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one accepted his station in life as the law of God. With such a political view, Althaus was unable to see any value in the Weimar Republic, and he fancied himself in basic agreement with Hitler,/ (p. 116). Though a media-tor, Althaus consistently defended the world view of Hitler from 1933 to 1937 and, even when he stopped public support after 1937, he never pub-licly recanted. The later statements of his son, Gerhard, largely confirm the portrait that Althaus did see the evil of Hitler (cf. pp. 97-8). And his ser-mons after 1941 began in an increasing way to express the guilt of the German people, albeit a corporate guilt. But for all his good, Althaus's moderation was only exceeded by his parochial attachment to the German state which is undeniably a cautious affirmation of National Socialism.

If Kittel was an opportunist and Althaus a disgruntled, but nonethe-less guilty mediator, Emanuel Hirsch was intellectually committed to German nationalism. A German existentialist, Hirsch possessed a brilliant mind, a stubborn, rationalistic personality and a bent toward strength and power. On 30 January 1934, the first anniversary of Hitler's rise to power, Hirsch wrote the preface to a book on the crisis of reason; his book opti-mistically, spiritually and rationally defended the Hitler movement as the answer to German religious and social problems. And though some of his statements contained caution, he never enlargened those cautions. He agreed with other German theologians of the time who thought Jesus was not truly Jewish (p. 164) and as Dean of the Faculty openly denounced col-leagues who opposed the Deutsche Christen (pp. 166-77). Hirsch lived until 1972; and he maintained a relationship to the University of Gottingen until that time. The tragedy is that evidence exists that even after 1945 Hirsch never changed his mind regarding National Socialism.

Ericksen's conclusions point to the deafening power of an ideology in the face of social crises. One's national values must be carefully scruti-nized and held in check by one's Christian values. And, he asks, if similar situations confront American theologians (war, economic hardships, the call to democratic principles, national unity), will American theologians follow in the footsteps or those they have condemned: Hirsch, Kittel and Althaus? Because of the connection we see today between American, evangelical Christianity and American, right-wing politics, it would be wise for all of us to ponder this question anew.

Scot McKnight Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Deerfield, Illinois

The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, by John Frame. Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1987.480 pp. S24.95.

John Frame's first book is an impressive testimony to the impact of the thought of Cornelius Van Til upon his students. It is impressive be-cause of the scope of the book, the degree to which the position of the book has been developed, the honesty with which problems for that posi-tion have been addressed, and the use to which the author sometimes puts analytic philosophy of the Wittgensteinian kind in setting out his own version of Van Tilianism. Although the book is couched in philosophical terminology, attempts to grapple with many philosophical issues, and cites philosophical sources, it is still the work of a theologian. This should not have been otherwise, given the basic argument of the book, namely, that

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"the knowledge of God's law [Scripture], the world, and the self are inter-dependent and ultimately identical" and that knowledge of the first of these three determines knowledge of the other two (p. 89).

The author believes that the primacy of Scripture for all knowledge is compatible, even dependent, upon the fact that "We come to know Scrip-ture through our senses and minds (self) and through Scripture's relations with the rest of the world" (p. 89). Frame sees some recognition of this in Van Til, but considers himself to be pushing this notion of the reciprocity between Scripture and other sources of knowledge "one step further" (p. 90). The impetus for this seems to be a heightened concern to fend off the criticism of vicious circularity which has dogged the trail of Van Til's pre-suppositionalism.

A fairly long book (437 pages), The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God exhibits a genuine desire to present a complete, scholarly case. The index of Scriptural passages cited, appropriately for a work predicated upon the primacy of Scripture, has nearly one thousand entries. The detail of the topical index, showing the power a computer gives a book's editor, enables the reader to find virtually any topic discussed. The book also shows a con-cern to teach, not just persuade, the reader. For example, there are many appendices on such topics as the reading of theological works, the relation of Frame's position to certain others, etc. But perhaps the most ambitious of all is a sixty-page chapter on logic and its application in theological method, complete with a discussion of twenty-one (count them) informal fallacies. The book amounts to a reference textbook containing the distil-lation of Professor Frame's years of teaching theological propaedeutics and Christian apologetics.

Like all Gaul, the book is divided into three parts. They deal with the objects, the justification, and the methods of knowledge respectively. Be-ginning with the objects of knowledge, we learn that they are actually re-ducible to one, namely, God. But He is unknowable except as the Lord of the Covenant, as the Creator, and as the Redeemer, and in that order. Instead of God being known first as the Creator, then as the Lord of the Covenant, and finally as Redeemer, even the Creator-creature relationship is construed as a covenant relationship; God's transcendence is un-derstood to be His covenant headship. Headship involves control and authority over creation, both of which imply God's presence in creation to affirm and enforce His control and authority. Since His authority is His law or commandments, and since these are expressed in His Word, and since the Scriptures are His Word, and since the Scriptures are the source of our knowledge of the Covenant, then the Scriptures are the source of our knowledge of the Lord of the Covenant who is the Creator. When placing a Scriptural perspective upon our thoughts, therefore, and only when doing so, our thoughts are true, i.e., they are coherent with the thoughts of the Lord of Creation whose "thoughts are ultimate creators." God's thoughts "cause the truths they contemplate" (p. 27).

All of which means that the criterion of truth becomes coherence with the Scriptural viewpoint, which is the viewpoint of the God who does not think what is true because it is true, but for whom what He thinks is true because He thinks it. Is it anymore meaningful, therefore, to speak of the truth of the Scriptural perspective, i.e., God's perspective, than it is to speak of the goodness of God's will if what He wills is good because He wills it, rather than that He wills it because it is good?

