John Frame's Selected Shorter Writings, Volume 2 by John M. Frame

Author:John M. Frame [Frame, John M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Christian Books & Bibles, Theology, Religion & Spirituality
ISBN: 9781629950785
Amazon: B00TOZWQ6S
Barnesnoble: B00TOZWQ6S
Goodreads: 24960433
Publisher: P&R Publishing
Published: 2015-02-14T22:00:00+00:00

21

Van Til: The Theologian

This chapter was originally published as “The Problem of Theological Paradox,” in Foundations of Christian Scholarship, ed. Gary North (Vallecito, CA: Ross House, 1976), 295–330. It was also published as a pamphlet, Van Til: The Theologian (Phillipsburg, NJ: Pilgrim, 1976). (For stylistic purposes, this chapter has been copyedited for inclusion in this volume.)

IN 1961, Cornelius Van Til reviewed a book by R. H. Bremmer called Herman Bavinck als Dogmaticus (Herman Bavinck the Theologian).173 Having run across this review in a recent perusal of the Van Til corpus, I asked myself whether someday there might be a book called Cornelius Van Til als Dogmaticus.

Perhaps one’s first instinct would be to say no. Van Til, after all, is an apologist, not a dogmatician. He did indeed teach courses in systematic theology for many years, but those courses (if some of his former students are to be believed) were essentially apologetics courses in disguise. Where Van Til does discuss theological issues, furthermore, he includes little exegesis (in the traditional sense of that term). What exegesis he does present is usually borrowed from other sources. His dogmatic formulations, too, are often simple repetitions or paraphrases of the creeds and of the great Reformed theologians from Calvin onward. Even when Van Til’s theology sounds most strange to American ears (for example, his strong emphasis on the ethical-metaphysical distinction), he is very often paraphrasing ideas from the Dutch tradition. (In the case of the ethical-metaphysical distinction, the source is Bavinck.)

If, however, from the considerations above we conclude that Van Til’s theology is uninteresting or unimportant, we will merely expose ourselves as shallow thinkers and cut ourselves off from one whose contribution to theology is of virtually Copernican dimensions. If Van Til had done nothing more than to introduce some of the best insights of the Dutch theologians to the American public, even then his work would have been of substantial importance. But when one considers the uniqueness of his apologetic position and then further considers the implications of that apologetic for theology, one searches for superlatives to describe the significance of Van Til’s overall approach.

Van Til’s apologetics may well be described as a group of original applications of some familiar Reformed doctrines. In Van Til’s view, apologetics and theology (particularly systematic theology) are very closely related: “defense and positive statement go hand in hand.”174 There can be no adequate positive statement without defense against error, and vice versa. In fact, “Systematic Theology is more closely related to apologetics than are any of the other disciplines. In it we have the system of truth that we are to defend.”175 Thus Van Til begins the exposition of his apologetic with an outline of Reformed systematic theology.176 It is clear from the outset that one of Van Til’s basic concerns is to present an apologetic that is true to Scripture and Reformed doctrine. His major complaints against competing apologetic methods are theological complaints, that is, that they compromise the incomprehensibility of God, total depravity, the clarity of natural revelation, God’s comprehensive control over creation, and so on.

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