists, “If you want rational order and coherence in all things, you need the Christian idea of God
to get that” (which we would agree with), he was likely unaware of how many of their categories (or
Kant’s) he had injested. Kuyper’s influence is seen in the antithesis idea, which Van Til turned into the
rationalist-irrationalist dialectic (which casts Kuyper in Hegelian lines).

His main works include A Defense of the Faith (1955), Christianity and Barthianism (1962), A Christian
Theory of Knowledge (1969), An Introduction to Systematic Theology (1974), Christian Apologetics (1975), …

What is his view on the relationship between theology and philosophy? Human reason must be
submissive to revelation: both natural and special. Any kind of neutral or autonomous philosophy is
both sinful and futile. Autonomy in this sense is defined as the failure to start with a total commitment
to the authority of God’s word over all things. Anyone who would subject theology to an autonomous
philosophy would be a denial of God. It is effectively denying the existence of the true God. So the
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relationship is this: Philosophy must be undergirded and directed by biblical theology, meaning not in
the discipline sense (e. g. Vos). Rather he just meant “the theology of the Bible.” Biblical theology is
Reformed theology. Van Til often distinguishes between Reformed and Evangelical theology, by the
latter he meant non-Reformed in the Protestant lineage. He was not saying that Arminians are not true
Christians, but only that they were inconsistent with their Christian profession. So Christian theology
and apologetics must be based upon explicitly Reformed theology because it is true and because it is
philosophically necessary. It is amazing that presuppositionalists think that this is incompatible with the
one-two step approach of Classicalism per se.

Van Til is most known for his distinct approach to apologetics: presuppositionalism. Actually there are
several forms. Anderson calls it “transcendental presuppositionalism.” It focuses on the presuppositions
that people actually have: foundational, guiding assumptions that determine how people reason about
the world. It is transcendental because he advocates a transcendental argument to vindicate Christian
presuppositions. It is a worldview oriented approach. Entirely worldviews are at stake. We are not
simply debating isolated historical facts — whether Jesus rose from the grave. There is a radical
antithesis between the view of the Christian and non-Christian. He saw other views as assuming that
the two have basic agreement and only disagree on the details. In fact, it is a clash of entire
epistemologies.

This a crucial point: “Any argument we make for God’s existence must presuppose (“at a deep level,”
Anderson adds) God’s existence.” What Van Tillians don’t realize is that this is an equivocation-and-a-
half. And I mean that literally. The first part of the statement “Any argument we make for God’s existence”
has an “experiential” person-to-person speech act as its referent (or it could be an argument one
entertains in his own mind or writes down, but in any case, that is ultimately designed to persuade
other persons). But then the second part of the statement — “must presuppose God’s existence.” What is
the referent of this? It depends. We could stay consistent and keep talking about our experiential
conversation meant to persuade. Or we could shift meaning (the equivocation) and make it refer to our
objective system: i. e. that which we take “the Christian worldview” to be, irrespective of the persuasive
discourse. One is polemical and the other is metaphysical. Notice what follows on either path. If we
treat the polemical referent, then Van Til was really saying that we should never argued for God’s
existence with another person without insisting that first this other person must presuppose that God
exists. In fact we are commending to that person a circular argument (Yes—we know about Frame’s
material on the virtue and inevitability of the circular reasoning of all worldviews. That doesn’t change
the fact just stated). But supposing the presuppositionalist objects, saying, “No — I don’t recognize that
to be my method. It may be the method of some presuppositionalists, but you should really try
Bahnsen…” or something of the sort. Very well, then let us choose the other path. What Van Til’s system
really maintains by this statement is that we [the Reformed apologists] “must presuppose God’s
existence” in our system, even if we do not insist that the person we are speaking with does so before we
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can engage. But that is precisely what Reformed classicalists like Sproul have been saying! What
remains of the critique of classicalism at that point? If the statement is really only a metaphysical
commitment — note Anderson’s qualification (“at a deep level” — Amen) — then really what is required
is only that the Reformed apologist not concede the standards of the unbelieving system. That is where
the reassertion of the true definitions of natural theology and natural law come in. Assessing evidence,
by probabilistic means, as such, is not “a secular canon.” If you say that it is then it is you who are
conceding ground to unbelieving systems. As if unbelieving philosophers invented everything from
logic to the five senses to the ABCs!

