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Sermon Series: Cornelius Van Til

  • Cornelius Van Til: Against the World for the Church

    Cornelius Van Til: Against the World for the Church

    About this sermon

    A Morning Instruction class concluding the study of Cornelius Van Til’s life, beginning with Paul’s farewell to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. The lesson draws on John Muether’s biography, comparing Van Til’s long teaching career with that of Charles Hodge at Princeton: both were churchmen who witnessed division in American Presbyterianism and served the church. It closes with a pastor’s account of coming to presuppositional apologetics and with prayer for faithful ministers, elders, and deacons to guard the flock Christ bought with his blood.

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    Sermon transcript

    Good morning, everyone. We conclude this morning our summer quarter of adult morning instruction in church history by reviewing the conclusion of Cornelius Van Til, Reformed Apologist and Churchman by John R. Meather. The conclusion is entitled, Against the World for the Church. If you have your books, you can see that in the book itself. This is the concluding section of the book. against the world for the church.

    Somewhat in keeping with that theme then, I will ask that we begin this morning by reading from the book of Acts, chapter 20. Acts chapter 20, verses 17 through 38. Let’s turn there together. Acts 20, verses 17 through 38. This is Paul’s farewell to the elders of the church of Ephesus. Beginning at verse 17, can we begin over here with Ben? And if you’ll read the first, Ben, then we’ll just go around in succession, each taking a verse, if you would, please. 17 through 38. Ben, if you’ll begin.

    From my leaders, he said to Abbasus, and called to him the elders of the church. And when they had come to him, he said to them, you yourselves know from the first day that I Serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the blossoms of Jesus. How I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable and teaching you in public from house to house. So only testifying that the Jews and Greeks have repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, behold, God is good.

    I am on my way to Jerusalem. You do not know what will happen to me there. Seven of the Holy Spirit testifies in every city, saying that change and tribulation await thee. Verse 24, up to you, Rose. But I do not consider my life for many a countenance dear to myself, so that I may finish my course in the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel and the grace of God. And now behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone did vow to claim your kingdom.

    This is my face again. Verse 28, Steve. Verse 29, Mark, would you like to read that? to be out there. For I know this, that after my departure, savage fools will come to enable you, not to spare you in the plot. If you cross your own boundary line, they’ll arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. Therefore, watch and remember if I have stayed three years Back to you, Ben.

    I have coveted no one’s silver or gold or clothes. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my own needs and to the men who were with me. In all things, I have shown you that by working hard in this way, we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, it is more a lesson to give than to receive. And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And he began to weep aloud. Thank you all. Let’s pray together, shall we?

    Father God, we thank you for this word and we thank you for the pastor’s heart that is evident in the Apostle Paul as he speaks to the elders that remained in Ephesus after his departure. knowing O God full well that he was about to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of wicked men.

    We know, God, that the church has been called upon in these latter days to embrace and hold fast to the truth and to hold fast to the good confession. May that be our lot, O God. May we desire it. May we seek your help and your blessing, and may you provide well for us. And may we stand firm, as we have considered in these last several weeks, Father, the life and ministry of Cornelius Nantill.

    We have been impressed, O Father, by his love for Christ and his love for the church, and may that Two, be an encouragement and a help to each one of us, and may you bless us now in our lesson time this morning, that all things may be for your glory and honor, and this we do pray together in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, giving thanks, amen.

    I trust you’ve all received the handout for this morning. I’ll ask that you not read that during the lesson time, though. That’s for your take home and for your reading pleasure and encouragement. If I were to ask you this morning who could give us a summary of what is presuppositional apologetics, would you feel comfortable in doing that? Perhaps not. Well, that’s what this little paper is all about. It’s a take home.

    It’s written by Scott Oliphant, who is a current professor at Westminster Seminary. And it’s one of the most clear, succinct, short summations of presuppositional apologetics that I’ve read. And it just so happens, in God’s good providence, that it was on the OPC website, praise the Lord. And so I printed it out and distributed it for your encouragement. Do take it to heart. I think it’s a wonderful little summation of that matter for us. And it seems fitting at the end of a quarter on apologetics and then a quarter on the life of Antill.

    Well, let’s get working here this morning, shall we? The death of J. Gresham Machen on January 1, 1937, less than a year after the founding of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which occurred on June 11, 1936, and less than a decade after the founding of Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929, that death of Machen left the young church and the seminary no doubt stunned and wondering what the future would hold for them as they faced the future without the presence of their beloved founder and leader.

    Ironically, the Dutch-born van Til stood as the heir apparent to fill Machen’s leadership role in American Presbyterianism. As Meather writes in his conclusion, Van Til worked tirelessly at continuing Machen’s task of maintaining confessional consistency and pure practice within the Reformed faith. That’s a quote. And though he lacked Machen’s eloquence, also a quote, Van Til generally succeeded in Machen’s mission by consistently warning the church about threats to her testimony from without and about corrosion of her heritage from within. That’s a quote from page 229, if you want to look that up.

    Thus was Van Til called to lead a movement that was embodied in these two young institutions, Westminster Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. As Meather points out, in a quote, in the judgment of Charles G. Dennison, Van Til’s leadership restored hope in these institutions as they recovered from the shock of Machen’s premature death. Not everyone, however, found comfort and confidence in Van Til’s leadership. Van Til had opponents in both the fundamentalist and evangelical camps. With his Dutch vocabulary, Mitha writes, with his Dutch vocabulary and his seemingly obscure references to continental reform thought, Van Til, in their view, hijacked the OPC into non-American directions.

    That quote’s found on page 230. Others, however, of the generation after Machin followed Van Til into a reformed self-consciousness, especially enriched in its understanding of its reformed tradition. As Meather notes, quote, despite his humility and aversion to attention, Van Til over time, came over time to accept this role, that is, as the follower of Machin, as the one who would be the defender the encourager of the church in these troubled times.

    Meather adds, certainly the title of Van Til’s magnum opus, Christianity and Bardianism, was a self-conscious claim that he labored in Machen’s steps. Machen, you might recall, had written Christianity and Liberalism back in 1924. The very title of Machen’s book revealing the thesis that Christianity and liberalism are two different things, despite the liberals’ claim that theirs was a reasonable and acceptable reformulation of the Christian faith. But Machen said no. In like manner, then, did Van Til say no to Bardianism.

    As Mether observes, quote, the biographical similarities between Machen and Van Til go far to explain Van Til’s devotion to his mentor, Machen. Each man forsook the church of his youth with its stability and reputation and cast his lot with a small upstart denomination. Like Machen who left the South to serve in the Northern Presbyterian Church, Van Til embarked on what might be considered a cross-cultural mission experience in leaving the comfort and familiarity of the Christian Reformed Church.

    That’s a quote from page 230 also. The lives of these men then illustrate the pilgrim character of the Christian faith. Their example continues to beckon us onward and upward in Christ. As Meather presses on to conclude his biography of Van Til, he pauses briefly to compare the life and career of Van Til with that of Charles Hodge, This is a section entitled Van Til and Hodge on pages 232 and 233.

    For more than 50 years, Hodge had taught at Princeton Theological Seminary, training over 3,000 Presbyterian ministers. By comparison, Van Til likely educated more than 1,500 students. in a 47-year teaching career. As Meather notes, quote, both professors were active churchmen who witnessed a significant division in American Presbyterianism and both became symbolic representatives of one side of their respective divisions. Both Hodge and Van Til were opposed to denominational reunions that were proposed late in their lives, fearing the theological corrosion that such reunions would generate. Hodge regretted the old school, new school reunion of 1869, while Van Til expressed relief that Orthodox Presbyterian Union efforts in the 1970s and 1980s were unsuccessful.

    That’s a quote from page 233. Both men, Meather argues, ought to be regarded as defendants of consistent Calvinism, whereas on the one hand, Hodge is sometimes maligned as a maintainer of tradition, in part due to his observation that no new idea had originated at Princeton during his tenure. Van Til, on the other hand, is sometimes maligned as an innovator whose radical redesign of apologetics is seen as overthrowing old Princeton. As Meather suggests, however, neither exaggeration is fair to the respective men. He writes, quote, to focus solely on Van Til’s novelty fails to appreciate the many ways in which he tried to preserve his tradition by standing on the shoulders of those who went before him.

    The principle of reformed and always reforming, which is a motto that came out of the Reformation, reformed and always reforming is not a mere slogan, but a commitment and a way of life. It can and ought to be said that Van Til sought the full flowering of reformed theology and the weeding out of counterfeits. That’s a quote from page 234. If he sought the full flowering of Reformed theology and the weeding out of counterfeits, then I urge you today, so should we.

    In the final three sections of the conclusion of the book, those three sections entitled, Vantill the Controversialist, Vantill the Modernist? and the ecumenical Vantil, those three sections, in those sections, Mithra provides what can be seen as a helpful summary and recapitulation of Vantil’s life. Through the lens of some of the paradoxes that surrounded the study of his life and work and of his extraordinary contributions to Christian thought and practice, we might see something revealed in these short sections then of the conclusion. A man of obvious gentleness and humility, and yet, as Meather says, controversy followed Van Til throughout his life.

    That’s a quote from page 234. He goes on to say, Van Til’s exposure to Abraham Kuyper at Calvin College opened him up to see the fundamental antagonism between believers and unbelievers in the world. And Van Til placed this antithesis at the forefront of his apologetic method, quote, end quote, page 235. Controversy inevitably attends the faithful preaching of the work, we might say.

    Ironically, after his lifelong attack on modernism and rationalism, some come away from Van Til accusing him of having fallen prey to postmodernism and irrationalism. Those latter would seek to posit no objective truth. Van Til, on the other hand, spoke of a, quote, divine system of truth, which alone makes human experience meaningful and intelligible. God, according to Van Til, is the all-conditioner. That’s a word that he uses in one of his books on apologetics. The all-conditioner. Not the air conditioner, but the all-conditioner.

    And finally, given Van Til’s propensity toward controversy and his decided commitment to the antithesis, we might wonder what we can possibly say about the ecumenical Van Til. After all, ecumenicity, by definition, has to do with the church’s oneness and giving expression to one holy Catholic church.

    Does not Van Til’s reformed militancy necessarily stand at odds with ecumenism? On the contrary, for Van Til, the Reformed faith yielded the most generous form of orthodoxy because, as he says, to a greater degree than other expressions, it highlighted the work of God’s saving grace. Van Til understood the distinctiveness of the Reformed faith not as an impediment to ecumenicity, but as the means whereby the Reformed could exercise true ecumenicity. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church and other Reformed churches then held the Reformed faith, in Van Til’s view, as stewards of the whole church. For Van Til, that whole church included mainline Protestants and evangelicals, whom he sought earnestly to win over to the Reformed faith.

    Thus, to serve the church Catholic did not mean hiding his Orthodox Presbyterianism under a basket, but setting that lamp on a lampstand, that it might give light to all, And it is on that note that we conclude our study of the life of Cornelius Van Til, as I encourage you to, to understand that we are called in these latter days to self-consciously live out our reformed and Presbyterian confession, not hiding that, not being ashamed of it, but recognizing that this is the best thing that we can do for our neighbor, for others in the church, whether they be evangelical churches or liberal churches or whatever. The true orthodox Presbyterianism is a great light that ought to be shined in all the world.

    And so that lessens our study of the life of Cornelius Van Til this morning. And I’ll ask that we’ll close with a word of prayer, shall we? Our Father, as we reflect upon these things together, we are reminded that we have the task of holding fast to the good confession, and may we do so not with shame or with sorrow, but with joy and thanksgiving that you have called us to be your people, set apart for the purposes of our God. And we do pray, then, for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We’re thankful for those who have gone before us in the faith, for J. Gresham Machen, for Cornelius Van Til and others, who have stood before us, O God, and proclaimed that word of truth faithfully for us, encouraging us much in the pattern of the Apostle Paul as he was about to leave the church at Ephesus, as he warns the elders that, yes, there are dangers, dangers to good orthodoxy, both from without and from within the church, and that we ought to be on our guard. And thus we do pray. for faithful ministry, but also for faithful elders and deacons who would serve well and lead well in the church, protecting your people, the flock of Jesus Christ, that flock that was purchased with the very purchase price of the blood of Jesus Christ our Lord. And thus we give thank you, oh Father, for our study of this past quarter and pray that you’ll prepare us for things to come. May we find great encouragement in these things, oh God, as we stand together in the faith for Christ, in whose name we pray.

    Amen. I’ll stop at this point. I’ll just leave opportunity for any comment or question anyone would like to make before we close up. Are there any comments or questions? Yes, Doris, please. I just have a practical question. There are those like you and Brett and many others who, when they’re asked to defend their faith, debate that are, some of us, like me, back to, this is what I believe. Like I can, I can tell people, I believe this, and it’s a water drop, and that’s where I start. But, so, what, so sometimes, you know, like people like me might feel bad because they feel, I don’t wanna say like a lesser person, I don’t mean that, but like, how do you, I mean, I know we can point to people like you all and say, Well, that’s a wonderful question.

    Wonderful question, Doris. Indeed, the teaching of apologetics is not meant to say that everyone should be able to write a book like Cornelia’s Van Til, or even that we should be able to debate like a Van Til could debate, or a Greg Bonson, for example. I certainly do not feel adequate in that regard, Doris. But at the same time, when the Apostle Peter says that every one of us should be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us, I could ask you the question very simply, what is the reason for the hope that is in you, Doris, and what would you tell me?

    I would tell you that the Lord has opened my eyes to my sin and shown me that I have a Redeemer. And that is a presuppositional Reformed apologetic, indeed. Amen. Be encouraged, be encouraged. It’s just to be able to state our faith and to express it in terms of those things that we know and understand in the Word of God.

    This is not meant to be just for the debaters and for the intellectual giants of the age. Indeed, as Paul writes to the Corinthians, think of how he writes, where is the debater? Where is the wise man? Not many among you were wise, not many among you were this and that and the other thing, but God chooses the weak to humble the strong. God chooses the things that are not to humble those things that are to bring down the powers and the principalities and powers of the present evil age.

    And so just a simple Christian confessing simply his or her belief in the Lord Jesus Christ and saying that God-given hope that we have by the grace of faith which has been worked in our hearts, that is the defense. That is the defense that Van Til wanted us to be able to express and not be ashamed of, I believe. And thus I hope that you’ll take this little three-page document that I passed out and be encouraged by it, not intimidated, not overcome, not feel ashamed, not feel inadequate, but to simply understand that we start where we stand, and we stand on the Gospel, we stand on the Word of God, and that’s our starting point, that’s where we begin, and that’s where we end.

    The Alpha and the Omega is the Lord Jesus Christ, is it not? Indeed, we have a glorious hope, and so just to be able to state, this is my hope, my hope is the Lord Jesus Christ, who is both the way, the truth, and the life, and has opened the very doors of heaven unto me, that I might have a hope in the midst of a fallen world that resists God and is suppressing the truth about God at every turn. I have a hope that is secure, that can never be taken away, and that hope is fixed for me in the Lord Jesus Christ, my Savior, our Savior, who has come to me in grace. Amen. And on that note, unless there’s another comment or question, I’ll end. Yes, Tim, please.

    I believe you had John Gershner at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, or that sort of building, of Reformed faith a little bit. Did you talk about Van Til, or how did Van Til come into your life even before you joined the advocacy? Yes, Van Til came into my life, as it were, at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary by means of an evidentialist, that is, John Gershner. John Gershner was a student of Van Til and made the statement multiple times in the classroom that he considered Van Til one of the best teachers he had ever had when he was in seminary at Westminster.

    But at the same time, he thought he was an irrational fideist, and he continued to assault, attack Van Til from his lectern day after day, week after week, to the point of where I thought I better read Van Til just to know who he’s talking about. at the time of coming into the OPC and realizing that presuppositional apologetics was the growing proposition in the OPC, again, that was at the time that I really began to read in earnest Van Til’s works, The Defense of the Faith and other books. And so yes, as I came into the Presbytery of Ohio, I was examined in theology and apologetics, so I had to stand before the presbytery and give an account of where I stood on such matters. And until then, I had considered myself pretty much an evidentialist until I began this earnest study of Van Til.

    And I was raked over the coals pretty good by our presbytery over such matters. But in the midst of that, I came to understand and to embrace the wonder and the beauty of what Van Til was saying. That is, that there is a simplicity to the apologetics enterprise that doesn’t require scholastic intellectual expertise that Doris was asking about. Indeed, it is a matter of being firm on the word and in the confessions of our faith. I think that was what impressed me most about reading Van Til. In reading apologetics, you were reading theology. From beginning to end, you were reading theology and setting that theology of the Reformed and Presbyterian faith over against Arminianism, over against the Roman Catholic faith, over against liberalism and modernism of every sort, Bardianism. But there was a great joy for me in seeing his wonderful and wholehearted commitment to our confessional faith. So I didn’t have to go back and learn a new confession. At least I was on the right track in that path, Tim. I was glad for that.

