Absolute Personality

There are several ways to define an absolute.  In the medieval philosophical sense, an absolute can be considered as something free from imperfection.  Other definitions would describe an absolute as something having no restriction, exception or qualification; perfectly embodying the nature of a thing.  But for our purposes, we will consider an absolute as something that is self-sufficient and free of external references and relationships.

Therefore, when we speak of God as an absolute personality, we mean that God is a person who is neither dependent upon nor derivative of any other person or thing.  He is a se and exists entirely self-sufficiently without need of any external reference or relationship.  As such, God is absolute.  As with God’s other essential attributes, this absoluteness extends to his personality since it is entirely self-sufficient, underived and without reference to any other personality.  God’s personality is the perfect embodiment of personality.  His self-consciousness and essence are coterminous.

This means that the world is intensely personal.  Van Til sought to explore the implications of this insight by applying it to epistemology.  Interestingly, various strands of philosophy have picked up on this same notion.  Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison saw absolute personality as a necessary precondition for a viable epistemology.  Working in the milieu of early 20th British absolute idealism, Pringle-Pattison moved the systems of F. H. Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet toward a personal solution.  Though it may be considered an improvement of sorts, Van Til pointed out the failures of Pringle-Pattison’s system.

For Van Til, nothing less than the absolute, personal and Trinitarian God of the Bible can provide the foundation for epistemology.  This is a driving factor behind Van Til’s discussion of God as a person in his unity – not simply in his diversity (i.e. the one person/three person discussion).  Working with the Trinitarian formulations of Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge and Herman Bavinck, Van Til sought to show how only an orthodox Trinitarian doctrine of perichoresis (mutual indwelling, interpenetration, coinherence of the Father, Son and Spirit) could provide the “solution” to philosophy’s epistemological questions.

Camden Bucey is the president of Reformed Forum. He graduated with an MDiv in 2011 and is currently a PhD student at Westminster Theological Seminary. Camden is a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and a licentiate of the presbytery of Philadelphia. You can follow Camden on Twitter at @camdenbucey. This entry was posted on Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 8:51 am and is filed under Philosophy, Systematic Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.