I have become fascinated by a single thought lately. I began thinking about it last year and have been trying to understand it ever since. The thought is something like this: In order for anyone to know anything, someone must know everything. Expressed more visually: if there is knowledge, there must be KNOWLEDGE. I found the idea in the writings of Cornelius Van Til who writes, “there must be comprehensive knowledge somewhere if there is to be any true knowledge anywhere.”1 The following, gleaned from something I wrote for a class during my MA, traces some of my thoughts on the matter, in particular, relating the idea to divine foreknowledge…
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Epistemological Answers to the Logical Problem of Evil
Although I have already posted on this subject (here), I have some further thoughts. In fact, the following thoughts were an earlier attempt to respond to the logical problem of evil. The logical problem of evil is an objection to Christian theism that suggests that the Christian is somehow irrational to hold to the set of beliefs – God is good, God is all-powerful and evil exists. The set of beliefs is said to produce a contradiction. I said that, for my defense I would contend that God determines all things, including evil, while human beings, not God, remain responsible for evil. This claim rests on a view of providence commonly…
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Knowing Me Knowing You
I exist. Am I sure that I exist? Well, as sure as I can be. I think I exist. Isn’t that enough to assure me that I exist. If I am thinking, I must exist. And so goes the familiar logic of Rene Descartes. Descartes proceeds in his pursuit of knowledge from the following starting point: “When we apprehend that we are thinking things, this is the first notion which is not drawn from any syllogism; and when one says, I think, hence I am, or I exist, he does not conclude his existence from his thought as by a force of some syllogism, he must beforehand have known this major, All…