Category Archives: Nathaniel Gray Sutanto

Two Theological Accounts of Logic (Nathaniel Gray Sutanto)

Articles, Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, Philosophy, Theology

“Two Theological Accounts of Logic: Theistic Conceptual Realism and a Reformed Archetype-Ectype Model” by Nathaniel Gray Sutanto

In this essay I analyze two emerging theistic accounts of the laws of logic, one precipitated by theistic conceptual realism and the other from an archetype-ectype paradigm in Reformed Scholasticism. The former posits the laws of logic as uncreated and necessary divine thoughts, whereas the latter thinks of those laws as contingent, accommodated forms of a pre-existing archetypal rationality. After the analysis of the two accounts, I offer an explication of the theological rationale motivating the archetype-ectype model of the laws of logic, and apply that model to recent discussions on theological paradox, abstract objects, and the function of natural-theological argumentation in apologetics. Finally, I respond to three anticipated objections against the archetype-ectype model.

Covenantal Apologetics and Common-Sense Realism (Nathaniel Gray Sutanto)

Apologetics, Articles, Nathaniel Gray Sutanto

“Covenantal Apologetics and Common-Sense Realism: Recalibrating the Argument from Consciousness as a Test Case” by Nathaniel Gray Sutanto

Cornelius Van Til argued that theistic arguments are useful so long as one formulates them “in such a way as not to compromise the doctrines of Scripture.” He rejects, therefore, not the proofs in and of themselves but the foundation on which the proofs are often presented. Van Til thus argued that it is possible to construe the arguments in a manner consistent with Christian theistic principles, on the one hand, or anti-theistic principles, on the other. The former appeals to them in an indirect fashion as confirmatory of the necessary existence of the self-contained triune God while the latter comes in the form of a direct appeal, often yielding the meager result that some god probably exists. Thus many of Van Til’s intellectual descendants have attempted to show how particular theistic proofs might be appropriated into an apologetic dialogue in a manner consistent with the Reformed worldview. I offer, in this paper, then, a Reformed, Covenantal reappropriation of a contemporary popular argument for the existence of God: the argument from consciousness. What is attempted in this essay is thus not originality in substance but in application and expansion.