The god of the philosophers is a particularly ridiculous idol. The fall of man is basic to a true epistemology or theory of knowledge because the fall meant the radical warping of reason that constitutes rationalism. Before the fall, God was in communication with man. After the fall, the situation changed. An Introduction to Theology, vol.
Condemnation means the judgment, death, and reprobation of man.
Atonement means that Christ's sacrificial death, vicariously dying for his elect, removes us from condemnation to life, from guilt to innocence. Our rationalistic theologians act as if there is no relationship between atonement and epistemology, and such an assumption makes them at best defective Christians if not indeed anti-Christian. It is obvious, first of all, that man as sinner hates the truth. It is for him so much easier to go by Aristotle than by the Bible, because Aristotle acknowledges no fall. Because man's mind and will have been corrupted by the fall, his ability to think has also been corrupted.