We must not attempt to argue from some nuetral starting point. But why not simply say to the
unbeliever: “Now let me show my cards and you show yours, because let’s face it: neither of us are
neutral. I presuppose the God of Scripture. You presuppose molecules in motion.” Now then can we
then say, “Now let us admit that there is a moral sense (e. g. Lewis’ argument)” And if not, then I must
ask the persuppositionalist, Why not? Do you think that “moral sense” per se is a secular invention?
That was not Paul’s take in Romans 2:14-15. And the Reformers did not think like either. They did not
think to call such a universal thing “neutral” by virtue of its universal presence or claims. It is not
“common property” much less “their property” simply because God has caused it to press upon all.

Back to the lecture notes, Van Til’s view of God is that because God is the all-explaining principle, then
nothing can be explained except in terms of God. Van Til saw his “Reformed apologetic” that follows —
“All use of proof and evidence must presuppose God — to be the only way to validly conclude from an
all-explaining God. But why not just explain the explanations that follow from the all-explaining God in
terms the unbeliever can understand?

A transcendental argument is the only argument for an absolute God. What does he mean? It is an
argument that discloses the preconditions of rational thought. The idea comes from Kant. It asks, “What
must be the case if we are to know anything at all?” Of course this utilizes all sorts of categories of
general revelation. Cheating. Cheating. Cheating. Just like Kant, and in the same direction as Kant! But
this argument “seeks to discover the foundations of the house of human knowledge must have to
function.” This is a great goal, but Van Til does not and cannot seek it; rather by his own standard he
must presuppose those preconditions. If he uses any words or ideas for it, he is doing the very thing he
calls “natural theology” and “autonomy.”

Van Til’s analogy is helpful for seeing how uncritical his idea was: “You cannot see the beams under the
floor of your house, but can infer that they are there because you are standing on the floor.” But wait:
That requires knowledge of 1. floors, 2. beams, 3. standing, 4. yourself, 5. the relationship between
standing and floors, 6. between beams and floors, and so on and so on. Cheating! Cheating! Cheating!
General revelation is the only psychologically possible starting point! Turning from natural theology to a
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transcendental view: You cannot see God, but because if he were not there, we could know nothing at
all. This is metaphysically true, but it still uses nothing but generally revealed truths. How does one
know that God is analogous to those beings?

Van Til also presupposed the Trinity as an argument for the one and the many. Only if ultimate reality is
both one and many do we prevent the irrationalism of either monism or pluralism.

Antitheism presupposes theism — Reformed Classicalists agree. But we recognize this as a metaphysical
statement: even of the metaphysics of knowlede (so first order epistemology).

Van Til is critical of natural theology as done by Aquinas or Butler. He says that everyone has a basic
knowledge of God, but unbelievers already know this and suppress it. Classicalists would say, “Exactly.”
If you argue for or to probability, you compromise the clarity of general revelation. And he says natural
theology traditionally understood treats the universal facts of nature as neutral.

Van Til says “there is common ground. It is not neutral ground.” Classicalists again say, precisely! Then
why call the knowledge of God in that ground (what is what natural theology is) autonomous and
neutral!!!

Frame (and Anderson) have questioned whether Van Til’s criticisms of various traditional arguments are
fair. If the unbeliever can do nothing with common terminology, then even the transcendental argument
wouldn’t be of value. Some therefore wonder whether he gives sufficient place for common grace. But
that’s only the rose by another name! This is a really fascinating sentence or two. This is precisely
Sproul, Gerstner, and Lindsley’s point, and they weren’t really being more overreaching in their critique
than this.

