The First Step- Brute Fact

This first step, the assumption of brute fact, may need some clarification. The important Creature- creator distinction must be maintained, but not so as to isolate creation from its Creator. That is a false view of the Creator- creature distinction. Rather, the facts of creation maintain their proper place as they reveal the Creator.

A few quotes from Van Til here may be helpful:

“If there are no brute facts, if brute facts are mute facts, it must be maintained that all facts are revelational of the true God. If facts may not be separated from faith, neither may faith be separated from facts. Every created fact must therefore be held to express, to some degree, the attitude of God to man. Not to maintain this is to fall back once again into a natural theology of a Roman Catholic sort. For it is to hold to the idea of brute fact after all. And with the idea of brute fact goes that of neutral reason. A fact not revelational of God is revelational only of itself.¹”

From: Common Grace Chapter 3. The Latest Debate about Common Grace

“Orthodox Christianity has a definite answer to the problem of individuation. It claims that in the last analysis it is God’s counsel or plan that causes distinction between one fact and another. God makes one blade of grass to differ from another blade; He makes one penguin to differ from another. God calls the stars by their names. Indeed, He names them before He makes them. He deals not merely with the genus nor even with the lowest species. His rationality penetrates down to the last particular of every individual thing. Not a hair shall fall from our heads without the will of our heavenly Father. The doctrine of election and reprobation is but the climactic expression of this general principle.

In contrast to this position of Christianity, every non-Christian philosophy finds its principle of individuation wholly independent of God. The Christian historian of philosophy has abundant evidence with which to establish this claim. ²”

From: The New Modernism: An Appraisal of the Theology of Barth and Brunner, Chapter 2, A. The Question of Fact Law, and Man

More to follow...