    Any other questions or comments? Yes, Kathy. where it is today at the forefront still. Name any other book that does that. Kathy, I think at heart, at root, you put your finger on the truth. That is, that the word of God is the unchanging authority to which we turn that self-attesting scripture, the self-attesting Jesus Christ of the scriptures. That’s what Van Til is telling us, and that’s what he is reminding us, that the Bible is the foundation upon which we stand. Indeed, there is no other, for it is the word of God that will not pass away. It will bring forth its fruit and its full flower in due time. So I think your point is well taken. I appreciate it. Yes, very much. Any other comments or questions? Yes, Steve? Indeed. Very good. Very, very good. Well said. Anything else? Yes, Maggie. He’s an evidentialist.

    He, along with Van Till and Arthur Linsley, wrote the book on classical apologetics, which is still available. Indeed, R.C. Sproul learned his apologetics at the feet of John Kirshner. at Pittsburgh Seminary, much as I did. There’s a wonderful irony, however, that in writing the book on classical apologetics, they dedicated it to Cornelius Van Til, of all things.

    And so I was present when someone asked Gerstner how that could be, and he said, he shrugged his shoulders. He said, I didn’t do that. I don’t know how that happened. He didn’t know why Archie Sproul had dedicated the book to Van Til. He couldn’t understand that at all.

    Yes, Ben. There’s actually a debate available between Greg Bonson and R.C. Sproul about that, about evidentialism, pre-revelation, apologetics. Very good. Well, you might check with Ben to find out where that resource is about that debate between Bonson and R.C. Sproul. It is available. Yes, Charles.

    And Bonson, in another work, commented on how he was very, very surprised at how little R.C. Sproul understood about the Vento’s use of evidences. I mean, everybody, almost everybody in the evidences camp is misunderstanding that the evidences are not part of the presupposition of apologetic grants. You know, Vento was very strong to say that we ought to expect the evidences to be in our favor. And he had not done that because other people had done Thank you Charles.

    I know we’re done early but I’m going to suggest that we conclude our class at this time and I’ll give you extra time for refreshments and remember next week we’ll be picking up with Dr. Gidley, is that correct? The book of Hebrews resumes next Lord’s Day. Stay tuned, be encouraged to be back here next week. And with that, we are dismissed. Thank you all. Be mindful of others. Yeah, this is time for you to read your little paper

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  • Cornelius Van Til: Toward a Christ-Centered Apologetic

    Cornelius Van Til: Toward a Christ-Centered Apologetic

    About this sermon

    A Morning Instruction class on Cornelius Van Til’s case for a Christ-centered apologetic, read with Romans 1 and Paul at Athens. All people know God from creation yet suppress the truth and worship the creature. The traditional method of apologetics, which grants the unbeliever’s reason as neutral judge, tells him nothing is wrong with his thinking, contrary to Scripture’s teaching that the natural mind is darkened. Following Calvin, Van Til rejected neutral natural theology and called for reasoning that begins with God’s revelation in Christ.

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    Sermon transcript

    OK, let’s begin with Romans chapter 1, verses 16 through 25. Listen carefully. This is God speaking to you in his word. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith or he who through faith is righteous shall live for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes namely His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.

    So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their heart to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator. who is blessed forever. Amen. Now Acts chapter 17 verses 22 through 31. Acts chapter 17 verses 22 through 31. Again the word of our Lord.

    So Paul standing in the midst of the Areopagus said, men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, to the unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you, the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

    And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being. As even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring. Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. Now the times of ignorance God overlooked, but now, He commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed the day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. And of this, he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

    Let’s pray. Dear Heavenly Father, you have commanded us, your people, to always be ready to give a defense for the hope that we have in our Lord Jesus Christ. Heavenly Father, help us to take that seriously and help us, Father, to be instructed, help us, Father, to grow to that end, Father, that we may faithfully and consistently and biblically defend the faith, Father, to give that reason that is acceptable to you, Father. In Jesus name we pray, amen.

    Cornelius Van Til wrote my credo to express his appreciation for the contributions that were made to his feshrift and that was called Jerusalem in Athens. And he actually made some contributions to that. They wrote their critiques of him, and he answered them. So it’s a very valuable book, and it’s out of print. But you can probably pick it up maybe for like $15 somewhere if you want to use copy. So highly recommended, sadly out of print.

    But again, he wrote it, my credo, as kind of an introduction to that festschrift, that collection of essays written in his honor. in appreciation for those contributions that were made. And in it, in my credo, he sets forth a general statement of his main beliefs that serve as the basis of his consistently biblical defense of the Christian faith. If you want to defend the faith biblically and consistently, it’s definitely worth a listen to what he has to say. Now this lesson today is It is more or less a distillation, I hope, and an explanation also of his essay, My Credo, or what might be translated as What I Believe.

    All right? It’s in three principal parts. One, the self-attesting Christ of Scripture. Two, Christ writes me a letter. And the third part, toward a Christ-centered apologetic. First of all, the self-attesting Christ. The self-attesting Christ of scripture, says Van Til, has always been my starting point for everything I’ve said.

    And Van Til provides an illustration of this by recalling an incident in Mark chapter 2 of the reaction of some scribes to Jesus’ pronouncement of forgiveness of sins of the man with palsy, and immediately thereafter healing him. Here, as many times thereafter, Jesus is charged with blasphemy because they reason, who can forgive sins but God only? It was for the charge of blasphemy that they nailed him to the cross.

    These Jews, call them Pharisees in their presumed orthodoxy, swore by Moses and the prophets and held Abraham as their father and the God of Abraham as their God. We thank thee, God, that we are not polytheists as other nations are. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. Surely this Jesus who claimed that he was the Son of God and one with the Father was a blasphemer.

    In their zeal for the one and only true God and for the law of Moses, they would save the people from his deception by delivering up to be hung on a tree according to that law. The irony of it all, says Van Tilt, the leaders of the Jews did not love and serve the God of Abraham at all. Like the nations around them, they had become worshippers of the creature rather than the creator. They made their own apostate moral consciousness the standard of right and wrong. By their notion of a living Torah, their oral tradition, They judged themselves able to do justice to the changelessness of the law while living according to the principles of the new morality.

    Every fact and dispute between the Pharisees and Jesus involved the ultimate claim that Jesus was the Son of God, and as such, the promised Messiah. Jesus told the Pharisees, in effect, that they had twisted beyond recognition the meaning of every word of the Old Testament. It was natural then, says Van Tilt, that they should think of Jesus as a blasphemer. That their own views might be blasphemy was inconceivable.

    If Jesus’ claim to be the promised Messiah, the Son of God, were true, then they, the Pharisees, were reactionaries, revolutionaries, apostates, who were intellectually, morally, and spiritually wrong in everything they said and did. How could they admit Jesus was right when he said that they were the father of the devil? How could Jesus be right when he said that though they were descendants of Abraham, yet spiritually Abraham was not their father at all? How could Jesus be right when he said, but I know you that ye have not the love of God in you.

    As Christians, we are not of ourselves better or wiser than were the Pharisees. Jesus asks us to do what he asked the Pharisees to do, namely to read the scriptures in the light of his testimony about himself. Christ has by his spirit identified himself with us and thereby at the same time told us who and what we are. He says he was sent into the world to save His people from their sins.

    So says Matthew 1.21, so says 1 Timothy 1.15. Jesus has sent His Spirit says Van Til, to dwell in my heart so that I might believe and therefore understand all things to be what he says they are. I have, by his spirit, learned to understand something of what Jesus meant when he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. I understand no fact, a right, unless I see it in its proper relation to Christ as creator, redeemer of me and my world. The self-attesting Christ of Scripture. Any questions with regard to this introduction? Very good. Let’s move on. This is good. Part two. Christ writes me a letter. I have never met Christ in the flesh. No matter, says Van Til, he’s written me a letter.

    Not he himself he chose helpers. who by the spirit of Christ wrote what he wanted me to know from heaven my Lord then sent his Holy Spirit on Pentecost to dwell in the hearts of all those whom he came into the world to redeem. They are his church. They are the church in whom and through whom Christ establishes his kingdom. I fight daily, says Van Til, against Satan who seeks at every point to establish his own kingdom in the hearts and to the heart of men. In his letter, Jesus tells me that all men are created by God, and as such are God’s children, as it were, who bear his image. Remember Adam, the son of God? So it’s like this. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

    So absolutely nothing is outside of God’s creation. And then he governs everything according to his will, and that’s providence, creation in providence. And see what a magnificent setup this is here, such that nothing can happen, nothing can come in, nothing can come into being, unless God created it. And nothing can happen, nothing!

    Sorry. It’s exciting stuff. Nothing can happen outside of the providence of God, unless God governs it, unless God cares for it, unless God builds a hedge around it. Okay? That’s a good place to be, isn’t it? Well, Adam, what do you think about that?

    Well, the first pair, Adam and Eve, from whom all later generations of people came by ordinary generation, sinned against God. God set before them the ideal of joy that he would give them if they lived their lives in love and obedience to him, their maker and benefactor.

    But Satan told our first parents how free he had become since declaring his independence of God, which of course is a lie since only God is truly independent. And all creation is necessarily dependent only God is the original, and man, and the rest of creation has God’s fingerprints all over it.

    So if there are any thoughts of man here, they are only analogical. Man cannot be, what Van Til calls, creatively constructive. That’s God. Man can only think God’s thoughts after him. And he ought to do this self-consciously. The works of providence are his holy, wise, and powerful, holy, wise, and powerful, preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions. Yes, even the thoughts and the deeds of man. Digest that, yes.

    So Adam and Eve, what of Adam and Eve? Satan told our first parents how free he had become since declaring his independence of God, and to be self-determining like me, said Satan, man must surely be able to decide the nature of the good, regardless of what God says about it. Okay, here’s the law. Alright? Man, this is the world, and Adam, you’re here, okay? You can be like God, knowing good or evil, and you can determine for yourself what is good, what is bad, what is true, what is false. To be self-determining, like me, Surely, you must be able to decide the nature of the good, regardless of what God says about it. Adam saw Satan’s point. You’re right, Satan.

    I must first decide whether such a God as often speaks to us. One, knows what the good for us is. Two, controls history so that he can determine what will happen if we disobey him. And three, has the right to demand obedience from us. Now again, you read your Bible, and well, all those things are true.

    But Adam wasn’t so sure. Adam said, well, after I decide whether these things are true, and if the answer is yes, then I shall obey him. Certainly not before. So by taking to himself the right to decide these issues, Adam had already decided them in the negative. If God is such a one as knows the good for us, controls whatever comes to pass, and has the right of unquestioned obedience, then man obeys his word because it is his word. Adam, in disobedience, became a free man.

    But Satan miscalculated. Refusing to believe that God controls the course of history, Satan began his attempt to take over the whole of mankind to himself. Having succeeded with the first Adam, he tried his trick on the second Adam. But the second Adam replied to Satan’s scheme, get thee behind me, Satan, and it is written. The second Adam both knew and received the word of God, for he was God, the Word.

    He lived his life according to what He, in His program, had written down in advance. Even the words, I thirst, spoken on the cross, were spoken in accord with what was written. Now, what was written consisted chiefly in His promise to His people, God’s promise to His people, that He would, in the face of Satan and his hosts, redeem them from their sin. He would be their great High Priest. Jesus would give himself as their substitute. Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. He would be their prophet, like unto Moses, proclaiming the final word of deliverance to his people, establishing them in the truth in the face of Satan’s effort to make them believe the lie. He would be their king, establishing his elect nation of holy ones against the effort of Satan to establish a kingdom based upon the self-righteousness of the Pharisees.

    When Christ came, he conquered. There was a transition from wrath to grace in history. The new age had come, the age of grace and glory. In his letter, Jesus tells us of this new age. Much of the early growth of Christ’s kingdom came through the work of his servant Paul. Now, how did Paul tell the story of the Christ? In Romans, Paul tells us of the wayward path of mankind.

    Both Jews and Greeks, being from the beginning of the world confronted with the truth of God, have nevertheless exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator. Since they chose not to have God in their knowledge, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against these men. who hold back the revelation of God as if it were some awful destructive flood. Such a flood it will be for men who refuse to turn back to God through his son.

    As children of Abraham, I’m sorry, as children of Adam, they have always made and continue to make the effort required to cover up the truth about themselves and God. They see every fact as other than what it really is. By means of their literature, drama, poetry, and philosophy, they try to prove to themselves that the world is not the estate of God, and that they are not made in his image. Both Jew and Gentile have blinded themselves to the true state of affairs about themselves and the world. about their past, their present, and their future. Not being creatures of God, they imagine, they could not have sinned against such a one.

    They don’t need, therefore, the atoning death of Christ for the remission of their sins. As Stephen said of the Jews, so also it must be said of the Gentiles, that they have always resisted the Holy Spirit to their own damnation. In his address on the Areopagus, Paul proclaims the name of the resurrected Christ to the Gentile covenant breakers, would-be fugitives from divine judgment. And they know they are in their hearts of hearts.

    Paul does not place himself on their level in order with them to investigate the nature of being and knowledge in general. He doesn’t use Satan’s reasoning, judge for yourself, no. He doesn’t place themselves on a level to just, you know, let’s reason and figure out and decide for yourself whether the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob might possibly exist. No, no. He tells them straight out what they claim, you know, what they claim not to know, he knows.

    He tells them that their so-called ignorance to an unknown God is culpable. God will judge them for that. For God is as near to them as their own selves. He tells them, therefore, to repent of their worship of idols, to turn to the living God, lest they stand without the robes of righteousness before the resurrected Lord Christ on the day of judgment.

    Paul knew that the Greeks could not correctly identify themselves working from their philosophy. What could their philosophy tell them? matter in motion, born out of chaos and old night, and what gives it order? Maybe the mind of man, somehow ordering things? And yet everything is in flux, things suddenly appearing that were new that weren’t there yesterday. Paul knew that the Greeks could not correctly identify themselves, surely. Chaos and Old Night were their only substitutes for what Paul told them of the origin and destiny of the world.

    They tried various combinations of ultimate rationality or unity. Everything makes sense. Everything can be categorized. All of the universals are known to this unknown god or this unmover of Aristotle. and they tried various combinations of ultimate chance of diversity. Sure, the universe is just chaotic matter, just falling, atoms falling randomly.

    So they used such terms as form and matter to take the place of creation and providence, but to no satisfaction. Even so, Paul could not prove to the Greeks, in their sense of the word prove, in their sense of the word prove that what they believed was foolishness and what he believed was good sense. He did not like Francis Schaeffer say, okay, you show me your proofs of existence, I’ll show you mine. And then you be the judge as to which one is better. No. Paul could not adopt the principles of the free first Adam to prove the principles of the second Adam. Paul recognized, as did his Greek audience, that all his ideas were foolishness, the open, I’m sorry, to the non-Christian mind. Greeks would not believe a single one of them, much less all of them in their proper relation to each other, unless by the generation of the Holy Spirit, they were given eyes to see the whole truth of God in Christ.

    The gospel is the power of God for salvation. Only in his light do we see light. And of course, only renewed minds that have been brought to life from the dead can understand and embrace the gospel and follow the need of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul knew that the natural man will keep on saying that Christ is wrong and Satan is right so long as he has breath. Accept the spirit in mercy. Give him light and life. This, says Mantille, this is the message of the letter written to me and to the whole church by Christ himself. And this letter is also known as, of course, the scripture. I think you’ve gathered that by now.

    And being first and foremost a minister of the word of God, as Van Til always identified himself, Van Til would also, would so minister in this capacity, how else, but as a follower of the Reformation. Because Calvin and Luther expounded on the idea of scripture, insisting on its necessity, authority, sufficiency, and perspicuity, that is, its clarity of meaning. Following the Reformers, Abraham Kuyper and Herwin Bavink taught that this idea of scripture, of all that it is, its authority, necessity, sufficiency, perspicuity, must never be separated from the message of scripture concerning the sovereign grace of God. Now, from the reformed point of view, all so-called evangelical, non-reformed, or Arminian theologians we can call them inconsistent Calvinists, I trust, that have an inadequate view of sovereign grace also have an inadequate view of scripture, if they’re consistent.

    A God who cannot control history because of countless men with wills not fully dependent on his own will. Outside of his control. And here’s God, somewhere here. He’s dependent on their will. A God who cannot, let’s see. All right, let’s see. Yes, a God who cannot control history because of countless men with wills not fully dependent on his own will can only make salvation a bare possibility. Who’s going to ensure that they will actually be saved, that Christ’s work will not have been in vain? Yes, Christ might have died in vain if this is true.

    Being free, all men might refuse to exercise their supposedly God-given freedom to, as it were, draw on the check for eternal life put in the bank of heaven for all men. God’s plan to carry the call out of people for himself might never have been realized. if they’ve been so frustrated. Needless to say, every major teaching of scripture excludes such a scheme. What bank of heaven?

    God is God. Christ finished the work of salvation for his own. Only those in Christ from the foundation of the world died with Christ on the cross. Christ saved his sheep. He did not just make their salvation possible. That’s not what what Matthew 1.21 says. You shall call his name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins.

    That’s not what 1 Timothy 1.15 says. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

    The emphasis, therefore, on human autonomy in non-reformed evangelical theology not only plays havoc with the scriptural message of salvation by grace alone, but distorts the doctrine of scripture itself by finding the ultimate principle of scriptural interpretation as the subjective experience of human freedom of man. Arminianism teaches that the Holy Spirit and the word of God do not change man. Man must first agree to be changed. Just as the self-attesting Christ of scripture is not absolutely central to such theology, he will not be central in any apologetic form. to defend it.

