So I paid $400 + $50 (donation due to their inconvenience of processing online payment) for my first course, first cohort discussion.
I'll try my best to read up, watch up all required videos, lectures, notes, etc.
Questions will be jotted down here as well. Hopefully, I would be able to take full advantage of this opportunity to talk with the likes of Tipton, since a one-on-one appointment is possible with this cohort.
What an amazing grace.
Questions:
- Ask about the possibility of a 4th person in the revealed Truine Godhead.
Answer: The Doctrine of Perichoresis. Also note interview with Brant Bosserman: https://youtu.be/P08XdEUkvEo, answered at around time 1:03:00. Awesome! Thanks Jeff Downs (Guest). Concluding three as kind of the "magic number" instead of Deu 29:29 on the possibility of the likes of Quadrinity.
- Find opportunity to ask about the human nature of Christ, the createdness of it and all.
- In the free lecture (Introduction tot he Theology of Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til), under Biography and Major Works > The Influence of Geerhards Vos, Tipton mentioned Van Til's siding with Kyper's worldview against the likes of Warfield...care to elaborate?
Answer (by Camden): This is a big theme in Van Tilian scholarship. Van Til was indebted both to Kuyper and Warfield, but he also was critical of aspects of each of their theology on certain points. The short (and perhaps simplistic) answer is that Van Til followed Kuyper on the antithesis and Warfield on the point of contact. He bridged their differences with his particular formulation of common grace.
- What Tipton said in "Van Til's Teaching and Writing" time 1:29? "and Van Til initially declined ??gronotialis visited??"
Answer (by Camden): "When O.T. Allis visited."
Notable quotes:
"...Who prized influence and affluence above fidelity to the Scriptures in the Reformed confession..." ~ Tipton, in the lecture Introduction to the Theology and Apologetics of Van Til > Van Til's Teaching and Writing. This is useful against the likes of those who left the reformed confession but may still pretend to practice the reformed tradition.
Week 3's video:
Anthropomorphic language: How we understand the relationship between the Eternal & the temporal, since God does not participate in the being of the temporal.
Barth's tertium quid: The Christ Event.
Week 4:
Immutable Triune Creator
Vos: "No time distinction exists" in the Creator. "New relation" needed for Adam & God, but new to Adam, not to God. Correlativism wants to apply "new" to God as well.
ad intra (God in Himself), ad extra (new relation), God does not change. Relation can change, creature in the relation can change.
Man Created in Fellowship with God
For Rome: Image of God brings reason and free will to Likeness of God.
Van Til: Image of God consists most basically of Natural Religious Fellowship (created already) with God at the moment of endowment of of the image. Rome wouldn't affirm.
Worship & Obedience the essence of communion with God. Immediately ordered to religious fellowship with God.
Rome: Adam was created already struggling (concupiscence) to be with God.
Van Til: Deeper Protestant Conception. Antithetical to Roman conception...
Rome: Only something that raises a man above his created nature, the Donum Superadditum to participate in the essence of God, then only it enables fellowship with God.
Vos: Then by the Roman view, fellowship with God is something extrinsic and alien to man's nature. Adam already was created with natural relationship with God.
Covenant & Eschatology
Covenant = Gen 2:15-17, WSC #12. Adds to Adam a special providence an advancement to Adam the Image of God to inherit God Himself (WC 7.1) as man's blessedness & reward.
Positive Verbal Revelation directs Adam to his telos. Instantly accompanying the natural fellowship of the image of God. Adam lives only by Word of God.
Image of God without covenant is blind.
Covenant without Image of God is empty.
Rome posits reason functions properly prior and after the fall, apart from Special Positive Verbal Revelation. This is abnormal (sinful) for creatures to attempt to reflect on nature apart from a word from God (Covenantal self disclosure).
Van Til: Revelation in Nature => Image & Likeness of God. Revelation in Scripture => Positive Verbal Revelation (covenant). Revelations in Nature (deed) + Word = grand covenantal revelation of God to man => Presupposing & Supplementing one another.
Revelational Epistemology
God walked and talked with Adam = Pre-redemptive special revelation. Both kinds of revelations work hand in hand.
Rome separates Nature & Grace (Donum Superadditum).
Calvin: Sinners = covenant breakers.
Covenant affirming activity (not sinner) vs. Covenant breaking activity (sinner)
Revelational Epistemology does not allow neutral reasoning. It needs both natural & verbal revelations of God. Or else it is the hallmark of the Fall.
