Cornelius Van Til said God is often Confusing.. Bahnsen too!

[DCGideon]

AndrewcBain,

You apparently have no understanding of how a presuppositional apologetic works. The psychological confusion of the unbeliever exists because it is impossible for an unbeliever to consistently live. This confusion is proof that his non-Christian presuppositions are faulty. This confusion will only go away when the unbeliever embraces faith in Christ and belief in propositional revelation of the Bible. I suggest that you first learn about a topic before posting

[andrewdotnich]

@DCGideon +1

[Klaratu]

Wake up Andrew! Your twisting peoples words and quite frankly im sick of it! I dont think your faith is as strong as you pretend it is!

[totallyturtles]

Hey Andrew? Uh.... Do I know you in real life??? Why do you want to be friends with me? What's your religion? Please respond.

[ironmonkeypalm]

God's Revelation to me wasn't confusing. It was totally cool and out of this world. My testimony to you.

[norgeforkristus]

Psalm 8. God made creation, and made man over it. Man is a "Doing" or "Deed" of God. So is creation. So is grass for animals and wine for man's heart Psalm 104. Providence is a constant -- the level of health we have, the talents we possess, our finances, our friends.. our citizenship in countries that allow Christians to live.... read John Flavel's Mystery of Providence.

[norgeforkristus]

Man is God's image. If man knows himself, as he truly is, he will know the image of God -- he will know God. Yet "among" him, there also many other proofs, such as the heavens declaring the glory of God Ps.19 and the Providential care of man's needs Acts 14.

It's not possible for images of God to be completely oblivious to the image of God, creation, and providence.

[norgeforkristus]

...to know yourself is to realize your subsistence in God. Where did I get this mind, these talents, this body? Surely not from myself. I am a creature. Calvin.

Van til is a Calvinist, you must read the Institutes of the Christian religion to appreciate him.

[norgeforkristus]

"Even man's negative ethical reaction to God's revelation within his own psychological confusion" Van til. This is not to say God is confusing in His revelation, but rather that in trying to shut out the sunlight, you still see it coming through the shutters. Dimmer, yes, but not entirely banished. Not the brilliance an open window would have...

[agustintadeo]

Lost People cannot have true in then cause if they have the true they would be Save and Perhaps they would not be unbelievers. True is Jesus. (Juan 14:6)

Try to keep the principal of the Jesus alone in the psalms is out of context. Anyway i think this is a good method to keep the ministers studying and making reviews of what they teach and not the ministers alone but any true believer i have been doing this with a Christian Friend for almost a year.

[AQuinault]

That said, in the spirit of fairness, is it possible Van Til here meant by unbelievers, not all unbelievers, but the elect before regeneration?

In this case, these unbelievers might have had knowledge of God which they suppressed, and God used evangelization as the means by which their confused, inconsistent positions were brought to the level of conscious awareness, so they could no longer deny the truth.

I'm just asking - I have not read Van Til.

[AQuinault]

The biggest problem I have with him is epistemology (another good verse on confusion 1 Co 14:33), saying things like 'God is simultaneously 1 person and 3 persons', or trying to prevent Gordon Clark's ordination simply because Clark wouldn't concede God had some special 'mystical' understanding of simple propositions such as 2+2=4.

[NeoConvert]

My suggestion to you is - once again, not unlike my comment on your Bahnsen piece - that you stop being so contentious, because I think you're embarrassing yourself. Your "critiques" demonstrate a lack of philosophical acuity, and I would be willing to bet that you have no training in the discipline at all.

Sorry man, I didn't get much past the 1:30 mark. What's the point of paying your critiques any mind when you continually demonstrate a lack of grasp of the thinker you're aiming at?

[NeoConvert]

At 1:06 you say that "according to Van Til, the most penetrating means by which the Holy Spirit presses the claims of God upon man is man's own confusion."

Andrew, first of all, this irresponsible of you. Van Til did not say that. You're blatantly misquoting him. I don't see how you could do this for you clearly had to type Van Til's words out yourself. In fact, they're on the screen, right there, even as you misquote him in your voice over.

[AndrewcBain]

G'day NeoConvert! Thanks for the feedback. I quoted Van Til saying, "Man's own interpretative activity, whether of the more of less extended type, whether in ratiocination or intuition, is no doubt the most penetrating means by which the Holy Spirit presses the claims of God upon man. Even man's negative ethical reaction to God's revelation within his own psychological confusion is revelational of God." (p441)

[AndrewcBain]

So "confusion is revelational of God", according to Van Til. And this is not a one-off comment from Van Til -- the idea that confusion reveals God is perfectly consistent with his system. In fact, Van Til must say that confusion reveals God - because he says unbelievers have God's "truth in them" and the Holy Spirit uses this.

[AndrewcBain]

However, Van Til also correctly affirmed that unbelievers are perpetually confused. This led Van Til to the awkward confusion that the only thing the Holy Spirit can use to "press the claims of God" upon the unbeliever are the unbeliever's confused thoughts.

[ReformedLou]

Andrew, I'm not going to spend a great deal of effort responding to this video, because I'm more "Clarkian" myself, and have problems with VanTil's epistemology, as does AQ. I will say, one shouldn't equate paradox with contradiction, as I believe you did in the video. We know that paradox is an apparent, not true, contradiction. But again, I can't defend VanTil's use of paradox.

[agustintadeo]

What is your Purpose doing all this?

Cornelius Van Til,

MacArthurh, John Piper, C.H. Spurgeon, and many others. to what ministers are you working with or are you any atheist?

[ReformedLou]

I see a lot of John Robbins in Andrew's theology. That's my guess, and I don't think he's an atheist at all. You can check out the Trinity Foundation for Robbins's stuff.