Revised: 02/02/2004
The writings of Cornelius Van Til may not be well known outside of Reformed circles, but his contributions to theology, philosophy, and apologetic methodology have often provoked strong reactions from those acquainted with them. On the one hand, there are some for whom it seems Van Til's word is all but infallible. On the other, there are those who think that many of his distinctive views are mistaken, misguided, even dangerous. A few have gone so far as to charge him with outright heterodoxy.
Now engendering controversy is no bad thing in itself — after all, there are many distinguished precedents in that respect — but for those who find much to appreciate in Van Til's work, what is troubling is that many oppose or dismiss his views for poor reasons. These reasons are often based on misunderstandings and misrepresentations of Van Til's thought, usually derived from secondary sources. This compilation of short articles is therefore designed to set the record straight on a number of important issues, either by quoting directly from Van Til's writings or by trying to shed some positive light on his more obscure or controversial statements. The Van Til FEM exists as a dynamic document, continually under review and subject to corrections and additions. I therefore welcome comments and criticisms.
The articles are intentionally brief and to the point. None of the issues raised are treated in great depth, since my aim is simply to show that Van Til should not be dismissed out of hand on the basis of straw-man representations or superficial understandings. For more thorough discussions of the points raised below, I would direct the interested reader to John Frame's Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought and Greg Bahnsen's Van Til's Apologetic: Readings & Analysis. At the end of each article, I have indicated where the particular issue in question is addressed in these two volumes.
The document consists of two sections: the first addresses certain commonly-encountered objections and misconceptions, while the second provides concrete examples of such objections and misconceptions. (Credit is due to David Byron for proposing the taxonomy for the FEMs.)
Note: The use of the quotations in Section B should not be interpreted as personal criticism of those authors quoted or taken to imply disapproval of their work in general.
It is often claimed that Van Til was a fideist, in the sense of one who maintains that our knowledge of God (and of the truth of Christianity) is based on a subjective faith apart from any evidence or rational considerations. Quite the opposite is true, however. Van Til rejected outright fideist and subjectivist approaches to apologetics, as the following quotes show:
It will then be possible to compare the Christian epistemology with any and with all the others. And being thus enabled to compare them all, we are in a position and placed before the responsibility of choosing between them. And this choosing can then, in the nature of the case, no longer be a matter of artistic preference. We cannot choose epistemologies as we choose hats. Such would be the case if it had been once for all established that the whole thing is but a matter of taste. But that is exactly what has not been established. That is exactly the point in dispute.
(A Survey of Christian Epistemology, p. xiii-xiv, emphasis added)In our great concern to win men we have allowed that the evidence for God's existence is only probably compelling. And from that fatal confession we have gone one step further down to the point where we have admitted or virtually admitted that it is not really compelling at all. And so we fall back on testimony instead of argument. After all, we say, God is not found at the end of an argument; He is found in our hearts. So we simply testify to men that once we were dead, and now we are alive, and that one we were blind and that now we see, and give up all intellectual argument. Do you suppose that our God approves of this attitude of His followers? I do not think so. [...] A testimony that is not an argument is not a testimony either, just as an argument that is not a testimony is not even an argument.
(Why I Believe in God, p. 16, emphasis original)
[For further discussion, see: Frame, pp. 178-84; Bahnsen, pp. 72-78.]
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Could Van Til have made such a patently absurd claim? Surely this would be reason enough to dismiss his epistemology as fatally flawed! The fact is that Van Til held no such belief — at least, not in the sense that many critics have attributed to him. Indeed, he explicitly denied this misunderstanding of his position:
The first objection that suggests itself may be expressed in the rhetorical questions 'Do you mean to assert that non-Christians do not discover truth by the methods they employ?' The reply is that we mean nothing so absurd as that. The implication of the method here advocated is simply that non-Christians are never able and therefore never do employ their own methods consistently.
(The Defense of the Faith, p. 103)
According to Van Til, the unbeliever does indeed possess knowledge:
We are well aware of the fact that non-Christian have a great deal of knowledge about this world which is true as far as it goes. That is, there is a sense in which we can and must allow for the value of knowledge of non-Christians.
(Introduction to Systematic Theology, p. 26)
Most significantly, the unbeliever has knowledge of God:
The apostle Paul speaks of the natural man as actually possessing the knowledge of God (Rom. 1:19-21).
(The Defense of the Faith, p. 92)It will not do to say that the natural man knows nothing of God, though he knows many other things well. [...] Man has the sense of deity indelibly engraved upon him. He knows God and he knows himself and the world as God's creation.
(Introduction to Systematic Theology, p. 27)
Van Til did argue, however, that unbelievers could know nothing in principle, given their philosophical outlook. In other words, if their non-Christian presuppositions were true, then knowledge would be impossible. Ironically, however, the fact that they do know things is proof that those presuppositions are false:
Thus there is absolutely certain proof for the existence of God and the truth of Christian theism. Even non-Christians presuppose its truth while they verbally reject it. They need to presuppose the truth of Christian theism in order to account for their own accomplishments.