My Take after reading Tipton's article on Van Til's Nature and Scripture:
Vos taught that biblical terminology does not use "immortality" but "life". Because immortality is not the original establishment of God's creation in man, but life. Eternal life. And only because of the Fall, that there is the need of the genuine humanity of the Lord and thus the incarnation, which is the only means to realize the eschatological essence of religion. A remedial and redemptive intervention centered on Christ.
Week 5: Common Grace
Creation, Fall, and Grace
Van Til quotes Calvin the most of any Tipton knew.
For Rome:
the "conflict" between Soul (higher, rational, spiritual) vs. Body of man = concupiscence
Likeness of God = supernatural gifts = donum superadditum => original righteousness, checks the concupiscence of the image bearer. Unlike the Image of God, the Likeness of God is not built in (not con-created), they were added graciously to Adam. They do not comprise the essence of the image of God.
The Fall does not corrupt the image of God, but the donum superadditum which was designed to offset the concupiscence of man, was lost.
Total Depravity
Reason, Will & Affection also corrupted.
Elements of a Reformed Doctrine of Common Grace
Calvin's 3 points:
1. All good comes from God and God alone.
2. Unregenerate, totally depraved (Rom 8:7-8, 3:9-11)
Mind darkened by sin (Eph 4:17), Will enslaved by sin (Rom 8:7-8), Affection turned from God to creaturely desire (Eph 4:20-21)
3. Nonsaving grace of God's Spirit: done by the unregenerated to be formally good before God.
Common Grace and Antithesis (of Regenerate vs. Unregenerate) works hand in hand.
We'll also be judged by God based on the free gift of His Common Grace.
John Murray (Collective Writings Vol 2 pg. 94): [the virtues of common grace] are not the common properties of nature (e.g. Roman Catholic view of the image of God, untainted by sin) but the peculiar graces of God...
Historical Debates Regarding Common Grace
"3 Points" CRC 1924 debate
1. God chooses Non redemptive Favor to all Sinners. Ref: Isaiah 26:10, Matt 5:44-46, Acts 17:14-17.
2. God Restrains sin/withhold wrath. Ref: Gen 20:6, Rom 1:24, 2Thess 2:6.
On Withholding Wrath, read Meredith Kline's work.
The Well-Meant Offer of the Gospel
How does Roman Catholicism teach that fallen man is able to make contributions to science or culture?
Fallen man is just like Adam before the fall and before the donum superadditum.
How does the Calvinist teach that fallen man is able to make contributions to science or culture?
By the common grace of the Spirit who restrains sin from fully and consistently expressing itself in fallen man.
Is there a universal well-meant offer of the gospel to all sinners?
Yes, in a manner consistent to the way God extends universal favor to Adam in the covenant of works before the fall even though he has not decreed such favor to extend to the reprobate.
Week 6: The Fall and The Antithesis
Genesis 3 and the Fall into Sin
WCF 9:3 Adam fell from innocency to an estate of sin and misery.
The Absolute Ethical Antithesis
Satan (Rev 12:9) used Eve (not the first hand receiver of God's covenant), to cast doubts on the terms of the covenant of work and on the aspersion of God's goodness.
"Did God actually say you shall not eat of ANY TREE..." subtle mis-statement. God did not say eat no tree...insinuating God being too restrictive of creaturely freedom and not for the good of the image bearer.
Serpent puts Eve in the place of judge and introduced serpent's hypothesis: You will not surely die.
vs. God's hypothesis: You will surely die.
Sin as Rebellion
Reason is a tool that requires and depends on God's revelation. Satan's version of reason is a judge deciding on the antithesis of hypothesis.
Gen 3:6...would the tree really make one wise? True if the serpent is right, foolish if God is right.
Eve treated God's word not reliable. She had made a judgment about the whole of reality.
Adam, despite being the divinely appointed priest and king to guard the land of Eden, stood by and watch the serpent sift his wife the entire time. And become a judge to reject God's word as hypothesis that cannot be confirmed.
Judgment and the Gospel
Gen 3:14Open in Logos Bible Software (if available) Great redemptive reversal of the sin and fall of Adam and Eve. Those who follow the serpent vs. those who follow God in covenant faithfulness.
Gen 3:15Open in Logos Bible Software (if available) An individual warrior. Van Til: Gospel in capsule form.
There is no Neutrality
Terms: Ordinary generation = natural descendants of Adam.
Men (the Greeks) use reason as an autonomous ("neutral") tool to adjudicate the "hypothesis" of God's speaking vs. any other hypothesis. Fundamentally began in Eden & sin.
Genesis 3:14Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)-... The embroinic proto-euangelion of the Gospel.
