The World Was Made To Be Known And You Were Made To Know It

The Starting point of the theory of knowledge ought to be ordinary daily experience, the universal and natural certainty of human beings concerning the objectivity and truth of their knowledge. After all, it is not philosophy that creates the cognitive faculty and cognition. Philosophy only finds it and then attempts to explain it. Any solution that does not explain the cognitive faculty but instead destroys it and, failing to understand cognition, turns it into an illusion, is judged by that fact. Only a theory of knowledge that penetrates the very depths of the problem has a chance to succeed.

—Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics vol. 1 Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 223. (HT: Theologia Vera)

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  • R. Scott Clark
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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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