    Any questions? Very good. Number three, toward a Christ-centered apologetic. Deciding, therefore, to follow the reformers in theology, says Van Til, it was natural that I attempt also to do so in apologetics. Hey, if their theology is good, their apologetics must be good too, right? Well, yeah, so he says, I turned, he says, to reformed apologists such as B.B. Warfield, Green, and others. What did I find?

    I found the theologians of the self-attesting Christ, all right? Very consistent is Warfield in that. But I found Warfield and others like him defending their faith with a method which denied precisely that point. It denied the self-attesting Christ of Scripture. That this is the case may be shown by a brief look at what I call the traditional method of Christian apologetics. All right, let’s look at the traditional method. The traditional method, offered first in detail by Thomas Aquinas in its Catholic form, and by Joseph Butler in its Protestant form, says Van Til, is based upon the assumption that one, man has some measure of autonomy or may act as his own judge.

    Autolaw, right? Autonomy. Man acts as his own judge, decides what’s true or false, what’s right or wrong on his own. And two, that the space-time world is, in some major, contingent or dependent on change. Kind of random. Things can pop in and out unexpectedly.

    And three, that man must creatively construct his own epistemology. instead of receptively reconstructing it from God, from his revelation. So man must creatively construct his own epistemology and is able to do so. In other words, what’s his epistemology? Well, it’s his theory of knowledge in an ultimate sense, He must derive his own rules as to how he knows what is real. That’s the lie. Satan says, yes, you can do that. You can do that as fallen man. You don’t need God. You certainly don’t need a redeemer.

    The traditional method has built into it the right and ability of the natural man, apart from the work of the spirit of God, to be the judge of the claim of the authoritative word of God. Before a man will submit to its authority, scripture must first pass his test of whether it is good or evil, true or false.

    But once you tell a non-Christian this, why should he be worried by anything else that you say? You’ve already told him that he’s quite all right just the way he is. Nothing’s wrong with your thinking. Well, you can decide matters of heaven and hell, of truth and false, of life and death.

    According to the traditional method, the scripture is not correct when it speaks of the non-Christians as having darkened minds, as we read, being willfully ignorant, dead in sins, Ephesians chapter 2, and blind to the truth. The traditional method endorses man’s autonomy when it should be demanding surrender with the Apostle Paul in Acts chapter 17. Seeing, therefore, the failure of even Reformed theologians and apologists in their effort to consistently defend the self-attesting Christ of Scripture, says Van Til, it became clear to me that new groundwork needed to be done. I did not, however, undertake this task so as to reinvent the wheel, no, since I conceived of Christian apologetics as focusing on the self-attesting Christ of Scripture, it was natural that I should find the development and defense of the doctrine of the person of the Christ in the history of the church, particularly in three areas. One, the Council of Nicaea. Two, the Chalcedon Creed. And three, the Reformed Confessions. First, the Council of Nicaea.

    Here, in AD 325, the church concluded that the only adequate expression of the teaching of Christ concerning himself and that of the apostles, concerning God, was in a formulation such that all three persons of the Trinity were equally ultimate. The Church rejected the subordination of the Son to the Father in the sense of God’s being or existence or divine nature. No, the two are equally God, just as the Spirit is co-equal with the Father and the Son in this regard, in His existence. as God. Hermann Boving points out that with this any attempt to unite God with man such that God ceased to be himself as God was rejected.

    Step further to the Chalcedon Creed. Now this formulation adopted in AD 451. Should I write that down? Chalcedon Creed. The Chalcedon Creed, this formulation says that divine and human natures of Christ are related unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, and inseparably. And that’s a whole quarter in and of itself.

    So please consult your Westminster standards for that and under the person of Christ, Christ our Redeemer. Our understanding of the work of Christ remains cloudy until the biblical teaching about his person is clearly understood. Yet the true significance of this person becomes clear only as we understand what Christ has accomplished for his people. What has Christ accomplished for his people?

    Three, the reformed confessions. These give more exact expression to the work of the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, as part of the continuing historical work of Christ as he is now with us. Remember? Remember Theophilus, I’m writing you a letter here, says Luke, and in the former work, I wrote what Jesus began to do and to teach. Now I’m writing to you what God continued to do and to teach, okay, through his Holy, and by his Spirit, the Holy Spirit.

    Consider Article 5, for example, in the Reformed Confessions, Article 5 of the Belgic Confession. We receive these books, and these only, it says, I quote, we receive these books and these only as holy and canonical for the regulation, foundation, and confirmation of our faith, believing without any doubt all things contained in them, not so much because the church receives and approves them as such, but more especially because the Holy Spirit witnesses in our hearts that they are from God, whereof they carry the evidence in themselves, For the very blind are able to perceive that the things foretold in them are fulfilling, as for the Spirit of God gives him sight, and in his light they see light. It appears then that not until the time of the reformers do we find the church as the church confessing before the world anything like an adequate view of the Holy Spirit as the one who ministers to us as he did to the disciples and the apostles the very Word of Christ. Only in the Reformed Creed do we find the Spirit of Christ to be an essential part of the work of Christ in saving his sheep. In these three areas we see the church’s increasing understanding of the person and work of Christ Individual theologians, too, helped the cause forward. One such was Tertullian, whom B.B. Warfield called, and I quote, the real father of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, unquote.

    With a very high view of Christ, Tertullian could say, after Jesus Christ, we have no need of speculation. After the gospel, no need of research. When we come to believe we have no desire to believe anything else. For we begin by believing there is nothing else which we have to believe. For Tertullian it is Christ who in the scriptures gives us the system of truth which man must believe.

    He concludes, and I quote, from this point onwards I shall contest the ground of my opponent’s appeal. End quote. Very noble objective Tertullian. It is clear, says Van Til, that I learned from Tertullian, a man ahead of his time, both in Christology and in apologetic method. But Tertullian was nevertheless, like us all, a son of his times. He never succeeded of ridding himself of the stranglehold which his logospeculation of his predecessors had on him, that he himself adopted also.

    In his argument with the Gnostics and the Gnostics of course taught that a number of emanations or mediators between God and the material world were necessary for its creation in order to distance God from material things. They read when God planted a garden in Genesis and they kind of cringed.

    Did God get his fingernails dirty? What’s happening here? God matters evil, right? And God is above that. He’s spirit. Such was their error. They thought there would have to be all these emanations All these mediators, all kinds of them, between God and his creation, in order for the creation to happen. Now Tertullian adopts, and again, he adopts not a mere form, but the very content of their emanation theories, using this logos, which is kind of an aberrant doctrine of Christ. as one of those emanations, so to speak, a chief emanations. So he adopts the content of their emanation theories, hoping to convince them that he but wishes to add Christ to their already adequate ideas of the origin of man and the world. He does not even attempt to contest the ground of his opponents, as he set out himself to do. He failed, therefore, to be consistent with the method which he himself proposed.

    It fell to Calvin to follow the method of Tertullian, cleansing it of its Logos theology. The third idea which the Reformed preached was basically an expression of the theology of John Calvin. If we look in detail at the Christology of Calvin, we shall also see a development and application of the method of Tertullian and therewith the beginnings of Christ-centered apologetics. managing to do with the help of God what Tertullian had set out to do. For Calvin, the doctrine of the Trinity.

    The doctrine of the Trinity was involved in his experience of salvation in the Christian certainty, quote, in the Christian certainty that the redeeming Christ and the sanctifying spirit are each divine persons. And he says again, The main thing was, he insisted, that men should heartily believe that there is but one God whom only they should serve, but also that Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier, is each no less this one God than God the Father, to whom we owe our being. While yet these three are distinct personal objects of our love and adoration, Now the significance of this for Christian apologetics should be clear at once. As Warfield observes, all those who were for any reason or in any degree unable or unwilling to allow Christ a deity in every respect equal to that of the Father were necessarily offended by the vindication to him of the ultimate divine quality of self-existence.

    Calvin, says Van Til, explicated the person of Christ solely in scriptural terms. That is, his method is one of scriptural exegesis or interpretation of the Bible, rather than speculation. As such, his method is simple. Who Christ is depends on Christ’s self-identification. If Christ is who he says he is, then all speculation is excluded, for God can swear only by himself. To find out What man is and who God is, one can only go to Scripture.

    Faith in the self-attesting Christ of Scripture is the beginning, not the conclusion of wisdom. You don’t arrive at Jesus as Lord because of your investigation. No, no, no, no. God proves that to you through his servants. And then you can understand and see all things as God has revealed them.

    It was therefore not until the fully developed Trinitarian theology of Calvin, which says that Christ is authoritative because he’s very God, and that there was developed a truly Christian methodology of theology and of apologetics, Calvin, seeing this, denied all speculation and natural theology as avenues to faith. No, no, Aristotle’s an unmoved mover. You don’t just prove him and say, okay, the God exists. No, let’s see, he probably exists because all of these proofs here, probably, isn’t that good enough? And then we’ll build upon that and we’ll convince you that that God we just proved is the God of the scriptures.

    No. Natural theologians assume that reason and logic and fact are religiously neutral. They’re not part of God’s providence, they’re not part of his creation. No. They see them as mere tools by which man may and must determine for himself what is and what is not possible. See how he’s twisting the truth of God.

    Rather, Countess Van Til, with Calvin, faith and understanding are pure gifts of free grace. You can’t understand unless God enables you to understand. The things of the spirit of foolishness. And thus God gives you light by his spirit, the spirit of Christ.

    Van Til’s apologetic method thus far outlined will be made clearer if we consider perhaps two common objections to John Calvin’s approach. One, Calvinism is determinist. Fetism, you know, we just cover our eyes and our ears and just believe what the word says. subscribe to a kind of a non-intellectualism, or perhaps just say that we’re fatalists, as it were, or that it is irrational. Okay, well that’s another thing. What kind of objections, what kind of accusations are these?

    That Calvinism is determinist, or that Calvinism is irrational? One, some allege that Calvinism is determinist, that it teaches that future events are fixed from the beginning, such that people are mere puppets who can do nothing about these future events.

    Now, while it is true, yeah, yeah, while it is true that God ordains all things that come to pass according to the counsel of his own will, he does not deal with his people fatalistically. but rather covenantally. He does not treat his people as mere servants who do not know what their master is doing, but as friends, as sons, and yes, as his own bride, covenantally, intimately. When he purposes to deal with mankind, he involves his people.

    When he determined to visit Sodom and Gomorrah with judgment, he first solicited the intercession of Abraham his friend. And when he declared through Jonah his prophet, 40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed, he did so with a view to bring about the repentance of the Ninevites who took heart in this declaration of coming wrath rather than to fall into fatalistic despair or dismiss it in unbelief.

    How did that happen? Was there a man And get this, was there ever a man who lived a life as manifestly predetermined as Jesus Christ? The very details of his life were written beforehand in scripture. Did that discourage him from praying? Did that reduce him to a mere puppet?

    God forbid such thinking. Yes, God predestines our lives, but he also predestines our prayers. which in Christ he is pleased to answer. This ought to be a great encouragement to us. On the other hand, when Arminians allege that God bases his election on the faith of certain individuals in the future that he foreknows or foresees, does this not make God a victim of history? history that he himself, somebody else had to write it, right? If he foresees it, if he has to figure out what it is.

    In this sense, not Calvinism, but Arminianism embraces determinism, or more fittingly, pagan fatalism. Some allege that Calvinism is irrational, that because the Calvinist has no point, any questions thus far? Just a little more and we’ll be finished here. Some allege that Calvinism is irrational, that because the Calvinist has no point of contact with the non-Christian, he cannot give reasons to the unbeliever as to why he ought to repent of his sins and bow the knee to Christ as Savior and Lord. Now, by point of contact, they mean agreeing with the non-Christian on his false views of man and the world.

    Can you argue on this side, given these presuppositions, that pure chance and absolute fate are equally ultimate? Yet somehow everything happened by chance and yet things are ordered? Yeah, pure chance and absolute fate, equally ultimate though contradictory principles that man uses as an explanation for the fact that we have learned much about the world and there is order in the world, while there is also continual change and development in the world. But the non-Christian’s explanation is no explanation at all. To say, it just happens that way, as an explanation of an event, is really to say, there’s no explanation that I know of.

    Against this position, says Van Til, I maintain, with Calvin following Paul, that my point of contact lies in the actual state of affairs between God and man, and the state of affairs between men and men, as the Bible tells of it. To utilize as a point of contact what men merely imagine and believe to be the case is to have no real point of contact at all. To look for a point of contact with the unbeliever and the unbeliever’s notions of himself and his world is only to encourage him in his wicked rebellion and establish him in his self-frustration. What then is the Christian’s point of contact with the non-Christian?

    I think you know by now it is, as the Bible teaches, creation. The fear of God is the beginning, not the end of wisdom, and all who are created in the image of God unavoidably possess some knowledge of God, albeit the natural man suppresses and twists it to his own destruction. The Calvinist, therefore, using his point of contact, says Van Til, declares to the non-Christian that if the world were not what the scripture says it is, if the natural man’s knowledge were not actually rooted in the creation and providence of God, then there could be no knowledge whatsoever. How do you know that the things you think now, today, are not going to somehow disappear and be replaced by something else? The Christian claims that non-Christians have made and now make many discoveries about the the true state of affairs of the universe simply because the universe is what Christ says it is. The unbelieving scientist borrows or steals the Christian principles of creation and providence every time he says that an explanation is possible.

    For he knows that he cannot account for the explanation on his own. As the image bearer of God operating in a universe controlled by God, the unbeliever contributes indirectly and adventitiously to the development of human knowledge and culture. It’s called common grace. In spite of himself, he does good with the help of God.

    The Calvinist refusal to accept the non-Christian scheme wherein the non-Christian determines what are the good reasons and valid proofs is not irrational. Rather, says Van Til, the Christian offers the self-attesting Christ to the world as the only foundation upon which a man must stand in order to give any reasons for anything at all. The whole notion of giving reasons is completely destroyed by any worldview other than the Christian one. The Christian claims that only after accepting the biblical scheme of things Will any man be able to understand and account for his own rationality, his own ability to reason, his own predication? Yeah, predication happens. Therefore, God exists. End of argument. Our time is expended, so you are dismissed to prepare for worship.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Cornelius Van Til: A Pastor’s Reminiscences

    Cornelius Van Til: A Pastor’s Reminiscences

    About this sermon

    A Morning Instruction class of personal reminiscences about Cornelius Van Til from a pastor who served his congregation in Glenside, Pennsylvania, beginning in 1981, when Van Til was elderly. Van Til is remembered as a Christian gentleman, classically trained and devoted to his students and his church, and as a pastor himself to those around him. The talk recalls stories from his teaching and later years and reflects on how his apologetics has been received, sometimes as a test of orthodoxy and sometimes rejected without real engagement.

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    Sermon transcript

    Thank you, Brett. I was asked by Ed Hardesty while we were in Japan, and he said, we’re going through Meather’s biography of Van Till, and would you come give some reminiscences about Dr. Van Till when we get back? And I said, well, OK. There’s a proviso that I had and sort of, what would I say? Sort of a warning label. It’s not gonna be as profound as you might hope.

    I was asked, when they were writing the book, I got a phone call and they were asking me for reminiscences about Van Til. And you have to understand that when you’re a pastor, there are a lot of things that go between people and their pastor that are private and are things that someone might say that they don’t necessarily wish to have passed along or might not have said as an opinion or a thought when they were younger. And I knew Dr. Van Til in his latter years. I became pastor at Glenside in 1981, 80-81. And he was already an elderly gentleman.

    He had good days and he had bad days. Some days he had very good days, and some days weren’t so good. He was an elderly gentleman. And I underline that word gentleman because Dr. Vantel was always a gentleman. He was a Christian gentleman from another time. We don’t have gentlemen very much like that anymore. He was a man that was classically trained. He reminded me one time that he had to write one of his theses, and I don’t remember whether it was a master’s or a doctorate or what, but he had to write it in Latin. So that was a long time ago, you know. He was a man who suffered a lot for the sake of the gospel. Always was good natured, good will, always had a twinkle in his eye and was ready for some fun and some laughter.

    He conducted his classes in a semi-humorous fashion, although it was very serious business. He was known for throwing chalk at his students. And sometimes it’s hard to sit through a class that involves philosophers and all kinds of things. And sometimes he would just come into class and lay across the desk and start somewhere in the middle of a lecture somewhere.

    And if somebody wasn’t listening, why, he’d just beat him with a piece of chalk. He stopped doing that in his latter years because one time he threw a piece of chalk, and it happened to be one that was just recently broken, and it had a sharp edge. And it cut the student at whom he threw it. And he was so abashed by that that he never threw chalk again.

    And one could understand the embarrassment. But when he came to his final illness and I visited him, one of the things I feel rather comfortable sharing, sort of here at the beginning, is What he requested to be read, I asked him what he would like to have read to him from the scriptures. We both knew at that point that he was in his final illness and that he would not recover.

    And so I began to visit him on a more frequent basis. And I asked him the first time, I said, now, what would you like for me to read to you from the scriptures? And he didn’t hesitate a second. He said, Revelation 21 and 22. And he frequently liked to be reminded of those things. And just as a reminder to us, I thought I’d quickly read just portions of that. And then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

    He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And he who is seated on the throne said, behold, I am making all things new. Also he said, write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. And he said to me, it is done.

