Why Is Doc Bill E. a Presuppositionalist?

From the New Horizons (May 1995) magazine of the OPC.

Click on pic to enlarge.

Joel Beeke on Cornelius Van Til

From the New Horizons (May 1995) magazine of the OPC.

Click on pic to enlarge.

The Decalogue of Covenantal Apologetics

1. The faith that we are defending must begin with, and necessarily include, the triune God— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit— who, as God, condescends to create and to redeem.

2. God's covenantal revelation is authoritative by virtue of what it is, and any covenantal, Christian apologetic will necessarily stand on and utilize that authority in order to defend Christianity.

3. It is the truth of God's revelation, together with the work of the Holy Spirit, that brings about a covenantal change from one who is in Adam to one who is in Christ.

4. Man (male and female) as image of God is in covenant with the triune God for eternity.

5. All people know the true God, and that knowledge entails covenantal obligations.

6. Those who are and remain in Adam suppress the truth that they know. Those who are in Christ see that truth for what it is.

7. There is an absolute, covenantal antithesis between Christian theism and any other, opposing position. Thus, Christianity is true and anything opposing it is false.

8. Suppression of the truth, like the depravity of sin, is total but not absolute. Thus, every unbelieving position will necessarily have within it ideas, concepts, notions, and the like that it has taken and wrenched from their true, Christian context.

9. The true, covenantal knowledge of God in man, together with God's universal mercy, allows for persuasion in apologetics.

10. Every fact and experience is what it is by virtue of the covenantal, all-controlling plan and purpose of God.

(K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith [Illinois: Crossway, 2013])




You can find Dr. Oliphint discussing covenantal apologetics at Reformed Forum here.

More apologetics posts:

Machen on the Perichoresis Between Evangelism and Apologetics

John Calvin's Influence on Reformed Apologetics

Van Til and the Perichoresis of Apologetics and Evangelism

The Antithesis a New Species Doth Not Make

Man, as made in the image of God, is intrinsically (by default) "wired" as a covenantal being. He knows of himself as a covenantal being and, though after the Fall, the sinner lives and moves in suppression of this fact, still he cannot escape it in the voice of his conscience and in the testimony of creation all around him.

What this covenatalism further presupposes is that both natural and special revelation bear upon man's conception of anything. Natural revelation both reveal the grace and wrath of God in the consistency of life-support systems in creation as well as the death dynamic that is at work in it, just as special revelation reveal the grace and wrath of God in the person and work of Christ and in the final, eschatological death that is alluded to by physical, temporal death. Man, as man, needs both natural and special revelation.

This realization has given me pause about NL2K (Natural Law Two Kingdoms Theology, or sometimes R2K). Sure, the baker does not need special revelation in order to engage in his baking, but this is merely speaking at a practical level. The baker, as an ontological human being made in the image of God, has upon himself the covenantal duty to reckon with both God's natural and special revelation at every turn. Is there an occasion wherein the baker does not bake as a human being? If not, then even in his baking, special revelation is required if he is to bake as a human being. What NL2K seems to imply is that there are two species of human beings, one for whom both natural and special revelation are of import and another wherein natural revelation will do. But the Fall did not create two different ontological classes of human beings but two different covenant relations to God in which man could either be a covenant-keeper or covenant-breaker (the antithesis). So when the baker bakes unmindful of God in special revelation, he bakes as a covenant-breaker and in fact sins in his baking.

To be sure, God uses the covenant-breaking baker to provide carbohydrate energy to both sinner and saint alike, but this is merely an outworking of His patience, intending the order and consistency in the present age to facilitate the smooth unfolding of redemptive history that will culminate in the age of glory characterized by revelational integrity.

Westminster Wednesday: Some Big Van Tillian Words

References:
(Bahnsen = Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1998).

Frame = John M. Frame, Cornelius Van Til: an Analysis of His Thought (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1995).

VT= Van Til)


Absolute Personality: VT's basic characterization of God. Unlike any non-Christian view, the biblical God is both absolute (a se, self-existent, selfsufficient, self-contained) and personal (thinking, speaking, acting, loving, judging). See Frame, 51ff.