Antithesis of covenant keepers vs. covenant breakers, eventually breached by Christ.
My take: Satan and his kinds reflect the covenant breakers; the Fallen nature of man and his ordinary generation reflect the autonomous reasoning attempt to be neutral in adjudicating God's hypothesis but this fails because of the very take of God's word as hypothesis to be adjudicated.
Week 7 Method, Worldview, and Evidence
Paul the Theologian is Paul the Apologist
The Nature of the Resurrection in Paul’s Apologetic Presentation
The resurrection of Jesus is a history changing event, not just a miraculous moment.
The Denotation and Connotation of the Resurrection
Denotation = fact
Connotation = meaning
Paul refuses to separate the denotation from the connotation, because they are covenantally and eschatologically qualified.
Gospel = Word revelation
Resurrection = Deed revelation
A Revelational Notion of Proof
The only way to take the resurrection is by faith and repentance; not by rational isolation.
A Biblical Approach to Apologetics
Col 2:8
Week 8 Idealism
Idealism and Realism
Idealism = antagonist of realism
DEF: Objects conform to the minds (or subjects).
Realism:
DEF: Minds/subjects conform to objects.
Van Til: That's still just about creatures & objects known by creatures. More importantly, we must ask how creatures relate to the self-contained Truine God.
Kantian Idealism
Also known as Transcendental Idealism.
Hegelian Idealism = Absolute Idealism.
On Hume's skepticism, (realist) John Locke's blank slate: Kant: Both rationalists and empiricists have common assumption and that is the mind passively receives its objects and conforms to them. Hume, mind receives sensations from external world; Descartes (dualist), Leibniz (atomist) & Spinoza (monist): minds receive data passively.
Kant offers: The mind is actively constructive of experience. (Kant used a Copernicus revolution)
Greg Bahnsen: Type writer paper (Locke to Kant) vs. Word processor program (Kant)
Kant: Object must conforms to knowledge. Object of understanding must conform to the mind's constructive activity. Mind is constructively active in making sense data intelligible.
Bahnsen: Kant's = water frozen in ice tray. Instead of water held by hand uncontrollably. Frozen water conforms to the categories of the ice tray.
Kant agrees with Locke and the rest with regards to sense data experience; but disagree with how the mind conforms to it.
Kant: The understanding is itself the law-giver of nature.
Kant: Two kinds of intelligibility on experience - 1. Transcendental Aesthetic (apriori knowledge of space and time = transcendental deduction) & 2. Transcendental Analytic (quantity, quality, relation & causation).
Kant: Transcendental Approach = The intelligibility of experience is a function of the knowing mind. Objects appear intelligible because of the constructive legislative function of the ego.
Van Til's Transcendental in Distinction from Kant's Transcendental
Van Til was mistaken by many as Kantian, because he also used the term "transcendental" in his method. But in his Survey of Christian Epistemology just a page after the transcendental method, Van Til said that it be anti-Christian method if the meaning of the fact is not given by God.
Van Til vs Kant = antithetical against each other. Kant: God cannot be invoked by virtue of theoretical reason, giving credit to human mind.
Hegelian Transcendental
Hegel = king of abstraction
Use these 3 principles to understand Hegel:
1. Ultimate reality is one developmental rational unity = Geist = spirit
2. Ultimate reality is the developmental outworking of not only reason, but "Mind".
3. Absolute mind comes to full self-conscious understanding of what is universally true and perfectly precise, through an historical dialectical process of becoming. And at the end of that process, is a concrete universal.
Hegel: Reality = absolute mind
Mind vs. Nature for Hegel: Mind = principle of timeless unity; Nature = principle of historical particularity. Mind & Nature are reciprocally related in a developmental and historical process. And Absolute spirit is what reconciles mind and nature in historical process.
Hegel: Thesis - Antithesis - synthesis - full self-consciousness by absolute mind. Triadic development (Entwicklung). Triadic process.
Hegel's better than Kant's because he posited the absolute mind. However, his absolute mind needs historical process with partial truths to come to fruition.
Van Til’s Criticism of Absolute Idealism
My cheeky question: So are those arguing against Van Til attempting for a synthesis :)?
Van Til ascribing "Hegel's concrete universal" to God is like John 1 ascribing stoic "logos" to Christ.
With various understanding of idealisms, thus, Van Til cannot be like any of those idealist.
Absolute Idealist = ultimately a pragmatist. Time, change, chance in history.
Check the cohort's recording on Tipton's critic on Oliphant & John Frame on being for Van Til.
Ask Tipton:
about God and abstract objects.
On Sye Ten Bruggencate.
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