John Frame
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Dr. John M. Frame (born 1939) is an American philosopher and a Calvinist theologian especially noted for his work in epistemology and presuppositional apologetics, systematic theology, and ethics. He is one of the foremost interpreters and critics of the thought of Cornelius Van Til.
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[edit] Biography
Frame received degrees from Princeton University (A.B.), Westminster Theological Seminary (B.D.), Yale University (A.M. and M.Phil., though he was working on a doctorate and admits his own failure to complete his dissertation[1]), and Belhaven College (D.D.). He has served on the faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary and was a founding faculty member of their California campus, and as of 2006 he teaches at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida.
Frame is well known in Reformed circles for his many books, chapters, and articles. He is also a classically trained musician and a critic of film, music, and other media.
[edit] Multiperspectival epistemology
Frame has elaborated a Christian epistemology in his 1987 work The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God. In this work, he develops what he calls triperspectivalism or multiperspectivalism which says that in every act of knowing, the knower is in constant contact with three things (or "perspectives") – the knowing subject himself, the object of knowledge, and the standard or criteria by which knowledge is attained. He argues that each perspective is interrelated to the others in such a fashion that, in knowing one of these, one actually knows the other two, also.
[edit] The normative perspective
Frame suggests that in all acts undertaken by humans there is some standard that serves as a guide, and that guide tells people what is the proper subject of inquiry, what actions they should pursue and avoid, what the universe is really like, and how knowledge should be sought. In his view, the marketplace of ideas is full of worldviews competing for the allegiance of each individual, and for some people, final allegiance to a system is due to sense experience, emotions, or political affiliation, while for others it is their particular religious tradition (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Bahá'í Faith, etc.) or secular philosophy (empiricism, rationalism, Marxism, postmodernism, etc.). Whatever serves as a person's final authority, Frame says, functions as his or her normative perspective.
Christians such as Frame believe that God has verbally revealed himself to mankind in the Bible for the purpose of providing everything people need for life. In this view, Frame suggests, God’s inspired word serves as the criteria by which all truth claims are to be checked, and God’s word dictates to humanity who he is, the true nature of the world around us, and who people are in relation to God and the world. Thus, for Frame as for Calvin, the Christian Scriptures serve as the lens through which one ought to see and evaluate everything, and even in knowing the Bible, he suggests that one knows both the world and himself (and, conversely, in knowing them both one comes to know Scriptures better).
[edit] The situational perspective
With the situational perspective, Frame refers to the facts of reality or the objects of knowledge. With this perspective in mind, he says one must acknowledge the details of history, science, and evidences for various beliefs, and yet, science, history, and the evidences can never to be interpreted in a fashion that ignores or sets aside the binding nature of the normative perspective. Viewing things from Frame's situational perspective, one looks for how the normative perspective is expressed in everyday life.
Thus, without an understanding of the world, Frame says, one cannot rightly understand or apply Scripture to his or her life. For example, an argument against abortion might run:
In Frame's scheme, the first point provides us with a normative command from the Bible, which serves as a timeless moral principle. But in order to arrive at the conclusion one needs to know whether or not abortion is really the taking the life of an innocent, unborn person, which requires use of the situational perspective. One must consult medical examinations of the nature of a fetus, the law of biogenesis, and the abortion procedure itself, since without this crucial information one could never know whether the person was faithfully applying God’s word in one's life.
[edit] The existential perspective
With the existential perspective, Frame draws attention back to the person doing the knowing because, he says, individuals bring their personal dispositions, temperaments, biases, presuppositions, and life experiences to every act of knowing. A problem common to all epistemological endeavors is that if one tries to formulate a true-to-life epistemology, one apparently must examine each and every action performed, but formulating every action into propositions for evaluation is quite tricky. For this reason, the Enlightenment model of epistemology viewed the knowing enterprise as something hampered by human subjectivity and sought an objective mode of knowing that excludes Frame's existential perspective. Frame notes that the search for a purely objective knowledge is not only impossible, but also idolatrous. States Frame:
"Sometimes we dream fondly of a “purely objective” knowledge of God--a knowledge of God of freed from the limitations of our senses, minds, experiences, preparation, and so forth. But nothing of this sort is possible, and God does not demand that of us. Rather, He condescends to dwell in and with us, as in a temple. He identifies himself in and through our thoughts, ideas, and experiences. And that identification is clear; it is adequate for Christian certainty. A “purely objective” knowledge is precisely what we don’t want! Such knowledge would presuppose a denial of our creaturehood and thus a denial of God and of all truth." (DKG, 65)
[edit] Integration of the perspectives
Frame argues that in order to appreciate the richness of the human knowing process, one must see that every instance of knowing involves these three perspectives. Esther Meek, following Frame's model closely, calls these perspectives the rules, the self, and the world, and emphasizing the existential perspective, she states, "Knowing is the responsible human struggle to rely on clues to focus on a coherent pattern and submit to its reality." Knowing in this sense is thus the process of integration by which one focuses on a pattern by means of various clues in the world, one's body-sense, and the norms for thinking.
Through this integration process the clues take on greater significance such that they are no longer seemingly disconnected occurrences, but rather meaningful portions that make up a greater reality. Yet, it is claimed, the pattern or integration, once achieved, retroactively throws light on the "clues" that made it up. The particulars retain their meaningfulness, but it is enhanced and transformed. These patterns now shape the knower, because, ideally, they connect her with a reality independent of herself. One comes to see the fullness of the pattern when its truth is lived in (or "habited"), thus extending one's self out into the world by means of that truth.
