I'm going to comment on this:
Scripturalism, then, teaches that all of our knowledge is to be derived from the Bible, which has a systematic monopoly on truth. This approach to a Christian worldview is taught by the Apostle Paul and is confirmed by the teachings of the Westminster Standards. According to the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura, neither science, nor history, nor philosophy is needed to give truth. According to the Scripturalist, there is no “two-source” theory of truth taught in the Word of God.
That's demonstrably false inasmuch as the Confession itself designates "the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence" (WCF 1.1) as sources of knowledge in addition to Scripture.
The Bible teaches, as stated by John Calvin, that the Spirit of God has implanted an innate idea of Himself, a sensus divinitatis, in all men, which is propositional and ineradicable. This is due to the fact that all men are created in the image of God.
How does Crampton prove that this is "propositional" rather than tacit?
When man interacts with God’s creation, which demonstrates His glory, power, and wisdom, man, as God’s image, is forced, in some sense, to “think God.” The visible creation itself does not mediate “knowledge” to man (as in the epistemology of Thomas Aquinas), for the visible universe sets forth no propositions. Rather, it stimulates the mind of man to intellectual intuition (or recollection), who as a rational being is already in possession of apriori, propositional information about God and His creation This apriori information is immediately impressed upon man’s consciousness, and it is more than adequate to show that the God of the Bible is the one and only true God.
Crampton's theory of repressed memories comes from Plato rather than Scripture. Keep in mind that Plato espoused reincarnation. Given his theory of preexistence, we retain repressed memories (anamnesis) from former lives:
The soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about everything; for as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things; there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as men say learning, out of a single recollection -all the rest, if a man is strenuous and does not faint; for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection.
Perhaps Crampton has now explained how Michael Sudduth went from Scripturalism to Hinduism! They share the same underlying epistemology.
Back to Crampton:
Rather, as noted above, the senses apparently stimulate the mind of man to intellectual intuition, to recollect the God-given innate ideas that man already possesses. Gordon Clark used the illustration of a piece of paper on which is written a message in invisible ink. The paper (by illustration, the mind) might appear blank, but in actuality it is not. When the heat of experience is applied to the mind (as when heat is applied to the paper), the message becomes visible. Human knowledge, then, is possible only because God has endowed man with certain innate ideas.
Another problem with Crampton's theory is the failure to distinguish between versions of nativism. As one philosopher notes, there are three different versions:
The Intuition/Deduction Thesis
The Innate Knowledge Thesis
The Innate Concept Thesis
Crampton needs to specify which model he's endorsing. And he needs to defend his preferred model against objections.
Since all knowledge must come through propositions (which are either true or false), since the senses in interacting with creation yield no propositions, knowledge cannot be conveyed by sensation.
That's an assertion in search of an argument. Let's take a counterexample. I see a sapphire. I think to myself, "That looks blue to me." That's a proposition.
Not just a proposition, but propositional knowledge. An indexical, self-presenting state. Notice that this doesn't depend on whether or not the sapphire is actually blue. What makes it a true belief or true proposition is that it appears to be blue to me. If it looks blue to me, then it's true that it looks blue to me.
Some of these propositional truths are implanted in man from conception by God. And when man interacts with creation or reads the words of Scripture, the divine teacher, the Logos, illuminates the mind so that the propositions come to consciousness, as the invisible ink. This is possible because the mind of man is enveloped by the mind of the Logos, who enlightens him to understand the eternal propositions in the mind of God. It does not come about by man’s effort or initiative, but by God’s, who reveals truth.God created humans with rational minds that use the same laws of thought as His own; men are image-bearers of God. The principles of reason (logic) and knowledge are innately given by God to mankind through the Logos.The Christian view of epistemology has its roots in the Logos doctrine.(15) According to the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ is the cosmological Logos (1:1-3), the epistemological Logos (1:9, 14), and the soteriological Logos (1:4, 12-13; 14:6). He is the Creator of the world, the source of all human knowledge, and the giver of salvation. As to the epistemological Logos, which is the focus of the present study, Christ is the “true light which enlightens every man coming into the world” (1:9). Apart from the Logos, the “inward teacher,” knowledge would not be possible.
