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Biblical Philosophers

Absolute Personality: VT’s basic characterization of God. Unlike any non-Christian view, the biblical God is both absolute (a se, self-existent, self-sufficient, self-contained) and personal (thinking, speaking, acting, loving, judging). See Frame, 51ff.

Ad hominem: Argument that exposes deficiencies in the arguer rather than deficiencies in the proposition under discussion. Thus, a logical fallacy. But often ad hominem argument is appropriate. See Bahnsen, 116ff, 468, 492, Frame, 153.

All-conditioner: VT’s characterization of God in “Why I Believe in God” (see Bahnsen, 121-143). God is the one who ultimately influences all reality, including our own thinking and reasoning about him.

For the entire glossary, click here.

Scientific misconduct has enjoyed some limelight lately. The president of Stanford, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, resigned last month after a series of investigations exposed serious problems in his research; an independent review of Tessier-Lavigne’s work found no evidence that he falsified data himself but concluded that his research failed standards “of scientific rigor and process” and that he failed to correct the record on multiple occasions.

And in June it was revealed that a scholar at Harvard Business School, Francesca Gino, was accused of having falsified research about – wait for it – honesty.

Of course, scientific misconduct does not happen only at Stanford and Harvard. Of the nearly 5,500 retractions we catalogued in 2022, and the thousands of cases we have reported on since launching our watchdog website Retraction Watch in 2010, the vast majority involve researchers at institutions without anywhere near Stanford and Harvard’s pedigrees.

See full article here…

They tell you to trust the science. But remember, science is observably less reliable than a coin flip.

Our universe could be twice as old as current estimates, according to a new study that challenges the dominant cosmological model and sheds new light on the so-called “impossible early galaxy problem.”

The work is published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“Our newly-devised model stretches the galaxy formation time by a several billion years, making the universe 26.7 billion years old, and not 13.7 as previously estimated,” says author Rajendra Gupta, adjunct professor of physics in the Faculty of Science at the University of Ottawa.

Article continues here…

Reviewed by John Frame

Scholasticism names a type of theology that matured in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. In the post-reformation period, both Protestant and Roman Catholic thinkers adopted many of the methods and conclusions of scholasticism, and some of these are even reflected in the Protestant confessions. In the “Enlightenment” of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many philosophers and theologians reacted strongly against scholasticism, so that in the nineteenth century scholastic and anti-scholastic agendas contended for supremacy in the theological academies.

I studied with Cornelius Van Til, who was in turn influenced by but critical of the Dutch neo-Calvinists such as Kuyper and Dooyeweerd. They accepted some doctrines characteristic of scholasticism—divine simplicity, aseity, supratemporal eternity—but in general they treated scholasticism as a theological blind alley. They were highly critical of Aquinas, saw him as a “synthesis” thinker, who tried to combine Christianity with Aristotelian and neoplatonic philosophy. When one neocalvinist referred to another as “scholastic,” that was a term of reproach. The general consensus was that those who do theology in the scholastic way were on a slippery slope that could end only in Roman Catholicism.

How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture by Christopher Watkin (May be purchased at Amazon.com

The early church catechized people meaning they rigorously trained those interested in following Christ to adopt a scheme of the world/life/God/ourselves/others consistent with the gospel. One of the markings of catechism was to inoculate people from the dominant strains of thinking. What Watkin is proposing is a kind of catechism; a reframing of our picture of the world that is dominated by secularism. Bottom line is how can we expect people to think and act biblically when the air that they breathe is secular (no aid or partnership with the Divine)? We are fools if we think an hour a week will do the trick or even a “quiet time” a few minutes a day will solve the problem. Critical theory is pervasive and we have Descartes, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, Marx and so on to thank for modern day skepticism. People poke and prod to get underneath everything only to find that there’s nothing real. What Watkin demonstrates so well is it’s the Bible that’s the original critical theory, dismantling everything that culture so subtly foists on us to get us to act in particular ways, only to find out that there’s ultimate reality – a real God underneath it all. What’s fascinating is his theory of diagonalization that allows us to hold things in tension. The gospel is not the middle of the road between two ditches. It’s a completely different road than religion or non-religion…. (Submitted by J. Nitta (from comments on Amazon.com)

Book Review: Murray A. Rae, Editor, Critical Conversations:
Michael Polanyi and Christian Theology

Polanyi’s interest in Christianity and the interest of many Polanyians in Christianity is intriguing,
although some have found it disconcerting. Polanyi surprises many with his references to
Augustine, St. Paul, the Christian scheme of Fall and Redemption, etc. Rae’s collection of essays
adds to a considerable literature on Polanyi’s ideas in relation to Christianity. But Christianity
is not one dimensional, as the essays here clearly demonstrate. The nine authors, many familiar to
Polanyians, discuss an array of topics, and my brief comments, which often use the authors’
words, mention only a few elements of these interesting essays.

For the entire book review, click here.

Dr. Billy Sichone concludes:

We can safely conclude that Theistic Epistemology is the way to go as taught by Cornelious Van Til, the presuppositionalist apologetics approach fore-runner, because we cannot truly know anything in the truest sense of the word unless we begin with God. Though Polanyi was on track towards the truth, he failed to point the finger ultimately where the truth originates-God. He instead pointed his thinking towards what he called “Tacit knowledge”. Perhaps that is the best light Polanyi had and should thus commend him somewhat because he differs from other epistemologists radically though he too does not match up to Van Til’s position where God is over all things and it is from/in Him that all things consist.

Polanyi, Calvin and Van Til