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THEOparadox - The Biblical Paradox Blog: Cornelius Van Til - "Why I Believe In God"
Personal blog that will cover my personal interests. I write about Christian Theology and Apologetics, politics, culture, science, and literature.
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Some of you are familiar with what has become known (inappropriately) as the Van Til/Clark controversy; dealing with what constitutes God's knowledge and man's knowledge. Recently the crew from the Reformed Forum spent some time with Dr. Scott Oliphint (who sat under Van Til and now teaches Apologetics at WTS) and addressed this controversy. Click here to listen.
If you are not familiar with Dr. Oliphint, he is the author of The Battle Belongs to the Lord and Reasons for Faith: Philosophy in the Service of Theology, both books dealing with apologetics. He is also one of the editors of Christian Apologetics Past and Present: A Primary Source Reader. Dr. Oliphint is certainly one of my favorites when it comes to contemporary apologetic thought.
I used the term "essence of God" to describe the divinity shared between the three Persons of the Trinity. The point is that this "divine essence" is not impersonal, but it is by virtue of this shared divinity that the Persons share attributes of the divine, and these attributes are personal. If I may spell it out, the being of God has divine attributes that are personal, and these attributes are shared between the three Persons of the Trinity. As far as I understand, there is nothing heretical about that. Perhaps this point may be a little obvious for a Westminster Seminary student (and I mean no disrespect by that), but I daresay this is not a thought that has occupied much attention in the thinking of most evangelicals.I think Collin is right. And explains why the Bible uses personal single pronouns regarding God in the Old Testament and for God - the father, God - the son, and God - the Holy Spirit in the New Testament.