Cornelius Van Til The Defense of the Faith Lecture 7

Cornelius Van TilThe Defense of the Faith

Lecture 7Prepared by

Dr. Richard Spencer

Outline

• Background on Van Til, including WTS

• Background – what is a worldview? Why is it important?

• Background – Van Til’s starting point

• Chapter 1, Christian Theology

• Chapters 2 through 4, The Christian Philosophy

• Chapters 5 through 7, Christian Apologetics

• Chapter 8, Common Grace and Scholasticism

Outline

• Christian Apologetics– Chapter 5, Point of Contact

– Chapter 6, The Problem of Method

– Chapter 7, Authority and Reason

Christian Apologetics – Authority and Reason

• The topic of authority gets to the heart of issue!

• Van Til wrote:

There are those, of course, who deny that they need any form of authority. … But the great thinkers among non-Christian men have taken no such position. They know that they cannot cover the whole area of reality with their knowledge. …

… The natural man will gladly allow for the idea of authority if only it be the authority of the expert in the use of reason. Such a conception of authority is quite consistent with the assumption of the sinner’s autonomy. DOF, pg. 145


• The natural man only accepts the authority of human reason (his, or an expert, or majority opinion); in other words, his epistemological method assumes that autonomous human reason is the appropriate ultimate standard


• This epistemological method implies that man views the universe as something he can observe and describe using methods, laws and categories he devises and that by doing so he can eventually arrive at a complete understanding (at least in principle given infinite time)

• i.e., there is no fundamental barrier to achieving a complete understanding


• Such a view is incompatible with the universe being created and controlled by God for a purpose because a complete understanding would have to include understanding God’s purpose and plan!

• The real question then is one of authority – do we accept man’s or God’s? If God’s, then his Word must be the ultimate standard – subjective ideas about God put man back in control


• Therefore, Van Til wrote:

Chance is simply the metaphysical correlative of the idea of the autonomous man. DOF, pg. 161

In other words, natural man’s epistemological position [i.e., how to obtain knowledge] is the ultimacy of his own intellect (he is autonomous), and the metaphysical position [i.e., the nature of reality] that goes along with that does not allow for the possibility that the universe is created and controlled by a personal God for a purpose (we are dependent creatures)


• Van Til then explains that the natural man’s view excludes even the possibility of the true God:

The very idea of God as self-contained [i.e., independent, self existent] is meaningless on his [the unbeliever’s] principles. The idea of such a God, says the modern follower of Kant, is fine as a limiting notion. Taken as a limiting notion it is quite innocent and even useful. For then it stands merely for the ideal of exhaustive rationality. [i.e., this concept of God is, in essence, just the ideal limiting case of man once he has grown to a fully mature knowledge of creation]

DOF, pg. 162


• Van Til explains that modern non-Reformed theologians (e.g., Barth) and Roman Catholics do not fully subordinate human reason to the Bible

• He then turns to Arminians and begins by saying:

individual Arminians are much better in their practical attitude toward Scripture than their system of theology permits them to be. It is only of this system of theology that we speak. And of it – there is no escape from it – the assertion must be made that its conception of reason is similar to that of Rome, and therefore its conception of authority cannot be very different from that of Rome.

DOF, pg. 160


• Van Til wrote:

The Arminian must grant that his opponent has rightly interpreted much of human experience in terms of the autonomy of the human mind and the ultimacy of chance.

DOF, pg. 164

• This is because the Arminian rejects the total depravity of man by asserting that the natural man can accept or reject the gospel – our thinking and acting are not under God’s sovereign control, which implies “chance” in Van Til’s usage of that term


• Van Til wrote:

Since the natural man assumes the idea of brute fact in metaphysics and the idea of the autonomy of the human mind in epistemology, the Reformed apologist realizes that he should first challenge these notions.


