scholarly journals Knowledge and the Fall in American Neo-Calvinism: Toward a Van Til–Plantinga Synthesis

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Bálint Békefi
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Christian Worldview ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Sensus Divinitatis ◽  
Cornelius Van Til ◽  
Van Til

Abstract Cornelius Van Til and Alvin Plantinga represent two strands of American Protestant philosophical thought influenced by Dutch neo-Calvinism. This paper compares and synthetizes their models of knowledge in non-Christians given the noetic effects of sin and non-Christian worldview commitments. The paper argues that Van Til’s distinction between the partial realization of the antithesis in practice and its absolute nature in principle correlates with Plantinga’s insistence on prima facie–warranted common-sense beliefs and their ultimate defeasibility given certain metaphysical commitments. Van Til endorsed more radical claims than Plantinga on epistemic defeat in non-Christian worldviews, the status of the sensus divinitatis, and conceptual accuracy in knowledge of the world. Finally, an approach to the use of evidence in apologetics is developed based on the proposed synthesis. This approach seeks to make more room for evidence than is generally recognized in Van Tilianism, while remaining consistent with the founder’s principles.

scholarly journals The covenantal trinitarian alternative to the scholastic dilemma

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy G.A. Ive
Keyword(s):  
John Calvin ◽  
The World ◽  
Cornelius Van Til ◽  
Institutional Church ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Van Til

This article sets out what it calls the ‘scholastic dilemma’ about whether God’s relation to the world is necessary or contingent – the former is based on a view of God primarily as intellect and the latter on a view of God primarily as will. In his dictum, Deus legibus solutus est sed non exlex, John Calvin rejects both these positions. The trinitarian basis for this dictum was spelt out more fully by later Calvinistic thinkers, including Abraham Kuyper and Cornelius van Til. Implicitly for Calvin and explicitly for Kuyper and Van Til, the love of the Persons of the Trinity for one another is the basis for God’s covenantal trustworthiness in his dealings with the world. Recognising this trinitarian basis allows us to conceive of God as at once faithful in his dealing with the world, and yet not dependent on the world for his existence. This has profound and far-reaching implications for our understanding of society, including the universal and institutional church and a recognition of the priority of relationships, both theoretically and practically.

On Certainty and Religious Belief

1984 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 593-613 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean Martin
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
On Certainty ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
Scientific Hypotheses

Logical positivism and its derivatives cast a sustained philosophical shadow over religious faith and theological reflection. Any number of issues continue to surface in explicit and subdued forms, all of them relating to the status of religious beliefs. In fairly recent years, much fruitful discussion is dependent on the later writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein's last notes, collected in On Certainty, are still largely unmined by those wishing to gain clarity about religious belief. It turns out, however, that these pages promise to be among the most helpful. In what follows, therefore, there is first offered a summary of the dominant themes of On Certainty – Wittgenstein's critique of G. E. Moore and his treatment of Moore's truisms of common sense. By a painstaking analysis, Wittgenstein shows that the truths defended by Moore are among any number of other fundamental propositions which have an extraordinary logical role in our language and judgements about the world. Next, partly by reference to Wittgenstein's lectures on religious belief and other collected notes, it is argued that many beliefs in Christianity share significant logical features with those fundamental propositions. Not least is the fact that, like the latter but unlike scientific hypotheses, Christian beliefs are removed from the ordinary traffic of verification and falsification. Despite the likenesses, notice is also taken of various dissimilarities which further set the peculiarity of Christian articles of faith into bold relief. The disparities, however, do not impugn the logically fundamental role which those beliefs have in the language and lives of those who embrace the faith.

scholarly journals Overtuigend gezag. De schriftvisie en wijze van omgang met de Schrift van Alvin Plantinga

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-152
Author(s):  
P. De Vries
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Cognitive Faculty ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Status ◽  
Sensus Divinitatis

This article analyzes and evaluates Alvin Plantinga view of the status and authority of the Bible. It shows the relevance of two or more kinds of Christian Biblical scholarship Plantinga develops in Warranted Christian Belief. Plantinga argues that we can speak of knowledge when there is a warrant.Cognitive faculties include a sense of experience, the sensus divinitatis, and the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. A properly functioning cognitive faculty produces knowledge. The Christian belief that the Bible is the Word of God is not just a conviction but knowledge, knowledge that leads one to glorify and enjoy God.

Wolfhart Pannenberg, Openness to the World, and the Sensus Divinitatis

2021 ◽  
pp. 002114002110177
Author(s):  
Andrew Hollingsworth
Keyword(s):  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
The Other ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Human Identity ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
The World ◽  
Innate Knowledge ◽  
Sensus Divinitatis ◽  
Wolfhart Pannenberg

One of the foundational concepts for Wolfhart Pannenberg’s theological anthropology is his notion of ‘openness to the world.’ Openness to the world, according to Pannenberg, is essential to human identity in that one’s identity is established in their openness to the world, to the other, and, ultimately, to God. I aim to bring Pannenberg’s openness to the world into dialogue with the concept of the sensus divinitatis as articulated by John Calvin and further developed by Alvin Plantinga. The question driving this paper is whether or not Pannenberg’s openness to the world can rightly be understood as the sensus divinitatis, and, if so, what might be some benefits of it. I conclude that Pannenberg’s understanding of openness to the world is a fruitful way of understanding the sensus divinitatis and a fruitful way of arguing for and explaining humanity’s innate knowledge of God.