    I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his god. and he will be my son. And then from chapter 22, then the angel showed me the river of the water of life bright as crystal flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city also on either side of the river, the tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month.

    The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and the lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads, and night will be no more. They will need no light or lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. And it is that vision of the nations pouring into the tree of life and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

    Underlined for me once again the concern for the evangelization of souls and the bringing in of the elect of God into his church that animated Dr. Vantill. I mean, he’s often thought of as a philosopher and he certainly was that and a theologian and he certainly was that. And of course an apologist that is in the technical sense, an apologist. And, uh, he was of course, premierly that.

    But, um, The men were animated by a deep desire to see people come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and come into his church as those who have been radically transformed by the gospel and by the spirit of God to a new life in Jesus Christ. And I think those things don’t often get reemphasized and come across the way they should. And as they were, especially in the beginning of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And I had the privilege of knowing many of the men who were young men when the Orthodox Presbyterian Church was founded and were old men, some of them very old men by the time I knew them.

    Of course, Dr. Van Til was one of them. I said he suffered for the gospel and, you know, a person of his education and ability In another time, and of course there aren’t other times, God places us when, where, and how he pleases, and he’s good, what he does is good, his will is right, and we serve when, where, and how he pleases, and we should be content and rejoice in that, and these men were content. They stood up against a a tsunami of cultural change and opposition, the likes of which we’re just beginning to see again, just the enormity of what was happening.

    And he would remind me of people that he had in his classes from time to time. One of the times that I got to spend the most intimate time with him was not when I would do pastoral visits. He had a certain view of pastoral visits, and they were sort of formal. And I became accustomed to that. You know, his upbringing was in the Dutch church, and I always suspected that he thought in Dutch and spoke in English. He certainly wrote that way. That’s part of what makes it impervious to some people. The other thing was, I said to him once, well, Dr. Vantel, we were, well, I got ahead of myself, but that’s all right. If I keep moving, maybe you’ll listen. Try and hit a moving target.

    We were going out to lunch one day. He liked to go out to lunch. He liked to take people out to lunch. He wasn’t a wealthy man, but he was alone by this time and he enjoyed the company. One of our deacons used to go pick him up for lunch. We would go for lunch.

    One of the most intimate times that I would have with him was not when we’d go to lunch or when I did pastoral visits, but when, on occasion, I would pick him up for Wednesday evening prayer service. Usually, Grace Mullen picked him up. And she was the assistant librarian at the seminary, and you probably all know her well. And she was great friends with Charlie. she would pick him up and bring him to Wednesday evening prayer meeting, without fail, unless he was not well or in the hospital.

    And sometimes he was very clear and very good, and sometimes one wasn’t quite sure where he was since he wasn’t in the room, even though he was sitting there, as happens with elderly people. My dad’s 92. He’s in a nursing center. And we’re not always sure what he knows or understands. And that’s sometimes the way Dr. Van Til was. Although he could walk, he had good balance, he had a good physique. But when he was in good health and Grace couldn’t pick him up and I picked him up, we would have very nice conversations.

    But I was talking about when we were headed to lunch and I asked him one time, I said, because we had a student with us, I had the deacon myself, and we had a student. He was going to take this student to lunch. He had some questions. I had been saying to the student some things to help him read Van Til, because Van Til could be rather opaque for some people to try to read. And I said, Dr. Van Til, I’ve encouraged this young man, if he really wants to understand what you’re trying to do, that he reads Calvin’s Institutes. Did I tell him the right thing?

    Turned around from the front seat. I was sitting in the back seat where I belong. And he was sitting in the front seat and he turned around and he said, of course. And just turned around and looked out the front window again. Sort of like, young man. So I was treated by Dr. Vantel as both a student and a young learner. And sometimes one would almost think a young fool. But also at other times, quite respectfully, as his pastor.

    And if I came to visit him, I would be ushered into the room. Maybe somebody was there also visiting, or the family that lived with him, caring for him. And they’d say, well, come on in. And he’d be sitting in the living room. And I’d come sit down. And the first thing he’d say to me is, good. In other words, the pastor was here. Good. He was getting a visit.

    And I was expected to read the scriptures and pray. And then we would talk about things that were of concern to him. And we would talk a little bit about things in the church or other such things. And that was a more formal time. And it was very clear that at that time he was taking the role of one who was a congregant and I was the pastor.

    And that was not so much, it wasn’t at all because of any particular gifts I had or who I was or what I was doing or even his appreciation for my ministry, but it was the high view of the word of God that he had and of the pastoral office. and of the fact that we all need the word of God brought to bear. And he was quite willing to be ministered to in that way. You don’t find that kind of humility today among people. People find it hard to have a pastor today for some reason. And he was not of that ilk. He had been raised with a much different view of things than that.

    And we were walking one day somewhere, I forget where, and actually I was walking with Bruce Hunt and we met Ani Saka and he asked Dr. Van Til, or we were talking, and he said, oh, this is my pastor. So that’s sort of how that came about, that people said, well, Steve was his pastor, because it wasn’t so much that I said anything about it or that that was well-known. It was just that Dr. Van Til would say that if someone said, well, who’s your pastor?

    He said, well, you know, where do you go to church? He never hesitated to say, I go to church in Calvary Glenside. We didn’t always have professors like that. There were professors who said, where do you go to church? And he said, well, I was preaching over at such and such a place this past week or whatever. But I have some very humorous recollections of Dr. Van Til.

    He was certainly a gentleman and a scholar, but he also liked fun. He always had a twinkle in his eye, as I said. Every Sunday I tried to greet him. He could get out of the pew pretty quickly, just so he wasn’t in the way and didn’t stumble and so on. He was a good-sized gentleman, was tall at one time.

    His son would bring him to church on Sunday while he was alive. His son died while while I was pastor there, well before Dr. Van Til died. That’s another story. But Earl would come and pick him up and bring him to church. And usually that was the time when Earl would, he collected a Lincoln Continental for an investment. He had it, it was a car he liked and it was a nice car and it had plenty of room. His dad could get in the back seat and drive. So it was parked out where Dr. Van Til could get in the car. And Dr. Van Til got out that particular Sunday before I could get to him. And so I thought, oh, I miss Dr. Van Til.

    I want to get out and say hello to him. So I went out to say hello to him. And I came around the side of the car where he was sitting behind the driver’s side in the back seat. And they had electronic windows. And he rolled down the window. And he looked over at me, and he said, get away from the car. I’m trying to look important. And he rolled the window back up. End of interview. So, I mean, we had a lot of fun that way. And I didn’t mind being the butt of his jokes at all. He was a gentleman who had already lost his wife. And in the early years while I was there, his son rather unexpectedly passed away.

    Earl was driving home from work. And when he got home, he said to his wife, Thelma, he said, oh, man, he says, I have the worst headache I’ve ever had in my life. And he went in and laid down on the couch, and she was fixing dinner, and she heard a thud. And she went in, and Earl was on the floor. And he had had an aneurysm burst in his head, and he was, for all intents and purposes, gone. But, of course, he was still breathing, so they rushed him to the hospital. And after surgery, the surgeon came out and took me aside and said, you’re the pastor. I said, yes. He said, well.

    You know, there’s the whole brain is just gone. I mean, it was just an explosion in his head and the pressure built up there. There’s nothing we can do. And for all intents and purposes, he’s not there. But his body’s still breathing and his heart’s still beating.

    Now what do we do? So I explained it to Thelma and she was not ready. for him not to be on life support, so they put Earl on life support. And that evening, there were a number of the men from the seminary who went over and sat with Dr. Van Til. And then when it was clear what had happened and what was going to unfold over the next few days, while his body got the message that Earl wasn’t home anymore, then I went over and I gave Dr. Van Til the final word about what was happening.

    He didn’t say anything at the time. He was silent. It was quite a blow. And then somewhere in the next week or so, Earl’s body was shutting down and it was very clear there was nothing happening but what the machines were doing. And when the machines were turned off, why then, he immediately, his body immediately shut down. It was, his heart immediately stopped. He wasn’t breathing on his own anyway. And then I had to go tell Dr. Van Til about that event. And he took it very well.

    That was something that was indicative of Dr. Van Tell, that he believed in God’s purposes, that God was sovereign, and that these things were from the Lord, and you received them as from the Lord’s hand. He was a Calvinist, and his desire in apologetics was to develop a an apologetic that answered to our thoroughgoing Calvinism so that there was a presentation and a defense of the gospel that actually arose out of the gospel and the character of the gospel itself. He wrote Hattie DeWard. Reverend DeWard was an early minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. My brother was out in Grand Rapids at what was then called Harvest, I think. And Hattie DeWard’s husband and Dr. Van Til had been close friends, and they had conducted Gerhardtus Voss’s funeral, actually, together.

    I once had a picture of that with the open casket, but someone removed it from my files for some reason to use, and it was never returned. So I don’t have it any longer, but I know it exists somewhere. And that was before I went to Eritrea. So those things get lost over the years. But they were good friends together. Dr. Vantill and Hattie DeWard kept up correspondence over the years and so once in a while she would show my brother letters from Dr. Vantill when my brother visited her out in Grand Rapids.

    On one occasion, he said, Steve, you’ve got to hear this. And it was not long after I had begun to preach at Glenside, Dr. Van Til wrote to Hatties and he said, finally, a pastor who believes and preaches the sovereignty of God. I don’t know what that meant, but I was very glad to hear that he was happy with my ministry. He was very much the Calvinist, and he wanted and he was looking for someone who actually not only doctrinally believed that, but that it’s pressed through the way we think and apply that in our Christian life. And it was a hallmark of how he dealt, for instance, with the death of Earl. That was something that God had ordered and he was willing to receive and accept. You don’t want to take that comment too seriously by him because finally a pastor. He hadn’t remembered the last couple or something.

    There had been fill-in pastors. One would question why they were there, but there had been some very fine men who filled that pulpit. Dr. Van Til served at the seminary at a time when it was small in numbers and he would tell me about guys. Recently I saw one of those evangelists that studied at the seminary.

    What was his name? He had sunshine. It was down in Maryland. What’s that? No, no, the, oh, it was back in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s. He had a radio program and he had, oh, why am I not remembering that name? Anyway, I just saw that somebody wrote a biography on him. It was funny, because Dr. Van Til had laughed about, maybe it’s good I don’t remember his name. Morning, where’s that place in Maryland? What was the name of that Jane down there? He had a camp down there. Sandy Cove, yeah, down at Sandy Cove. I forget the name of the place.

    But he was a famous reformed, sort of semi-reformed evangelist. And Dr. Van Til said, I was never any used to that guy at all. He just came into the class. He knew exactly what he believed. And I never had any effect on him whatsoever. But he did affect other people that We might be surprised to hear, when I conducted Dr. Van Til’s graveside service, afterward, a pretty impressive elderly gentleman came up to me and he had a bodyguard on each side of him. It looked like a bodyguard on each side. It wasn’t. It was just probably syncophants that were there. But it was Carl McIntyre. And he came up. pressed right up close to me, you know.

    He was a very impressive man, always was very forceful, took my hand, it hurt. And he said, and he was very appreciative of the message, which was nice. But what he really wanted to say was, you know, the two men that affected my life more than anyone else were Jay Gresham Machen and Cornelius Van Til, and now they’re both with the Lord. That was what MacIntyre said. Now, one, with all the trouble that Carl MacIntyre caused, those two men in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, one might not have expected that response, but that’s what he said at the time. And first thing he said to me was, do you know who I am? And I said, yes, sir, I do. Dr. Van Til wasn’t that way. He didn’t want to impress others with his presence or his person.

    But he was very concerned that the gospel as it really was in the scripture would be communicated and thought out and brought into various fields of endeavor. One time I came to visit him and he was reading at his desk. I went upstairs and he was reading at his desk. And I wondered what he was reading. And he said it was either Bavink or Birkhoff. I can’t remember correctly, but it was a systematic theology. And it just, for some reason, as a young man, it just caught me off guard for a moment. And I said a stupid thing, as we often do, say stupid things.

    I said, well, why are you doing that? I mean, he could write his own, you know? Why are you doing that? He says, well, you have to keep up. You have to keep these things fresh in your mind. I understand what he means now, but of course, I didn’t understand then. But that’s the way it was.

    And what you have to understand in those days, and I think this is good and right, and we ought to learn from this, He was concerned that Reformed theology as a whole, as a system, be pressed through our thinking. That how we think of God, how we think of the world, God’s providence, God’s care of things, the whole nature of redemption, Calvinist doctrines, but the whole, the whole of it as a system pressed through in our thinking, in our presentation of Christ in the church and so on. So for him, systematic theology was an organizing feature of our thought. It was something that was positive.

    It’s often spoken of today in a negative way, but it was a positive for Dr. Van Til and something that was part of the shorthand of your thinking, how you pulled things together. And in that sense, he had a high appreciation of systematic theology, and he expressed that to me on a number of occasions.

    He hardly ever missed morning worship, and he seemed always to seek to be attentive in morning worship. There were others who regularly slept during morning worship, but Dr. Van Til was not one of them. And as I said, he would come to the weekly prayer meeting. And it’s often when I would fill in for someone else and pick him up and drive him to the prayer meeting, we would get to talk if he was having a good day. And it was, those were very enlightening conversations.

    Like my old pastor, Bob Atwell, He viewed the early Orthodox Presbyterian Church as a bunch of just very young men. You know, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church was started by a bunch of very young men and very few men. And that’s something to be remembered. You know, we might look back and say, well, you know, these guys, they didn’t have it all together. They were struggling to deal with the onslaught of modernism and progressivism and the whole change of a society. And many of them were just barely Calvinists. A large group of them were thinking about going into the CMA.

    So these were not people who, you know, and when they got into Dr. Van Til’s class, for many of them, that was the first time they ever heard of the Reformed faith being presented sort of as an entire picture, something coming on to mold your thinking about everything. And it was just an overwhelming experience. John Mail told me that it wasn’t until his father returned the next year after he had had Dr. Van Til. that he’d even become a Calvinist. And then that was because of what Dr. Van Til had taught.

    And the way, it wasn’t just, you know, a particular argument, just one thing, but the whole of the Reformed faith as it pressed And said, now this is what the Bible teaches, but this is really the way God is. This is the way the world is. And from the ground up, this is how I have to be thinking. And so he threw over his thinking. And many of the students were like that, apparently.

    But Dr. Van Til said during the war he had three students, and I can’t imitate the faces he made, but he made three faces. One was looking up agape at the ceiling. One was, you know, like completely, his eyes rolling back in his head, and the other was, you know, intent on thinking his own thoughts. As only Dr. Van Til could make these faces.

    He said, I often wondered, what was I doing there? At one point, very early on in his career, he went to Machen with his resignation. That’s probably in the book somewhere. He said, you know, we really don’t agree on apologetics, so if you would like me to resign, I can offer my resignation. And Dr. Vangel said, if we can’t afford to lose the janitor, much less our professor of apologetics.

    And Dr. Vangel was fond of repeating that over and over again with a chuckle, because You know, he thought of himself as just there by the skin of his teeth. He got an honorary doctorate from Project Strom in South Africa. And he told me, he said, I was more appreciative of that than the one I earned. So it’s interesting, the things that mean something to us in life. He was very much aware of his rural upbringing and sort of the idea that he was a farm boy.

    And you can see that in some of his examples. They haven’t preserved a lot of his lectures. I wish they had been. And they haven’t preserved a lot of his examples. But you still can get some of that rustic sort of thing here and there in his sermons and lectures. And you can get them. I guess there’s a collection of them that you can get online and so on. But it’s really in his examples that I found so much help in understanding Dr. Van Til and his thinking.

    Like the man of water who lived in the world of water, climbing up a ladder of water to try and get out of the world of water. But how could you ever, you say? That sort of, if you want to know why the liberal media is liberal, but it doesn’t understand that it’s liberal, it’s because it’s the man of water, looking in the world of water, saying, of course we’re all made out of water. Our presuppositions determine where we come out.

    And he always was very sensitive to the argument that he argued in circular reasoning But the fact is that where people begin is going to structure the way they look at things. And therefore, they’re going to take what they look at and structure it the way they look at it. And then they’re going to come out with their conclusions that fit the pattern of their thinking with which they began. That’s what you see. happens on the evening news, it’s what’s happening as people look at the world from their political point of view, it’s what happens when the scientists look at creation and they see a creation that’s very, very old, and all of these things. They’re looking with presuppositions that structure their whole approach, and then their whole approach structures their conclusions. And Dr. Van Til was very much aware of that, and that was very much a part of how he felt we should approach our understanding of both the world and philosophy and thinking, but also how it ought to be critiqued, and then how we ought to carefully restructure what we do on the ground of our presuppositions so the direction we go is not the direction that’s signaled by the presuppositions of others.

    He used road signs. to talk about that. If you follow somebody else’s road signs, you’re not gonna get to where you wanna go. Your destination is, you gotta follow a whole different set of road signs. If you follow their road signs for long enough, and then you say, no, but I’ve gotta go the other way now, they say, well, why are you leaving us? And that’s why he talked about the old apologetics as being inconsistent in that way.

