Reformed Epistemology by Cornelius Van Til

Coming now to discuss that form of Christian epistemology which we consider most satisfactory, we already know from the standard of criticism employed throughout the previous chapters that the Reformed view makes the claim of having alone done greatest justice to the principium speciale. 'Calvinism is Theism come to its own.' That, as so many others, was a profound and comprehensive statement of Dr. Warfield. Calvinism alone, with its doctrine of the total dependence of man upon God, a dependence which is absolute and which nevertheless does not violate but brings out the true exercise of the human faculties, Calvinism alone could develop a truly biblical theology and philosophy. Calvinism alone, with its covenant-theology could make God the interpretive category of all reality, and thus afford the necessary universal validity. Calvinism alone could offer such a metaphysics upon which a valid epistemology could be constructed. So also with the principium speciale. Calvinism alone with its doctrine of the nature of man and the image of God in man did justice to the noetic influence of sin. The full and open recognition of the loss of God's imagein the narrower sense through sin, and the retention of that image in the wider sense through common grace could alone open the way for a valuation of the influence of sin upon the consciousness of man that should neither over nor underestimate the same.

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