(The Defense of the Faith, p. 103, emphasis added)
Moreover, to the extent that unbelievers endeavour to reason in a way consistent with their faulty presuppositions, they find themselves falling into skepticism and absurdity.
It should be conceded that Van Til did not articulate his position regarding the knowledge of the unbeliever as clearly and systematically as many would wish. In his own words, this issue "has always been a difficult point" such that "we cannot give any wholly satisfactory answer to the situation [of the unbeliever's knowledge] as it actually obtains" — a situation that is "always a mixture of truth with error" (Introduction to Systematic Theology, pp. 26-27). Even so, it should be evident from the above that Van Til's position is considerably more complex and nuanced than many of his critics seem willing to acknowledge.
[For further discussion, see: Frame, pp. 187-213; Bahnsen, pp. 442-53.]
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On the basis of certain statements regarding the antithesis between believer and unbeliever, a number of writers on Christian apologetics have represented Van Til as denying that there is any common ground between the two parties; thus, these writers claim, Van Til effectively ruled out the possibility of settling disagreements over religious claims in an objective and rational manner. If there is no common ground, then there is no 'point of contact' at which the apologist may ply his trade. Such writers would have us conclude that, ironically, Van Til was more anti-apologist than apologist.
In this instance, it must be granted that the more extreme antithetical statements in Van Til's writings, if taken alone, might well lead one to misunderstand his position. For this reason, Van Til was prompted in one of his later publications to explicitly disavow this misrepresentation of his views:
I have been told that on my view the Christian can say nothing more to the non-Christian than: 'You work on one set of presuppositions and I work on another set of presuppositions, and that is the end of the matter. There simply is no common ground of any sort between us.' I would now make as plain as possible that only because reality is what the self-attesting Christ of Scripture has told us it is do we, as believers and as unbelievers, have common ground at all. If the triune God of Scripture did not exist and if He did not do what He says in Scripture He does, i.e. create and direct the whole course of history, the unbeliever would have no standing place in order to engage in his effort by his false systems to deny the existence and work of God.
(Toward A Reformed Apologetic, 1972 pamphlet, sect. 15)
Van Til's essential position was that although there is certainly common ground between believers and unbelievers (and thus apologetics is possible), that common ground is by no means neutral ground.
It is commonness 'without qualification,' that is, the idea of neutral territory of interpretation between believers and non-believers that I reject.
(Common Grace and the Gospel, p. 152, emphasis original)
In other words, although there is knowledge that is shared by both believer and unbeliever (which serves as a 'point of contact' for rational argumentation), this knowledge is not religiously neutral — it is not such that it presupposes neither the truth nor the falsity of Christianity (or any other worldview).
In Van Til's view, this 'common' knowledge must in principle presuppose either the truth or the falsity of Christianity — and in actuality, he believed, it presupposes the truth of Christianity. (This conviction is, in a nutshell, what Van Til's celebrated 'transcendental argument' for Christian theism seeks to demonstrate.) We might put Van Til's position like this: both believer and unbeliever stand on common ground, but that ground is Christian ground. Thus, the apologetic task is not to move the unbeliever onto Christian ground, but to show him that he has been standing on Christian ground all along!
For Van Til, the 'point of contact' is not to be located in religiously neutral premises, but in the fact that the unbeliever is created in the image of God and, although he professes otherwise, he knows it. God's self-revelation in the created order, and particularly in the soul of man, is inescapable.
The point of contact for the gospel, then, must be sought within the natural man. Deep down in his mind every man knows that he is the creature of God and responsible to God. Every man, at bottom, knows that he is a covenant-breaker.
(Christian Apologetics, p. 57)Only by thus finding the point of contact in man's sense of deity that lies underneath his own conception of self-consciousness as ultimate can we be both true to Scripture and effective in reasoning with the natural man.
(Ibid., p. 58)With this basic contrast in mind it is then possible to speak in biblical fashion of the point of contact for the gospel in the sense of need found in the natural man. It is the original and ineradicable revelation of God and of his will within men's minds that is the background and foundation for the work of the Holy Spirit. Without this background the gospel would speak into a vacuum.
(A Christian Theory of Knowledge, p. 56)
[For further discussion, see: Frame, pp. 304-9, 415-17; Bahnsen, pp. 407-10, 438-41.]
