Van Til: His Simplicity and Profundity (1986)
by John M. Frame
Our Orthodox Presbyterian Church is
a small body and has little influence in the world or even in the
worldwide Christian community. For its size, however, it has had as
members a remarkable number and quality of Christian scholars. That
fact may at times distort our perspective. We OP's may be tempted,
for instance, to think regarding Cornelius Van Til that since he is one of us he cannot really be
very important. OP's remember Van Til as a
familiar, friendly face at church gatherings-- the fellow who washed
dishes at congregational meetings so his wife could vote, the grandfatherly minister who loved kids and told jokes
about chickens and such, the flaky professor who threw chalk at wayward
students, the kindly man who visited hospital rooms and prayed with
strangers as well as friends.
A good man, a gracious, humble, fun
and friendly man, as we all know him-- yes. But also a thinker of enormous
power, combining unquestioned orthodoxy with dazzling originality;
a theologian who challenges us to our very roots, who burns out
our insides to expose our rebellion against God. Though speaking
of apologetics as the "defense of the faith," he puts the
Christian thinker on the offense,
perhaps more than ever before, exposing the utter bankruptcy of unbelief.
Van Til's teaching (in the words of one who
studied with him but does not agree with his distinctive views) is a
"devastating experience." One does not leave that experience
unchanged, unless he is dead, physically or spiritually. Van Til, yes, our Van
Til, is perhaps the most important Christian
thinker of the twentieth-century.
What's he all about? Well, at one
level, Van Til's thought is far too complicated
and deep to be expounded in New Horizon!
He is a philosophical theologian, unapologetically intellectual.
I have been through his works many times and still keep learning new
things or freshly understanding old ones. Van Til's
writings ought to generate more humility in his
But though Van Til's
thought, like that of many great thinkers, is often oversimplified, at
another level (and this is another characteristic of theological
greatness- compare Luther, Calvin, Kuyper, Machen) his insight is brilliantly simple. Let me try
to state that simple insight for you, fully aware of the danger that I too
may be oversimplifying!
Two simple points, which all
Christians know: God is Lord, and God is Savior. (1) God is Lord: Therefore
he has a right to rule all of life including
our thinking. Our minds must be subject to him, "thinking his
thoughts after him." Thus in every thought we must presuppose him. God and his word
are the most reliable, the most certain things we know, and
therefore they are the criteria for all other truths. Nothing is more
sure: not mathematical truths, not logic, not the evidence of
our senses, not our own existence. His word is the ultimate
criterion of truth and falsity. God may not be "proved" by some
principle that is supposedly more certain than he is, like cause or
purpose or logic or self-existence. Rather, no concept is
intelligible unless it already presupposes the reality of God. Cause,
e.g., is God-ordained cause, or it is nothing at all.
(2) God is Savior: Sinful man refuses to presuppose God, to
recognize God's lordship. Therefore he needs salvation. Salvation involves
renouncing one's own lordship and acknowledging that of Christ. Therefore
the sinner must be radically changed (II Cor.
5:17), in every aspect of his life, including thought (II Cor. 10:5), if he is to be saved from sin. The
philosophies, theologies, sociologies, psychologies, indeed all the thoughts of unbelief are
drastically defective from a Christian point of view. They result, not
from "unbiased" or "neutral" inquiry, but from
willful, sinful distortion of the truth (Rom.
1:18-32, I Cor. 1:18-31, 3:18-20, II Cor. 4:3f, Col. 2:8). Therefore the Christian apologist
must challenge them head-on, rather than seeking compromise
("neutrality," "common ground") between the Gospel and
these ideologies. Unbelievers must be challenged to repentance in
all of life, including the intellectual. Unless we present that kind
of challenge, at least implicitly, we are not presenting the
Gospel at all, as it is in Scripture.
That, I think, is the essence of it.
Van Til, at one level, is simply a preacher of
the Gospel, presenting Christ as Lord and Savior. But he applies these
simplicities to man's intellectual life. That's when it starts getting
complicated. Armed with these basics, Van Til
develops penetrating critiques of Plato, Kant, Hegel,
Schleiermacher, Barth,
modern psychology, etc. He shows the inadequacy of the "traditional
apologetics" (Aquinas, Butler, Montgomery, Gerstner,
Carnell, et al., which seeks to prove the truth
of the Bible without presupposing God
[1]
and without
challenging the pretended autonomy of unbelief.
Van Til
also has fascinating, wise things to say about common grace, the doctrine
of scripture, ethics, logic and paradox, the incomprehensibility of God,
the Trinity, the deity and humanity of Christ: in these areas you can
learn things from him that you cannot learn anywhere else. Others have
applied his thought to economics, politics, mathematics and other
Van Til is
not perfect or infallible; only the Bible has those qualities. There are
many areas in Van Til's thought that require
clarification, some that need rethinking. One area in which he himself
admitted difficulty was the question of how, and to what degree, an
unbeliever could suppress the truth of God, yet acknowledge truth "in
spite of himself."
[3]
That Van Til himself admitted difficulty at this point ought to
give pause to the many Van Til disciples who
think they have a simple answer to this question!
[4]
Another
important admission of Van Til (which also ought
to moderate the zeal of his less moderate followers): He told me that he
did not believe his distinctive
views should be made a test of orthodoxy in the church. He did not
consider them to have that sort of final, definitive character.
But whatever may be his human
limitations, we can thank God that Cornelius Van
Til has spent these many years in our midst. May
God give him health and strength, together with great joy in the fruits of
his labors and in the Savior whose Lordship and grace he has tirelessly
proclaimed.
Some Introductions
to Van Til's Thought
E. R. Geehan, ed., Jerusalem
and Athens. Essays in honor of Van Til,
mostly about him. Contains responses by Van Til to
critics.
Jim Halsey, For a Time
Such as This. Some good formulations here, close to Van Til in language, style and emphasis, but for that very
reason it doesn't help clarify Van Til very much. I don't recommend this volume. It
contains some confused ideas and tends to be unnecessarily (and
misleadingly) dogmatic and precise.
George Marston, The Voice of
Authority. Recently reprinted, this book very simply and lucidly presents the essential Van Til insights.
George is one of our senior OPC ministers, who spent many years traveling
on behalf of Westminster Seminary. Doubtless he spent a substantial amount
of time explaining Van Til!
Thom Notaro, Van Til and the
Use of Evidence. A slender volume which deals very clearly and
helpfully with a major problem in Van Til's
thought: if we presuppose God, why bother with evidence?
Richard Pratt, Every Thought
Captive. Developed and tested in a church setting to teach evangelism
to high school and post-high youth. A Van Tillian
apologetic that most all of us can understand.
Rousas J. Rushdoony, By What Standard? More
sophisticated (and difficult) than Marston or Pratt, contains some helpful illustrations.
Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith. The
standard presentation of his distinctive position. Difficult at points.
--, Why I Believe in God? This little
pamphlet is what hooked me on Van Til. Best
writing Van Til ever did. Raises more questions
than it answers, but creates a real hunger for what Van Til offers elsewhere.
William White, Van Til-- Defender of the Faith. "Authorized biography." Interesting anecdotes, mostly from Van Til himself. Not a scholarly biography, nor a reliable guide to Van Til's thought. Van Til deserves something better! How about one of you OPC historians preparing one for his centennial?