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- Published: 20 June 2015 20 June 2015
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It is always a joy to discover a theological gem. It is even more fun when the more you read, the better it gets. This is the case with one of my summer reads: Auguste Lecerf's An Introduction to Reformed Dogmatics. Lecerf was a French Reformed theologian, who ended his career teaching on the Protestant Faculty in Paris. He is of interest to me because he is working through a Christian understanding of knowledge. He lived from 1872-1943. He is conversant with the continental philosophical tradition, and is offering a robust Christian engagement with that world of thought. All the more interesting, as a Frenchman he is right in the heart of the world of Descartes, et al. Here is Lecerf on a Christian understanding "facts" (I suspect he would have enjoyed Van Til). At the same time, he appears to have been drawn (to some degree) to the neo-Thomist revival of his era (e.g. Etienne Gilson):
"The relations which exist between facts are thus conceived as pre-existent in the divine intelligence; they are established by God. The facts themselves are his thoughts, realized and manifested in time. From this point of view, the evidence of reason and of the senses must be considered as a revelation of God. 'In his light', cried the psalmist, 'we shall see light.'" (An Introduction to Reformed Dogmatics, 106).