Tag: Van Til

The Philosophical and Moral Impotency of Natural Law in Refuting Homosexuality

by Ron DiGiacomo1 Comment on The Philosophical and Moral Impotency of Natural Law in Refuting Homosexuality

Although all men know by nature that homosexuality is sin, it’s only through Scripture that one can adequately defend the claim. (Natural theology types are free to try sometime.)

Since most people are autonomous in their thinking it’s understandable why most cannot justify with any consistency (and without avoiding arbitrariness) the claim that homosexuality is morally wrong. (Again, natural theology types are free to try sometime.)

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Although many straight people still find homosexuality unnatural – unnatural does not imply moral deviance. Even the claim that something is unnatural presupposes a network of beliefs about reality, truth, and ethical standards that cannot adequately be justified apart from Scripture. Whether homosexuality is sin is indeed a worldview question.

Sure, in general revelation there is natural law that pronounces guilt for sin upon all mankind, including guilt for homosexuality. Notwithstanding, natural law can grow increasingly dim in the minds of the ungodly. Yet even when natural law was shining more brightly upon social conscience, it was never to be interpreted apart from special revelation. With the rejection of the Bible, mankind is left to grope in darkness but not in search for moral standards – rather for moral standards that are philosophically defensible in the context of a larger worldview context that should be consistent, coherent and explanatory. On the authority of God’s word, we know it cannot successfully be done, which has been corroborated and verified since the time of creation.

Accordingly, two unhappy alternatives:

Apart from viewing homosexuality through the lens of Scripture, one is left with two unhappy alternatives: (i) a bigoted rejection of homosexuality or else (ii) condoning what is known in conscience to be morally deviant. In other words, apart from Scripture one either can judge correctly yet for sinful reasons, or else violate conscience (and live in moral conflict) by condoning in the name of love, no less, that which is an abomination in God’s sight.

Regarding natural theology, the church needs to wake-up from its Thomistic slumbers and distinguish (i) the universal knowledge of sin through natural law from (ii) the sole basis by which we might adequately defend the possibility of such knowledge. The former pertains to knowledge that permeates all moral creatures regardless of one’s worldview; whereas the latter relates to an epistemological defense that is unique to the Christian worldview. Without God’s word as the foundation for the only worldview that can reconcile moral absolutes with life experience, in whose name might we dare judge any behavior as sinful?!

In order to avoid imposing personal preference upon others, one is left to condone a practice that is contrary to God’s word. In other words, the “open minded” (to everything but God’s word, that is), if they’re to remain free from such bigotry, are constrained to not object to deviant behavior, “for who are we to judge?” Without God’s word, through the illumination of the Spirit, confirming to us that which we indeed know by nature to be sin, our beliefs would be reduced to subjective doubt and philosophical skepticism. Indeed, apart from the propositional revelation contained in Scripture we cannot adequately justify the knowledge we have, at least in any robust philosophical sense, that there even is such a thing as natural law. If that is not true, then God has not made foolish the wisdom of this world. (Again, natural theology types are free to try sometime.)

In closing:

An insurmountable natural theology conundrum is that apart from special revelation we’re consigned to non-authoritative personal preference, even though the Spirit unambiguously and universally testifies that homosexuality is sin. Perhaps the biggest irony in all of this is that without God’s word, ultimate autonomous virtue leads to defending deviant behavior against conscience. That’s where the world lives today. It doesn’t have a good enough reason to condemn sinful practice without being bigoted, so the world defends what God condemns.

In sum, apart from Scripture one is left either to go along with ungodly behavior to avoid personal prejudicial preference, or else undergo the conflicting guilt that comes with arbitrarily disapproving of a practice that is known to be morally wrong. At the end of the day, the Christian’s righteous disapproval of ungodly behavior is not available to us apart from values informed by Scripture and no amount of natural law can get us out of that Thomistic, humanistic predicament. No amount or natural law can get us to a defensible natural theology of sin. We must distinguish knowledge from the justification of the possibility of knowledge.

Yet Christians can rejoice in at least this: God is not mocked; the fool is confounded once again.

Univocal Of The Analogical (part ii)

by Ron DiGiacomo

When ectypal knowledge obtains, the object of it must be true. If the object is true, then God must believe it (since God believes all truth). God believes it as it truly is, an analogy of the archetypal knowledge, which only God has (knowledge of the archetypal).

Assume all our thoughts of God are analogical. Although we cannot know God as God knows himself, we can know God as he has revealed himself to us in “baby talk.” Per my original post, the controversy of the 40s missed a distinction. If I may simplify, Clark thought that if we don’t know the content of a proposition as God believes it (not exhaustively yet at least minimally for knowledge to obtain), then we can’t have knowledge. Whereas Van Til maintained that we cannot know a proposition even minimally as God believes it lest we become like God. 

It appeared that Clark was saying that the intersection was at the archetypal level. Van Til (CVT) was correct in denying that interpretation. Yet in saying all our knowledge is analogical (CVT), it left the impression that we can’t know anything given that if we are to know anything our minds must obviously intersect God’s (Clark). (Many Van Tillians often deny this, which leads to skepticism. What is knowledge after all? Many Van Tillians compound the error by allowing for apparent contradiction in an extreme sense of logical contradiction and equivocation. These sorts do Van Til’s thought harm.) 

The solution is, God knows the original and the analogy. Did either side acknowledge that?! The creator-creature distinction does not imply that there is no similitude between God’s thoughts and man’s thoughts, but rather that the point of resemblance is at a point of true analogy, not at a point of univocation. I think both sides missed it. To my knowledge CVT did not acknowledge that God knows the objects of our ectypal knowledge whereas Clark dismissed analogical knowledge altogether. 

Univocal Of The Analogical (part i)

by Ron DiGiacomo

Regarding the Clark / Van Til controversy of the 1940s these points were innocuous.

1. Both sides affirmed a quantitative difference between God’s knowledge and man’s. The disagreement wasn’t so trivial as to pertain to the number of propositions known or how they exhaustively relate to each other. Surely, both sides agreed. God knows more stuff.

2. The mode or manner of how God knows is radically different than that of man. God’s knowledge is original or intuitive. Man’s, receptive or derivative. I know no disciple of CVT or GHC who’d demur.

3. The Westminster team wanted Clark and his gang to affirm a qualitative difference regarding the “content” of what God and man know.

With that as our backdrop, a few words…

All God’s knowledge is eternal and exhaustive. We oppose process theology, open theism, socinianism etc. Yet with respect to God’s ectypal knowledge, that knowledge would be God’s eternal and unchanging knowledge of the analogy he always intended to reveal to us through the things that are made. So, God knows himself originally, but as he lisps his revelation of himself to us he does so in a manner suitable to our creatureliness. The object of our knowledge is God’s revelation of himself, which is a replication or divine interpretation of the original.

Moving beyond the premise, this construct makes room for our having true knowledge that must intersect the mind of God, but not univocal with respect to God’s intuitive knowledge of himself, rather similitude with respect to God’s knowledge of his interpretation of the original. The point of contact or intersection between minds would be the analogy, which is to say God’s communication.

With that in mind, we may consider our knowledge of the ectypal, but not in relation to the archetypal but in relation to God’s own knowledge of the (analogical) objects of our analogical knowledge. In other words, although our knowledge is analogical to God’s original self knowledge (analogical to the archetypal), our knowledge in another sense corresponds not directly to the original of God’s knowledge but rather as it corresponds to God’s own knowledge of the analogical icons that we also know.

In a word, it’s not that we know what God knows (the original), but that God knows what he has allowed us to know (the interpretation of the original).