-----Original Message-----
	From: Michael Sudduth [mailto:[email protected]]
	Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 9:36 AM
	To: Dr. Kelly James Clark
	Subject: Re: Van Til and the Knowledge of the Unbeliever

	Hi Kelly,

	While I'm no Van Tilian, and I have certainly had my share of
	confrontations with folks on the Van Til list, I'm not persuaded
	that your criticisms of Van Til are all that plausible, at least not
	as you have developed them thus far.

	Since I'll be discussing Van Til in one of the chapters in my
	book in progress and I'm pressed on time at the moment, I
	won't get into specific exegetical issues here and try to
	argue against your contention that Van Til's view implies
	that unbelievers have no knowledge. My main goal here
	is simply to present reasons for your consideration as to
	why you haven't adequately argued that his view has the
	implication in question.

	I. Knowledge and the Truth Condition

	In your post to the Van Til list, you wrote: "The point is, truth is
	a requirement of knowledge. So if the unbeliever cannot have an
	"even true interpretation of the snake", then they cannot know
	anything."

	It seems to me that a crucial issue here is what exactly Van
	Til *meant* by "true interpretation."  Did he understand this
	phrase in such a way that it entails that unbelievers possess no
	true beliefs?  In your post, you provide two possibilities, only
	one of which implies that unbelievers have no knowledge. But
	as far as I can see you really don't *argue* that Van Til
	understood the phrase this way.  What is lacking here I think
	is a careful engagement with the relevant texts and a consideration
	of the philosophical background of Van Til's thought in order
	to ascertain what Van Til meant by the phrase in question.
	But I don't see that you done much here, at least not in your
	post to the Van Til list, your paper-response to Oliphint, or
	your contributions in the *Five Views* book.

	If we can't ascertain with any degree of likelihood what Van
	Til meant by this phrase, the reasonable thing is to be agnostic
	about whether his claims have the implications you attribute
	to them.

	Of course, as you note, Van Til himself claims that unbelievers
	*do* have knowledge. So perhaps we have better reason to deny
	that the implication you suggest holds than to affirm it and accuse
	Van Til of contradiction. This would be the charitable interpretation.

	II. Lack of Justification

	In the *Five Views* book, you wrote:

	"Van Til and his followers often claim that Van Til never claims
	this. The problem is that the conclusion - that unbelievers cannot
	know anything - follows fairly simply from their analysis of knowledge
	and the disparaging remarks they make about the unbeliever's
	lack of justification due to faulty reasoning."

	You bring this up again in your post to the Van Til list, though
	here you are directing your comments specifically to Frame:

	"Frame's views of justification imply that unbelievers cannot know
	anything because they lack justification (which requires explicit
	faith in Jesus, according to Frame). If a person is not justified in
	her belief that p, a person cannot know that p."

	I think the argument you are suggesting here and in the *Five
	Views* book, is problematic for several reasons. Why suppose
	that by virtue of the unbeliever's presuppositions (faulty as
	they may be), the unbeliever is *unjustified*? Unjustified in
	what sense? And unjustified in believing *what* exactly? I
	think the argument at best needs more unpacking if it is to have
	any show of plausibility.

	It is true that Van Til held that the unbeliever's worldview,
	or his presuppositions qua unbeliever, cannot *account* for
	the epistemic efficacy of our cognitive faculties. In this sense,
	the unbeliever qua unbeliever cannot *justify* his epistemological
	commitments. Indeed, on Van Til's view, *if* the unbeliever's
	worldview were true, then knowledge would not be possible.
	Of course, part of Van Til's point is that the world in fact is
	not as the unbeliever takes it to be, and this why knowledge
	is possible. Moreover, one of the implications of the doctrine
	of antithesis is that the unbeliever himself operates with an
	antithesis, a dichotomy - for instance - between his metaphysical
	naturalism and his positive theoretical and/or practical
	epistemological commitments. There is a conflict here, and
	so - as Van Tilians say - since the unbeliever's epistemological
	commitments can only be justified within the framework of
	Christian theism, the unbeliever is living off "borrowed capital."
	But how exactly should we understand all of this?