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Some critics of Van Til have pointed to his claim that "the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man coincide at no point" and have argued that this implies either antirealism (such that what is true for us is not necessarily true for God) or pure skepticism (such that we have no knowledge at all). Wrenched from its context and presented as if it were expressed without any qualification, this quotation inevitably puts Van Til in a bad light. When the section is read as a whole, however, it is clear that Van Til is in no way endorsing antirealism or skepticism:
In the first place, it is possible in this way to see that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man coincide at every point in the sense that always and everywhere man confronts that which is already fully known or interpreted by God. The point of reference cannot but be the same for man as for God. There is no fact that man meets in any of his investigation where the face of God does not confront him. On the other hand in this way it is possible to see that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man coincide at no point in the sense that in his awareness of meaning of anything, in his mental grasp or understanding of anything, man is at each point dependent upon a prior act of unchangeable understanding and revelation on the part of God. The form of the revelation of God to man must come to man in accordance with his creaturely limitations.
(An Introduction to Systematic Theology, pp. 164-65)
Note three things about what Van Til writes here. First of all, the claim in question is immediately followed by the words "in the sense that"; thus it is only in a certain qualified sense that God's knowledge and man's knowledge are said never to coincide.
Secondly, Van Til begins the paragraph by stating that there is a sense in which God's knowledge and man's knowledge coincide at every point. Thus it is clear that Van Til's aim here is to distinguish the aspects in which divine knowledge and human knowledge do coincide and the aspects in which they do not. Moreover, the sense in which (according to Van Til) they coincide is such as to preclude antirealism or skepticism; for anything that man could know (i.e., the revelation with which he is confronted) is, in the nature of the case, already an item of God's knowledge. (Hence Van Til's oft-repeated claim that our knowledge amounts to "thinking God's thoughts after him.")
Finally, note the precise sense in which there is said to be no point of coincidence between God's knowledge and man's knowledge: it concerns the character of the knowledge, rather than its content. At root, it is a question of dependence. God's knowledge is original, constructive, and utterly independent of any prior knowledge. In stark contrast, man's knowledge is derivative, reconstructive, and utterly dependent on God's prior knowledge. (As Van Til later puts it, "God's knowledge is archetypal and ours ectypal." Ibid., p. 203.) In this respect, then, it is clear that God's knowledge and man's knowledge have nothing in common (much as God's will and man's will have nothing in common with respect to the foreordination of history). Moreover, rather than opening the door to antirealism or skepticism, Van Til argued, this relationship between divine knowledge and human knowledge underpins the epistemological realism of the Christian faith (i.e., the notion that we can acquire knowledge of an objective reality independent of our own minds).
As with many of Van Til's distinctive views, this characterization of God's knowledge and man's knowledge is certainly open to debate. However, it should be quite clear from the above that his "no point of coincidence" claim should not be superficially dismissed as obviously wrong or epistemologically self-destructive.
[For further discussion, see: Frame, pp. 89-113; Bahnsen, pp. 220-35.]
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Some have dismissed Van Til as an irrationalist, suggesting that he denied the validity of logic and reasoning in gaining knowledge and defending the faith. This inaccurate charge seems to arise from a failure to note that Van Til sometimes uses terms such as 'logic' and 'reason' in quite different senses; nevertheless, what he means in any particular instance is usually clear from the context. When he speaks negatively of 'logic' or 'reason', Van Til invariably has in mind either a particular conception of logic or a certain approach to reasoning. Thus, for example, we find him criticizing non-Christian 'logic' (by which he meant principles of reasoning taken to be valid in an autonomous sense, independent of God, in terms of which the truth claims of God's revelation can be judged) as well as Christian epistemologies which explicitly or implicitly treat human reason (including our application of logical principles) as if it were an equal or higher authority than Scripture. On the other hand, Van Til wholeheartedly endorsed the use of logic and reason, operating in submission to revelation, and emphasized the rationality of the Christian faith:
Positively Hodge and Warfield were quite right in stressing the fact that Christianity meets every legitimate demand of reason. Surely Christianity is not irrational. To be sure, it must be accepted by faith, but surely it must not be taken on blind faith. Christianity is capable of rational defense.
(Common Grace and the Gospel, p. 184)Christianity is the only reasonable position to hold. It is not merely as reasonable as other positions, or a bit more reasonable than other positions; it alone is the natural and reasonable position for man to take.
(Ibid., p. 62)
In Van Til's view, the laws of logic are God-given and should be used in our reasoning because they reflect the intrinsic rationality of God himself:
The law of contradiction, therefore, as we know it, is but the expression on a created level of the internal coherence of God's nature. [...] Christians should employ the law of contradiction, whether positively or negatively, as a means by which to systematize the facts of revelation.
(An Introduction to Systematic Theology, p. 11)
[For further discussion, see: Frame, pp. 151-60; Bahnsen, pp. 235-37.]
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A common objection to Van Til's presuppositional apologetic is that it commits an elementary logic fallacy, that of circular argumentation or 'begging the question'. A circular argument is one in which the premises are logically connected to the conclusion in such a way that they would only be conceded by someone who already accepted the conclusion. An example would be the following argument: The Bible claims to be God's Word, and whatever the Bible claims is true, therefore the Bible is God's Word. This is clearly a hopeless argument, since no one is likely to grant the second premise who does not already believe the conclusion.