Ad hominem: Argument that exposes deficiencies in the arguer rather than deficiencies in the proposition under discussion. Thus, a logical fallacy. But often ad hominem argument is appropriate. See Bahnsen, 116ff, 468, 492, Frame, 153.

All-conditioner: VT's characterization of God in "Why I Believe in God" (see Bahnsen, 121-143). God is the one who ultimately influences all reality, including our own thinking and reasoning about him.

Analogy, analogical reasoning: (1) (Aquinas) Thinking in language that is neither literally true (univocal), nor unrelated to the subject matter (equivocal), but which bears a genuine resemblance to that subject matter. (2) (VT) Thinking in subjection to God's revelation and therefore thinking God's thoughts after him.

Antithesis: The opposition between Christian and non-Christian thought. See Frame, 187ff.

Apologetics: That branch of theology that gives reasons for our hope. VT saw it as involving proof, defense, and offense.

A priori: Knowledge acquired prior to experience, used to interpret and evaluate experience. Contrasted with a posteriori knowledge, knowledge arising out of experience. See Bahnsen, 107n, 177.

Authority of the expert: Submission to the knowledge of someone better informed, rather than absolute submission to God as the very criterion of truth. To VT, this is the only kind of authority the unbeliever will accept.

Autonomy: The attempt to live apart from any law external to the self. To VT, this is the paradigm attitude of unbelief. See Bahnsen 109, n.

Was Man's Reason Unaffected by the Fall? Turretin Denies

Gordon Clark and his followers believe and proclaim the affirmative. They assert that the human intellect remained in its pristine condition even after man's descent into sin and that the sin problem is one solely of an ethical nature.

While the sin problem is indeed ethical, an immediate observation is the undue and coerced bifurcation made between reason and the will (an assumed independence). What the position seems to be saying is that the will can act independently of what the mind deems as good and fitting. Even in the case of addictions, where it seems that the will and emotions are acting in rebellion against the mind, the intellectual involvement is ever present in its estimation of the pleasure to be derived from engaging in the illicit act.

But what does one of the prime exponents of Reformed Orthodoxy have to say about the state of reason in unregenerate man? Let us reckon with Francis Turretin's words:

My Credo, by Cornelius Van Til

If you want to know what Cornelius Van Til was all about and where he was coming from, as narrated by the man himself, and be thoroughly refreshed and inspired in the process, then read on.


How can I express my appreciation adequately for the honor you have conferred on me by your contributions to this Festschrift? I shall try to do so first by setting forth in this, my "Credo," a general statement of my main beliefs as I hold them today. Then I shall deal separately with the problems and objections some of you have raised in respect to my views in separate response to the essays themselves. I hope that by doing this we may be of help to one another as together we present the name of Jesus as the only name given under heaven by which men must be saved.

Juicing and Natural Theology

I've been juicing for the past 2 weeks or so now, and I must say that it certainly feels good to be doing this little extra thing for my health.

The "rule" is that beetroot, apple, and carrot should be the staple of the concoction, upon which one can add all sorts of other fruits and vegetables. I've been juicing bell pepper, bitter gourd, cucumber, cabbage, onion, garlic, unripe mango, potato, etc.

The star of the show is beetroot. This dark purple root crop has all sorts of "magical" properties. Read about them and be enticed here.

The Coolest of the Reformed Cats

Notice the prominent foreheads? A chief requirement of Reformed coolness.

Turretin was probably wearing a wig or decided on the "heavy metal" look—still within the bounds of cool. LOL.

Theology and Philosophy: Husband and Wife or Employer and Employee?

"Theology rules over philosophy, and this latter acts as a handmaid to and subserves the former." (Francis Turretin, Institutes, I:xiii:2)

The vid below, courtesy of Reformed Forum generosity, contains over an hour of profitable, erudite discussion on the relationsip between theology and philosophy. Enjoy!

Biblical Counseling is Van Tillian

"I would say that if you were to look at primary sources for what biblical counseling is, that Scripture, orthodox theology are gonna be what you'd first say. But from a deep structure standpoint, it is Van Tillian utterly from beginning to end." (David Powlison)

More here.

