12. Epistemological Self-Consciousness

12. Epistemological Self-Consciousness

For Calvinist epistemology, among the most key verses in the Bible are surely the following:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were  thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. (Romans 1:18-23)

There clearly comes a point in some people's perception when the external world is seen not as window on, or mirror of, God, but as raw uncreated otherness. In Van Til's terminology, these people have reached "epistemological self-consciousness" (in other words, their worldview is no longer inchoate or "agnostic", but their atheism is now intellectually resolved and comprehensively committed to). Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, was certainly "epistemologically self-conscious", and his existentialism engendered in him a sense of estrangement from his surroundings. In his "La Nausée", the sight of a particular tree trunk precipitates a feeling of nausea, being (ostensibly) irreducibly alien to Sartre's humanity. This is an utterly unChristian view, as Sartre was pointedly aware:

The existentialist...finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappear with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that "the good" exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plain where there are only men. Dostoievsky once wrote "If God did not exist, everything would be permitted"; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point [...] Before there can be any truth whatever then, there must be an absolute truth, and there is such a truth which is simple, easily attained, and within the reach of everybody; it consists in one's immediate sense of one's self. […] Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which consists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man. […] Thus there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is.
(Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism)

Though Sartre in the above quote suggests that "one's immediate sense of one's self" is "a truth which is simple, easily attained", he well knows that the paradoxes are not far to seek:

Je suis, j'existe, je pense donc je suis; je suis parce que je pense; pourquoi est-ce que je pense? je ne veux plus penser; je suis parce que je pense que je ne veux pas être; je pense que je....parce que.... pouah!
(I am, I exist, I think therefore I am; I am because I think; why is it that I think? I don't want to think any more; I am because I think that I don't want to be; I think that I....because....blah!)
(Jean-Paul Sartre, La Nausée, Éditions Gallimard, 1938)

Calvin, for his part, in the opening words of his magnum opus the "Institutes of the Christian Religion", insists that our sense of self is inextricably linked with our sense of God. So the elimination of God from all our thoughts, insofar as such can be achieved, is epistemological suicide ("The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God", Psalm 14:1).

Having quoted above the French of Sartre, it might be nice to begin the following quote from Calvin with a taste of his own majestic French:

Toute la somme de nostre saigesse, laquelle mérite d'estre apellée vraie et certaine saigesse, est quasi comprinse en deux parties, à sçavoir la congnoissance de Dieu, et de nousmesmes.

The relevant English in Beveridge's translation is:

Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone.
(Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion) (Page of English quote)

Besides Sartre, another and more contemporary, "epistemologically self-conscious" atheist is the neo-Darwinist propagandist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins is a relentless reductionist (primarily to the physical and biotic (F/B) aspects), driven by a desire to edit God from every page of reality. But he thereby leaves Earth's life-forms as mere gene-machines with no meaning beyond blank propagation. The challenge he faces, as he clearly realizes, is to avoid letting his bio-mechanistic absolutism devour all human purposefulness. Like Paul Atreides in Frank Herbert's "Dune", minute yet triumphant atop the gargantuan and omnivorous desert-cleaving worm, so Richard Dawkins plays the masterful mahout of his own all-consuming earthly Godzilla. Prophet of the selfish gene, Dawkins smiles down from on high, assuring humanity that, contrary to all appearances, we are not on the breakfast menu.

Herman Dooyeweerd gives us a philosophical analysis of the tensions within humanism, which help to make sense of Sartre (who stands at the humanist polarity of irrationalist personalism) and Dawkins (who stands at the opposite humanist polarity of rationalist scientism):

Unlike that of the Greeks and the scholastic thinkers, the inner dialectic of the Humanistic ground-motive is not born out of a conflict between two different religions. The deepest root of its dialectical character lies in the ambiguity of the Humanistic freedom-motive. The latter is the central driving force of the modern religion of human personality. And from its own depths it calls forth the motive to dominate nature, and thus leads to a religion of autonomous objective science in which there is no room for the free personality. […] The Humanistic science-ideal has led philosophy into a maze of antinomies. Every time philosophical thought tried to surpass the modal boundaries of the different aspects (numerical, spatial, physical, psychical (feeling (F/B)), logical (F/B), historical (F/B), linguistical, social, economic, juridical (F/B), ethical (F/B), pistical (F/B)) by means of a mathematical or mechanistic method, it punished itself by becoming involved in antinomies. 

