From A Survey of Christian Epistemology,
by Cornelius Van Til; Den Dulk Foundation, 1969
Barth and his school would seem to do away with the usus
instrumentalis of the intellect altogether. God is said to reveal himself in spite of man's intellect. But, strange to say, in this way Barth has
really once more made the human consciousness apart from God, the standard of
truth. That this is so may be observed
from the fact that Barth's position involves the denial of the traditional
conception of the absolute self-consciousness of God. If God is thought of as absolutely self-conscious, man must be
thought of as created in his image. And
if man is created in God's image, his intellect is certainly finite, so that it
cannot be ultimately interpretive, but it is equally certain the avenue by
which revelation must come to man's self-consciousness. One cannot say that the human intellect is
paradoxical and mean therewith self-contradictory, unless one surround man with
complete irrationality.
[Underlining mine] And if man is
surrounded by complete irrationality, it is, after all, the human consciousness
that sets up shop for itself apart from God.
It appears then that even when we discuss what seems to be such a
self-evident matter as the usus instrumentalis of the intellect of man,
we must be on our guard against (a) all forms of antitheistic
anti-intellectualism, and (b) all forms of antitheistic intellectualisms. [p. 187, 188]
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We find that there is no more fundamental difference between
theism and antitheism than on the matter of prediction. Theism holds that all prediction presupposes
the existence of God as a self-conscious being, while antitheism holds that
prediction is possible without any reference to God. In fact all non-Christian views, in effect maintain that man has
no freedom to interpret reality properly so long as the God of orthodox
Christianity is in absolute control of history. This at once gives to the terms is and is not quite different
connotations. For the antitheist these
terms play upon the background of bare possibility. Hence the theist must contend that is and is not may very well be reversed upon an antitheistic
basis. The theist must contend that
the antitheist has, in effect, fundamentally denied the very law of
contradiction, inasmuch as the law of contradiction has its foundation in the
nature of God. [UNDERLINING
MINE]. On the other hand, the antitheist
from his standpoint will not hesitate to say that the theist has denied the law
of contradiction. For him, the belief
in an absolutely self-conscious God is tantamount to the rejection of the law
of contradiction, inasmuch as such a belief does not place is and is not in a correlative basis. The conception of an absolutely
self-conscious God definitely limits the field of the possible to that which is
according to the will and nature of God....
If then there is such a fundamentally exclusive difference of opinion on
the question of what the law of contradiction itself is between theists and
nontheists, it is quite out of the question to speak of the law of
contradiction as something that all men have in common.
To be sure, all men have the law of contradiction in common in
the sense that all men, as creatures made in the image of God, cannot but
function in a universe that embodies the ordinances of God. But non-Christians do not believe in such a
universe. They believe that man is
autonomous, that he is surrounded by a world of pure contingent factuality, and
that he himself must seek to impose order upon pure factual contingency by
means of the laws of logic that exist in themselves. Accordingly, the Christian, having
opposite views of reality, has opposite views of the nature and function of
logic in relation to reality.
[Underlining mine] [pages
189,190)
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When a theist and an antitheist together look at a cow, it is
quite true that they will be in hearty agreement that the cow cannot both be
and not be. But let them as the
question of "to be or not to be" about God, and it appears at once
that the antitheist says that God once was not and now is. In other words, he believes in accordance
with the tenets of his system, in a finite God. And if it then be said that even the antitheist will admit that
God cannot both be and not be at this moment, it is true but meaningless,
because it is complete abstraction that can be of no influence on life. The real question is whether we can
intelligibly think of the non-existence of God. If we maintain that we can,
affirmation and negation are lost in a shoreless sea of possibility, so that
the law of contradiction does not mean the same thing that it did before. p. 190, 191
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Finally Hodge tells us, "The ultimate ground of faith and
knowledge is confidence in God. We can
neither believe nor know anything unless we confide in those laws of belief
which God has implanted in our nature.
If we can be required to believe what contradicts those laws, then the
foundations are broken up." (Vol. I, p. 53) This statement too is true.
Yet it must be understood as applying only to those who are willing to
recognize that it is God who has implanted laws of belief in our nature. To be sure, none have any right to destroy
the laws of belief implanted in their nature by God. We believe that, as a matter of fact, God has implanted such laws
in man, and that no man has the right to break those laws, just as we believe
that no man has the right to sin. [p.
192,3]
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But he [Abraham Kuyper] has spoken of all this as witnessing to
the world rather than reasoning with the world. If we keep in mind in this connection that the position of Hodge
and Warfield is also glad to recognize the fact that regeneration is necessary
if there is to be a genuine reception of the truth, it appears that the
difference is perhaps not a great as it is sometimes said to be. The yes of Hodge and Warfield in answer to
the question whether it is possible to reason with the non-regenerate
consciousness, and the no of Kuyper, have neither of them been
unqualified. [p. 194,5]
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Our arguments taken by themselves effect nothing, while the Holy
Spirit may very well convict without the use of our argument as he may convict
without the use of our preaching. Yet
because God is himself a completely rational God and has created us in his
image, there is every reason to believe
that he will make argumentation effective. [p. 196,7]
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God can give what he commands because man has always remained his
creature. There is then even in the
consciousness of the non-regenerate a formal power of receptivity. It is this that enables him to consider the
Christian theistic position and see that it stands squarely over against his
own, and demands of him the surrender of his own position.
Still further we should recall that the ethical alienation, though
complete and exclusive in principle, is not yet complete in degree. It is this conception of the relatively good
in the absolutely evil that underlies the contention of Hodge that there is a
moral consciousness of man that may be trusted in moral matters to some
extent....
If we thought of the non-regenerate consciousness what it thinks
of itself, we should not attempt to reason with it. By that we mean that the non-regenerate consciousness thinks
itself to be independent of God metaphysically and ethically. If we thought there was any truth in this we
could not argue with it, because with a being metaphysically independent, it
would not be possible to come into any intellectual or moral contact at
all. p. 196,7
[Underlining mine throughout the above quotations]