John Ahern writes in response to Nick’s post against Abstractions and Platonic notions, etc.,

Well, to put my difference with Nick simply, I think he’s been inconsistent. That inconsistency is bound to exist, as there is some inconsistency in almost every position?—?even, apparently, including mine, as I do believe that Reason exists.

Unfortunately, Nick has let on to a Platonic ideal already?—?that is, the Platonic ideal of personality. Platonic ideals give essences to things, and he says that the essence of a chair is found in the ability of a person to make it a chair, to give it its chairish essence. Personality, then, would be his only Platonic ideal.

Nick does have a worthy claim against Plato, and I don’t personally (no pun intended) think that Plato could reconcile his abstracts of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty with the idea of Personality.

I once argued with a friend over what made a human a human, and I said that it was his sense of morality and his ability to reason. My friend chafed at the idea of man’s innate sense of morality, and I cited the first chapter of Mere Christianity as a good place to see the argument. (Of course, I could have cited Romans 1, but that has more baggage.) His objection to C. S. Lewis’ argument was that C. S. Lewis was supporting a sense of morality and an ability to reason apart from God.

As for Van Til (with one “l”?—?shows how much I know about him), I’ll have to read up on that a bit more to properly respond to that.

But what C. S. Lewis put so elegantly later in Mere Christianity (read the chapter on dualism and competing religions) is that the Three Transcendentals, Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, are really incarnational things. They are not apart from God because God is They. Truth, our ability to reason, is not a tool made by God for men to use; it was not made by God at all. Begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father. Likewise, morality is not something apart from God, but it is within the Trinity.

Because the Logos became flesh, Plato’s ideas become refined. The Word (Logos) that gave the word “light” its essence is a Person because he is human. This is where Plato and Kant can be unified.

This explains Romans 1 and the existence of “conscience” and the Tau. St. Thomas wasn’t telling us something we didn’t know in his proofs for the existence of God. We already know his existence because man was made in Imagine Dei. (“His invisible attributes are clearly seen.”)

And, as for the claim that the word “Goodness” has no meaning outside the word “Evil”?—?A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis.

And, finally, as for Reason proving Reason, or Logic proving Logic, this is all very true. I suppose one could level the same complaint against God and his creation. If God made everything, then he had to make himself. But that’s utter rot. The fact is that God is in a completely different time, and he needs no beginning or end. Again, we see an illustration of Reason as something coming from God to man. In order for Reason to work, as Nick ironically pointed out, it has to be a Person.