Machen on the Perichoresis Between Evangelism and Apologetics

Getting on a street corner (or the other side of the globe), oozing with enthusiasm, is not enough. J. Gresham Machen explains why:

"We are all agreed that at least one great function of the Church is the conversion of individual men. The missionary movement is the great religious movement of our day. Now it is perfectly true that men must be brought to Christ one by one. There are no labor-saving devices in evangelism. It is all hand-work.And yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that all men are equally well prepared to receive the gospel. It is true that the decisive thing is the regenerative power of God. That can overcome all lack of preparation, and the absence of that makes even the best preparation useless. But as a matter of fact God usually exerts that power in connection with certain prior conditions of the human mind, and it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of God, those favorable conditions for the reception of the gospel. False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root.....What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires. In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combatted; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassionate debate. So as Christians we should try to mold the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity.....Is it not far easier to be an earnest Christian if you confine your attention to the Bible and do not risk being led astray by the thought of the world? We answer, of course it is easier. Shut yourself up in an intellectual monastery, do not disturb yourself with the thoughts of unregenerate men, and of course you will find it easier to be a Christian, just as it is easier to be a good soldier in comfortable winter quarters than it is on the field of battle. You save your own soul—but the Lord's enemies remain in possession of the field." (J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Culture)

Covenantal Apologetics: Waking Up the Already Awake

It is virtually impossible to wake someone up who is feigning sleep. It is also futile to attempt to convince the natural man of the existence of God because He already knows that God exists by virtue of being created in God's image. Romans 1:19-21 states:

"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, in 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."

While classical apologetics has sought to wake up the already awake, covenantal apologetics realizes that man's problem before God is not intellectual/epistemological but moral/covenantal. The natural man denies God's existence, not because of a lack of proof, but because of the desire to live autonomously, apart from the rule of God and creaturely dependence on Him. The love of sin and the love of God are mutually exclusive, and up until the Holy Spirit regenerates the sin-hardened heart in order that, through repentance and faith in Christ, man might be in the favorable side of the covenant, man will never wake up from his fake slumber.

Evangelism and apologetics stand in perichoresis to each other, and the way to engage the unregenerate is as follows:

"Here then are the facts, or some of the main facts that the Reformed apologist presents to the natural man. There is first the fact of God's self-contained existence. Second, the fact of creation in general and of man as made in God's image in particular. Third, there is the fact of the comprehensive plan and providence of God with respect to all that takes place in the universe. Then there is the fact of the fall of man and his subsequent sin. It is in relation to these facts, and only in relation to these facts, that the other facts pertaining to the redemptive work of Christ are what they are. Their very factness as facts would not be what it is unless the facts just mentioned are what they are." (Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics [New Jersey: P & R, 2003], ed. William Edgar, 193)

More on covenantal apologetics here.

Calvin the Van Tillian

In his letter to Martin Bucer entitled, Consolations to Be Found in the Study of Divine and Everlasting Truth, dated February 1549, Calvin shows himself to be the Van Tillian that he truly is (barring the anachronism):

"As truth is most precious, so all men confess it to be so. And yet, since God alone is the source of all good, you must not doubt, that whatever truth you anywhere meet with, proceeds from him, unless you would be doubly ungrateful to him; it is in this way you have received the word descended from heaven. For it is sinful to treat God’s gifts with contempt; and to ascribe to man what is peculiarly God’s is a still greater impiety. Philosophy is, consequently, the noble gift of God, and those learned men who have striven hard after it in all ages have been incited thereto by God himself, that they might enlighten the world in the knowledge of the truth. But there is a wide difference between the writings of these men and those truths which God, of his own pleasure, delivered to guilty men for their sanctification. In the former, you may fall in with a small particle of truth, of which you can get only a taste, sufficient to make you feel how pleasant and sweet it is; but in the latter, you may obtain in rich abundance that which can refresh the soul to the full. In the one, a shadow and an image is placed before the eyes which can only excite in you a love of the object, without admitting you to familiar intercourse with it; in the other, the solid substance stands before you, with which you may not only become intimately acquainted, but may also, in some measure, handle it. In that, the seed is in a manner choked; in this, you may possess the fruit in its very maturity. There, in short, only a few small sparks break forth, which so point out the path that they fail in the middle of the journey, — or rather, which fail in indicating the path at all — and can only restrain the traveler from going farther astray; but here, the Spirit of God, like a most brilliant torch, or rather like the sun itself, shines in full splendor, not only to guide the course of your life, even to its final goal, but also to conduct you to a blessed immortality. Draw then from this source, wherever you may wander, and as soon as he finds you a settled abode, you ought to make that your place of rest..."