Still, Van Til insisted that any argument for God's existence or the truth of Scripture must also presuppose God's existence and the truth of Scripture. Why? Because when one argues in defence of an ultimate epistemic authority, such as an ultimate standard of truth, then some element of circularity will be unavoidable. Consider: if the truthfulness of our ultimate standard of truth — God's revelation — could be established on the basis of some other standard of truth, then it wouldn't actually be the ultimate standard. Our attempted proof would effectively disprove our position!
Similarly, if God is absolute, then all things depend on him for their existence, including our ability to think and form arguments. Therefore, any argument for God's existence must, in some sense, presuppose God's existence in order to be possible at all. To suggest otherwise would, again, negate our position, i.e., God's absolute existence. Van Til put the matter thus:
[T]his brings up the point of circular reasoning. The charge is constantly made that if matters stand thus with Christianity, it has written its own death warrant as far as intelligent men are concerned. Who wishes to make such a simple blunder in elementary logic, as to say that we believe something to be true because it is in the Bible? Our answer to this is briefly that we prefer to reason in a circle to not reasoning at all. We hold it to be true that circular reasoning is the only reasoning that is possible to finite man. [...] Unless we are larger than God we cannot reason about him any other way, than by a transcendental or circular argument. The refusal to admit the necessity of circular reasoning is itself an evident token of opposition to Christianity.
(A Survey of Christian Epistemology, p. 12)
It should be noted, incidentally, that all worldviews — not just Christianity — must face this issue of circularity when arguing for their truthfulness. The epistemological first principles of a worldview can only be justified on the basis of those same first principles if one is to be consistent.
How, then, are we able to argue for our position without begging the question entirely? The answer, according to Van Til, is to prove our presuppositions indirectly; more specifically, to argue transcendentally. A transcendental argument is one that aims to show what must be true in order for reasoning and argumentation to be possible at all. In effect, we argue from the impossibility of the contrary; we assume, for the sake of argument, the denial of the Christian position and show that it leads to self-contradiction and absurdity (e.g., that reasoning, argument, knowledge, and so on, would be impossible on those terms).
It is the firm conviction of every epistemologically self-conscious Christian that no human being can utter a single syllable, whether in negation or affirmation, unless it were for God's existence. Thus the transcendental argument seeks to discover what sort of foundations the house of human knowledge must have, in order to be what it is.
(Ibid., p. 11)
Thus although circularity is necessary in some sense, it need not be a vicious or fallacious circularity (as is the case in the example given above):
The charge is made that we engage in circular reasoning. Now if it be called circular reasoning when we hold it necessary to presuppose the existence of God, we are not ashamed of it because we are firmly convinced that all forms of reasoning that leave God out of account will end in ruin. Yet we hold that our reasoning cannot fairly be called circular reasoning [i.e., begging the question —JA], because we are not reasoning about and seeking to explain facts by assuming the existence and meaning of certain other facts on the same level of being with the facts we are investigating, and then explaining these facts in turn by the facts with which we began. We are presupposing God, not merely another fact of the universe.
(Ibid., p. 201, emphasis original)
[For further discussion, see: Frame, pp. 301-9; Bahnsen, pp. 482-83, 518-20, 523-26, 650-52.]
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Not true at all. Van Til believed that every fact was in some sense evidence of Christian theism, since facts can only be made intelligible on Christian theistic presuppositions. He supported the use of evidence, but opposed in principle the methodology of presenting evidence without challenging the non-Christian presuppositions that are used to interpret (or rather misinterpret) that evidence:
Nor can we disagree with [Warfield] when he says that the Christian faith is not a blind faith but is faith based on evidence.
(A Christian Theory of Knowledge, p. 250)I see induction and analytical reasoning as part of one process of interpretation. I would therefore engage in historical apologetics. (I do not personally do a great deal of this because my colleagues in the other departments of the Seminary in which I teach are doing it better than I could do it.) Every bit of historical investigation, whether it be in the directly biblical field, archaeology, or in general history, is bound to confirm the truth of the claims of the Christian position. But I would not talk endlessly about facts and more facts without challenging the unbeliever's philosophy of fact. A really fruitful historical apologetic argues that every fact is and must be such as proves the truth of the Christian position.
(Ibid., p. 293, emphasis original)
[For further discussion, see: Frame, pp. 177-84; Bahnsen, pp. 131, 634-48.]
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This idea is often mistakenly inferred from Van Til's criticism of the 'classical' proofs of God's existence (as traditionally formulated) and from his presuppositional epistemology which seemingly insists on assuming God's existence in order to demonstrate it. However, he says:
[T]he best and only possible proof for the existence of such a God is that his existence is required for the uniformity of nature and for the coherence of all things in the world. [...] Thus there is absolutely certain proof for the existence of God and the truth of Christian theism.
