Throughout my education, I have received a lot of support and help from several individuals and organizations. This dissertation is not so much the culmination of a single individual's work as it is a representation of the hard work and dedication of those who have made sacrifices on my behalf. As a student of Southern Seminary for more than a decade, I am indebted to both the principals and teachers of such an excellent school.
I am grateful to the executive committee of Southern Seminary, which provided a continuing opportunity for military members to continue uninterrupted in their studies at the school during a time of administrative change. The theological faculty at Southern Seminary has always steered me in the right direction on matters of doctrine and spirituality. Similarly, my faculty supervisor, Stephen Wellum has been instrumental in guiding my academic interests towards a specific subject.
I would also like to thank John Frame for his insightful and pastoral correspondence over the course of a decade from which much of the material for this thesis was born. My wife, Julia, sacrificed in countless ways for me to pursue my academic goals, and I could never have completed my degree without her love and encouragement.
INTRODUCTION
An Analysis of the Philosophy of Cornelius Van Til (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1995); Rousas John Rushdoony, Van Til and the Limits of Reason (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 2013). Van Til urged apologists to think seriously about the noetic effects of the Fall.84. Van Til's externalist coherentism is rooted in the doctrine of the Trinity in which each person fully understands the eternal.
The created world is expressive of the nature of God."120 Van Til ties the knowledge of God and the knowledge of the world together. In his discussion of the necessity of special revelation, Van Til argues that the presuppositions of biblical theism. One area in which Plantinga's analysis can be assisted by Van Til's is with regard to the scope of properly basic belief in God.
And the unbeliever's knowledge of God, epistemologically speaking, would for Van Til be equivalent to unjustified true belief in God for Plantinga. Plantinga's view of the fixability of belief in God can be helped by Van Til's distinction between. Secondly, I will analyze Van Til's version of the noetic effect of sin and how it fits into his theory of knowledge.
With regard to the knowledge of God, Van Til states that the unbeliever has lost the knowledge.
BORROWED CAPITAL
To demonstrate the value of integrating their views, I will first elaborate on Plantinga's writings on the nature of the unbeliever's attempt to gain knowledge. The non-Christian needs the truth of the Christian religion in order to attack it. In their acquisition of further knowledge they are thus dependent on their assumption of the Christian view of God and the world.
He asks about the very existence of God, which is necessary for the intelligibility of the question. Unbelieving discoveries in science cannot be explained except by the assumption of the Christian God. Van Til also acknowledges that the content of unbelieving borrowed capital includes notions of creation and providence.
Both Plantinga and Van Til are helpful in highlighting the nature of non-believers borrowing Christian assumptions for their achievements. However, the problem of one and many is solved in the biblical teaching about God. Bosserman elaborates on Van Til's use of the Trinity in solving the problem of the one and the many.
Bosserman, The Trinity and the Justification of the Christian Paradox: An Interpretation and Refinement of Cornelius Van Til's Theological Approach (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2014)90. It is not only a monotheistic god that can solve the problem of the one and the many, but specifically Christian theism. Plantinga does not address whether the unbeliever in general borrows from the Christian worldview.
Plantinga's account of the unbeliever's borrowing from the Christian faith would be aided by Van Til's examples of the content of that very borrowing. Since unbelief is a malfunction of the cognitive faculty, the unbeliever is never justified in his unbelief. Van Til's insight into the necessity of the Trinity to solve the problem of the one and the many is a useful corrective to Plantinga's allowance of the unbeliever's borrowings from non-Christian belief systems, specifically the Jewish way of thinking.
COMMON GROUND
To demonstrate this, I will first examine Plantinga's understanding of the concept of common ground between the believer and the unbeliever. What is not common between the believer and the unbeliever is the knowledge of God, the gospel and the application of the gospel in life. What the unbeliever needs to rise to the level of the believer in knowledge is additional information.
Plantinga's concept of the noetic effects of sin seems to result in a two-story structure of knowledge.8 The lowest level consists of natural knowledge. The ground floor of the house of knowledge is a common ground for believers and unbelievers alike. The main point of contention between their two views concerns the nature of the common ground.
However, the mechanical process of survival had nothing to do with the truth of the rabbit's belief system. Cornelius Van Til reaches the same conclusion of the irrationality of disbelief, though not in the form of the implied, but of the transcendent. Modal form of. the transcendental argument does not clearly demonstrate the absolute nature of the relationship between intelligibility and the Christian worldview.
The failure of the Christian worldview presupposition results in the inability to assign to intelligibility a truth value or true or false. Presuppositional logic allows the transcendental argument to affirm the primitive status of God's existence found within the Christian worldview. Whether the intelligibility is affirmed or denied, the truth of the Christian worldview is the conclusion.
The presuppositional form of the modified argument is the same type of argument that Van Til makes regarding Christianity. In order to defend the RF model of epistemology, this chapter is structured according to the name of the proposed model. The justification required for knowledge in the case of the born-again depends in part on the Holy Spirit.
Man depended on God's revelation to know his purpose as steward of the garden and filling the earth. It recognized the fact that its function was that of interpreting God's revelation.