Van Til’s Big Idea. All rational thought presupposes Christian theism.

Gordon Clark. He was an American philosopher who taught at Wheaton from 1937 to 43 and then Butler
at 1943 to 73. He was influenced by Augustine and Calvin in his Reformed theologian and metaphysics.
But Anderson would put Plato and Descartes are influences in his epistemology. Clark and his followers
would dispute this, but Anderson classifies him as a rationalist. That does ring true on who he classifies
as an empiricist and how he places all modern science into the affirming the consequent fallacy. He
thinks you can refute empiricism in that nothing that we receive through the senses gives us knowledge
of the world.

His philosophy may be called Scripturalism (I have heard Propositionalism). He does reject any non-
revelational rationalism. So he has a revelational rationalism, being very adamant about Sola Scriptura.
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It is his epistemological axiom: the Bible alone is the word of God. All knowledge therefore consists in 1.
what is expressly written and 2. what may be validly inferred from it. Anything else is mere opinion.

He was a presuppositionalist, but a “dogmatic presuppositionalist,” in his apologetics. Every system of

thought has some unproven axioms. A presupposition for him is an axiom that cannot be proven by any
more fundamental truth. The Christian system of thought has its own axiom — the Bible alone is the
word of God. However we can still rational evaluate different systems of thought for their consistency
and comprehensiveness. So his strategy is to do internal logical critiques of non-Christian systems of
thought: to wield the LNC against non-believing systems of thought. Step 1. Show that the Christian
system of thought is logically consistent. Many critics will say that the Trinity and Incarnation that he
winds up defending move beyond orthodoxy. Step 2. Show that non-Christian systems are logically
inconsistent. One limitation of this is that showing this is not to prove that one’s own system is true. To
show that a system is logically system is not to prove that it is true. Perhaps multiple systems are
coherent within themselves, perhaps even consistent with each other. What then? Some cannot be
reconciled with other systems. Some may be consistent yet not corresponding to the world. George
Mavrodes exposed this limitation.

Clark says that Christians ultimately accept the Bible is that the Holy Spirit causes us to believe. The
problem here is that a cause is not a reason. I wonder the limitations of another presuppositionalist
(whatever stripe) pointing this out. How is Van Til’s system different in this respect? Anderson says that
Clark’s system reduces to fideism.

Clark’s answer to the problem of evil is that God is ex lex: above the law, and thus it does not apply to
him. Is this not a form, or a tenant, of voluntarism? Was Clark motivated by an antipathy to natural law
and realism?

About science, Clark is an anti-realist because of his own anti-empiricism. So we do not need to care
about any conflict between science and Scripture.

Clark’s Big Idea. The only logically consistent system of thought is one that take the divine revelation of the Bible
as its axiom.

William Lane Craig. Craig studied under Hackett at Wheaton and then went on to a doctorate under
John Hick at Birmingham in the UK — the topic of his dissertation being the kalaam cosmological
argument — and then finally a second doctorate at Munich under Pannenberg. He taught from 1980 to
1986 at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, then went to more study, and then from 1994 on the
research professor at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. He is very close in all views to
colleague J. P. Moreland. Anderson regards him to be the most formidable debator and defender of the
Christian faith today. In his view he has never lost a debate, in spite of some near-draws. His works
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include The Kalaam Cosmological Agrument (1979), The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz (1980),
The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus During the Deist Controversy (198?), Reasonable
Faith (1984), The Only Wise God (1987) — which is a defense of Molinism —

He sees theology and philosophy as complementary and mutually supportive. Theology can clarify and
provide rational support for theological claims. Whereas theology can inform and direct philosophical
investigation. This may come from some Plantinga influence? As for faith and reason, Chritian faith is
reasonable but need not be based on philosophical arguments. Craig endorses a version, then, of
Reformed epistemology. However Craig is much more enthusiastic about natural theology and
evidential apologetics. Analytical philosophy and historic scholarship (including secular scholarship)
can be used in the defense of the faith. So he is an advocate of classical apologetics: a two-step
approach. Step 1 is to demonstrate the existence of God (especially the kalaam cosmological argument
in Craig’s case — stated simply as a modus ponens); Step 2 is to demonstrate the resurrection of Christ.
Ofcall evidentially established truths, the resurrection is central: probably on the influence of
Pannenberg.