Several problems with Crampton's Mickey Mouse prooftexting:
i) The ambiguous syntax of Jn 1:9: does it refer to Christ coming into the world or everyone coming into the world? Crampton doesn't even acknowledge the syntactical issue, much less demonstrate that his construction is the best interpretation of the passage.
ii) Even if (ex hypothesi) it refers to everyone coming into the world, Crampton fails to show from the text how that selects for internal revelation rather than external revelation.
iii) Furthermore, to say that Christ enlightens every man falls far short of showing that "the senses apparently stimulate the mind of man to intellectual intuition, to recollect the God-given innate ideas that man already possesses." Jn 1:9 doesn't make that specific claim. Not even close.
So much does the Bible speak of God as the God of logic, that in John 1:1 Jesus Christ is called the “Logic” of God: “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God” (the English word “logic” is derived from the Greek word Logos used in this verse). John 1:1 emphasized the rationality of God the Son. Logic is as eternal as God himself because “the Logos is God.” Hence, God and logic cannot be separated; logic is the characteristic of God’s thinking. In the words of Clark, “God and logic are one and the same first principle, for John wrote that Logic was God.”
i) That's on the same level as saying God loves a "hilarious" giver or the Gospel is the "dynamite" unto salvation.
ii) As many commentators have documented, John is using "logos" as a Septuagintal carryover for God's creative speech. It doesn't mean "logic." That's further borne out by the conspicuous allusion to Gen 1. The background lies in OT usage rather than Greek philosophy.
Another way of explaining this is that the sum total of all truth exists in the mind of God: “For in Him [God] we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Nothing exists outside of the mind of God.
i) To say nothing exists outside the mind of God commits Crampton pantheistic idealism. It denies denies a physical world, objective to God.
ii) It also renders time illusory, if God's mind is timeless. In that case, nothing really happens. No creation. No exodus. No Incarnation. No crucifixion. No Resurrection. No return of Christ. These are just divine ideas. Timeless ideas.
iii) Acts 17:28 doesn't say we live and move and have our being in the mind of God. What would it even mean to say we "live" or "move" in God's mind? Are ideas alive? Do ideas move from one place in God's mind to another place in God's mind? Does Crampton think God's mind has spatial dimensions?
That is the meaning of the words “omniscient” and “omnipresent.”
It is? I take omnipresence to be a picturesque metaphor for God's omniscience and omnipotence.
If man is going to know the truth, he must come to know the eternal propositions in the mind of God. As stated by Jonathan Edwards, “since all truth is in the mind,” and since “God is truth itself,” if we are going to know the truth there must be “the consistency and agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God.”(16) Thus, whenever human beings know truth, they know that which exists in the mind of God; they do not merely have a representation of the truth.Scripturalism denies the correspondence theory of truth, i.e., that the mind of man has only a representation of the truth, and not the truth itself. Rather, a Christian epistemology holds to the coherence theory of truth, which maintains that what man has is the real truth: the same truth that exists in man’s mind exists first in the mind of God. As stated by Gordon Clark: “Realism is the view that the mind of man actually possesses the truth. Representationalism holds that the mind has only an image, a picture, a representation, an analogy of the truth, but does not have the truth itself.”
To revert to my example, when I think to myself, "that sapphire looks blue to me [a man]," then, according to Scripturalism, that can only be true if God thinks to himself, "that sapphire looks blue to me [God]."
Does Crampton think physical objects appear to be colored to God? Does an emerald appear to be green to God? Doesn't that theory of knowledge attribute sensory perception to God?
For speech to be intellible [sic], words must have univocal meanings. What makes the words meaningful and revelation and communication possible is that each word conforms to the law of contradiction.
So double entendres are meaningless?