    It is interesting that a number of people have tried to write about Dr. Van Til, what he taught, what he believed. I think the only one that he felt that got it right while he was alive was Craig Bonson. That’s what he told me. I asked him about John Frame’s little book, Van Til, the Theologian, and he said, I didn’t recognize myself in that book. So that might help you. in your reading, and he was quite adamant about that. Of course, he had a proviso, and he’d say, well, I said, who would you have liked to succeed you at the seminary? He said, well, Craig Bonson would have been good, he said, except for that little matter of theonomy. And that’s the way he would talk, you know, just that little matter of theonomy.

    He liked to pinch. And when he would see me at prayer meeting, and even if I hadn’t driven him, he’d come up and he’d grab me by the back of the arm and pinch me. And it would get your attention. I mean, he was taller than I was. And he would get ahold of the back of my arm and he would pinch.

    And I’d say, yes, I’m here. I’m listening. You know? Practically bring a tear to your eye. One time he did that, and he pinched so hard, and he pulled me around the corner, took me in a little cubicle I had as an office at the time. And he said, you know this PCA thing? He said, Steve, you’ve got to do something about that. And he said, do you? And I tried my hardest. He said, you know, and you have to understand the way he talked, but he said, we own the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

    By that he meant the Reformed faith. And it was very, very much a matter of deep reverent concern for him that the special principle, as he called it in apologetics, the converting, regenerating power of the Holy Spirit not be messed with, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit that had been recovered in the Reformation, not be distorted. And the idea now of the gifts and these things being allowed, you know, charismatic speaking in tongues and the idea that this was a matter of indifference. that somehow you could have a service where people could get up and say, thus saith the Lord from the pew, you know, and the Lord gave me a message, or they’re speaking in tongues. This was a matter of grave concern, that Reformed people wouldn’t see that this is not something that comports with or is compatible with our doctrine of the Holy Spirit. one at such great a price, you see, in the past. And then this would be watered down, diluted in some way. It was a grave concern to him. And also the matter of the Sabbath. But the thing that really exercised him at that point was masonry.

    You know, masonry was still very big in the South at that time. talking around 1980, 1981, 82 in there. And he said, Steve, you know, in the church I grew up, it was in the Dutch Reformed Church, the Christian Reformed Church, you couldn’t be a member and be a Mason.

    And he said, we can’t allow this. He says, that’s universalism. and it’ll destroy the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. So he was very exercised about that and I think I had a bruise for a while on the back of that arm after that conversation. He was really exercised about it and he was not against ecumenicity at all, don’t get me wrong, but it was just a deep concern. Those things, masonry, we can’t allow that.

    Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the Reformed Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, we have to protect that at all costs, even at the cost of not joining with another group with which we might have affinity and desire to join. And so he was very concerned about that. He was also concerned later on what it looked like because, you know, we kept going through these cycles of trying to commit suicide as a denomination. And I guess we went two or three times through that kind of thing while I was in Glenside. And finally he said to me one time while he was still alive, towards the end of his life, just don’t let them use my apologetics as a criteria for what’s orthodox. Don’t let that divide the church. I never forgot that because he was intent on that. That was something that meant a great deal to him. And I was very pleased on the one hand and unpleased on the other. You know, you get mixed emotions. I could hear his voice ringing in my ear when we adopted a curriculum and put it in the back of our book of church order that included Pantaleon apologetics as almost a hallmark of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

    That is expressly against his wishes. And very few people, I think, are aware of that, or if they are aware of it, have followed it. It’s not that I would depreciate his apologetics. But I think in his mind, the conversation wasn’t over. And I think what’s happened in a sense is sort of tragic in the whole area of apologetics because for many, orthodoxy is determined by whether you’re a Vantillian or not, whether or not they understand that. I’m not sure they understand it. What being thinking through things in a Vantillian way is and what presuppositional apologetics really are. But nevertheless, it’s a hallmark for them of orthodoxy And then other people just rejected outright, but the conversation hasn’t gone on.

    There hasn’t been a continuing discussion of epistemology that is how do we know what we know? And those kinds of things. Do Christians know differently than those who are unregenerate and how they look at the world? That was a big question when it came to how does God know what he knows and how do we know or what God knows, and what is truth, and so on. These questions are all related. And Dr. Van Til, I think, would have preferred that the conversation go on, and that these kinds of things would develop, and there would be a lot more asking the question, how, as Reformed Christians, from where we come in terms of our system of theology, that we find taught in the scriptures. What does that require of us in our thinking about the way people know and how we present the gospel and the way we look at the world?

    It’s not that there aren’t right and wrong answers. I’m not saying in any way, shape, or form he was a relativist. He hated relativism. But that we don’t say, any one of us, that we are the answer. And I think he felt that very keenly, that his approach should not be considered the and the only approach, and then all others excluded. And I think we’ve kind of, oh, we’ve run out of time. We might have a few minutes for questions. I should maybe stop with that.

    Yeah. yeah back when the PCA started you know they weren’t they didn’t refuse to accept people who believed in speaking in tongues and other spiritual manifestations that was not to be made an issue of And they were bringing in people. You see, there were a lot of folks leaving the Southern Presbyterian Church at that time with those who had already left the PCA. And there were people coming out of the PCA, the UP, or the PCUSA in the north. And so their desire was to be a national church. So they didn’t want to be so exclusive. Many of their elders were masons.

    And so these were issues in the formation of the PCA. PCA formed, I forget what year it was, right around the time we got married, I don’t know, was it 1970, 71, somewhere in there. And within just years, the character of the church began to change. And you can sort of see that in the history, because you have someone, for instance, in the life of Morton Smith. He was involved with RTS. And then you have Greenville Seminary starting. That became necessary in his way of thinking. Greenville originally was called Thornwell Seminary.

    Their idea was, and Morton Smith was the first, I don’t know if he was the first moderator or the first, he became the clerk, sort of the original clerk of the PCA. But he was one of the founding fathers and the idea was very much different than what eventually happened and it was just, That kind of concern that Dr. Mintill was expressing, he felt that it would be a big mistake to go in at that time.

    And those issues should be discussed. They should be dealt with. And it should be made clear what our doctrine of the Holy Spirit was. That’s what that was about. If I wasn’t clear, Another funny comment he made, he came down one time, I think it was while I was still in seminary. You have to excuse me because memories fade and the timeline gets changed over the years, as some of you can realize. But I remember him coming down the back steps of the seminary, flapping a picture of himself on the front of Christianity Today. So you can still look that up when that was.

    And I was crossing, there was a little dogwood tree there at the time, and I was crossing across towards the parking lot. And he came and he says, look, Steve. He said, I died. Because he was on the cover of Christianity Today. Another time, his insurance company sent him a notice that his insurance policy was filled up or whatever.

    I don’t know. I don’t know exactly what. He said, look, I’m dead. I said, what’s that? He says, well, I’m not covered anymore. They sent it back to me. He says, I’ve lived too long. I don’t know what it was, whether the cutoff was 90 91, but he got a great thrill out of having lived so long that all these funny things were happening. Who was it? Was it Bart or someone else? He met only once. And he said, you’ve been a naughty boy.

    Well, yeah, to Dr. Van Til. Well, that was sort of the attitude he had towards me. So you have to understand I’m not an expert in that way. Let’s see if I left anything out. Well, he was a warm-hearted person. And I think I’d want to end with that, that he was certainly a person whose heart and soul was for the gospel and for the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ. And at his deepest core, he thought of himself as just simply a believer, a sinner saved by grace. And he really didn’t share an understanding of Presbyterian piety with us. I mean, Presbyterian government, but he shared Presbyterian piety in the sense that He believed that that was the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit and that you could really count on the Lord. You could really count on the Lord. And he did. And he believed in a warm-hearted, reformed Christianity.

    And it was very hard to see him go, like so many of the others that we had to let go. When I was at Glenside, I had One year I had a funeral every month, and one month I had a funeral every week. So that was, how many, 16 funerals in that year. And I lost a lot of those folks who had been very instrumental in forming what we’ve enjoyed in the years since.

    The last time I saw Dr. Van Til, I can end with this, he was in bed, he was unconscious, he was up in his bedroom, and I think he was lecturing. He was in a coma, but I could just faintly hear him going through things, but it was in Dutch. It wasn’t in English, and I couldn’t understand. But to me, it sounded very much like his lectures. And I don’t know where he was in his mind, but right to the end, he was presenting the gospel.

    I’ve taken up more than enough time. Sorry about that. Thank you. It was a privilege. Let’s close in prayer. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for this time that we have had to reflect upon history, the history of our denomination and the biography of one person. And we thank you for the testimony of his life and the way that it still speaks to us, and his humility and his godliness. We do love and appreciate those who went before us, We do ask that you would cast down anything in us that would seek to make these who we hold very highly, that we would not make them lords over us, but that we would see them as they truly are, fellow servants, those who were saved by grace, even as we are and have been. Still though, we thank you for the way that you have used these people in such great ways to help us to know more of the Lord Jesus Christ. In his name we pray, amen.

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  • Cornelius Van Til: Van Til and Machen

    Cornelius Van Til: Van Til and Machen

    About this sermon

    A Morning Instruction class on Cornelius Van Til’s apologetics and his relationship to J. Gresham Machen and old Princeton. The lesson asks whether Van Til’s presuppositional method contradicts Machen’s evidential emphasis or complements it. It traces Van Til’s first published article, a critique of A. N. Whitehead in the Princeton Theological Review, and his position on the theistic proofs: natural revelation leaves people without excuse, but there is no neutral natural theology, and facts cannot be interpreted apart from God’s word.

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    Sermon transcript

    Very good. And your other finger. How about that other finger? Let’s see. Acts 26 and Luke 16. Okay, Acts 26. We’ll read secondly. Let’s begin with Luke chapter 16, verses 19 through 31. If you’ll be pleased to turn with me and your Bibles. Luke chapter 16, and we’ll read verses 19 through 31.

    There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and who feasted sumptuously every day, and at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels at Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.

    And he called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and sent Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame. But Abraham said, child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus and like men are bad things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us. And he said, then I beg you, Father, to send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.

    But Abraham said, they have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them. And he said, no, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. He said to them, if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, Neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.

    And now Acts chapter 26 verses 22 through 29. Acts chapter 26 reading verses 22 through 29. And the Apostle Paul is giving these events before Felix. And he says, to this day, I have had the help that comes from God, and so I stand here testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass, that the Christ must suffer, and that by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim life both to our people and to the Gentiles.

    And he was, I’m sorry, Festus. And as he was saying these things in his defense, Festus, said with a loud voice, Paul, you are out of your mind. Your great learning is driving you out of your mind. But Paul said, I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking true and rational words, for the king knows about these things. And to him I speak only, for I am persuaded that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this has not been done in a corner. King of Rippa. Do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe. And Griffith said to Paul, in a short time, you would persuade me to be a Christian. And Paul said, whether short or long, I would to God that not only you, but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am, except for these chains.

    Let’s pray. Dear Heavenly Father, please bless our time together as we prepare for worship and as we would also prepare to faithfully and convincingly and credibly give a defense for what we believe to those who would ask us. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

    Today’s class There’s a distillation and explanation of Greg Barneson’s essay, Machen, Van Til, and the Apologetical Tradition of the OPC, which constitutes chapter 17 of the OPC’s 50th anniversary commemorative collaboration, Pressing Toward the Mark, edited by Charlie Dennison and Rick Gamble. Unfortunately, this is currently out of print. There should be a copy near you somewhere in the library, I believe. All right? OK.

    So Bonson argues, and Bonson would tell us that apologetics gave birth to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, because the OPC formed as a result of defending the true historic biblical faith, not against a variant of biblical Christianity, but against the unbelief of modernism or liberalism, a new, different, false religion that had so infected and dominated the PCUSA. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church has a reputation for apologetics.

    In Bonson’s estimation, the preeminence in the 20th century defense of biblical faith belongs to the labors of J. Gresham Machen and Cornelius Van Til.

    And while both distinguished themselves in the field of apologetics, they did so in different emphases or different scholarly specializations. Machen in historical studies and Van Til philosophical studies as they related to Christian theology. Alright, now does this constitute a house divided? Did this difference in specialization or apologetic emphasis between the historical defense of Machen and the philosophical defense of Van Til, does this difference constitute or represent two opposing apologetic methodologies or traditions as some contend? Or one might ask if William Wyndham Machen understand how far from the old Princeton apologetic, the new Westminster apologetic, as now represented by Van Kilt’s presuppositionalism, really was. And insofar as Machen did, one might further ask, did Machen simply put up with Van Kilt’s presuppositionalism for the sake of their common cause for historic biblical Christianity, as exemplified in Westminster Theological Seminary and the OPC, against unbelief that gripped Princeton Seminary and the PCUSA, or perhaps as Alan McRae, that renowned critic, antagonist, and sadly, mal-interpreter of Van Tilt alleged, did Machen suffer from a sort of buyer’s remorse with regard to Van Tilt, wishing that he had instead recruited someone subscribing to the apologetical approach of B.B. Werfel in the old school Princeton, or not the old school Princeton, the old Princeton apologetics. And finally, did Machen and van Kiel’s differences in apologetic emphasis indicate contrary and even irreconcilable methodologies, or were they rather complementary?

    Any questions about the question? Okay, good, let’s move on quickly. To address these questions responsibly and with intellectual honesty, it behooves us to first consider the following points. Point number one, Machen and Van Til represented two different scholarly specializations. Machen devoted himself to the detailed historical challenges to the Christian faith with works such as The Origin of Paul’s Religion and The Virgin Birth of Christ. I hope we have copies back here.

    He would write, Christian piety must be grounded firmly in historical knowledge. Van Til, on the other hand, wrestled with the underlying philosophical challenges. mounted against Christian understanding of reality, knowledge, and ethics, as in such works as a survey of Christian epistemology, or the knowledge of why we know what we know, and Christianity and idealism, idealism dealing with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, on which was based liberal theology. He would write, the conflict between those And those who do not cannot be carried by a discussion of facts without at the same time discussing the philosophy of fact. One has to go back at the facts of history to a discussion of the meaning of history.

    Point two, Machen and Van Til represented two different sets of intellectual temperaments, preparation, and interests. While Machen on one hand was fascinated and absorbed with the particulars of classical languages and literature, he no-wise felt at ease in the field of philosophical speculation. As a student, he distinguished himself in classics, but he once relayed to his older brother, Arthur, an offer of $1,000 for a satisfactory exegesis or interpretation of a single page of the idealist philosopher Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Poor Reason, not his cup of tea. On the other hand, Ben Thiel, as a doctoral candidate at Princeton University, mastered the complete works of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel in their original languages.

    And while he later would write about the fact that historical investigation bolstered the work of apologetics, he would add this autobiographical note, 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. Point three, while Meacham had an immense admiration and commitment for the grand theological reputation of Princeton Seminary, from which he was a student and where he was a faculty member, and he openly identified with the outlook and scholarship of B.E. Warfield, at least he was consistent in his systematic theology, when it came to apologetics, Meacham’s own perspective on and pursuit of defending the faith apologetics, moved away from the old Princeton conception of apologetics in a presuppositional direction. And I hope we can show you some of that later, Lord willing, if we have the time.

    Point number four, Van Til could applaud and support Machen’s historical defense of the faith, says Boston, even as Machen could appreciate and approve the developments in methodology and philosophical defense by Van Til. Now, our question here is, was Van Til aware of Machen’s historical defense of the faith and its deviation from old Princeton towards presupposition? Consider the history.

    How much would Machen really know about Van Til before he actually recruited and hired him? Consider that in 1906, when Van Til was 11 years old, Machen joined the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary, such that during Van Til’s teenage and college years, Machen distinguished himself as an intelligent and defender of the historical Christian faith, with articles such as Jesus and Paul, Christianity and Culture, and History and Faith. In 1921, the year that Van Til entered Calvin Theological Seminary, Machen’s first major book and apologetically masterpiece, The Origin of Paul’s Religion, was published. in 1922, being impressed with the faculty of Princeton Seminary, consisting of the likes of Machen, Boss, Charles Hodge, Dean Wilson, and the international prestige of Princeton University. Van Til transferred there to later earn his THM from the seminary in 1925 and his PhD from the university in 1927. While a seminary student, Van Til lived on the same floor with Machen in Alexander Hall. During his five intellectually intense years at Princeton, Van Til came to know and respect Machen on a personal basis.

    He was there when Machen was embroiled in the theological and ecclesiastical controversy over Fawcett’s notorious address, Shall the Fundamentalists Win, in 1922. and with the signing of the Alberta Affirmation in December of 1923. Machen often preached fervently in defense of the faith as stated in supply in the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton from 1923 to 1924. It was also during this time that Machen wrote his two books, Christianity and Liberalism in 1923, And what is faith in 1925? In addition to articles defending the faith such as Is Christianity True in 1923, The God of Early Christians in 1924, The Modern Use of the Bible in 1925, The Relation of Religion to Science and Philosophy in 1926. And is the Bible right about Jesus in 1927?

    In light of Van Til’s admiration for Machen, Machen’s personal proximity, right there down the hall, and the obvious bearing of Machen’s scholarship on Van Til’s chosen interest in apologetics, argued Lawson, it is unreasonable to think that Van Til could be unaware of Machen’s position and the details of his method of defense. Given Van Til’s brilliance, it is unreasonable to think that he did not understand them.