Against the problem of evil he also offers a Greater Good Theodicy. Christians shouldn’t just be on
defense here: Craig argues that the very distinction of good versus evil turns into a proof for the
existence of God.

He is also known for his work in philosophical theology. He believes we can clarify and more deeply
understand theological knowledge by philosophy. Of course he does this with Molinism. He thinks he
must do this to preserve all three coherehently: providence and omniscience and human freedom. Our
actions must be free in the libertarian sense. So how does God both know what we will do and maintain
control? The answer is that God has “middle knowledge” coming in between his natural knowledge (of all
possibilities) and his free knowledge (what God has chosen and what actually will happen). His middle
knowledge is what he has before he creates anything: of what any possible person would freely do in any
possible circumstance. Where does Molinism come on a spectrum of Calvinism to Arminianism? Craig
thinks it is a middle way. It supposedly recognizes a strong view of providence with a serious view of
libertarian free will. Anderson says it concedes much more ground to Arminianism — divine election is
still conditional. This is obvious enough. Molinism gets hit from both sides. Calvinists say it reduces
sovereignty and aseity because it still makes God’s plan dependent on the creatures. Whereas some
Arminians have complained that it still makes God a divine manipulater. But the main problem is that it
is incoherent.55

Craig also writes about the relationship of God to time. He has a very novel and idiosyncratic view. God
is timeless prior to creation, but temporal subject to creation. “The moment” (literally) that God creates,

55 See Frame’s Systematic Theology — one of his strong points is a multi-level decimation of Middle Knowledge.
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God himself must be in time — cf. Turretin and Dolezal on this, particularly missing from modern
theologians is the notion of God ad extra. When God acts, where does the change and succession occur?

Craig’s Big Idea. Natural theology isn’t dead. Christian theism can be shown to be very probable by the
kalaam cosmological and the case for the resurrection. Craig even waters that down with words like
“more probable than not.”

Alvin Plantinga. He studied under the same professor at Calvin College that Van Till did (William Harry
Jellema?), raised in the Dutch Reformed tradition. He taught at Calvin College from 1963 ro 1982 and
Nortre Dame from 1982 to 2010. He has gone back to Calvin to teach some classes there. He served as
one of the founding members of the Society of Christian Philosophers with a journal called “Faith and
Philosophy” in 1978. Some of his important works: God and Other Minds (1967) — his early critique of
natural theology and a-theology: so no good arguments for either, The Nature of Necessity (1974) — modal
metaphysics: study of what could be the case and what must be the case, which he then applied to issues
such as the existence of God and the problem of evil; God, Freedom, and Evil (1974) was a simplified
version of the same; Faith and Rationality (1983) - an early statement of Reformed Epsitemology;
Warranted Christian Belief (2000), his most mature statement of Reformed Epistemology, and then the
scaled down version of that, Knowledge and Christian Belief (2015).

Summarized: Anselm and Augustine over Aquinas — more “faith seeking understanding,” rather than faith
founded on, or justified by, natural reason. He was polar opposite to Swinburne for example. You can
rationally start with faith with reason supplementing and clarifying. Augustinian Christian Philosophy
was what he thought of it as. We can and should do our philosophy from a self-consciously Christian
stance. It does not need any prior, especially secular, justification. We “don’t have to” prove our belief by
any secular standards before we can start using those beliefs in their philosophy.

Why do we have to insist that classical apologetics rejects this? This is the immovable straw man it
seems.

