Van Til: a Reassessment
by John M. Frame
I have written a book on Cornelius Van Til, which will
be published this year, Lord willing, by Presbyterian and
Reformed Publishing Co. The book is a sympathetic, critical analysis
of Van Til's thought; it tries to determine what
in Van Til is of value for apologists today.
Bill Edgar of the WTS faculty saw the ms. and suggested that I come to the
conference and present to you some of its ideas.
In the final chapter, I summarize
the approach to Van Til taken in the book, and I
address the question of how we contemporary Christians can best use Van Til's ideas in our witness to the world. What I
present here will be essentially that final chapter, with some explanatory
additions.
In the book, I try to dispel the
impression that Van Til's thought is a "seamless robe," that it must either be accepted or rejected in
its entirety. That impression has, of course, been given both by Van Til's friends and his enemies. Thus the literature
about Van Til tends to be either
uncritical adulation or super-critical debunking. The concept of a book
such as mine which seeks to be both sympathetic and critical seems
in this environment to be highly anomalous.
Van Til
himself tends to give that same impression. He speaks of proving Christian
theism "as a unit." In teaching apologetics, both in class and
in print, he tended to throw his whole system at the reader all at once,
so to speak, rather than bit by bit. And if the student or reader doesn't
grasp it all, well, Van Til throws it all at him
a second time. Thus the reader gets the impression that he cannot pick and
choose; it is either all or nothing; Van Til
must be thoroughly embraced or totally opposed. All of that is in keeping,
of course, with Van Til's background in philosophical
idealism, and, on the other hand, with his Kuyperian-Machenite "antithetical" mode of thought.
Yet I have dared to differ with this
approach. I have tried to break down Van Til's
system into its basic elements, so as to analyze and evaluate each one at
a time. I do not deny that Van Til's thought is
highly interrelated and systematic; I have tried to bring out those
systematic interrelations as best I can. But it seems to me to make more
pedagogical sense to move from the simple to the complex, from the known
to the unknown.
In this process I have concluded
that Van Til's thought is not, after all, a
"seamless robe." There are some elements of it which are
unquestionably biblical and fundamental to Christian thought and life.
These constitute an indispensable basis for any future apologetic. Other
aspects of Van Til's system, however, are not
well-grounded scripturally and can be forgotten
without loss.
To show this, let me give you my
outline of Van Til's system:
I. The Metaphysics of Knowledge
A. The Self-Contained God
B. The Trinitarian
One-and-Many
C. Divine Sovereignty
D. Analogical
Knowledge
E. Revelation
F. Presuppositions
G. Reason, Logic,
Evidence
II. The Ethics of Knowledge
A. Antithesis
B. Common Grace
C. Unbelieving Thought:
Rationalism and
III. Apologetic Method
A. The Traditional
Method
B. Spiral or Circular
Argument
C. Reasoning by
Presupposition
D. Models
IV. Criticism of Other Thinkers
A. Greek Philosophy and
Scholasticism
B. Immanuel
Kant and Karl Barth
C. Herman Dooyeweerd
The strongest part of Van Til's system is what I have called "the
metaphysics of knowledge." In these areas I have very little
criticism. It seems to me that in these areas, Van Til
is simply reproducing the teaching of scripture and showing
its applications to human thought and life. His view of
the creator-creature distinction is nothing more or less than
generic Calvinism. Analogical knowledge simply
means that the goal of knowledge is an understanding of reality which
images as faithfully as possible on the created level God's
own understanding. One who thinks analogously seeks to think in a
way that is obedient to God's norms for thought. That means,
of course, that all human thought is bound by divine revelation. And,
in turn, that implies that the truth of divine revelation must be the most
fundamental presupposition of human thought.
Van Til
does not disparage the use of reason, logic and evidence, as many critics
suppose, though there are some statements in his writings that are a bit
confusing in this respect. He merely insists that these be subordinate to
God's word, a limitation to which no Christian should object.
I do take issue with his
illegitimate application of these principles in the Clark controversy. In that
controversy, Van Til insisted that there is "not one point of identity" between God's mind and man's. Clark
believed this view had skeptical implications. He insisted that God and
man are capable of entertaining and believing the same propositions.