Much of this pattern-making process is inarticulatable, but Frame and Meek believe this more-than-words aspect of epistemic acts cannot be ignored because he sees it as crucial in the common, everyday process of knowing.
[edit] Presuppositions
As a former student of Van Til, Frame is supporter of the presuppositionalist school of Christian apologetics. He defines a presupposition as follows:
- A presupposition is a belief that takes precedence over another and therefore serves as a criterion for another. An ultimate presupposition is a belief over which no other takes precedence. For a Christian, the content of Scripture must serve as his ultimate presupposition.... This doctrine is merely the outworking of the lordship of God in the area of human thought. It merely applies the doctrine of scriptural infallibility to the realm of knowing. (Doctrine of Knowledge of God, 45)
[edit] Rationalism and irrationalism in non-Christian thought
Frame, developing the thought of his mentor Cornelius Van Til, has asserted in both his Apologetics to the Glory of God and his Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought that all non-Christian thought can be categorized as the ebb and flow of rationalism and irrationalism.
[edit] Rationalism
In this context Frame defines rationalism as any attempt to establish the finite human mind as the ultimate standard of truth and falsity. This establishing of the autonomous intellect occurs within the context of rejecting God’s revelation of himself in both nature and the Bible. A rationalist, in this sense, states that the human mind is able to fully and exhaustively explain reality.
Yet, when Frame speaks of "exhaustive explanations" he does not mean these systems seek omniscience. Rather, He means that the history of non-Christian thought (though, admittedly, his focus is Western philosophy) is the history of various attempts to construct systems that account for everything (a distinctive metaphysic, epistemology and value theory).
According to Frame, examples of attempts to explain reality are found in Plato and Aristotle's Form/Matter dualism; the debate between the nominalists and the realists over the status of universals and particulars, and the "all is... [fire, water, atoms,etc]" of the pre-Socratics. More examples would include Descartes' Mind/Body dualism, Spinoza's God or nature, and Leibniz's monadology, Plotinus' "The One" and his teaching on emanation, the British empiricists attempts to limit knowledge and possibility to that which can be empirically verified, Kant's worlds of the noumena and the phenomena, and Hegel's dialectic.
[edit] Irrationalism
Non-Christian thought, in Frame's view, also is characterized by irrationalism because inevitably the finite and fallen human mind cannot fully capture all of reality into a man-made system. On this position, at the point in which the non-Christian rationalist realizes that they cannot account for everything, they engage in what Francis Schaeffer called an "upper story leap."
As a brief example, Frame uses the epistemology of Kant, who taught that the categories of thought that are necessary for our understanding the world around us, such as causality, laws of logic, time, space, and order, are structured by our minds and imposed upon the things we experience. In order to be rational and make sense out of life we must assume, or presuppose, these notions. Because we cannot empirically verify these categories by touch, smell, sight, etc. they must be thought of as created by and arising from our minds, thus ordering and providing the criterion for those things that we can empirically verify. This led Kant to conclude that if we are to think of anything at all we must think in terms of everything being caused by something logically and temporally prior to it. This lead to a fairly deterministic view of mankind.
Frame asks where we can find moral responsibility and freedom in Kant's scheme. He argues that Kant believed that while we couldn't prove that man was a responsible moral agent we must nevertheless act as though this were the case. Philosophers have described these as Kant’s "two worlds" – the world of nature (which leads to determinism), and the world of freedom (where responsibility is found). Kant himself spoke of the "starry skies above" and the "moral law within", and although Kant did not deny the regularity of the natural world and the reality of humanity’s "moral motions," his philosophy could not bring these two worlds together. Frame concludes that Kant made the "upper story leap" to irrationalism by asserting the truth of something with no rational justification. Thus, in Immanuel Kant Frame finds both rationalism and irrationalism.
Likewise, according to both Frame and Van Til, every non-Christian system contains what Jacques Derrida calls "alterity", that is each system contains the very principles for its downfall. They all "auto-deconstruct."
[edit] Selected Books
- Van Til: The Theologian, 1976 (available online) ISBN 0-916034-02-X
- The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 1987 (Theology of Lordship Series) ISBN 0-87552-262-9
- Medical Ethics, 1988 ISBN 0-87552-261-0
- Perspectives on the Word of God: An Introduction to Christian Ethics, 1990 ISBN 0-8010-3557-0
- Evangelical Reunion, 1991 (available [2] for free) ISBN 0-8010-3560-0
- Apologetics to the Glory of God, 1994 ISBN 0-87552-243-2
- Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of his Thought, 1995 ISBN 0-87552-245-9
- Worship in Spirit and Truth, 1996 ISBN 0-87552-242-4
- Contemporary Music: a Biblical Defense, 1997 ISBN 0-87552-212-2
- No Other God: A Response to Open Theism, 2001 ISBN 0-87552-185-1
- The Doctrine of God, Theology of Lordship Series, 2002 ISBN 0-87552-263-7
- Salvation Belongs To The Lord: An Introduction To Systematic Theology, 2006 ISBN 1-59638-018-7
- The Doctrine of the Word of God, Theology of Lordship Series, forthcoming; parts available online
- The Doctrine of the Christian Life, Theology of Lordship Series, forthcoming; parts available online
[edit] External links
- Third Millennium Ministries offers audio, books, articles, essays, and lecture outlines by Frame, his like-minded colleagues, and his students.
- www.frame-poythress.org publishes the writings of John Frame and Vern Poythress.