(The Defense of the Faith, p. 103)[...] I do not reject 'the theistic proofs' but merely insist on formulating them in such a way as not to compromise the doctrines of Scripture.
(Ibid., p. 197)The argument for the existence of God and for the truth of Christianity is objectively valid. We should not tone down this argument to the probability level. The argument may be poorly stated, and may never be adequately stated. But in itself the argument is absolutely sound. Christianity is the only reasonable position to hold.
(Common Grace and the Gospel, p. 62)Dr. Masselink asserts that I deny any truth value to the theistic proofs. [...] This is again simply contrary to fact.
(Ibid., p. 179)The theistic proofs therefore reduce to one proof, the proof which argues that unless this God, the God of the Bible, the ultimate being, the Creator, the controller of the universe, be presupposed as the foundation of human experience, this experience operates in a void. This one proof is absolutely convincing.
(Ibid., p. 192, emphasis original)
In what sense, then, must God's existence be presupposed in order to prove it?
[T]he argument for Christianity must therefore be that of presupposition. With Augustine it must be maintained that God's revelation is the sun from which all other light derives. The best, the only, the absolutely certain proof of the truth of Christianity is that unless its truth be presupposed there is no proof of anything. Christianity is proved as being the very foundation of the idea of proof itself.
(The Defense of the Faith, p. 298, emphasis added)
[For further discussion, see: Frame, pp. 299-322; Bahnsen, passim.]
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In Common Grace and the Gospel, p. 142, Van Til wrote a paragraph with this subtitle: All Teaching of Scripture is Apparently Contradictory. This has been mistaken by some as a claim that the Bible contains contradictions. Since two contradictory statements cannot both be true, the implication drawn is either that the Bible contains falsehoods or that God's Word (and therefore God) is illogical and thus incoherent. So what on earth prompted Van Til to make this incredible claim?
Van Til characteristically used extreme and antithetical language to express what he took to be important principles. In this case, his point was that since Scripture is the self-revelation of a God who is incomprehensible (but not inapprehensible; we have partial but not full understanding of him), we should hardly be surprised to find points of logical tension — 'apparent contradiction' or 'paradox' — in our systematization of that revelation. For example: God is all-glorious, yet we are told that our actions can 'give glory' to him. (Note that for Van Til such 'paradoxes' are only apparently contradictory, not genuinely so; the logical perplexities arise because of our finite, creaturely perspective. See ibid. p. 9ff.) Furthermore, Van Til observed that the doctrines of Scripture are intimately and inextricably related to another, forming a complex system of truth. Because some of these doctrines are 'paradoxical', the system presented to us as a whole system is 'apparently contradictory'.
To confirm that this explanation puts Van Til's statement in the proper context, we need only look at the first sentence of the paragraph in question, where John Calvin is quoted with approval:
Rather let us say with Calvin: 'And most certainly there is nothing in the whole circle of spiritual doctrine which does not far surpass the capacity of man and confound its utmost reach.'"
It should also be noted that, in the immediate context, Van Til's point is related to the subject of witnessing to unbelievers. The thrust of his argument is that if the unbeliever is encouraged to suppose that his finite mind is appropriate to determine, by its own lights, the 'reasonableness' of the Christian revelation, he will reject it out of hand on account of its paradoxical teachings — that there is one God who exists in three distinct persons, that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, that God foreordains all things yet we are morally responsible for our actions, and so forth. Thus, if witnessing is to be effective, the apologist must challenge that very supposition by arguing that only Christianity can account for a finite mind being able to determine anything at all.
Yet doesn't the presence of 'apparent contradiction' circumvent any attempt to systematize doctrine or draw logical conclusions from Scripture? Not necessarily. It simply means that we must be alert to the possibility of such paradoxes arising, and if all attempts at resolving an 'apparent contradiction' prove unsuccessful we should avoid deducing erroneous conclusions based on one side of the paradox taken in isolation from its counterpoint. John Frame explains:
If we are to think analogically, using Christian limiting concepts [the two sides of an 'apparent contradiction' —JA], we should not deduce from God's unity that he cannot be three, or vice versa. Nor should we reason that because God has foreordained all things, finite beings cannot bring glory to him. Insofar as these paradoxes influence everything we say about God and man, they inject 'apparent contradiction' into all of our theology.
But we can make many deductions from God's unity that do not compromise his triune nature. For example, since the true God is one, and we must worship only a true God, it follows that we must not worship many gods. And to reason that since God foreordains all things, he foreordains the fluctuations of the stock market, does not compromise the full bucket paradox [i.e., that human actions are significant to an all-sufficient God —JA]. Therefore, to acknowledge apparent contradictions is not to renounce all use of logic. To be sure, we must always ask ourselves whether our attempts at logical deduction fall afoul of the general paradoxes pertaining to the divine nature and the Creator-creature distinction. Some such attempts do; some do not. If we have asked this question in a responsible way, then nothing prevents our free use of logical deduction.
