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.
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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