At this stage we only wish to point out that the consistent following out of the naturalistic ideal of science must reveal a fundamental antinomy in the basic structure of the Humanistic transcendental ground-Idea. This science-ideal, evoked by the ideal of personality, acknowledged no limits to the application of the new natural scientific method. Had not scientific thought been emancipated from the cosmic order and declared "unconditionally" sovereign?

But the moment must come when personality, the new sovereign in the Humanistic ground-motive, which had glorified itself in its absolute freedom, must itself fall a prey to this ideal of science. Personality had been absolutized in its temporal functions of reason. The physical and biologicalfunctions had been subjected to the domination of the mathematical and mechanical method of thought. The postulate of logical continuity implied that the psychical (F/B), logical (F/B), historical (F/B), linguistical, social, economic, juridical (F/B), ethical (F/B), and faith (F/B) functions of personality must also be subjected to the naturalistic science-ideal. Thereby, the latter dealt a death blow to the sovereignty of the ideal of personality! "Die ich rief, die Geister, Werde ich nun nicht los!"
 Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought (pp 190, 204, 205)

It is only by God's "Common Grace" that the unbeliever, or better, "misbeliever", escapes spiritual blankness. Common Grace is operative insofar as behaviour, value-systems, culture etc, remain in harmony with God's will for humanity. Common Grace is a marker of the degree to which God restrains the outworking of God-denying presuppositions within society. Thus, despite their enmity towards Christ, atheistic scientists, politicians, engineers and artists etc, may well find themselves (despite themselves) fulfilling His plan for the Earth. To paraphrase Van Til  - We can only slap God in the face because He lifts us (as a parent lifts a child) close enough to do it.

The human rapport with nature is an implicit recognition of the transcendent God. We sense those "Divine attributes" which Paul mentions in Romans 1. Van Til repeatedly insists that the battle of interpretation rages over every fact in the universe. We would insist, for instance, that there is no such thing as a Darwinian animal, i.e. an animal as a product of time plus chance. Animals are fundamentally misrepresented if they are not seen as creatures of the Triune God of Scripture. Van Til writes:

True human knowledge corresponds to the knowledge which God has of Himself and His world. Suppose that I am a scientist investigating the life and ways of a cow. What is this cow? I say it is an animal. But that only pushes the question back. What is an animal? To answer that question I must know what life is. But again, to know what life is I must know how it is related to the inorganic world. And so I may and must continue till I reach the borders of the universe. And even when I have reached the borders of the universe, I do not yet know what the cow is. Complete knowledge of what a cow is can be had only by an absolute intelligence, i.e., by one who has, so to speak, the blueprint of the whole universe. But it does not follow from this that the knowledge of the cow that I have is not true as far as it goes. It is true if it corresponds to the knowledge that God has of the cow. (Cornelius Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology  PDF, being In Defense of the Faith Volume 2, den Dulk Christian Foundation,1969)

Richard Dawkins begs to differ, of course. He has just published his latest on-the-run salvo against the ever-pursuant Hound of Heaven 

("Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth")

A big hardback book called "The God Delusion". Occupying pride of place at the entrance of Border's bookstore, and by the stairway to Starbucks. Promoted over the Tannoy. Half-price offer. 

("Ah! must -
Designer infinite!- 
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?")

The irony and tragedy for Dawkins is that "The God Delusion" defines his own life (ie the delusion that God is not there). The same delusion which persuaded Sartre to expend his precious years in a futile attempt to interpret himself, and reality at large, in an apostate direction, i.e. away from the Creator instead of unto the Creator. 

("That Voice is round me like a bursting sea")

Believing themselves to be a champions of the Truth, these men in fact "suppress the Truth", and ultimately meaning must drain from their universe*. 

("Halts by me that footfall")

—————— 

* cf Justin Brierley’s 2008 Premier Christian Radio interview with Richard Dawkins:

JB: When you make a value judgement don't you immediately step yourself outside of this evolutionary process and say that the reason this is good is that it's good. And you don't have any way to stand on that statement.

RD: My value judgement itself could come from my evolutionary past. 

JB: So therefore it's just as random in a sense as any product of evolution.

RD: You could say that, it doesn't in any case, nothing about it makes it more probable that there is anything supernatural.

JB: Ultimately, your belief that rape is wrong is as arbitrary as the fact that we've evolved five fingers rather than six.

RD: You could say that, yeah.

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