Book Review: Apologetics – By Cornelius Van Til

^{^W}ithin the realm of 20th Century apologetics few thinkers dominate the sphere as strongly as Cornelius Van Til. No list of Christian apologists would be complete without him being listed as one of the biggest movers within the field. His thought has come to dominate Reformed apologetics, carried on by scholars such as Greg Bahnsen, Scott Oliphint, and John Frame.

Apologetics is Van Til’s brief outline of his thought as conceived in the system of presuppositional apologetics, specifically as it opposes the apologetical methods of Roman Catholicism and Arminian Protestantism. The central tenant of this apologetic may be understood as follows: “Christians are interested in showing to those who believe in no God or in a God, a beyond, some ultimate or absolute, that it is this God in whom they must believe lest all meaning should disappear from human words.”

In beginning his endeavor Van Til does not set out as many apologists would, that is, by jumping into the fray and discussing the logicality of God and pointing out with clever diction why the non-believer should accept his system. In this even the structure of his book is a mirror of his apologetical method, for Van Til’s goal is not the acceptance of some general idea of God, but rather a very specific idea of God – that is, the very specific idea of God as presented by Christianity. Thus Van Til does not start out with nature or logic and reason his way up to God; rather, he begins by laying out Christian orthodoxy, from which place he may explain exactly what it is he means to defend before he goes about defending it.

Following his outline of Christian orthodoxy Van Til goes on to explain Christianity (or, theology) in its relation to philosophy and science. This chapter, along with the third which discusses the ‘point of contact’ which may be made between the non-believer and the apologist, lay out Van Til’s epistemology (that is, his theory of knowledge and how we come about it). The basis of this epistemology is that all human knowledge (indeed the mind of man) is derivative of God’s mind and His knowledge. Furthermore, ‘facts’ are only such in relation to God’s ordination; they exist as part of the system he has set in place, the system of his providence, and apart from that system they are meaningless (from which he may base his argument on the lack of meaning in science and philosophy apart from Christianity).

This idea is expressed by Van Til in stating that: “Thus there is one system of reality of which all that exists forms a part. And any individual fact of this system is what it is primarily because of its relation to this system. It is therefore a contradiction in terms to speak of presenting certain facts to men unless one presents them as parts of this system. The very factness of any individual fact of history is precisely what it is because God is what he is. It is God’s counsel that is the principle of individuation for the Christian man. God makes the facts to be what they are.”

The point of contact for Van Til is not a shared logical mind interpreting nature or the common grace shared by all men (as is usually employed by classical apologists), rather his point of contact is the suppressed knowledge of God residing in all men. His methodology is one which attempts to overthrow the entirety of autonomy within human thought, which leads to the final discussion of authority, namely, the authority of Scripture versus the authority of the human mind (or the Catholic church, we sees as analogous to the former). The light of Scripture takes precedence to the light of man.

Overall Van Til’s Apologetics is a concise discussion of an apologetical method which seeks to bring God back to his proper place of authority over the minds of men. Coming in at just under 100 pages it may no doubt serve as an excellent introduction to presuppositional apologetics and the thought of Cornelius Van Til. Furthermore it will give the reader an excellent foothold in better understanding how to better defend their faith.

Memorable Quotes:

[These tend on the long side, but they’re good, and cutting them down just wouldn’t do them justice…]

–“…Truth [ultimately consists] in correspondence to the internally self-complete nature and knowledge that God has of himself and of all created reality.”

–“But real redemption has not been fully wrought for us till it is wrought also within us. Sin being what it is, it would be useless to have salvation lie ready to hand unless it were also applied to us. Inasmuch as we are dead in trespasses and sins it would do us no good to have a wonderful life-giving potion lad next to us in our coffin. It would do us good only if someone actually administered the potion to us.”

-“But Reformed theology, as worked out by Calvin and his recent exponents such as Hodge, Warfield, Kuyper and Bavink, holds that man’s mind is derivative. As such it is naturally in contact with God’s revelation. It is surrounded by nothing but revelation. It is itself inherently revelational. It cannot naturally be conscious of itself without being conscious of its creatureliness. Fore man self-consciousness presupposes God-consciousness. Calvin speaks of this as man’s inescapable sense of deity.”

–“We do not use candles, or electric lights in order to discover whether the light and the energy of the sun exist. The reverse is the case. We have light in candles and electric light bulbs because of the light and energy of the sun. So we cannot subject the authoritative pronouncements of Scripture about reality to the scrutiny of reason because it is reason itself that learns its proper function from Scripture…. All the objections that are brought against such a position spring, in the last analysis, from the assumption that the human person is ultimate and as such should properly act as judge of all claims to authority that are made by any one. But if man is not autonomous, if he is rather what Scripture says he is, namely, a creature of God and a sinner before his face, then man should subordinate his reason to the Scriptures and seek in the light of it to interpret his experience.”

Specific Criticisms

On the whole I don’t believe there is much that I may critique concerning Van Til. On the superficial level he is not quite as easy to read as some of his students (ie, Bahnsen and Frame); this should by no means discourage the reader, Van Til is not difficult, he’s simply not as concise as he could be. Another minor criticism may the time he spends addressing specific thinkers, thinkers which modern readers may not be familiar with – but again, this doesn’t really detract from the text.

One greater criticism of Van Til’s system (at least as presented in this text alone) is that he offers no rebuttal against the ideas of existentialism, absurdism, or nihilism. Van Til’s position is that in order to give meaning to anything one must adopt the Christian worldview, yet this does nothing to address those who are content with the world having no meaning (or with that meaning being completely subjective/absurd/relative). Perhaps this can simply be chalked up to the outline nature of the book (that is, it is not all-inclusive of Van Til’s thought).

A few more minor nitpicks might consist in the following. Van Til states that “[If obedient to God] The controlling and directing power of his will would be the will of God. ” To me this statement reads as a contradiction. The ‘if obedient’ presumes an autonomy on the part of man which is not present if ‘the controlling power of his will’ is the will of God. One might be able to escape this by interpreting ‘if obedient’ in terms of ‘if God grants obedience’, but this is not set out in the text.

A similar contradiction in terms is found in the statement that “Any other sort of God is no God at all and to prove that some other sort of God exists is to prove that no God exists.” If the word ‘prove’ here is taken in its hardest meaning, that is, if the opponent did indeed prove that some other god existed, this would negate Christianity. Van Til’s apologetic gets the better of his semantics; in allowing the possibility of “some other sort of God” to be proven he undermines the presupposition that no such other God can be proven (even if that other God should prove to be meaningless or impotent). One would think his argument could be made without asserting the notion that proving some other God is even possible.