Foundational Christian beliefs are properly basic. A properly basic belief is a belief that is rationally
justified, but not on the basis of other beliefs. It has every right to be there. Examples of such beliefs are
elementary mathematical truths (2+2=4), memory beliefs (what I had for breakfast this morning, or who my
mother is), the existence of the external world, and Plantinga is saying that basic Christian beliefs are in
the same boat. This is another form of foundationalism, but it is a modest and moderate sort. It is
almost pragmatic, though I do not think it can be charged with pragmatism, because he is going to show
that these are reasonable per se. This also allows for a richer base of these kind of beliefs. These are
justified but defeasible. We are justified in believing them, but reasons can be presented to defeat them
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and we may dispense them at that time. These outside beliefs challenging the basic beliefs, he calls
“defeaters.”

Now what does this imply about natural theology? It is not sufficient for justified theistic beliefs, but
they are not necessary anyway. It is a very weak foundation. This is more of the straw man! Very few
people ever did that, even among those who handled such arguments. Plantinga develops this in a very
positive direction based on the idea of proper function. Knowledge is true beliefs that are produced by
cognitive faculties that are functioning properly. This may reduce to pragmatism. It can be a true definition,
but will he get away with making this properly basic and therefore unassailable? He says that he takes
this from Calvin’s sensus divinitatis — what Plantinga translates into a cognitive faculty that produces
theistic beliefs. No doubt this is descriptively true. But this faculty has been damaged by sin. The Holy
Spirit renews this faculty at regeneration. Through this faculty we can actually know the specifics of the
Christian faith. Through it we have knowledge — these doctrinal specifics constitute real knowledge.
Many things that happen to us in life trigger this sense, initiating perspectives (Frame) on this
knowledge. We can know God and the things of God through the Bible and the Holy Spirit. The former
is the objective component, and the latter is the subjective: the inner testimony by which God speaks
affirmatively about his word. This is an understanding and a conviction. He derives this from the
Reformers, though he thinks he can find it in Aquinas as well.

Plantinga would say that some non-Christian beliefs can be properly basic in that they can be internally
justified. But for knowledge one needs more than this consistency. This is a great conundrum because
he has also defined knowledge as true beliefs that are produced by cognitive faculties that are functioning
properly. But the God-faculty has been damaged by sin. It is not functioning properly in the unbeliever.
The question is: How improperly? The bar for a properly basic belief is set low, but the bar for
knowledge is set higher.

Another problem: How does an equally valid view fail to be knowledge?

His apologetics. He spends his time attacking defeaters, like the problem of evil. All we need to do is to
defeat the defeaters. Plantinga actually appeals to some Molinist ideas to show that God may even have
to allow evil to create a world, etc. And then he too brings in the Greater Good Defense to follow up his
Free Will Defense. In any case, we are not in the position to say that God does not, or cannot, have
sufficient reasons to allow sufferings, etc.

He has also dealt with some evidential matters, like higher criticism, where he exposes the naturalistic
presuppositions. He does the same to naturalistic science. Since naturalism as a philosophy is false, we
need not worry about their particular research. Of his own arguments for God’s existence, he has to be
consistent with his epistemology, and say, “But, don’t put too much stock into it.”
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Plantinga’s Big Idea. Christian beliefs are properly basic and therefore do not need to be rationlly justified on
the basis of arguments or empirical evidence.

Split the difference between Swinburne and Plantinga! Rational ground is necessary but not for personal
faith. It is rather for the objective (even if relative, in the sense of “by degrees”) integrity of the Christian
doctrinal system. This is closer to Craig, but really in the spirit of Sproul …

Classical apologetics is not defined by the concept, much less positive value, of probability. This is a
constant drum that is beat by presuppositionalists.

ANDERSON’ S 6 LESSONS for the whole study …

1. Philosophy as such is neither good nor bad — like the internet.

2. Philosophy is unavoidable. What Sproul says about theology is true here: Everyone is a Philosopher.
3. Philosophy has changed the world, both for good and for bad.
4. Philosophy based on autonomous human reasoning is futile.
5. Philosophy must be done in the context of the Christian worldview.
6. Philosophy rightly done can be very useful in the service of Christian faith.