    He knew what he was getting into. What about Mason? Point five, Machen could appreciate and approve the developments in methodology and philosophical defense by van Gogh. And Watson argues this. Was Machen aware, this is the question, was Machen aware of van Gogh’s presuppositional apologetic methodology before he recruited him to teach apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary? Once again, consider the history.

    Upon entering Princeton as a middler, that is a second year student, Van Til began to make a strong impression on his professors, and on Machen in particular. Consider the fact that Van Til had already studied under W.H. Jellema at Calvin, and he had read the works of Abraham Kuyper in the Dutch language. Being, as Machen’s esteemed mentor at Princeton, B.B. Warfield had published a critique, I’m sorry, published a critical discussion of Kuyper’s view of apologetics while Machen was a seminary student. Could Machen have missed this in his personal contacts and conversations with Van Til? Van Til had demonstrated his philosophical proficiency before the faculty by writing the prize-winning student papers for both the 1923, on evil and theodicy, and for 1924, on the will and its theological relations, as well as by his taking simultaneous philosophy courses at the university each semester, with Machen hearing of A. A. Bowman’s high praise for Plato’s competence in metaphysics. And having thus gained Machen’s attention as a seminary student, Two months before the granting of his doctorate in 1927, Van Til published in the Princeton Theological Review a critique of A.N. Whitehead’s 1926 lecture series entitled Religion in the Making.

    In this article, Van Til identifies the author’s presuppositions. He exposes his denial of a creature-creature distinction. He exposes his subjection to God, the author’s subjection to God, to man’s autonomous judgment. He identifies the internal contradiction and inadequacy of the author’s worldview. And Van Til explains why biblical Christianity alone provides the solution to the author’s conundrum.

    So in this, Van Til’s first published article, no less in the Princeton Theological Review, his presuppositional direction of thought was displayed before the faculty of Princeton. including, of course, J. Ressa Machin. Any questions so far? We’ll move on. In 1928, the following year, Princeton Seminary invited Van Til to take a leave from his new pastorate and serve the seminary as an instructor in apologetics. This was quite an honor, making him the youngest member of the faculty. This is what his hero and friend, Das Machin, in a letter to his mother had to say about Van Till’s invitation to teach at Princeton. He wrote, makes him wrote to his mother, the best piece of news for some time is that Mr. Van Till, a recent graduate of the seminary has, despite Dr. Stevenson’s vigorous opposition, been asked by the director’s curriculum committee to teach the classes in apologetics during this year and has accepted. It is the first real forward step that has been taken in some time. Van Til is excellent material from which a professor might ultimately be made.

    And in January… What is Marcus Stevenson objecting? Stevenson was, he might have been on this, yeah, but he was of liberal persuasion. I do believe, if I’m not mistaken about that. But I’ll look it up and try to find an answer for you. In January 1929 Banfield published a review of two books by Hermann Bobing and in this review Banfield called for abandoning the impossible notion of neutral territory in truth or study and insisted on the necessity of schools that are self-consciously Christian in their starting point and in their goal, and I quote, if we would truly employ all the means given us for the propagation and defense of the faith, end quote. And in writing this, Banfield publicly rejected old Princeton’s cherished assumption of neutral or common ground with the unbelievers in apologetic dialogue. More about this later.

    Could Machen, a scholar of excellent perception who had the previous year maintained a close personal relationship with Van Tilt and his wife, could he have missed this? And when in the spring of 1929 the board of Princeton Seminary elected Van Tilt to occupy the very chair of apologetics at Machen to turn down because he saw the writing on the wall where Princeton was going. As Stonehouse writes, Machen expressed his intense gratification at this development. Speaking of Van Til’s special equipment for the work and his great success with the students. From this, it is evident, says Bonson, that Machen was conscious of, interested in, and personally applauded the character and quality of Van Til’s apologetic location.

    Any questions here? So you can see Bonson’s thesis. Now let’s see if we can back it up in terms of put some meat on the bones here and try to understand some of the particulars. First of all, let’s take a brief look, cursory look, at Van Tillis’ apologetics. Is that possible?

    Fortunately, we’ve just been through a quarter in apologetics, so I wouldn’t even address it had we not OK, so the notion of apologetical incompatibility between Machen and Van Til apparently springs from, or definitely springs from, harboring misleading assumptions about Van Til’s view of the use of empirical or historical evidence, arguing for the evidence from history that Paul was converted before that, the resurrection took place, and such things.

    And on one hand, and also, Banquo’s use of theistic proofs, they characterize, or I’m sorry, they caricature that. They get it wrong. What did Banquo believe with regard to using theistic proofs in defending the faith? Unless, of course, this error, thinking that Minkin and Banquo are, you know, opposed to one another, it may spring from an equally misconceived notion of what Machen thought about them as well, about van Til’s view of using historical evidence and using mystic proofs. Now these misrepresentations are unfounded in the light of the published works of Machen and van Til, which we shall see, but arise from faulty preconceptions of what their positions must imply and from inadequate familiarity with their teaching.

    To take just one of many, sadly, lamentably, many available illustrations of this, Clark Pinnock, the apologist, has portrayed Van Til as maintaining that, quote, it is not only useless, but wrong to appeal to theistic arguments or historical vindications in defense of the Christian faith. Unquote. That’s what Clark Pinnock thinks that Van Til is saying. He’s not.

    As opposed to or standing over against Van Til, he erroneously thinks, Pinnock teaches that a, quote, a philosophy of Christian evidences which employs argument and historical evidence is needed, lest the gospel be discredited as a grand and unwarranted assumption.

    Okay, Van Til, there are at least parts of that that Van Til would be in hearty agreement. to explain this sort of thing, and I trust we can unpack that. Efforts must be made then to clarify and explain just where van Gogh stood, looking first at the issue of theistic proofs, and second, at the issue of empirical evidence for Christianity. Now, first of all, the objective proof of Christian theism according to Van Til. Point one, Van Til’s criticism of the theistic proofs has always and only been directed against the proofs as they were traditionally formulated, understood, and applied.

    That is, as presupposing man as ultimate or autonomous. See my credo. for this, and I hope we’ll get to that. I hope we’ll have time to study my credo during this quarter, which we shall see. But just in summary, before we go any further anyway, let’s take a look at two worldviews. Autonomous man, on the one hand, which would be your presupposition, or what we would call biblical Christianity, or Christian theism.

    Biblical Christianity, some call it the Reformed Faith or Calvinism. Now this should be familiar to some of you. This circle represents God and this is the created universe and all that it contains. Things seen and unseen, heaven and hell included. Everything, this is the universe, this is God.

    And of course God How does God execute his decrees? God executes his decrees in the works of creation and providence. The decrees of God, what are the decrees of God? His eternal purpose according to the power of his will, whereby for his own, let’s see, he foreordain whatsoever comes to pass for his own glory. Creation and providence here.

    All right, and as opposed to this, There is what we might call paganism in its various degrees of sophistication. And here, in the midst of this chance universe, which is completely irrational, it just happened to roll out there for no particular reason, we have man. And man is kind of a crown, man is king. Man measures all things. Man is the ounce of rationality. and reason and logic in the midst of all this chaos.

    You look at that and say, how can this of a chance universe. What’s more, it doesn’t seem to work, does it? Because you have all these repeatable, eternal, unchangeable laws of nature, natural law, laws of physics, laws of other schools of science, past, present, and future.

    And he’s wearing a red shirt. And we all look at him and say, he has a red shirt. Why do we all recognize red is red? Why do we all write down the words R-E-D, or letters R-E-D, and say, that’s red. And we all understand that. We can translate that. And why is it that tomorrow, we’ll say the same thing? And the next day, and we look in the past. There’s continuity. Think about these things. Van Til thought about these things. And he said, you cannot justify that in a system like that. Why? Because anything new can come. and mess it up. Now what’s the difference between sophisticated paganism, or paganism in unsophisticated form, and Arminianism? That.

    You just add God to the picture, that’s all. This God is too small. This God does not control all things. For example, There’s something out here that could be the will of man, and that’s something that is outside of God’s reach. God does not determine, according to the Arminian, what man will do.

    Man is still wearing that crown. There’s a problem here. So if you come and make an argument, you’re giving up the goose. You’re giving up the farm here. Because what happens is you’re saying, OK, man, what do you think of of the law of God, or what do you think of these things? And he’ll say, well, has not God said, well, let me be the judge of that. And man has an axe to grind. More about this, you see. In other words, man is sinful and fallen, and he will always give you an answer that he likes. After all, if he’s the judge and you give him that share as judge, then you’ve completely given up the argument. More about this later, but point number two, any questions about this? I hope you have questions, but later on. Point number two with regard to Van Til’s use of the theistic proofs and such. Van Til realized that there is no natural theology.

    Now according to Romans 1, the created realm of nature simply provides uninterpreted raw data which merely makes possible, provided men rationally reflect on it correctly, which they don’t, a natural knowledge of God as the eventual conclusion of the reasoning. Alright, you might say, okay, well, look, there’s all these forces of nature, maybe there are little gods here, you know, a god of the sea, a god of the sun, a god of the sky, who brings rain and everything, and that sort of thing, maybe that’s what it is, but that’s all the best they can come up with, and they may even say, like Aristotle, there’s an unmoved mover, yeah, that’s it, yeah, he brings order to everything. all of the universals, but he knows none of the particulars.

    And we can’t know him. We’re still here, in our own right, untouched by him. Alright, is this the best we can do for natural theology? This is the best that the fallen man has come up with. There is no natural theology. Even Adam in the garden needed to have special word revelation. Look at Genesis 2, verses 16-17. Adam needed to be told. See that tree over there, Adam? That’s the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. See that tree over there, Adam? That’s the tree of life. Adam could not have known that on his own.

    And two, fallen man by his sinful nature twists the truth of God as revealed in nature through his own destruction and must be made alive and indwelt by the spirit of God to reflect upon it correctly. Romans 1 verse 18 of course says that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against ungodliness of men who by their ungodliness suppress the truth.

    They don’t want to hear it. Why? Because every time they look in the mirror they say What have I done to the image of God? Because, again, Romans 2, verse 15, the law of God, the work of the law of God is written on the hearts. And those conflicting thoughts accuse them.

    They realize, I know the law of God because I have moral indignation when I see it broken, and in fact I know that I myself have broken the law of God. But they try to efface the inevitable truth that God has created them, because they do know God, as Romans 1 verse 21 would say. Although they knew God, They did not give thanks to him as God. And they know they should have, so they’re guilty. They know they’re covenant breakers.

    Point number three, Vancho’s apologetic is based upon confidence in natural revelation, not natural with the word of God. Van Kiel insists upon the objective validity of the argument for the existence of God and for the truth of Christianity in another form. But he gives a valid argument more about this later. Anything, any questions thus far? This is very deep stuff.

    Ed. Would you go so far as to contend that the philosophy of Dorfield and Princeton? I would say that Dorfield and Princeton had an apologetic that was more consistent with this. They were Calvinistic, but for some reason they just dropped the ball completely and picked up an Arminian view of apologetics. Good question.

    Another point, Van Til forcefully refutes the notion that it is useless for the regenerate to reason with the unregenerate insisting that we must. This is how he deviated from Kuiper. Kuyper was saying, don’t waste your time with the unbelievers. I mean, let them hear the word of God preached that they may be made alive, but why even bother?

    And Dan Kill says, no, we have to remove, we have to take every thought captive. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to the way of Christ. He has to be shown. He has to be shown that his argument is invalid, even though he’ll disagree with you, and yet you have to leave him with his tongue clinging to his jaw. Point number six, Van Til is decidedly critical of the theistic attitude.

    What’s that? which comes to expression frequently in the statement of the experiential proof of the truth of Christianity, people will say that they know that they are saved and that Christianity is true no matter what the philosophical or scientific evidence for it, against it may be.

    Now God says it, I believe it, that tells it, or put it another way, as the hymn says, remember that hymn that you won’t find in your Trinity hymnal, you ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart. okay, there is the witness of the spirit, but there’s more than that, isn’t it? God has not left himself without a witness, has he? The word of God, okay, and yes, it naturally follows that if the word of God is true, then the evidence will fall into line with regard to the resurrection of Jesus Christ and other such things, that the Bible speaks of very clearly, all right?

    But Emanuel is, ironically, he’s accused of being a fetus, you know, one who says, well, just faith alone. It doesn’t matter what the intellect says. You have to believe what the Bible says unquestionably. Do you understand what the Bible says, even? Do you even question your own interpretation of the Bible, Christian? But you understand that in seeking to believe something that the Bible says is true no matter what philosophy or science or evidence for it or against it may be, you realize that in thus seeking withdrawal from all intellectual argument, such fetuses have virtually admitted that the validity of the argument against Christianity is, you know, they’ve admitted the validity.

    They’re saying it is a valid argument, it is a true argument. They will have to believe in their hearts what they have virtually allowed to be intellectually indefensible, if they often are defensible. Alright? Any questions? Van Til insists that the argument with the unbeliever must be regarding the preconditions of all intelligible experience, logic, science, ethics and such, an argument from the impossibility of the contrary. and the irrationalism of how it came to be. The universe, that is, and all things. Matter in motion. How does matter in motion beget love? How does matter in motion beget the laws of physics? How does matter in motion beget the moral truths? Why is your conscience stricken if you kill someone? Matter in motion.

    No, there’s something wrong here. creation, nothing can come in and surprise him. No boogeyman can be out there. No other, you know, God called will, ho, ho, ho, ho, you know, coming to attack God. If you allow anything outside of God’s control, you’ve opened a terrible Pandora’s box. You don’t know what else, what is out there, because God doesn’t know what’s out there. we just say that they are inconsistent talents. Okay? Get with the program! Come on! And so we would encourage them accordingly. Alright, time’s fleeting here.

    What about evidences, according to Van Til? Would Van Til, indeed, as his critics claim, refuse to have anything to do with presenting verifying evidence for the Christian faith and dismissing the unbelievers’ questions without even hearing? The truth is that Van Til did not in the slightest reject the proper use of inductive reasoning and verbal evidences and apologetics. That’s the truth.

    Listen to what Van Til says about the phenomenon of scripture and the use of historical evidence in the defense of the Bible. He says, the point is we are told that, and I quote, an infallible Bible, there shouldn’t be any discrepancies. There should be no statement of historical fact in scripture that is contradictory to a statement of historical fact given elsewhere. Yet higher criticism, that is the biblical critics, has in modern times found what it thinks are facts that cannot possibly be harmonized with the idea of an infallible Bible.

    What shall be the attitude of the Orthodox believer with respect to this? Shall he be an obscurantist and hold to the doctrine of the authority of Scripture, though he knows that it can empirically be shown to be contrary to the facts of Scripture themselves? it goes without saying that such should not be his attitude, and listen to what Banto says about the use of experimental inductive study according to the scientific method. What does Banto say about the validity of the scientific method? He says it’s quite commonly held that we cannot accept anything that is not the result of a sound scientific methodology.

    With this we can as Christians heartily agree, the Christian position is certainly not opposed to experimentation and observation. The greater amount of detailed study and the more carefully such study is undertaken, the more truly Christian the method will be.

    Let’s skip ahead a little bit here, and let’s take a look at Van Til’s view of evidence as valuable. as both offering the Godís children the answers and he so as not to be intellectually troubled when hearing of learned objections of non-Christian scholars and silencing the futile empirical objections of unbelievers to the claims of Christianity and clearing away the mental debris that could cause intellectual prejudice. So the believers can open the Bible and say, OK, well, what does the Bible say? What I’ve heard about the Bible is not true. Though valuing the evidences as indispensable, historical evidences, or the work of Machen, Van Til would insist that evidences can never stand on their own in Christian apologetics.

    This should be obvious enough from what God the Word teaches us. What people think about the observed evidence is affected by non-observational beliefs. Of course we know that. Why else would the Jewish leaders have the evidence of the resurrection and tell the people that the disciples came by night and stole this body while we guards were asleep? In dealing with the claims of Christ, nobody is truly detached and uncommitted one way or another. No man can serve two masters. And he who is not with me is against me, says our Lord.

    In Matthew 6.24 and 12.30 respectively.

    The non-observational commitments, or that is the presuppositions of the unbeliever, They exchange the truth about God for lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the creator, Romans 1.25. These presuppositions of the unbeliever are objectively foolish and lead to the destruction of knowledge.

    They became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened, Romans 1.21.

    And for all men inescapably do you have an inner knowledge of God, Romans 1.21-22, which we quoted in 2.15. The work of law is written on their hearts. One, the one who’s of sovereign power and plan uphold the universe’s regularity. They know he exists, working all things after the counsel of his own will. Look at the order in the universe. Ephesians 1 verse 11 explains that to them. That’s in consonance with what Pentecostal politics is.

    Five, yet unbelievers are deeply hostile to this knowledge. and suppress it in unrighteousness, as we said, preferring to walk in the vanity of their minds and darken their understanding, like Ephesians 4, verses 17-18 says, and 6, that explains why it is that regarding such empirical evidences and the resurrection, if they do not believe Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead, Luke 16, verse 31.