• Van Til wrote:

Man as the creature of God needs supernatural revelation, and man, become a sinner, needs supernatural redemptive revelation. … The natural man seeks to suppress … God’s revelation … it is God as his Creator and as his Judge that asks of him to listen and be obedient. How can the autonomous man be obedient on his own assumptions? He cannot be obedient unless he reverses his entire position, and this he cannot do of himself. It takes the regenerating power of the Spirit to do that. DOF, pg. 168


• Van Til wrote:

Both in preaching and in reasoning – and every approach to the natural man should be both – the Reformed theologian will ask the sinner to do what he knows the sinner of himself cannot do. DOF, pg. 168

• But we can have confidence that our witness can and will be effective when that is God’s will

Mark 10:27 Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God."


• Van Til wrote:

When the sinner has by God’s grace in Christ received this new light and this new power of sight then he sees all things in their proper relationships. Formerly he stood on his head while now he stands on his feet. Formerly he referred all things to himself as the final point of reference. Now he refers all things to God his Creator, and the Christ his redeemer as the final point of reference. His conversion was a Copernican revolution. It was not accomplished by steps or stages. It was an about-face. …


• Van Til wrote:

… Before his conversion he looked away from the God and the Christ of Scripture. After his conversion he can’t see a fact in the world that he does not wish to deal with to the glory of God. The words of Paul, “Whether ye eat, or drink, or do anything else, do all to the glory of God.’ are now his motto. Deeply conscious of his continued sinfulness he is, none the less, now, in the core of his being, a lover instead of a hater of God. VA, pg. 93

Make Your Calling and Election Sure

1 Cor 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am

• In commenting on this verse, John Newton was reported to have said:

though I am not what I ought to be,

nor what I wish to be,

nor what I hope to be,

I can truly say, I am not what I once was;

a slave to sin and Satan;

and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge,

“By the grace of God I am what I am”

quoted from The Christian Spectator, 1821, Vol III, pg. 186


• In summary – our reason must be under theauthority of God’s Word!

• Van Til wrote:

When God has reasoned with us and changed our minds till our every thought is brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, we must use our minds, our intellect, our reason, our consciousness, in order to receive and re-interpret the revelation God has given of himself in Scripture. That is the proper place of reason in theology. There is no conflict between this reason and faith, since faith is the impelling power which urges reason to interpret aright. VA, pg. 93

Christian Apologetics – Final Comment

• John Frame properly points out:

evangelism is part of apologetics … The apologist must always be ready to present the gospel. He must not get so tangled up in arguments, proofs, defenses, and critiques that he neglects to give the unbeliever what he needs most.

Apologetics to the Glory of God, pg. 54

Outline

• Background on Van Til, including WTS

• Background – what is a worldview? Why is it important?

• Background – Van Til’s starting point

• Chapter 1, Christian Theology

• Chapters 2 through 4, The Christian Philosophy

• Chapters 5 through 7, Christian Apologetics

• Chapter 8, Common Grace and Scholasticism

Common Grace and Scholasticism

• Common grace is a controversial topic that led to the founding of the Protestant Reformed Churches in America after a number of ministers were deposed or left the Christian Reformed Church over the “Three Points of Common Grace”

• The doctrine of common grace also played a role in the dispute between Gordon Clark and Van Til, which ultimately resulted in Clark leaving the Orthodox Presbyterian Church he had helped Machen and others found


• The controversies often involve people speaking past one another and not paying careful enough attention to what the other is actually saying (and both sides claiming the other holds Arminian views!)

• We will avoid the controversies and stick to what I think is both biblical and beneficial


• What is common grace?

Murray defines it as “every favour of whatever kind or degree, falling short of salvation, which this undeserving and sin-cursed world enjoys at the hand of God.”

J. Murray, Collected Writings, Vol. Two, pg. 96

Berkhof makes the important point that “Reformed theology does not, like Arminian theology, regard the doctrine of common grace as a part of Soteriology.”

Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 4th ed., pg. 432


• Van Til wrote:

Common grace provides for the doing of relatively good deeds by sinful men who are kept from working out to its full fruition the principle of total depravity within them. Common grace thus is a means by which God accomplishes through men his purpose in displaying his glory in the created world, in history, before the judgment day. So there is no common grace in hell. DOF, pg. 188

Common Grace

• Van Til spoke about the antithesis between the believer and the unbeliever caused by their radically different presuppositions

• This led to his concluding that there was no point of contact except the unbeliever’s suppressed knowledge of God

Common Grace

• Van Til wrote:

Rome and evangelical Protestantism seek a point of contact in some area of “common knowledge” between believers and unbelievers. Their argument is that in teaching the total depravity of man in the way he does the Calvinist is in the unfortunate position of having to speak to deaf men when he preaches the gospel. We believe, on the contrary, that it is only the Calvinist who is not in this position. DOF, pg. 109

Common Grace

• To understand how the unbeliever can be an enemy of God, totally depraved, and yet not always appear so, Van Til notes:

We shall need to make a sharp distinction between that which is merely psychological, and that which is epistemological in man’s interpretive activity. … Psychologically there are no atheistic men; epistemologically every sinner is atheistic. VA, pg. 409

Common Grace

• Bahnsen explains:

when Van Til spoke of the antithesis between the thinking of the believer and the thinking of the unbeliever … he was speaking of the unbeliever epistemologically – that is, speaking in principle, about systems of thought and their self-conscious implications. When Van Til spoke of the unbeliever inescapably knowing God … of common grace making cooperation possible between the believer and the unbeliever, and … of the point of contact … he was speaking of the unbeliever psychologically – that is, speaking about the actual (though unadmitted) inner thoughts and practices of the person who wants to (but cannot) escape from his awareness of God and the authority of God over him.

VA, pg. 442

Common Grace

• Van Til spoke about the unbeliever’s “old man” and “new man”

– The “old man” is the pre-fall man, which is present in the ineradicable image of God – the evidence the unbeliever can’t avoid that he is a creature and that God exists

– The “new man” is the fallen sinner who is, in principle, a sworn enemy of God and absolutely opposed to God in every way

• There is a struggle within every unbeliever between the old and new man, just as there is in the believer!

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Common Grace

• This old-man/new-man dynamic in the unbeliever and believer explains why there are unbelievers who lead more moral, upright and productive lives than some believers!

4

Common Grace

• God’s common grace does not allow unbelievers to live in a way that is completely consistent with their new man

• This fact explains how unbelievers can constructively contribute to society in many ways, which allows believers to live in relative peace and share the gospel

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Summary Review

• Van Til’s most important points are:

– The Creator/creature distinction is central to our worldview and theology

– The Bible is the ultimate standard for Christians, both for faith and for conduct

– The triune God of the Bible is the only presupposition that makes creation intelligible and logic and science possible

– The only point of contact with the unbeliever is his innate knowledge that God exists and that he is a sinner

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Summary Review

• Van Til’s most important points are:

– When we present the gospel, we should strive to present Christianity as a unit – including the infallible Word of God

– The proper method for apologetics is indirect – you cannot build on the unbeliever’s foundation, you must show that it is fatally flawed and then present the Christian alternative

– There is a radical antithesis between unbelievers and believers, but in both cases there is an internal struggle between the old and new man, God’s common grace will not allow unbelievers to consistently live out their enmity toward God

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Challenges for Believers

• Van Til’s apologetic should challenge us to make our calling and election sure in the following ways:

– Do you consistently think, speak, live and worship in light of the Creator/creature distinction?

– Are you fully submitted to the authority of God’s Word, or do you allow your reason to overrule it on some things?

• Is God’s glory truly your main purpose?

• Is your will fully submitted to God’s will? (Phil 2)

• Is your exegesis ruled by wanting to know what God says, or do you look to justify what you think?

• Do you have an eternal perspective?

Cornelius Van Til The Defense of the Faith Lecture 7

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Transcript of Cornelius Van Til The Defense of the Faith Lecture 7