Van Til's Limiting Concept

Van Tillian Presuppositionalism is, among other things, the theological approach which asserts that revelation is primary, and that there is no knowledge without it. All truth is original to God and some truth is revealed (through Scripture and nature) to us. The limits of revealed truth then are the “limiting concepts” of Van Til.

Kant held that to get past the rationalism/empiricism impasse one had to argue transcendentally. For Kant this meant starting with the human mind as “over” the world. But Kant’s philosophy imposed a world upon us that “in itself” is not knowable, since the mind organizes what we perceive. Thus, the autonomous mind is the transcendental. The “thing in itself” is off-limits because of this, yet what is presented to us by the mind can be categorized and structured and become the basis of our knowledge.

Of course, much more should be added, but Van Til’s notion of transcendental argumentation will have none of this. Since we are dependent creatures who are reliant upon revelation we cannot start with ourselves, we must begin with God the Revealer. Since what can be known in the world (general revelation) can be subject to man’s sinful distortion (due to the effects of the Fall upon our reason), the benchmark of knowledge must be found in what God has spoken to us in His Word. Hence, for Van Til, the transcendental is Scripture, especially the self-attesting Christ. This “starting-point” of knowledge must be ours, for without it we can know nothing. In order to receive this revealed knowledge we have to exercise dependence (i.e. faith!)

For Kant, reality cannot be known for what it is (idealism). For Van Til, reality is upon to our five senses (realism), but it is greater than our five senses. Thus, the starting point of knowledge, and the content of knowledge are different for Kant and Van Til. Kant and Presuppositionalism are at odds all the way through. If you want more on this you can ask and I will try to respond.

As per your example from the Ken Ham/Bill Nye debate, I confess that I was disappointed with Ham’s performance (though his content was superior). Still, I stand to be corrected, but I believe that well nigh every fossil in existence has C-14 in it. C-14 is untraceable after circa 100,000 years, so this is good scientific evidence that the old earth numbers are greatly exaggerated. The RATE Project done by ICR found C-14 in diamonds as well!

Yes, there is pseudo-science in YEC materials. But it finds a very hospitable nesting place in old-earth and evolutionary materials too.

Thanks Paul for the interaction. I am enjoying my studies of these things.

everything is revelatory, but that (proper) science is not possible outside a Christian-theistic framework.

This is pretty much where I’m at, but I feel like, on my personal journey, my convictions on that aren’t well enough thought through. Too much feels assumed… and like I can’t really fully explain it. I feel like I don’t really know something until I can teach it! (Or, sometimes, until I actually have taught it.)

So this whole conversation helps me quite a bit. (If only I had a couple of days a week to just read!) Bahnsen and Frame have moved up my backlogged reading list.

Can someone link again to where audio of Van Til speaking is available? I’m sure I’d benefit from hearing that.

[Paul Henebury]

Van Til certainly would not separate faith and science. That would be the opposite of what he taught. He held that everything is revelatory, but that (proper) science is not possible outside a Christian-theistic framework.

I would be interested in how he defined science. Science is definitely possible outside a Christian framework. You do not need to have Scripture or a biblical understanding for a scientist to invent a light bulb. In my opinion a Christian-theistic framework is important as it relates to science on those areas where Scripture touches on science. But that is not too much as Scripture is not a science text book but a religious text.

Understandably, this question shows a failure to comprehend what the transcendental argument of Van Til is asserting. Yes, a person can do science without being a Christian. But could a monistic Buddhist or Hindu who basically believes the sensory world to be an illusion, give an explanation of material science or a foundation for pursuing it within their worldview? The answer is no. They are false worldviews which cannot therefore provide the pre-conditions needed for doing science.

What about a materialist atheist? Same thing. Many of them are physicalists who deny the reality of the soul (never mind God). Therefore, they believe the mind is just the firing of neurons in the brain. This leads many of them to a non-realist worldview (i.e. the “mind” does not think for truth but for survival value). A materialist conception of the universe cannot account for laws of thought, number and scientific laws (nor our ability to recognize them). Ergo, that worldview cannot account for science.

Can Buddhists, Hindus and Atheists do science? Surely. but their belief system can’t provide the necessary things which the scientific enterprise needs (e.g. the reliability of our sense perceptions, our knowledge of the extended world beyond our brains, realism, immaterial laws and numbers, a principle of uniformity, normativity, etc). Only the Judeo-Christian worldview can do these things (in its stride). Therefore, advocates of non-Christian worldviews must borrow from Christianity what their own worldviews fail to produce.

Do they know or acknowledge this borrowing? Not usually, any more than a person denying the existence of air will think about the fact that he is breathing air (Bahnsen’s illustration).

The light bulb could not have been invented if the world was not the way the Bible says it is. That is Van Til’s argument. I hope that answer helps.

The borrowing phenomenon is what Francis Schaeffer talks about in God Who Is There, and Nancy Pearcy fleshes out more practically in Finding Truth. They explain that the genuinely Christian worldview is the only one that fully accepts all of reality as it is. So the upper-story vs. lower-story metaphor illustrates how people with non-Christian worldviews can be very high functioning (but with cognitive dissonance, Pearcy calls it). On the lower story they may maintain that humans are just bundles of extremely complex chemical processes, and there is really no right or wrong, no meaning to life, no hereafter, no love (in the sense of anything more than chemicals and physics)… no objective truth. But we’re all forced to live as though there were such a thing as right and wrong, as though individual lives matter, as though there is such a thing as truth—in short, as though reality is real. That’s the upper story. Several prominent non-Christian thinkers acknowledge the problem and more or less accept the fact that they look at the world in two fundamentally incompatible ways, depending on the situation. (Can’t name any at the moment, but Pearcy does. Schaeffer is a bit more abstract about it in what I’ve read somewhat recently… and what sticks in memory for me is more of an emphasis on how the lack of coherence in worldviews tormented some thinkers to the point of extremes of despair.)

…Schaeffer and Pearcey do not teach Van Til’s position of the impossibility of the contrary. Rather, they teach that the biblical worldview is the best hypothesis.

Van Til taught that “the Christian worldview fully accepts all of reality as it really is”, but rather that things must be the way the Bible says they are.