Beyond this, the debate went through many complicated twists and
turns. However, Clark never denied, in my view, the point that
God's mind and man's were different in their metaphysical nature.
Nor did Van Til deny that God and man could
believe the same proposition. Therefore, in my view, the controversy was
really unnecessary and largely based on misunderstanding. Van Til in my view was at his worst when he was debating
with other Christian apologists.
Van Til's
view of the "ethics of knowledge" is an area of both strength
and weakness. Certainly he is right to insist that non-Christians know,
but suppress, the truth of God's revelation. In Romans 1, scripture makes
that assertion quite explicitly. But Van Til
seems to search for words in order to express how the unbeliever can in
one sense know, and in another sense be ignorant of, the truth of God. In
certain moods, he uses the language of "extreme antithesis,"
suggesting that the unbeliever has no knowledge at all, that he "knows
nothing truly," and therefore no area of agreement with the believer.
Other times, however, Van Til describes various
senses in which the unbeliever can and does have genuine knowledge. He
says, for example, that although the unbeliever seeks to think according
to atheistic principles, he is not always successful in thinking according to
those principles. At times, "in spite of himself," or
by "borrowed capital," he finds himself thinking in terms
of Christian principles instead of non-Christian ones. This and other
formulations produce a deep tension in Van Til's
thought. Uncharacteristically, he did admit that this was a problem in
his system, one for which he did not have an adequate answer.
While it is true that all the
unbeliever's actions and thoughts are in service of his would-be autonomy,
the language of extreme antithesis is highly misleading and confusing to
the practical work of apologetics. It is better to say that the unbeliever's
depravity manifests itself in many varied forms, and that the
non-Christian can and does utter either truth or falsehood for his
purposes.
The doctrine of common grace deals
with the question of how God can give good gifts to the non-elect, to the
reprobate. More specifically, the question arises of how God can present
the promises of the gospel to the reprobate, to those whom he
has foreordained not to benefit from those promises. Van Til's doctrine of common grace gets off to a good
start, insisting on the importance of historical process. God gives
blessings to the reprobate because the final judgment has not arrived.
After human beings are assigned to their final destinies, there will be
no more common grace. The elect will be blessed; the non-elect
will be punished; and there will therefore be no blessings in
common between them.
However, Van Til
adds to this account the unhistorical and unbiblical
notion that the free offer of the gospel is directed toward a
"generality" of people, rather than actual persons. Then Van Til compounds the confusion by postulating, without
biblical warrant, a continuous process in which unbelief becomes worse and
worse over time.
On the other hand, he introduces a
very helpful apologetic tool in showing that unbelief is inseparably
linked to the dialectic of rationalism and irrationalism,
which destroys all basis for intelligible predication. Unbelief
is rationalistic, because it insists on the autonomy of
human thought, and therefore insists that human thought is the
ultimate criterion of truth and falsity, of right and wrong. On the
other hand, unbelief is also irrationalistic,
because it believes that the apparent order in the universe is ultimately
based on disorder, upon chance.
Van Til
points out how unbelieving thought bounces back and forth, inconsistently,
between rationalism and irrationalism. In Parmenides, rationalism generates a doctrine of
static "being," while irrationalism
generates a mythological explanation of how the illusion of movement can
exist. Plato's forms represent his rationalism; his irrationalism
is seen in his view of the empirical world, the world of mere opinion. The
enduring problem of Plato's philosophy is the difficulty of achieving
any intelligible relationship between the two worlds. In Kant, the same problem recurs in the relation between
the irrational noumenal world and the
rationalistically conceived phenomenal.
Now let us look at Van Til's view of apologetic method. He suggests what he
calls a "transcendental" method or "reasoning by
presupposition." Here he emphasizes that we should seek to show that
no meaning, intelligibility, or predication, is possible apart from the
God of scripture. He also insists that this argument must be
"circular" or "spiral," always resting on the
presupposition of God's truth.
I agree that apologetic argument
must be circular in one sense, in the sense that a Christian apologist
must never abandon his Christian presuppositions when he argues with
a non-Christian. We cannot abandon those presuppositions, for we believe
that those presuppositions define the proper way to reason. Therefore,
when we seek to prove those presuppositions, we must presuppose them, and
that is a kind of
circularity. Of course, that is the kind of circularity that always
exists when people try to prove the truth of an ultimate standard
of rationality. To prove that human reason is ultimate, one
must presuppose human reason, etc. This does not imply that
apologetic argument needs to use viciously circular arguments, such as
"the Bible is the word of God because it is the word of God."
