Olasky’s Books For December: Recalling Van Til’s Writing And Legacy
(ANALYSIS) Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) was a distinguished theologian who left liberal Princeton Seminary in 1929 to join the faculty of newly-formed Westminster Theological Seminary, where he taught for the next half-century. We are approaching the golden anniversary of what to me is his most readable book, “Christian Apologetics” (1976), so my Christmas present to readers is a quick look at it and six other Van Til books all published by P&R.
Van Til may be the 20th century’s most challenging Christian author because, at a time when many emphasized either our individual or communal desires, his “Christian Apologetics” emphasized the will of God, “the final and determinative power of whatsoever comes to pass. … Things are what they are ultimately because of the plan of God. They are what they are in relation to one another because of the place God has assigned them in his plan.”
Some Christians make human free will equal to or almost equal to God’s, but Van Til said we can’t play it both ways: We have “no alternative to the Christian view of the will of God as ultimate but the idea of man’s moral consciousness itself as being ultimate.” Van Til kept pointing to our ultimate presuppositions: “When man became a sinner, he made himself instead of God the ultimate final reference point.”
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Overall, I suggest that for those exploring Christianity, C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer and Tim Keller (going generation by generation) are best — but for graduate school, Van Til is worth a deep dive. The question is one of apologetics as well as knowledge, because when we join others in culture war and deemphasize the uniqueness of Christianity, we offer it to natural man “as something that is merely information additional to what he already possesses.”
Van Til is particularly challenging because he promotes “concrete thinking” but often lays out his abstract ideas in abstruse prose. Hearty readers of Van Til’s famous “The Defense of the Faith” might start with chapter 12, where Van Til argues that Mr. White and Mr. Black, believer and non-believer, are both rational, but syncretist Mr. Grey in the middle is not.
Van Til’s emphasis on absolute antithesis leads him to criticize C.S. Lewis’s slight applause for the recognition by some non-Christians “that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false.” Van Til complains, “To say that there is or must be an objective standard is not the same as to say what that standard is…. Only those who believe in God through Christ seek to obey God. … The ‘gospel according to St. Lewis’ is too much of a compromise with the ideas of the natural man to constitute a clear challenge in our day.”
Here are quick looks at five other P&R Van Til books, starting with “Common Grace and the Gospel,” where he emphasizes our “total depravity.” That does not mean we are drooling beasts. It does mean that “sin has affected man in all his functions,” and so deeply that “everyone seeks to suppress the truth.”
In “Psychology of Religion,” Van Til criticizes academics who half a century ago equated the “religious consciousness” with fantasy: “Our respectable citizen learns in this connection that… the more distinguished a person is the less likely he is to believe in God.”
Van Til in “An Introduction to Systematic Theology” calls the idea of neutral autonomy anti-Christian, not just non-Christian. When we explore a new subject, we either recognize that we are sinful creatures who suppress our knowledge of God, or we set up ourselves as gods who foolishly sit in judgment on theories similarly foolish.
In “The Reformed Pastor & Modern Thought,” Van Til says believers and non-believers see the same set of facts, which speak plainly of God, but a non-believer “is like the man with colored glasses on his nose…. All is yellow to the jaundiced eye.” A journalist “reports them to himself and others as ‘yellow.’ His own subjectivity distorts the facts “which he assumes to be the facts as they really are.”
Van Til’s “Christian Theistic Evidences” shows that his presuppositional criticism of those who emphasize man’s reason does not mean ignoring evidence God might use to help us change our thinking. Writing before most non-scientists began grappling with the mystery of quantum physics, Van Til said “science can and does indeed allow for the strange and weird,” but many scientists dismiss it merely as something that “cannot be wholly explained” — yet.
Can we appreciate what is strange and weird? We need to be born again, which means realizing we become babies with a tendency to bobble, babble, and seek our amusement in bubbles and baubles, until we absorb the Bible.
Marvin Olasky is the author of 30 books, including this year’s Moral Vision and Pivot Points. His foundation awards Zenger Prizes for street-level journalism.