Propositions III: The Dual Relationship and the Third Party

2019 ◽  
pp. 169-198
Author(s):  
Marcel Hénaff
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
The Other ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Moral Tradition ◽  
Living Together ◽  
The World ◽  
The Gift ◽  
The Status ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the gift relationship. Whether private or socially instituted, the gift relationship appears to embody certain exemplary dimensions of being-with-others and living-together. However, a reflection on this type of gesture or procedure brings to the fore a number of unresolved problems and, for this very reason, occasions a number of misunderstandings. The main difficulty has to do with the indeterminacy of the very term, gift, too often used with respect to profoundly heterogeneous situations. This indeterminacy encourages a tendency to privilege the sense of the word sanctioned by an age-old religious and moral tradition that appears based on common sense and tends to be viewed as the standard by which the other forms of gift can be assessed: the unreciprocated generous gesture. However, this ontology is of little help when one attempts to answer questions such as the following: Who gives what to whom, under what circumstances, and for what purpose? This question concerns intersubjective as well as social relationships. It is therefore crucial to clarify the status of the partners involved and the nature of the “thing” that is offered by one to the other or that circulates between the two partners. Although dual by definition, the relationship of reciprocity cannot be reduced to a one-on-one interaction: It necessarily includes a third element, a thing from the world, which can sometimes be a mere word, or even—when the institution is already in place—an easily recognizable gesture.

Religious Statements and the World

1966 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. J. Wainwright
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status

In the past few years philosophers of religion and theologians have devoted much attention to the status of religious statements. There are three main positions: (1) The statements as generally understood are (false) empirical statements. The people who make them have either made honest mistakes (they are unaware of the counter evidence) or they are irrational. This view may be coupled with the claim that religious language can be reconstructed in such a way that we may continue to use it and yet avoid making false assertions. (The position Braithwaite outlines in An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief seems to be close to this.) (2) The statements are not empirical and are therefore not significant. (3) The statements are not empirical— common sense and science are irrelevant to the truth and falsity of religious claims—and yet they are significant.

The Event Universe

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leemon B. McHenry
Keyword(s):  
Electromagnetic Field ◽  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Physical Theory ◽  
Alfred North Whitehead ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Theory Of Relativity ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
Linguistic Methods

What kinds of things are events? Battles, explosions, accidents, crashes, rock concerts would be typical examples of events and these would be reinforced in the way we speak about the world. Events or actions function linguistically as verbs and adverbs. Philosophers following Aristotle have claimed that events are dependent on substances such as physical objects and persons. But with the advances of modern physics, some philosophers and physicists have argued that events are the basic entities of reality and what we perceive as physical bodies are just very long events spread out in space-time. In other words, everything turns out to be events. This view, no doubt, radically revises our ordinary common sense view of reality, but as our event theorists argue common sense is out of touch with advancing science. In The Event Universe: The Revisionary Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, Leemon McHenry argues that Whitehead's metaphysics provides a more adequate basis for achieving a unification of physical theory than a traditional substance metaphysics. He investigates the influence of Maxwell's electromagnetic field, Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics on the development of the ontology of events and compares Whitehead’s theory to his contemporaries, C. D. Broad and Bertrand Russell, as well as another key proponent of this theory, W. V. Quine. In this manner, McHenry defends the naturalized and speculative approach to metaphysics as opposed to analytical and linguistic methods that arose in the 20th century.

Ghost, Broken Narratives and the Art of Dying

2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 15-22
Author(s):  
Lars Rømer
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
Art Of Dying ◽  
The Dead

This article investigates how experiences of ghosts can be seen as a series of broken narratives. By using cases from contemporary as well 19th century Denmark I will argue that ghosts enter the world of the living as sensations that question both common sense understanding and problematize the unfinished death. Although ghosts have been in opposition to both science and religion in Denmark at least since the reformation I will exemplify how people deal with the broken narrative of ghosts in ways that incorporate and mimic techniques of both the scientist and the priest. Ghosts, thus, initiate a dialogue between the dead and the living concerning the art of dying that will enable both to move on.

Impact of Social Media on English Language: A Review

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Dr. Neha Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
English Language ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
International Level ◽  
Class Society ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Media ◽  
Subsequent Rise

Language being a potent vehicle of transmitting cultural values, norms and beliefs remains a central factor in determining the status of any nation. India is a multilingual country which tends to encourage people to use English at national and international level. Basically English in India owes its presence to the British but its subsequent rise is not fully attributable to the British. It has now become the language of wider communication which is now spoken by large number of people all over the world. It is influenced by many factors such as class, society, developments in science and technology etc. However the major influence on English language is and has been the media.

MANAGING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY APPLICATION IN TEACHING AT HIGH SCHOOLS IN VINH YEN CITY, VINH PHUC PROVINCE MEETS INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 4.0

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vu Kha Thap
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
Surface Strength ◽  
Technology Application ◽  
Management Measures ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Information Technology Application

Entering the XXI century and especially in the period of the industrial revolution has entered the era of IT with the knowledge economy in the trend of globalization. The 4.0 mankind development of ICT, especially the Internet has had a strong impact and make changes to all activities profound social life of every country in the world. Through surveys in six high School, interviewed 85 managers and teachers on the status of the management of information technology application in teaching, author of the article used the SWOT method to distribute surface strength, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges from which to export 7 management measures consistent with reality. 7 measures have been conducting trials and the results showed that 07 measures of necessary and feasible.

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