(Cornelius Van Til, p. 169)
To summarize: Although Van Til's views on 'apparent contradiction' are provocative and controversial, a correct understanding of his statements shows at least that he was implying neither that the Bible contains real contradictions nor that systematic theology is impossible in principle.
[For further discussion, see: Frame, pp. 161-75; Bahnsen, pp. 234, 237.]
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In An Introduction to Systematic Theology, p. 229, Van Til makes the following statements as part of his discussion of the 'Triunity of God':
We do assert that God, that is, the whole Godhead, is one person. [...] Even within the ontological Trinity we must maintain that God is numerically one. He is one person. When we say that we believe in a personal God, we do not merely mean that we believe in a God to whom the adjective 'personality' may be attached. God is not an essence that has personality; He is absolute personality.
It is hardly surprising that this "bold theological move" (as John Frame describes it) has stirred up controversy. On the face of it, isn't Van Til's claim in direct conflict with the orthodox trinitarian formula of "one in essence and three in person"? Isn't he advocating the heresy of Sabellianism, according to which God is merely one person who manifests himself in three 'modes' — Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Or is he claiming that God's very nature is inherently contradictory?
There is no doubt that this is a provocative, confusing, and potentially misleading teaching, and a full discussion of the issue is far beyond the scope and purpose of this article. My aim here will simply be to indicate the motivation behind Van Til's statements and to argue that he is guilty of neither irrationalism nor unorthodoxy.
Van Til did not reject the orthodox formulation at all. In fact, the passage quoted above immediately follows a discussion of the traditional doctrine of the Trinity in which he endorses the statements of Nicea, Constantinople and Chalcedon, and the Westminster Confession. He also outlines and criticizes the historic anti-trinitarian heresies, including Sabellianism. His complaint with the traditional statements was not that they were in error, but that issues which have arisen in the intervening centuries and which demand a further defence of orthodox doctrine could not be adequately addressed without intensifying those statements. Van Til's concern was that we should avoid any implication that the unity of the Godhead is an impersonal unity, that the Being who is the ground of all being is ultimately impersonal in nature. One of the implications of denying this, Van Til argued, would be that since interpretation is a personal act (existing in the mind of a person) there could be no ultimately unified interpretation of reality. The universe would be fundamentally unintelligible.
This, then, was Van Til's basic motivation for stating that God must be one person as well as three persons (as per the Nicene definition). In addition to the conceptual argument, he claimed biblical support through verses which express God's personal unity (e.g., Deut. 6:4-5, a supremely personal text).
Yet, we reply, how could God be both one person and three persons? Isn't that a blatant violation of the law of non-contradiction? In seeking an answer, we must acknowledge that Van Til considered this an apparent contradiction and not a real one (see Common Grace and the Gospel, p. 9). A contradiction is said to occur when something is asserted to be both A and not-A at the same time and in the same sense. Since Van Til held to the traditional doctrine of God's timelessness, we can disregard the 'same time' condition. We must therefore conclude that, since Van Til emphatically rejected the idea that Christian truth involves real contradictions, he held that God is one person and three person in different senses.
What exactly are these different senses? Where or how is the distinction to be made? Van Til, of course, didn't specify; his point was that we cannot specify the distinction, as finite creatures, and thus we must rest content with an apparent contradiction (at least for now). Although we can rationally infer that there is a distinction to be made, we are not in a position to specify what that distinction is. Still, God comprehends the distinction and there is no irresolvable contradiction in his mind.
Was Van Til correct in all or any of this? That is a matter of continuing debate. In conclusion, however, it must be admitted that after a careful examination of the background to Van Til's position, and its relationship to the rest of his philosophy, he cannot be fairly accused of embracing irrationalism or of rejecting orthodoxy.
[For further discussion, see: Frame, pp. 63-71.]
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Fideism is not limited to nonevangelicals. Cornelius Van Til speaks from a strong Reformed, Biblical perspective theologically and yet in an absolute revelational presuppositionalism apologetically. As we shall see, this position may be viewed as methodological fideism.
(Norman L. Geisler, Christian Apologetics, Baker, 1976, p. 56)
[See the entire section entitled 'The Revelational Fideism of Cornelius Van Til', pp. 56-58. This misrepresentation is particularly regrettable in light of the fact that Geisler acknowledges the transcendental aspect of Van Til's apologetic (p. 56, fn. 25) but remarks elsewhere (p. 258, fn. 25) that a transcendental approach would do more than merely posit God's existence as a presupposition (as a true fideist would require).]
One's response to this objection will turn, in part, on one's approach to apologetics. If one is a fideist or a presuppositionalist (roughly, the view that rational argumentation and evidence cannot be offered as epistemic support for Christian theism from some neutral starting point), then one may say that begging the question is not a problem here.