    Nevertheless, the objective revelation provided by God and the evidence of history in scripture is such that we can, through the resurrection, know for certain that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ, Acts 2, verse 36, and also Paul and Mars Hill. God has proven that he will come to judge the world by raising this Christ who will be the judge from the dead. We can know the certainty of the things in which we have been instructed, Luke 1, verse 4. And according to the Apostle John, 1 John 2, verse 3, we know that we know.

    So Bantow insisted that the evidences which are innumerable must be presented in a manner which compels a return to the true nature as the confirmatory of Christianity. And how is this done? Bantow says it’s indispensable to present empirical evidence to non-believers. You have to do that. But he immediately adds, I would not talk endlessly about the facts and more facts without ever challenging the non-believers’ philosophy of facts. So traditional apologetics doesn’t do it because it separates the general defense of theism as step one. We’ll use the natural theology to say that there is a God. And then we’ll convince people with other proofs that Christianity specifically is true. And it is the God who exists. God of Christianity. Any questions so far? Time’s almost up.

    A few examples from Machen. Machen did believe in the use of presuppositions, for example. As early as 1926, Machen recognized that presuppositions controlled the divergent implications which would be drawn from the evidence. In other words, your worldview, be it Christian, historical evidence.

    There is no such thing as neutrality from philosophical bias. Machen said, if the separation of science from religion is unwarranted, so also it may be remarked in passing is the separation of science from philosophy. Dr. Mullen seems to be supposing that there is such a thing as modern scientific criticism of the New Testament, which is independent of philosophical presuppositions, or neutral. the results of which can be safely accepted by men of different shades of philosophical and religious opinion. As a matter of fact, we do not think that such a neutral, purely scientific criticism exists.

    The study of the New Testament, even in the sphere of literary criticism, and certainly in the sphere of historical criticism, cannot get along without presuppositions. Says Machen, in the Relation to Religion to Science and Philosophy in the Princeton Theological Review in 1926, three years before he hired Cornelius Van Hill.

    And our time is up. I wish I could say more. But again, please, please, when the morning instruction is over, run. Don’t walk, run. And pick up this copy from the library before somebody else gets it. And you can see this for yourself. All right? Well, very good. Then let us prepare for worship.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Cornelius Van Til: His Life

    Cornelius Van Til: His Life

    About this sermon

    A Morning Instruction class on the life of Cornelius Van Til, opening with Jude’s call to contend for the faith. The lesson traces the Dutch Reformed background into which Van Til was born in 1895, including the secession churches of the 1830s and the five points of Calvinism set against Arminianism, then his emigration, his studies at Calvin and Princeton, and his joining J. Gresham Machen at the founding of Westminster Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, where he served until his death in 1987.

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    Sermon transcript

    In the interest of togetherness, I’m going to ask that the folk who are sitting on that side would move over and join the others on this side, please. Mr. Maryland, we have a handout. Please make sure at least every family has one. I think I printed about two dozen copies of our handout, so please either receive one or sit next to someone who does have it so you’ll be able to look together, if you would, this morning.

    As we begin today, I’m going to ask, first of all, that we turn in the scriptures to the book of Jude, Jude chapter 1. John Doyle, if I could ask you to read chapter 1 through 7, verses 1 through 7, rather, chapter 1. Book of Jude, starting in verse one. Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ, may mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.

    Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you content earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. And angels who do not, who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, he has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they, in the same way as these, indulge in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. Thank you, John.

    Let’s pray together, shall we? Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the church, and we thank you for the faith, once for all, delivered to the saints. And we pray, oh Father, not only that we would embrace that faith, but that we would, as the Church of Jesus Christ, contend earnestly for that faith. And we pray, Father, as we begin a new quarter of adult morning instruction today, that you will be with us. May you grant us the power and grace and presence of your Holy Spirit, that together we might grow in that grace, oh Lord, and may we make progress in our faith. Devoted to Christ, devoted to one another as members of Christ. We ask, O God, that all things that we do and say here today would be for your glory and for the edification of your people. And this we do pray now in Jesus’ name, giving thanks.

    Amen. I’m going to ask that you also turn this morning in the confession of faith, and I’ll ask you to turn to chapter one, which is found on page 673 in the back of your hymnals. Chapter one of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Mr. Brandenbury, I’m going to ask you to begin reading, if you would, and I’ll have you begin reading at paragraph four, and then, Carl, if you’ll read paragraph five.

    The authority of the holy scriptures for which it ought to be believed and obeyed depends not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God, who is truth itself, the author thereof, and therefore it is to be received because it is the word of God.

    We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God. the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God. Yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts. Okay, thank you both. I’ve selected this portion of the confession this morning as it speaks of the authority and power of the word of God, and the fact that the scriptures themselves are their own best defender, depending not upon the testimony of any man or church for their authority, but solely upon God, who is truth himself. And so as we have been thinking in the last quarter about the apologetics enterprise, it is incumbent upon us to remember that the word itself is its own best defender, and as Cornelius Van Til has taught us and others have taught us. We begin with that presupposition of faith, that the word of God is the word of God.

    And so ours then, in accordance with the book of Jude, to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, is that we receive the faith that is delivered in the scripture that has been spoken through the prophets and the apostles. And it is that faith then that we are defending, that we are contending earnestly for.

    And this morning we take up A new quarter, as you know, and I’ll ask that you take the handout that I’ve given you, and I’m going to read from that for just a bit here, if you would. In this quarter, we take up the life and work of Cornelius Van Til, using a biography written by John R. Meather, and I trust many of you have that book already. If you have not received it and would like to have it, we can obtain it for you. a biography written by John R. Meather, librarian and associate professor of church history at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. Mr. Meather is also the denominational historian for the OPC, and he serves as a ruling elder at Reformation OPC in Oviedo, Florida. The author holds the thesis, and this is an important thesis throughout the course that we’ll be doing this quarter, that Van Til’s theological commitments cannot be understood apart from his ecclesiology.

    In other words, his theology and his ecclesiology are one and the same. They stand together. In other words, the faith that Van Til sought to defend was the faith of Reformed churches that found expression in the Reformed creeds. In other words, for him, Apologetics is the defense of the faith once for all delivered to the saints, that is, the Presbyterian and Reformed faith over against all other expressions of Christianity.

    We take up the life of Antill as a fitting follow-up to our most recent quarter in adult morning instruction spent studying apologetics. We might say that apologetics and the defense of the faith was the life work of Cornelius Antill, brought to expression through his life in the church, and particularly in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church where he served from 1936 at the church’s founding through his death in 1987. As part of our introduction this morning, I thought it might be helpful to set before you a brief chronological summary of some important dates and events in Van Til’s life.

    This list is by no means exhaustive, although it may be a bit exhausting, but here we go. I’m just going to draw heavily upon the handout this morning, so bear with me as we go through that. And my hope is that in presenting this to you is that this will be a paper that you’ll be able to use throughout the quarter as we look at the various aspects of Van Til’s life. But also my hope and my prayer is that not only will these dates appear important in the life of Cornelius Van Til, but that we will increasingly see the importance of these dates and events in our Christian lives. in our faith and walk as well. And so we begin. And to compile this, I basically relied upon the first couple of sections from the biography. So this may be very familiar to some of you. I hope it’s not redundant or too tedious. But I trust it will be helpful.

    First of all, we begin in the year 1561. And in that year, the Belgic Confession is adopted. Now, if you’re familiar, or perhaps not, the Belgic Confession was a truly reformed confession of faith adopted in 1561 by the Dutch Reformed Churches. And so we begin at that point. And I might ask at this point, does anyone know the date in which the Westminster Confession of Faith was adopted?

    Yes, Steve. Well, close, close. Anyone else want to make a guess at that, the date of the adoption of the Westminster Confession of Faith? Yes, Mr. Malin, please. 1646. 1646, 1648, those are the years of the Westminster Assembly. Yes, so Steve, it’s very close, and we’ll take that as a good answer. So at this point, I simply want to draw your attention to the fact that this is the age of the formulation of the Reformed Confessions following the Protestant Reformation. As you think of what happened in the year of Martin Luther tacking his 95 feces on the door at the church in Wittenberg, who can give us that date? What year was that? Yes, in the back, Shanna, please. I’m sorry? The year 1517 is correct, yes. The 95 Theses, 1517.

    So we’re seeing the Protestant Reformation has begun and taken root and the reforms, particularly as you think of the writings and work of the systematician of the Reformation, John Calvin, his work is being compiled and the church is growing in her understanding of what the scriptures actually teach. And so from 1517, to the late 1500s to the 1600s, the church is in the process of formulating her understanding of the scriptures that have come to light once again in the midst of the great awakening that occurred as a result of the Protestant Reformation. 1561, the Belgian Confession. 1648, the Westminster Confession of Faith. And you’ll note in the next date, 1563, the Heidelberg Catechism is written and translated into Dutch. Again, another important Reformation document, the Heidelberg Catechism, which is a very personal first person, oftentimes in its formulations, in which the church is taught to confess her faith as her faith. those things we believe, the scriptures to teach concerning the faith.

    And then in the year 1618 and 1619, or the year 1618-19, the Synod of Dortrek, or Dort for short, the Synod of Dort convenes adopting the canons of Dort, marking the victory of Calvinistic orthodoxy over Arminianism. And thus, as a consequence, now the three forms of unity become the doctrinal affirmations of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands. And what are those three forms of unity? The Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the canons of Dort, compiled together are identifiable as the three forms of unity adopted and received and affirmed by the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands.

    And as you can well imagine, these are important dates in the history of the church in the Netherlands, but these are important dates as they relate to us also. Of course, Cornelius van Til being a Hollander himself born in the Netherlands and transferring to America in time, These are important years of formulation, not only for the church, but for men like Cornelius Van Til and ourselves, as we have come to embrace the things that we embrace. And I’m going to pause for a moment at 1618-19 at the Synod of Dort. When we think of the canons of Dort, how do we think of that in the vernacular? What were the things that were adopted at the Synod of Dort? the acronym that we are so familiar with as a summation of the Calvinistic faith. Yes, Steve? The tulip. The tulip. And it’s certainly appropriate in that the tulip is known in Holland, right? In other words, so here is a plant that has its roots in the Netherlands and the tulip.

    And so the question that I follow up there is, if those were the five points of Calvinism adopted as the canons of Doerr, Why was the church addressing those five points in that manner? And as it says in the affirmation here, it was dealing with Calvinistic, what the Reformed church believed over against Arminianism. So actually, the five points of Calvinism were a response and the church’s answer to the five points of Arminianism. And I’m going to ask you to list the five points of Arminianism then. If you know the five points of Calvinism, you ought to be able to identify the five points of Arminianism. What would be the first point of Arminianism, please?

    Mark, do you want to try and answer that one? I’m going to answer my dad’s question. OK. The first point would be when he said there was a book called Reformed Faith. Sure, the Reformed Faith, things that the Reformed churches received and adopted. Well, let’s go back to an easier one. What is the first point of the five points of Calvinism? We’re totally depraved. I’m sorry, Doris? Totally depraved. Total depravity, OK, the T of the tulip, total depravity.

    So judging from that, what would you say would be the first point of Arminianism? Yes, Steve? Well, obviously, we’re not totally depraved. There is some portion of our being that can make a decision without God’s help. and receive the gospel. Is it free will? Precisely. In other words, the Arminians were endeavoring to preserve the ability of man to choose, to make the decision of faith or not. It was still within man’s power to do that. And where does the word Arminianism come from? Yes, Ed Brandeberry. Jacob Arminius. Jacob Arminius. What country do you suppose Jacob Arminius was from? from Holland, he was a Netherlander indeed.

    And so the church convened at a time in which the writings and teachings of Jacob, or James Arminius, were being, were offering a serious challenge to the unity and peace of the church in the day. And so the Synod of Dort was particularly convened to address the disturbance in the church that was being created by the writings of Jacob Arminianus, and those who upheld his teaching were a group that had the name Remonstrance, The remonstrants received and accepted the writings of James Arminius as a challenge to the writings of Calvin and Beza and the reformers. And so the Synod of Dort is meeting to address those challenges being offered by the remonstrants set forth in Arminianism.

    And the first point of Arminianism being, man is not totally depraved, but man is still capable of making the choice of faith. And so the second point of Arminianism, What’s the second point of communism, Paul? Unconditional election. Drawing from that, what would you surmise to be the second point of Arminianism, then?

    I would probably have to guess that that would be that they could choose of their own ability to believe in God, and that he would choose them by something that he might have seen in them, that they would do in the future. Precisely. In other words, God elects, according to the Arminian, God elects on the condition of foreseen faith in the believer, the believer who can make that choice in and of himself. So yes, not unconditional election where God chooses whom he will without any condition in the man or woman to make that choice, but simply his pure unmerited favor. No, for the Arminian, the choice is based on something that God foresees in the future, the faith of that person who would choose. So God’s selection is based on a condition, a pre-seen or a previewed condition in the man, indeed.

    The third point of Calvinism, please. Yes, Peter. Limited atonement. Limited atonement, and the Arminian view of that particular doctrine would be what you think. probably unlimited atonement and everybody. Okay, unlimited atonement, another way of putting that would be universal redemption.

    In other words, that Christ died for all men. Christ did not just die for the elect, but the Arminian would offer that Christ died for all. And it is because Christ died for all that man with his ability to choose may indeed choose or not choose Christ as he has offered to him. So that’s the third point of Arminianism.

    The fourth point of Calvinism, the fourth canon of Dort? David? Irresistible grace. OK. And what do you think the converse of that would be in Arminianism? Resistible grace. Resistible grace, yes. The fourth point of Arminianism, resistible grace. Which means what, David? That God’s favor can be rejected. At the end of the day, it’s not God’s favor that decides men’s hearts. I hope you all heard that. David is saying, at the end of the day, it is not God’s favor that makes the change, but man’s response or resistance to God’s favor shown in the preaching of the gospel.

    So again, we’re at man-centered. You begin to see the pattern here of the man-centeredness of the Arminian belief system. That’s the fourth point. The fifth point, then. First of all, the fifth point of Calvinism, or the fifth canon of Dort. Yes, Doris, please.

    Perseverance of the saints. Perseverance of the saints and the converse in the Arminian system? It’s like you can be separated from God. God will persevere with you to the end. He can kind of give you up. OK. Again, I hope you all heard that. In other words, it’s up to you.

    God does not keep you to the end, but it depends upon you whether you resist or continue to walk by faith or not, according to the Arminians. And that is a very, very sad doctrine, in my estimation. For indeed, it is saying what Jesus said about no one being able to snatch us out of his hand is just saying the opposite, that someone might indeed snatch us out of the hand of Jesus Christ. You might snatch yourself out of the hand of Jesus Christ, is what the Arminian is saying. And that’s shameful, I believe.

    But again, trying to get things straight in our minds as to those things that we confess and believe. And so you can see the importance, then, I trust, of the Synod of Dort. And I trust those years will be inserted in your memory as well, 16, 18, and 19. This is before the Westminster Confession of Faith is adopted, of course. And so that is part of our history as well.

    The five points of Calvinism that come to expression in various ways in the Westminster Confession of Faith had already been articulated and wonderfully conceptualized in the Belgic Confession and in turn in the Heidelberg Catechism. And so those who met at the Westminster Assembly were drawing upon the work and encouragement of reformers who had gone before, and we rejoice in that.

    We move on in our outline then this morning. And I would just ask you to consider that about the time of the convening of the Senate of Dort, the settlement of New Netherlands in the Hudson Valley in North America has begun or is beginning. Again, thinking of this not only in terms of the history of Cornelius Van Til, but in terms of your own history as an American and as a Christian believer, a believer of Reformed and Presbyterian faith. At about the time the Synod of Dort and the Five Points of Calvinism are being argued out and hammered home in terms of an affirmation and creedal statement is about the same time that the Lord providentially was sending forth to a new world an immigration that had begun in this country as well. I follow up that with this note. Yes, sir? Is there a question or a comment? And so that also had an effect on their positions, some of their positions as they then came over to New England. Yes. I hope you heard that as well.

    In other words, what it is saying is that the persecution that had begun in England, the persecution of the churches and Reformed Christians in particular, the Puritans and others, many of them migrated up to the Netherlands as a place of refuge and relief in the midst of their persecutions. And it was in the consequence of their having been in the Netherlands that many of them ended up seeking relief further, came to the New World as well. And so again, a very significant historical moment and point in the life of the church, and our church as well. Another note from our biography, as well as of some significance here, is the Reformation in the Netherlands and Europe is followed closely thereafter. by the Catholic counter-reformation and the influences of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. And as a consequence, within the churches, within the faithful churches, concern was beginning to arise among the Orthodox that the Netherlandse Heerboende Kerk, that is the Dutch Reformed Church, has begun to spiritually degenerate.

    We’ll pause there for just a moment. What is meant by the term the Catholic Counter-Reformation? Has anyone heard of that and can speak a word about that? What was the Catholic Counter-Reformation? David, you want to offer a little? Well, Spain and some other Catholic countries, in response to Luther and Calvin, formed armies and, you know, and went in against some of the Protestant countries to return them back to the Catholic fold. One of the great, David is suggesting that in Spain, armies were formed and all sorts of things as trying to respond to what had been initiated by Luther and others.