Layne Staley Replies to Cornelius Van Til

"It is not difficult to see that the Christian position requires the apologist to challenge this whole approach in the interest of the knowledge of the truth. If man's necessarily discursive thought is not to fall into the ultimate irrationalism and skepticism that is involved in modern methodology, we must presuppose the conception of the God that is found in Scripture. Scripture alone presents the sort of God whose intuition of system is not bought at the price of his knowledge of individuality, and whose knowledge of individuality is not bought at the expense of intuitional knowledge of system. But such a God must really be presupposed. He must be taken as the prerequisite of the possibility and actuality of relationship between man's various concepts and propositions of knowledge. Man's system of knowledge must therefore be an analogical replica of the system of knowledge that belongs to God" (Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics [New Jersey: P & R, 2003], ed. William Edgar, 158).

Or else one is forced to agree with Layne Staley that:

If Not Calvin, Then Who? Yourself?

I found the picture above on FB, posted by an Arminian who started an FB group about refuting Calvinism (or something to that effect).

What the picture seems to be saying is that Calvin's massive theological contribution to the Body of Christ was, and is, a source of idolatry among its adherents. What this argument fails to realize is that: if not Calvin, then who?

No one approaches Scripture tabula rasa. No one can read and understand Scripture, at least as it should be read and understood, without the aid of the understanding of those who have gone before. This is not to say that Scripture is not perspicuous, it simply is a testament to the nature of knowledge. The relationship of induction and deduction in epistemology is perichoretic. One's understanding of fact must necessarily be based on an already-established conceptual system to which that fact belongs, and conceptual systems are established based on gathered facts.

In reality, what this picture is merely saying is that "I am the source of all valid knowledge; I am autonomous and, with me and my Bible, I'm ready to go places!" It actually implicates the self as both the subject and object of idolatry in its misdirected stab at Calvinism.

Cornelius on the Caveman's Club

While the unregenerate, the natural man, knows of the true God (not some notion of generic "deity", cf. Rom. 1:18-20) by virtue of being created in the image of God and by the testimony of the Decalogue engraved in the human heart, he suppresses this knowledge in wickedness, desiring autonomy and the liberty to judge metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical truth on his own terms.

In light of this, only the Reformed apologetic is meet for the task of toppling down these erections of hubris. Cornelius Van Til states:

"It is but to be expected that only in the Reformed faith will we find an uncompromising method of apologetics. Calvinism makes no compromise with the natural man either on his views of the autonomy of the human mind or on his views of the nature of existence as not controlled by the plan of God. Therefore Calvinism cannot find a direct point of contact in any of the accepted concepts of the natural man. He disagrees with every individual doctrine of the natural man because he disagrees with the outlook of the natural man as a whole. He disagrees with the basic immanentistic assumption of the natural man. For it is this basic assumption that colors all his statements about individual teachings. It is therefore this basic assumption of the natural man that meets its first major challenge when it is confronted by the statement of a full-fledged Christianity" (Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics [New Jersey: P & R, 2003], ed. William Edgar, 146).

Only the Reformed ray gun is capable of blasting away the club from the caveman's hands.

    

A Primer on the Gordon Clark/Cornelius Van Til Controversy

Almost an hour of profitable discussion:

John Calvin's Influence on Reformed Apologetics

In no way exhaustive, the following 3 points derived from John Calvin's thought enumerate the ways in which he has contributed significantly to Reformed apologetics:

I. THE CREATOR-CREATURE DISTINCTION—IN KNOWING GOD YOU KNOW YOURSELF, IN KNOWING YOURSELF YOU KNOW GOD.

II. THE SENSUS DIVINITATIS.

III. THE SELF-ATTESTING AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE.


More below:

The Relationship of Apologetics, Philosophy, and the Doctrine of Scripture to Each Other

Dr. K. Scott Oliphint discusses (a 3-part video):