(J. P. Moreland, Christianity and the Nature of Science, Baker, 1989, p. 205, fn. 42)
[Moreland is correct in noting that Van Til, as a presuppositionalist, denies the possibility of a neutral starting point, but incorrectly associates that position with fideism. He fails to appreciate the role of transcendental argumentation in Van Til's apologetic.]
Cornelius Van Til has contributed to a virile twentieth century apologetic by his insistence that the Christian claim, if true, is more coherent than any other world-view. Unfortunately, a curious epistemology derived from a modern Calvinistic school of philosophy in Holland has led him to align his orthodox theology with a form of irrational fideism.
(Clark H. Pinnock, 'The Philosophy of Christian Evidences' in Jerusalem and Athens, Presbyterian & Reformed Pub. Co., 1971, p. 425)
[Pinnock makes the additional error of suggesting that Van Til's apologetic merely aims to demonstrate that the Christian worldview is more coherent than any other, presumably ignoring the need to show that it also corresponds to reality ("if true"). Pinnock appears to be confusing Van Til's approach with that of Gordon H. Clark.]
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It is important to stress that Calvin makes no suggestion whatsoever that this knowledge of God from the created order is peculiar to, or restricted to, Christian believers. It is perhaps at this point that both Karl Barth and Cornelius van Til find themselves unable to endorse thoroughly Calvinian insights.
(Alister E. McGrath, Intellectuals Don't Need God & Other Modern Myths, Zondervan, 1993, p. 214)
[Contrary to McGrath's suggestion, Van Til fully endorsed Calvin's contention that all humans, not just believers, have knowledge of God from the created order. See quotes in section A.I.2.]
Cornelius Van Til, a twentieth-century Reformed theologian, sees 'unregenerated' human beings as rebellious creatures in this way. He argues that this condition not only makes it impossible for them to reach religious truths; it makes it impossible for them to reach truth of any kind. Though the grace of God does restrain the effects of sin, and rebellious humans never completely follow out the logic of their position, Van Til holds that rebellious humans are logically committed to 'presuppositions' that make it impossible for them to discover genuine truth. Hence, what might be called 'natural' human beings simply have no 'ability or right to judge what is true or false, right or wrong.'
(C. Stephen Evans, Faith Beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Approach, William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1998, p. 19)
[Three FEMs for the price of one on this page of Evans' volume! See also B.I.3 and B.III.2.]
Van Til's epistemological claims seem clearly to imply that non-Christians cannot know anything. This has caused some embarrassment for his followers because it looks like it is obviously false. Surely even the most benighted unbelievers know that they aren't the only people who exist in the world, what their names are, and what they ate for breakfast. The reason unbelievers can't know anything, according to presuppositionalists, is that the presuppositions upon which their knowledge is based are all wrong — they believe on the basis of autonomous human reason and not on the basis of the God who is reason.
(Kelly James Clark, 'A Reformed Epistemologist's Response to Presuppositional Apologetics' in Steven B. Cowan (ed.), Five Views on Apologetics, Zondervan, 2001, pp. 256-57)
Van Til and his followers often claim that Van Til never claims this. The problem is that the conclusion — that unbelievers cannot know anything — follows fairly simply from their analysis of knowledge and the disparaging remarks they make about the unbeliever's lack of justification due to faulty reasoning.
(ibid., pp. 256-57, fn. 3)
[Clark seems to vacillate between the charge that Van Til and his followers claim that unbelievers have no knowledge and the charge that, regardless of whether they claim it or deny it, this conclusion is implied by their other claims about knowledge and the unbeliever. The quotes in section A.I.2 certainly refute the former charge; and to be fair to Clark, it appears that his main concern is the latter. Nevertheless, even this objection is unwarranted (and somewhat uncharitable) in light of Van Til's own clarifications of his position (e.g., the first quote in section A.I.2). Van Til's claim is that unbelievers lack knowledge to the extent that they are consistent with their anti-Christian presuppositions. Whenever they do possess knowledge, Van Til maintains, they are effectively living off 'borrowed capital' — they are implicitly assuming that the human mind and the external world are indeed as the Christian contends. It would be surprising if Clark were to object to these more nuanced and plausible theses, since they bear more than a passing similarity to the conclusions of one of Clark's fellow Reformed epistemologists, Alvin Plantinga. (See Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 199-240.) An analysis of Kelly Clark's criticisms of Van Til, addressed to Clark in an email by Michael Sudduth, can be accessed here.]
Here Plantinga would depart from radical interpretations of the antithesis which contend that the unbeliever can know nothing at all; rightly so, it seems to me, as the radical interpretations of the antithesis seem utterly implausible. But Oliphint seems led to just this radical interpretation if he insists that in order to know one must start with (conscious) belief in (the Christian) God (as understood by Calvin). And his criticisms of Plantinga seem to lead him to embrace such a position.
