Updates and Inquiry

Just a quick reminder, the article “The Ontological Significance of the Trinity” has been updated with some very, very important and stellar quotations by Rushdoony, Frame, and Van Til (but you gotta read them slowly folks!!). Also, you may have noticed the blog-comment war going on under the no-female-pastor post. Enjoy!

The mailbox was also undergoing some useful activity today.

I am looking for a critique of pantheism from a presuppositionalist perspective. I am dealing with some fairly educated people who are into neo-platonic/new age(ish) ideas. I have read Ronald Nash’s chapter on plotinus in “Life’s Ultimate Questions,” and found didnt think it was deep enough for what I’m looking for. I also read Nash’s “The Gospel and the Greeks” but it was very rigorous philosophically. Van Til and Bahnsen’s discussions on the problem of universality and particularity have been helpful (i.e. either the unbeliever can have particulars with no unity (autonomous empiricism) or we have unity that has no contact with individuality of our experience (autonomous rationalism). I think Eastern pantheism/New Age(ish) thought seeks to solve this problem by denying any particularity what so ever relegating the reality we experience to illusion. Obviously many problems arise quickly at this point, but I was wondering if you know of any resources that might touch on this problem more clearly. I am begining to think that eastern spirituality/pantheism/paganism may be the biggest challenge to Christianity…thanks for all you guys do! -

I thought t my reply could be useful to others, so here it is:

Excellent question David, and my answer is simple (and perhaps obvious): the works of Cornelius Van Til.
Van Til had immense knowledge of pantheistic monism, and is ironically the founder of presuppositionalism. From 1925-1927, Van Til demonstrated his “mastery of Hegelian philosophy” which “gained high praise from AA Bowman, who offered him a graduate fellowship. In 1927 the university granted him a Ph.D in philosophy for a dissertation on ‘God and the Absolute,’ (Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, 9). Depending on how serious you are about the subject, I’d read every page of Van Til you can get your hands on – especially his works in metaphysics and philosophy for this particular issue.

Where to begin?

1. Read the RealApologetics.org article entitled “The Ontological Significance of the Trinity.” Monism, Dualism, Pantheism/Pantheistic monism…all of these worldviews are the result of a failure to apply Trinitarian theology at the ontological level. (Yes, we can derive our philosophy from our theology, and in fact, usually should.)
2. Read “Van Til and the Problem of the One and the Many” in Jerusalem and Athens (P&R, 1980) by RJ Rushdoony. If you find this article online, let me know, because I haven’t been able to.
3. Van Til’s works (doctoral dissertation, The Defense of the Faith, perhaps others that are more pertinent to pantheism that I can’t find).
4. Listen to Ellis Potter’s lecture on “The Real Problem with Buddhism.”

I wouldn’t go as far as to say pantheism/eastern thought is “maybe the biggest challenge to Christianity.” But as Potter points out in that lecture, the idea of “oneness” is perhaps the most powerful idea ever known to human beings other than the crucifixion of Christ. What’s so difficult about talking to the serious eastern folks is that they are often bent on emptying the mind, not filling it like “westerners,” which means they stop giving you attention as soon as you offer an argument or even engage in a meaningful conversation (it also means they fill it up with bad stuff, but simply aren’t intentional/conscious about it). It’s binding, captivating for many, indeed. However, history reveals that it is an ancient problem with ancient problems, and all of them insufficient to uphold their worldview; the truth is always on the side of the Triune God and His Word…and I think one could argue quite easily that Islam, which is thoroughly anti-pantheistic/monistic, is gaining much more traction on a global scale.

At any rate, hope this helps,
blessings

jamin h