I also agree with the transcendental
character of Van Til's apologetic. We should
seek to establish that the biblical God is the source of all meaning and
intelligibility in the world, for indeed he is the source of all meaning
and intelligibility in the world. However, Van Til
tries to derive from the nature of transcendental argument some
additional restrictions on the apologist, restrictions which I
consider unnecessary. (1) He insists that arguments for
Christianity should be indirect rather than direct. Instead of proving
the existence of God directly, Van Til insists
that we prove it indirectly, by showing the "impossibility of the
contrary." He urges us to adopt the unbeliever's presupposition
"for the sake of argument" and show that that presupposition
leads to incoherence and meaninglessness. (2) He demands that we
always claim absolute certainty rather than probability. (3)
He occasionally requires that we announce our entire theology
"at the outset" of every apologetic encounter. (4) He occasionally requires
that the argument conclude by proving the @UN(whole) of Christian theism,
rather than merely proving individual doctrines. (5) He insists that we
may never present Christian truth as a "supplement" to the
unbeliever's knowledge.
In my view, Van Til's
own arguments do not always observe these principles, and in any case I
believe that he has failed to make an adequate case for them. I cannot see
that any of these five rules can be established from scripture or as a
consequence of the transcendental nature of apologetics. It seems to me
(1) that an indirect argument is not necessarily the only kind of argument
that can establish the transcendental conclusion, (2) that although the
evidence for God's reality is certain, our verbal formulations of that
evidence may be merely probable, etc.
Van Til is
at his worst in his critiques of other thinkers, but even there he
provides valuable insight. His critique of the "traditional
apologetic method" seems to me often to make unreasonable demands
upon past thinkers (such as the illegitimate rules mentioned in the above
paragraph). His criticisms are valuable, however, as advice on strategy
and clear communication. Certainly, the apologetic tradition has
obscured the gospel by failing to make clear (to unbelievers and
believers alike) the radical antithesis between Christian and
non-Christian thought. It has even used formulae (e.g., "bring on
your revelations! let them make peace with the law of
contradiction and the facts of experience, and they will deserve a
rational man's assent") which, while true in themselves, taken in
context encourage unbelievers to continue thinking
autonomously. Unfortunately, Van Til sometimes
fails to distinguish adequately between (1) issues of communication and
strategy, and (2) issues of biblical orthodoxy. He also
There are similar problems in Van Til's critiques of scholasticism and of the Amsterdam
philosophy; but he does hit upon some genuine and serious errors and
confusions in those systems, and even more in the system of Karl Barth. For giving the church such clear warning about
these errors, he deserves the commendation of all Christians.
I believe, therefore, that we can
learn much that is good and valuable from Van Til,
without being slavish devotes. It is not necessary for the Van Tillian movement to maintain a "movement
mentality." Nor is it necessary to stand in "antithesis"
against all our fellow Christians who have thus far not joined that
movement.
A Van Tillian
apologetic for the next century should free itself from those Van Tillian restrictions which are illegitimate and then
enrich itself by developing a great variety of arguments contextualized for many different sorts of apologetic
encounter. Van Til has taught us that every fact
of history testifies to the reality of the biblical God. He has only begun
to show us how this takes place. It is for us further to implement this
vision, by showing how the presuppositions of scripture reveal
everything for what it truly is in relation to God. That is an exciting
task indeed.
It is also important for us to move
beyond the traditional Van Tillian preoccupation
with methodology.
[1]
Van Tillian
courses in apologetics, including mine, have focused far too much on methods,
especially upon distinguishing our methods from those of other schools
of thought. More time should be spent on developing actual arguments.
We need to spend more time addressing unbelievers, less time arguing with
one another over methods. Students of Van Tillian
apologetics need to be far better informed about Christian evidences and
about the current situations which the apologist must address.
My critical account of Van Til allows us to take a somewhat less apocalyptic view of methodological differences among apologists, so that we can indeed concentrate on fulfilling the Great Commission. If this book can encourage believers in that work, it will have accomplished its purpose. _