(Kelly James Clark, 'Plantinga vs. Oliphint: And The Winner Is...', Calvin Theological Journal 33 (1998), pp. 160-69)
[Here Clark charges K. Scott Oliphint, a Van Tilian presuppositionalist, with the same error as Van Til.]
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Van Til thus declares that the possibility of a dialogue with those outside the Christian faith is excluded. There is no common ground.
(Alister E. McGrath, Intellectuals Don't Need God & Other Modern Myths, Zondervan, 1993, p. 218)
One might wonder if Van Til has thereby made it impossible for Christians to defend their faith to non-Christians. It appears that there is no point of contact or common ground upon which an appeal might be made. Van Til's response to this is that the non-Christian really does know the truth and hence has the ability to recognise it when it is proclaimed and defended. The trouble is that non-Christians constantly suppress this knowledge because of their sinfulness. How can this suppression of the truth be overcome and the non-Christian brought to recognise the truth? Van Til says clearly that God must 'force an entrance.' 'As to the possibility and likelihood of the sinner's accepting the Christian position, it must be said that this is a matter of the grace of God.'
(C. Stephen Evans, Faith Beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Approach, William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1998, p. 19)
[Van Til's position on common ground is explained in section A.I.3. Moreover, the idea that the acceptance of the Christian position "is a matter of the grace of God" is hardly distinctive to Van Til — it is the historic Augustinian/Reformed position on conversion. Apologetics (the rational defence of the faith, endorsed by Van Til) no more converts people than preaching does — after all, it is God that "giveth the increase" (1 Cor. 3:7) — but it is no less worthwhile or necessary for that.]
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[A] minority of evangelicals continues to support retrenchment and isolationism. [...] Not nearly as extreme [as the view of Eta Linnemann] but more widespread is the legacy of Cornelius van Til, longtime professor at Westminster Seminary and champion deluxe of the presuppositional approach to apologetics. Exponents of his perspective reject the kind of 'evidentialist' apologetics of the Tyndale House Projects (or, for that matter, of substantial portions of this book) as misguided, because they think that one cannot demonstrate the probability of Christianity apart from presupposing its truth.
(Craig L. Blomberg, 'The Historical Reliability of the New Testament' in William Lane Craig, Reasonable Belief, Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994, p. 202)
[It is true that Van Til maintained "one cannot demonstrate the probability of Christianity apart from presupposing its truth", but it doesn't follow that historical research and evidences are worthless and inappropriate for use in apologetics. On the contrary, Van Til explicitly endorsed the use of such evidences and even admitted to employing them himself on occasions! (See the quote in section A.III.1.) His concern, however, was that since all empirical evidence is subject to interpretation according to one's basic presuppositions, evidences presented in support of Christianity will not function as evidence for Christianity when interpreted within an anti-Christian philosophical framework (e.g., metaphysical naturalism or epistemological antirealism). Thus, one should not "talk endlessly about facts and more facts without challenging the unbeliever's philosophy of fact."]
If van Til is correct in his presentation and application of the reformed tradition (especially, one might add, Dutch reformed theology), one would expect its leading writers to explicitly disavow a rational apologetic.
(Alister E. McGrath, Intellectuals Don't Need God & Other Modern Myths, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993, pp. 220-1)
Van Til therefore vigorously rejects the claim that apologetic arguments can be mounted that appeal to facts or logical principles that the unregenerate mind can grasp. Such an apologetic argument ignores the non-neutrality of human reason and implicity concedes that sinful human reason can operate reliably. Van Til argues, for example, that one should not try to give rational arguments that the Bible is the inspired word of God.
(C. Stephen Evans, Faith Beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Approach, William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1998, p. 19)
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Strange to say, a recent theologian has renewed the logical difficulty or perhaps has invented a new one. Cornelius Van Til asserts unity and plurality of the Trinity in exactly the same sense. He rejects the Athanasian doctrine of one substance and three Persons, or one reality and three hypostases. His words are, 'We do assert that God, that is, the whole Godhead, is one person' (An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 229). In the context, Van Til denies that the 'paradox' of the three and the one can be resolved by the formula, 'one in essence and three in person.' This departure from the faith of the universal Christian church is indeed a paradox, but it is one of Van Til's own making.
(Gordon H. Clark, 'The Trinity', The Trinity Review, November 1979)
[Clark claims that Van Til "rejected the Athanasian doctrine" and characterizes this as a "departure from the faith of the universal Christian church"; but as I noted in A.IV.2, Van Til unequivocally endorses the Nicene affirmations in the very chapter to which Clark refers. The important point here is that Van Til does not deny the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity; rather, he affirms it, but argues that more can and should be said in order to be biblically and theologically faithful. As I also remarked, Van Til's conclusions on this point may be mistaken, but properly understood they do not amount to heterodoxy.]
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Last updated: 31 March 2004
Copyright © James N. Anderson 2004
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