    The Counter-Reformation is particularly identifiable with what could be seen as an attempt on the part of the Catholic Church to morally correct itself. In other words, one of the great thing that was coming out of the Reformation was Luther and others were identifying the great abuses, the great moral corruption that was within the Church. And so this was not a reformation in the true sense of going back to the Scripture and being reformed in doctrine and life, but a counter-reformation in that the Catholic Church was basically trying to clean up its act, trying to clean up its morality that was so blatantly wrong in the monasteries and other places. And so the Counter-Reformation was an attempt to soften the blow of the Reformation by simply being able to put on a more moralistic face to the world.

    And so that Counter-Reformation was having some impact among the Reformed and filtering over as to say, well, maybe things are not so bad in the Catholic Church after all. And so you can see how that might arise or cause concern to arise among the Reformed. that maybe we were wrong, maybe the Reformation was out of whack.

    All right, and what about the Enlightenment and the French Revolution? What themes, what are some of the ideology that arises out of the Enlightenment? Doris? During the Enlightenment, weren’t the sciences and man’s thought elevated above scripture? That’s what I think of when I think of the Enlightenment. Doris is suggesting that the Enlightenment elevated man and his study and his use of science and his ability to think.

    Again, thinking as a Vandilian, you can see how the Enlightenment was was very much a source of the idea of human autonomy, man’s ability to stand on his own, to think for himself, to reason, to master the world, to master ideology. And again, in man’s ability, think of Arminius and think of the Arminian theology and think of how that was working itself out in the secular world as well, of the elevation of man’s ability to think and reason the autonomy of man not needing God to tell him what to do and believe, but rather man’s own ability to search those things out for himself. And you can see then how that encroachment of the Enlightenment and the me-first mentality of the Enlightenment would become the concern of Van Til and his apologetic where the whole business of human autonomy is challenged to the core. to the quick by the fact that God in his word is truth itself revealed, the self-attesting word, the self-attesting Christ. And this is what Bentil was so diligent to defend over against the conception of human autonomy and man’s reason being lifted above the height of scripture, where science replaces the word of God.

    And you can see then as Enlightenment thinking And the concept of the I, that is the first person singular of man’s autonomy, would be raising a concern within the Dutch Reformed churches as those kinds of ways of thinking might have had some tendency to filter into the life of the church.

    Let’s turn on to page two in our outline, if you would, please. After those synods and assemblies that had so formulated the Reformation thinking as the Belgian Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort, in 1816 in the Netherlands, there was a Netherlandic National Synod that was convened, obviously at the call of the state, which altered the ministerial subscription formulas and relaxes the polity, that is, the church order that had been so diligently established at Dort. Again, this is another change that has come very quickly, very heavily upon the Reformed churches, and in this case, actually a national synod that undid much of what had been accomplished at earlier synods and councils in the adoption of the Reformed faith. This was a denial of such things. particularly as it related to what was required in terms of ordination vows of subscription for ministers and others. And the church order that was established at Dort, that is the carefully worked out details of scripture as it taught what the church ought to do and believe. Again, think of that in terms of the impact upon not only the church as a whole, but how that would work itself out in all of church history, as it relates to us also.

    In 1834, a man by the name, a pastor by the name of Hendrik de Kock, organizes and leads what is known as an act of secession and return. In Groningen, which is a northern province in the Netherlands, that word secession is the Dutch word of shiding, and I would ask our linguist to give us the actual pronunciation of that word. Give it your best touch ever, if you would, and recognize that that word, as you see it appearing in the textbook and throughout the course here this time, it will mean the secession. And this was a reforming secession, where churches were having to make decisions to disassociate themselves from the reformed church in the Netherlands. That national synod, that prompted the act of secession in return, de Kock himself was the organizer and a planter of several churches there in Northern Netherlands in that area of Groningen, which is where Cornelius Van Til will be born, into that very region where de Kock and others had established secessionist churches.

    And with the National Synod, And these churches that are deciding to secede from the Reformed Church and return to a more confessional, biblical way of practicing the life of the church, you can imagine that state persecution increased upon these churches that were choosing to withdraw from the Dutch Reformed Church.

    And a divergence emerged, a divergence between the Northern and Southern secessionists began to emerge. with the northern party placing greater stress on doctrinal confessional orthodoxy as that had been defined at Dorr. And this northern group also stressed the need for Christian schools and for catechetical instruction of the youth over against the public schools of the state. As a result, state persecution only increased. And along with that, immigration to North America was hastened as well. On the other hand, the Southern party was more pietistic, emphasizing personal conversion and piety over against what they would term dead orthodoxy.

    Have you heard that term before or that criticism from others before? So this party, also a secessionist, but at the same time, much more pietistic in their approach, meaning personal personal belief and practice over against what they would consider to be the dead orthodoxy of the confessional standards that had been adopted years earlier.

    Coming out of that period of the secession, in 1837 to 1920, these are the years, the dates associated with the life of the man Abraham Kuyper, whose influence is identified with a new Calvinistic revival of sorts in the Netherlands, called the Dolianti, which translates as the complaint, which emphasized on his part social and cultural involvement, stressing both the suppositions of antithesis and of common grace.

    Abraham Kuyper, we might comment, rose to the position in Netherlands of prime minister of the Netherlands, and his influence as a teacher and theologian were strongly felt in the Dutch Reformed churches. And even to our very day in our colleges and universities where what we might call transformational Christianity or an approach where Christianity is seen as a way of changing the world, of transforming culture, that very much has its roots in the teachings and writings of Abraham Kuyper. And so this was a strong influence in the Dutch churches as indeed here was a reform of man of some power and persuasion actually rising in a place of political position and power as Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

    In the midst of this controversy and these changes that are coming upon the church in the Netherlands, in 1857, the Christian Reformed Church of North America is formed. Now again, we commented just very briefly earlier upon the immigration of Dutch Calvinist to America. And it’s in 1857 that the Christian Reformed Church of North America is formed. And it is into that church that Cornelius Van Til will be received as a member when he and his family immigrate to the New World as well.

    Again, following our outline, 1898, Abraham Kuyper delivers what is a monumental series of lectures, lectures on Calvinism that he would speak at Princeton Theological Seminary. Those are compiled in book form and are still available today, and a very important contribution to Christian literature, the lectures on Calvinism delivered by Abraham Kuyper at Princeton Seminary. From 1882 to 1902, Herman Bobbink, another Dutch theologian, teaches at Compton Theological School and publishes his Eurephemerida dogmatique or his reform dogmatics.

    These two are available. In fact, just recently in the past few years have these Dutch writings been translated into English. And so they are now available in English. And we might say of Herman Bobbink that he was the systematizer of the Dutch reformed secession and revival that took place there. And he was very close to Kuyper, Kuyper very close to Bobbink, but Bobbink was the, was the great organizer, the great systematizer, and his reform dogmatics are indeed a tremendous contribution to Christian, reformed Christian literature, still at use today and very valuable today. You might also know the book, Our Reasonable Faith, which has been read by many in this congregation and one which is of great value, also by Herman Bobbink. Our Reasonable Faith, which is a short form of the reform dogmatics, actually.

    In 1892, the Geerreformeerde Kerken in Netherlands is formed, thus uniting the Afskaarding and the Doleante. In other words, these two different reformation groups, or revival groups, one being a more confessional, doctrinal, church polity-minded group, the Afskaarding, and the Doleante, the more culturally-minded group, Nevertheless, in 1892, the Reformed Church in the Netherlands is organized in such a way as to bring those two groups together.

    And again, this is the environment, the soil in which Cornelius Van Til was being brought, would be brought up. In 1895, you can see just three years later, CVT, that is Cornelius Van Til, the son of E.T. and Clausine of Van Til, was born in Groningen, in the province of Groningen, to be raised on a small family farms in a number of different cities. They were quite a moving family. They moved from Rotterdast to a new Matil and Olde Kerk and eventually moved to Friesland and the city of Zeppelheisen. And you might note again that this is in northern Netherlands, a province in northern Netherlands, especially where the work of Hendrik van Gogh had been the foundational starting point for many of those churches that organized there in northern Netherlands.

    In 1900, Cornelius Van Til enters a Christian school at age five. And so you think of the Hyperion influence and the doctrinal emphasis of the secession where there was this great emphasis upon Christian education. Van Til himself is a product of Christian schooling, having entered a Christian school at the age of five.

    In 1905, just five years later, the Van Til family emigrates to Hoboken, New Jersey, settling along the west bank of the Hudson River, and then very shortly thereafter, by train, would move and settle in Highland, Indiana, northern Indiana, where they would become a part of and attend the Munster Christian Reformed Church that had been organized in the year 1870. They having moved there just in 1905, in 1907, the Munster Christian School was built. And in 1908, a congregation is organized in Highland, where the Vantills have settled. The Highland Christian Reform Church is organized in 1908. In 1910, Cornelius Vantill becomes the first graduate of Munster Christian School, and that at the age of 15.

    And then thereafter, for four years, we see 1910 to 1914, Van Til works on his father’s farm, a truck farm there in the greater Chicago area. And so you can think of that time and period of our history as a country of the small farms that were feeding the cities. And Chicago, because of immigration, was becoming a major, major city, and the Van Tils were among those providing the produce and other things needful for life in the big cities at that time. And it’s while he was working there on his father’s farm for those four years that he met his neighbor, Rena Closter, who indeed would become his future wife. Some of you are into such formalities and details.

    In 1914, Van Till enrolls at what was then the Calvin Preparatory School in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Later he would transition from the preparatory school to Calvin College, and eventually he would become, at the college, one of the student editors of the Calvin College Chimes. This was a student newspaper, and we read in the biography that Calvin was noted as one who served with some distinction as the editor of that college magazine. In 1921, during his senior year at Calvin College, Cornelius Van Til enrolls as a first-year student at the Theological Seminary of the Christian Reformed Church. This would eventually become Calvin Theological Seminary, but at the time it was the Theological Seminary of the Christian Reformed Church.

    In 1922, Calvin College professor Ralph Janssen is deposed. Ralph Jansen is mentioned particularly as a professor whom Cornelius Van Til had spent much time studying with. And that deposition of Mr. Jansen would have had some dramatic effect upon this young seminarian. In that same year that he is deposed, Van Til himself graduates from Calvin College.

    And in that same year also, in 1922, he enrolls at Princeton Seminary, moving, as it were, from this Dutch Calvinistic school to mainline Presbyterianism, if you will, Princeton Theological Seminary. And you begin to see quite dramatically how this is fitting into the history of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, as Stantill there at Princeton Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, begins his study under Gerhardus Voss and the theological writings of Gerhardus Voss, himself a Dutchman, of course, with the tremendous background of the Dutch Theology, and Gerhardus Voss was a close acquaintance and colleague of Kuyper and Bolling. Indeed, those men sought to persuade Voss to come join with them in the Netherlands at a school there, Voss determining instead to remain in Princeton. And while at Princeton Seminary, not only does Van Til now come into the influence of the sphere of Voss, but also there he is going to meet Jay Gresham Machen, a professor at Princeton, and John Murray, who both enrolled there and would later become a professor himself.

    In 1927, pretty quickly, I would say, Van Til receives the PhD from Princeton. And that same year, he is called to pastor Spring Lake, Michigan, in the city of Spring Lake, Michigan, the Christian Reformed Church that is there. And so for a year, he serves as the pastor of that congregation. Only a year later, 1928, he is called as an instructor of apologetics back at Princeton. And one year later again, 1929, Cornelius Van Til joins the faculty of newly organized Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

    And in 1936, Van Til, who has now aligned himself with Machen and the others, there at Westminster actually joins in that founding group with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, where he would remain a lifelong member and minister until his death in 1987. I’ve not been watching my watch. I’d better check things out. I think I’d better stop at this point.

    Are there any comments or questions this morning, first of all? As I say, this is perhaps not exhaustive, but exhausting. Feel free to mark these up any way you would like to use this as a note-keeping pad or use it as you’re reading through the book, putting into perspective the things you’ll be reading in the biography. And I hope this will be helpful to you. Any questions or comments this morning?

    Yes, Darla, please. I was just wondering, it says that the Heidelberg passage was translated into Dutch. What was the original language? It would have been in the Dutch. It would have been, yes. Yes, Brett, please. I’m sorry? The question was, what was it originally, right? And it was German. It was German. It was German and translated into English.

    Guido de Brie, is that the right person? I’m sorry? Guido de Brie is the author of the Heidelberg Catechism, I believe. One of the writers. One of them. There’s another one as well, I’m afraid. Any other comments or questions? Yes, Marianne. I just want to thank you for this. This is really wonderful. Surely. Because this is something I surely collected. OK.

    Well, again, as you think about this as a total, think about the development of history that precedes and works itself out in the life of Van Til. And we’ll be reading more about Van Til, how that works out, how he works out in the life and history of the OPC.

    Indeed, I would point your attention to our denominational website. And even today, even now, there is at the heading of our Orthodox Presbyterian website, opc.org, a feature article written some years ago by Charlie Dennison entitled, Cornelius Van Til and the Identity of the OPC. In this essay, Dennison is setting up for us the wonderful importance of Van Til in the life of the OPC. And it’s an interesting and somewhat ironic that that article would appear now because it makes mention of the fact that at the time of the formation of the OPC, Van Til’s presence as a theological or apologetics instructor was being challenged by some who were in the group to organize the OPC, namely J. Oliver Buswell, who was then the president of Wheaton College.

    And it’s interesting that in this week, our denominational General Assembly will be meeting at Wheaton College. There is a letter that is in the archives of the OPC in which Buswell writes Machen pleading that there is a strange and foreign element that has appeared in the apologetics realm of the Orthodox Presbyterian movement that was organizing at that point. Buswell was taking exception to Van Til and his Dutch heritage and his apologetics teaching. He describes it as scientific theorism rather than acknowledging it as sound, biblical apologetics. And so part of the controversy of the OPC at its very founding surrounds the work and ministry of Cornelia Sandhill.

    And you might find that article, and you probably will recall it, many of you. But it’s there to be read. In fact, I’ve made a copy. If you’d like to have my copy, I would happily hand that to you, and you can take it with you today. But do read that and be encouraged by it. As it spoke of the fact that Machen, having received such a such a letter, there is but a fragment of Machin’s first attempts at a response to Boswell’s letter.

    And it was apparent to Dennison that Machin was having a hard time formulating a response to this challenge, but that Machin obviously was devoted to Van Til, that he was the man that he had chosen to come as the apologetics professor at Westminster. the newly organized seminary that would become the stalwart of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s movement. So these are, this is a, Van Til is certainly a key figure, and one whom I trust that you’ll enjoy reading his biography, and I trust that you’ll pick up on Meather’s thesis, that to know the man, you have to know not only his theology, but his ecclesiology. It was a man who was devoted to the church. And so his defense of the faith was a defense of the Presbyterian and Reformed faith, and make that your ambition also. One of the helpful things that this was for me, you have to understand, I went to Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and I was trained in apologetics by John Gershner, who is literally the author of the book on classical apologetics.

    And all I heard about Van Til and Seminary was that Van Til was irrational, irrational. But when I joined the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, I had to learn that van Til. And I had to read his material, and very difficult and painful. But Charlie Dennison made sure that I was moving in the direction of presuppositional apologetics before I would be received as a minister in the OPC.

    And I’ve come to love and embrace Cornelius van Til and see him not as an irrational fideus, as Gershner used to label him, but as a true biblical theologian and apologist of the first rank. I trust he will be and is an encouragement to you. And if you read Van Til, if you read his books, Defense of the Faith and others, you will see that his Defense of the Faith is a defense of Reformed and Presbyterian orthodoxy over against Arminianism, over against Roman Catholicism, over against any lesser forms of Christianity than the Presbyterian and Reformed branch of Christendom. He sees that as the true biblical faith.

    And so for me, the defense of Reformed theology is very much tied to my being an Orthodox Presbyterian minister. It is a church that needs to remain true to her moorings, her confession of faith, and that we might take delight in that, that we not be ashamed of our confession or of our ecclesiology either, and the church that we embrace. therapist at the Health Center just recently, and she was asking questions about the church, and I told her how we had a pretty well-formulated doctrine of worship, as worship being the meeting of God with his people. And this is a person who is attending a church nearby, very much what we would call the happy-clapping kind of And she was quite impressed with the idea of worship as a meeting with God, a dialogue between God and his people. We don’t have to be ashamed, brothers and sisters, of our Reformed and Presbyterian faith. Indeed, it is the faith that we are called to defend.

    And with that, I’m going to close and offer a word of prayer and dismission. Thank you all for your attention this morning. Dear God, we thank you for this time together. We thank you for the glorious and rich heritage which is ours as Reformed believers.

    And we are thankful for those men and women who have gone before, who have stood for the truth, who have suffered much for the cause of Christ, feeling the hand of persecution even in their own countries. And we ask, oh God, that even now we would rise up and call them blessed as we would seek to be found faithful in our own day. Even as we join in praying for our General Assembly about to convene in Wheaton, Illinois, we pray that you will give great courage Wisdom and boldness to those men, ministers and elders who gather to take up matters relating to the life of Christ’s church. We ask that they would be found faithful and do your church no harm. We pray in Jesus’ name. Bless us now as we turn to our worship service this morning, we ask in Jesus. Amen.

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