I am interrupting our current series for a shameless advertisement. For the past few months my brother and I have been working on producing a website that will allow people to socially bookmark their libraries of books, music, and videos. We are finally to a point where I can announce our site to a larger audience. I have given it the Steve Hays-esque name Socialogue [http://www.socialogue.com/]. Our site is entirely free and does not have any usage restrictions. Users may store as many items in our site as they desire.

My goal is to get as many reformed readers signed up as possible. The real value of this tool lies in its ability to recommend items to you based on your current library. The tool also finds similarities between items. In order to take further advantage of these capabilities, I hope to have a bibliography creator implemented within the week. This feature will ask visitors to type in keywords and/or select a few books so the tool will be able to build a formatted bibliography of related books. I believe this will turn out to be a very useful tool for research. However great this sounds, these features presuppose a corpus of similar items, which is why I am announcing this on Reformata.

We have tried to implement features that make Socialogue as user-friendly and useful as possible. For those privy to music, we can import data from an iTunes music library. Personally, I use the site to keep track of all the books I loaned out over a year ago that have yet to be returned.

Take a look at Socialogue. And if you have any bibliophile or audiophile friends, let them know we are up and running.

While Kuyper describes the antithesis in absolute terms, as we see in (K2), he does allow for aspects of science that are not affected by the fall such as weighing, measuring and the use of logic.¹ He also allows for a neutral zone within the context of common grace where believers and unbelievers can meet with equality and determine common principles of knowledge. This may be related to his territorial view of common grace in which spatial analogies govern. Van Til will improve on Kuyper with his temporal/historical formulation of the doctrine of common grace.

Another factor in Kuyper’s apparent inconsistency here may be his discussion of a formal faith.² Kuyper wants to account for why we believe in the existence of ourselves (i.e., the existence of the “ego”) and in the trustworthiness of the delivery of the senses. He desires to explain how it is that we can know things. In other words, Kuyper is discussing the subject/object relationship and developing his epistemological theory.³
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Kuyper

Kuyper’s central epistemological insight (K1) involves the recognition of the antithesis between belief and unbelief. While ideally there is but one science that human consciousness adds to throughout the centuries, the fact of the matter is that the introduction of sin into the world through the fall produces an “abnormal” condition.¹

There are those scientists who view the world through the lens of normality assuming that the way things are is the way they have always been. Then there are scientists who have experienced palingenesis (regeneration) that helps them realize that the world which they explore has been ruptured by sin and is in the process of being redeemed. The antithesis between belief and unbelief leads to the development of two sciences, although Kuyper recognizes that ideally there is only one science.²
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While Warfield is on solid ground to affirm the objectivity, intelligibility, and clarity of God’s revelation to all men, he makes a wrong turn, so to speak, when he holds that the evidence for Christianity only yields probable certainty (W2).

In his article, “The Real Problem of Inspiration,” Warfield addresses the matter of biblical evidence for the trustworthiness of the teaching of Jesus and the apostles.

Of course, this evidence is not in the strict logical sense “demonstrative;” it is “probable” evidence. It therefore leaves open the metaphysical possibility of its being mistaken. But it may be contended that it is about as great in amount and weight as “probable” evidence can be made, and that the strength of conviction which it is adapted to produce may be and should be practically equal to that produced by demonstration itself. ¹

Inductive examination of the evidence in the nature of the case, for Warfield, can never yield absolute certainty even when the evidence is absolutely clear.²
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