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Frame's anti-realism and epistemological anti-foundationalism be-come even clearer as he tackles the difficult question for him of the logic of the thinker who stands outside the Scriptural perspective. The Christian, we are told, knows "by faith" that the factual world exists independently of his thoughts about it. The content of that faith is "God's revelation" which alone "provides us with a sure knowledge of that world", thereby prevent-ing us from assenting to "an absolutely crazy world." But what about the non-Christian who has no such "safeguard"? His hope lies in his "tendency to live parasitically off Christian capital" (100).

Passing over the question of how "parasitic" knowledge is possible for a coherentist, we must ask about the grounds for the Christian's epistemic faith. The Christian's beliefs are true, thereby constituting knowledge, when interpreted from the Scriptural perspective, by virtue of the appro-priate way in which they fit into a pattern. But how does the Christian jus-tify his belief that what he takes to be the appropriate fit of a belief really is that way? Frame works on this problem in the second part of the book. At one point he asks how one can know that one is going in the right direction as he moves back up a chain of justification for a conclusion. Surprisingly enough, Frame's answer is that "At some point, we are forced into a corner where we say, 1 just know'. That is 'intuition'." By way of explanation he points out that "Ultimate presuppositions, in that sense, are known intu-itively, though they are verified by circular arguments of various sorts" (p. 346).

Now is not such an appeal to an intuitive awareness of ultimate pre-suppositions a case of textbook foundationalism? And would this not be all that is needed to account for the possession by all human beings of com-mon criteria for the evaluation of belief systems, without their having to be said to be parasitic upon Christianity? Probably not, at least in Frame's case, for it will be noticed that he distinguished between the intuitive knowledge of ultimate presuppositions and their verification by circular arguments. He exhibits what might be designated a holistic coherentism, as distinct from a linear one in which any belief in the circular epistemic chain is linked by an inferential line to any other, and, thus, never known to be true directly. For Frame there seems to be psychologically (by intuition) a direct knowledge of the terminal points of the chains of justification, but epistemically all beliefs are indirectly known to be true, being coherent with other beliefs already taken to be true by virtue of their fit with the pat-tern of beliefs which he finds in Scripture. Hence, there is still no epistemi-cally direct knowledge.

But without that direct knowledge there is no reason to think that it is the coherence of a set of beliefs which produces any justification or truth at all. It should be kept in mind that the coherence of beliefs is nothing more than an internal relation within the system of beliefs. It entails nothing about the relation of those beliefs to anything outside the system. Of course, if reality is reducible to a system of beliefs, then there would be fewer problems. Not all Reformed theologians have considered idealism a viable option, however. The obvious example in the English speaking world is the Old Princeton Tradition in Christian apologetics built upon Scottish Common Sense Realism. Furthermore, if one's intuitive beliefs must be verified by their coherence with a pattern of beliefs, then their psychologi-cal certainty carries no presumption in favor of their truth.

Frame is not one to evade such criticisms, but at the end of the day he will rest his case on the "self-attestation" of Scripture, (p. 130) Is this also

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"intuitive" and does it need "verification"? If so, then we are back where we started. But if not, then he has finally slipped into what has been called a "biblical foundationalism," something he explicitly denies doing (p. 129).

The third and largest part of the book, dealing with "the methods of knowledge" is more practical. It discusses the use of Scripture, the use of language and logic in theology, the qualifications of a theologian, and so forth. All of this is resolutely seen from the author's Biblical presupposi-tionalism. He can be quite creative at times in working out the implica-tions of his position for these practical areas. Indeed, creative would be an appropriate term to characterize the entire work. Professor Frame has an-nounced himself with this book as being quite capable of establishing a reputation equal to that of his mentor.

Stanley Obitts Westmont College

Santa Barbara, California

Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. Volume 1: Prolegomena to The-ology by Richard A. Mller. Baker, 1987.365 pp. $12.95, paper.

Richard A. Muller's Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics is the first of a proposed three-volume series analyzing the theology of the Reformed orthodox of the post-Reformation period. This project updates Heinrich Heppe's Reformed Dogmatics in light of contemporary theology and his-torical scholarship.

Muller's main contention is that the post-Reformation Reformed scholastics were the codifiers and perpetuators of the Reformation. They were responsible for organizing the theology of such founders as John Calvin, Wolfgang Musculus, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Andreas Hyperius and Heinrich Bullinger. It is important to note here that Mller advocates the multiple origin of the Reformed faith and dismisses the notion that Calvin was the sole or even the principal founder of the movement.

Mller divides the post-Reformation era into three periods. (1) Early orthodoxy from 1565 to 1630 or 1640 was the era of the internationalization of Reformed theology highlighted by the Synod of Dort. (2) High orthodoxy fully modified and developed the system of theology. It concluded at the end of the seventeenth century and contained the works of such the-ologians as Francois Turrettini, John Owen and Benedict Pictet. (3) Late orthodoxy, which developed after 1700, was philosophically eclectic and less acrimonious in its attacks on other orthodox Protestant groups than the earlier periods. This was the era when rationalist philosophy overcame orthodoxy leading to the dethronement of theology as the queen of the sciences.

One of Muller's major contributions is his definition of "scholastic-ism" as primarily referring to the organization of theology rather than to its specific content. Mller defines scholasticism as "the technical and logical approach to theology as a discipline characteristic of theological system from the late twelfth through the seventeenth century. Since scholasticism is primarily a method or approach to academic disciplines it is not neces-sarily allied to any particular philosophical perspective nor does it repre-sent a systematic attachment to or concentration upon any particular doctrine or concept as a key to theological system" (18). Having defined

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