	The first thing to note here is that this *logical* point about the
	alleged incompatibility between (a) the unbeliever's worldview
	qua unbeliever and (b) his state of knowing (as well his taking
	himself to have knowledge or to be justified) does not entail that
	the unbeliever is unjustified to believe the second-order proposition
	that his cognitive faculties are reliable, valid, or epistemically
	efficacious, at least not under most theories of epistemic
	justification. After all, like the evolutionary naturalist, perhaps
	he doesn't see the connection between the relevant propositions.
	And depending on what constraints one places on defeaters,
	it isn't clear that he gets a defeater for his second-order beliefs
	about the positive epistemic status of his first-order beliefs. Or
	perhaps the idea is that if the unbeliever *were* correct, say,
	in his metaphysical naturalism, then he *would* be unjustified to
	believe that knowledge is possible. But of course this is not the
	case. So I think it is far from obvious that the unbeliever is
	unjustified in holding these higher-order beliefs.

	Of course, perhaps it follows that the unbeliever cannot engage
	in the *activity* of justifying his epistemological beliefs, at least
	not successfully, since his worldview cannot properly account for
	them. But it wouldn't necessarily follow from this that he cannot
	*be* justified in these beliefs. All one needs to do is pull a Reid
	out of the Van Tilian hat. Perhaps God has so designed us that
	these epistemological commitments are basic beliefs. So we are
	immediately justified to believe them. In that case, the
	unbeliever's inability to successfully engage in the activity of
	justifying these beliefs by argument does not entail that he is
	unjustified in holding these beliefs.  Indeed, in that case, one
	might suppose that these epistemological commitments give
	the unbeliever a defeater for his metaphysical naturalism.

	At all events, it certainly doesn't follow in any obvious way
	that the unbeliever is unjustified in his second-order beliefs
	about knowledge or the epistemic efficacy of his cognitive
	faculties simply because some of his metaphysical presuppositions
	clash with the truth of these second-order beliefs. For the
	same reason the unbeliever can hold justified beliefs that
	presuppose the validity of causality, even if his metaphysical
	presuppositions are such that they cannot justify or account
	for the law of causality. Indeed, in the *Five Views* book, Frame
	asserts this contradiction between the unbeliever's worldview
	qua unbeliever and the unbeliever's de facto *commitments*
	that allegedly presuppose the truth of theism. But again, why
	conclude from the fact that there is this contradiction, that certain
	beliefs are unjustified? I can't see how this follows from
	anything Frame or Van Til says.

	Moreover, I suspect this last point is connected to a lack of
	specification in your argument regarding *justification.* You
	don't explain what you mean by "justification," or what plausible
	conditions may be imposed upon the instantiation of the concept.
	For this reason, there is a sense in which it isn't clear what you
	are denying. The necessity of justification as a condition of knowledge
	depends in large part on how one understands the concept of
	epistemic justification.  Since this is left unclear, the deductions
	there from are doubtful.

	But even if we supposed that the inability of the unbeliever to
	justify his epistemological commitments, or that the clash between
	these commitments and his worldview entailed that he was not
	justified in believing that his cognitive faculties are reliable, it
	would not follow that the unbeliever was unjustified in his other
	first-order beliefs, at least not if there are no higher-level requirements
	for justification. I can't see that it is very plausible to suppose
	that to be justified in believing that p I must also be justified in
	believing that I am justified in believing that p. The same thing
	holds true if we replace "justified" with "knowledge" here, unless
	of course you are assuming some radical form of internalism
	that involves higher-level requirements. (Of course those of us
	who are dubious about such accounts of justification are not
	likely to find such an argument persuasive). So perhaps the
	unbeliever cannot justify his epistemic beliefs or claims. Perhaps
	he is not justified to hold such beliefs. But it doesn't follow from
	this alone that he lacks knowledge. If it did, just about everyone
	would be in the same boat because most people, Christian or
	otherwise, cannot successfully justify their epistemic beliefs,
	unless one is being considerably liberal as to what counts as
	justifying a belief.

	Finally, it isn't clear where Van Til himself stood on the concept
	of justification, especially since he wrote before the JTB theory of
	knowledge came into prominence. So I think it is a bit unfair to
	Van Til to claim that *his* beliefs imply that unbelievers cannot
	know anything, as the derivation depends on assumptions about
	the nature of knowledge which have not been exegetically established
	to be Van Til's own. I realize that Frame uses the term justification
	(though how exactly is another question), but here is a situation
	where it would be prudent to distinguish between Van Til's views
	and the views of some of his commentators.

	III. The Necessity of Presupposing God

	A final  point.  In the *Five Views* book, you state: "Presuppositionalists,
	in general, seem to assume that, lacking explicit knowledge of God,
	we cannot know things" (p. 258).

	They may *seem* to assume this, but is this really so? Where
	is the support for the notion that "generally" presuppositionalists
	think this?

	While presuppositionalists maintain that everyone does have
	a knowledge of God (i.e., a sensus divinitatis), it is wholly unclear
	that the presuppositionalist position requires that this knowledge
	be *explicit* in all people. That this knowledge is not explicit
	may indeed be a consequence of the fact that the knowledge
	is suppressed by sin, a theme that is central to Van Tilianism.
	In that case, perhaps this knowledge is in some sense, *implicit.*
	The notion of a universal, implicit knowledge of God is certainly
	not an uncommon view in the history of philosophy. In fact, it
	appears to have been fairly popular among thinkers who would
	have been among Van Til's proximate intellectual predecessors
	(e.g., Strong, Harris). The idea strikes me as a plausible
	interpretation of Van Til. At any rate, one certainly needs to
	be alert to the fact that Van Til's position may be nuanced
	than you make it out to be.

	Now perhaps it appears that the Van Tilian is committed
	to the idea of an explicit knowledge of God as a necessary
	condition of knowledge generally because he contends that
	knowledge presupposes God. One might suppose that this
	implies that knowledge requires an awareness of or explicit
	belief in or acceptance of God. But "presupposing x" can be
	can be interpreted in various ways, some of which do not
	require the subject has formulated a proposition about x.  One
	finds such uses in both Augustus Strong and Samuel Harris
	in the late nineteenth century. Van Til himself used the word
	"presupposition" in different ways, but I don't quite see why
	you have excluded the interpretation that Van Til had in mind
	the necessity of the *ontological fact* of God's existence
	for the possibility of knowledge. When you say "It does not
	follow that atheists must be aware of God's existence or
	submit to God's authority in order to know things" (*Five
	Views,* p. 258), I would think that many Van Tilians would
	agree with this, though they would add that human beings
	do at least have something like an implicit knowledge of God.

	In the light of the points raised above, I have reservations
	about the cogency of your arguments and the plausibility
	of your contention that Van Til's beliefs or views entail
	that unbelievers lack all knowledge.  I just don't see that
	you have presented a very strong argument for this. The
	argument needs a lot more work.

	Now perhaps such an argument *can* be made. Indeed,
	perhaps your arguments as they stand have force against
	*some* Van Tilians. But I can't see that they hit their
	purported target, namely Van Til himself, or even Frame.
	I'm certainly not here to defend all Van Tilians, much
	less the notion that no Van Tilian is in the position of
	being logically committed to the view that unbelievers
	lack all knowledge. I'm fairly sure this is an entailment
	of the beliefs held by *some* Van Tilians. But it is easy
	to find philosophically incompetent devotees of just
	about any philosopher. But what about Van Til himself?
	What were his views? That's my question. And that's
	what I would expect to find in the arguments by anyone
	who makes claims about the implications of Van Til's
	views or beliefs.

	In addition to the distinctions I have suggested above, you
	might want to take a look at the textual material and references
	presented by James Anderson under "Frequently Encountered
	Misconceptions" of Van Til's thought.
	http://www.vantil.info/articles/vtfem.html

	peace,
	Michael