Conspicuous Absence of Van Til

Greetings.

I thought I'd post something here that I posted earlier at an internet discussion group regarding the conspicuous absence of Van Til in a book I read last month. See if you agree with me or not:



I probably should have waited till I finished the book but I felt I had to say something about the conspicuous absence of at least a passing reference to Dr. Van Til in chapter 4 of Dr. Carson's book "Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church". It is true that Dr. Carson mentions Mr. Frame, a former student of Van Til's (p. 116, p.124,) in relation to presupposionalism, but some wonder how faithfully he (Mr. Frame) interprets Van Til.

Fist of all, I realize I'm way out of my league here. Dr. Carson is without peer as a Christian scholar and I'm just the little boy on the curb watching the parade go by. Be that as it may, I just have to speak up (respectfully of course).

What bothers me is how little the Church at large makes good use of Van Til's rich legacy. If- and I say IF- he is read outside of Reformed circles at all, Van Til is usually brushed aside or misread somehow. Pity.

Personally, I'm not a "movement mentality" nut, or one of "Mechaen's Warrior Children"

http://www.frame-poythress.org/frame_articles/2003Machen.htm

I just think Van Til (and Dr. Bahnsen after him)have made significant contributions in philosophy, theology, and apologetics and we should make use of them.

For instance, in "Emerging Church", under the heading, "Weaknesses of Postmodern Epistemology", chapter 4, the discussion turns on the absurdities of postmodern epistemology and the manipulative false antithesis of necessary "omniscience" on the one hand, and hopeless subjectivity on the other(p.104ff). Van Til has some wonderful insights about this. He refers to this as the rational- irrational dilemma of autonomous man:

"The modern man is in the first place a rationalist. All non-Christians are rationalists. As descendants of Adam, their covenant-breaking representative, (Rom 5:12) every man refuses to submit his mind in the way of obedience to the mind of God. He undertakes to interpret the nature of reality in terms of himself as the final reference point. But to be a rationalist man must also be an irrationalist. Man obviously cannot legislate by logic for reality. Unwilling to admit that God has determined the laws of reality, man, by implication, attributes all power to chance. As a rationalist he says that only that is possible which he can logically grasp in exhaustive fashion. As an irrationalist he says that since he cannot logically grasp the whole of reality, and really cannot legislate for existence by logic at all, it is chance that rules supreme.
It is to this rationalist-irrationalist man that the gospel comes with its doctrine of creation and revelation, its doctrine of redemption through grace in Christ. It is quite impossible to challenge the modern man with the gospel of Christ unless this gospel of Christ be set in its widest possible setting. It is that which the Reformed faith tries to do."
Introduction to Systematic Theology, 174

and,

Strange as it may seem at first sight, the irrationalism of the idea of pure contingency requires for its correlative the rationalism of the most absolute determinism. The idea of pure contingency requires the rejection of the Christian doctrine of creation and providence as logically impossible. Thus the statement that anything may happen must be qualified by adding that anything but Christianity is possible. Theoretically speaking, any hypothesis is relevant, but practically speaking, the Christian ‘hypothesis’ is excluded at the outset of any investigation. Men will follow the facts wherever they may lead so long as they do not lead to the truth of Christianity.
There is nothing surprising in the fact that modern man is both utterly irrationalist and utterly rationalist at the same time. He has to be both in order to be either. And he has to be both in order to defend his basic assumption of his own freedom or ultimacy. About the idea of freedom or contingency pure and simple, nothing can be said. It is the idea of pure, bare, brute, or mute factuality. It is the idea of existence without essence; the idea of being without meaning. Yet modern man must say something about his freedom. Above all he must be defended against those who attack it. And who are they that attack it? Are they the determinists, and the rationalists? Not at all. The determinists and rationalists are what they are in the interest of defending the same autonomy or freedom of man that the indeterminists and irrationalists are defending. The determinist or rationalist differs from the indeterminist or irrationalist merely in the way that he defends the ultimacy or autonomy of man. They therefore have their internal family quarrels. These quarrels centre on the one question of how best to fend off the common enemy, which is Christianity.
But how then, it will be asked, does the determinist seek to defend the idea of man’s ultimacy or freedom and therewith the idea of contingency? He does this by seeking to show that Reality cannot allow for the Creator-creature distinction. Creation out of nothing is said to be impossible. It is said to be impossible because it is contradictory. It would require us to hold that God changed from the status of not being a Creator to the status of being the Creator of the universe and that without any change in His being. Reality must therefore be of one nature. And if man is contingent, as is assumed, then God must also be contingent. If God is ultimate, man is also ultimate. If God is free, man is free with the same freedom with which God is free.
It is thus that the irrationalist may employ the rationalist or determinist to do battle for him in a field where he says he does not feel at home. In fact the ‘free man’ of modern non-Christian thought is Janus-faced. He turns one way and would seem to be nothing but an irrationalist. He talks about the ‘fact’ of freedom. He even makes a pretence of being hotly opposed to the rationalist. With Kierkegaard he will boldly assert that what cannot happen according to logic has happened in fact. Then he turns the other way and would seem to be nothing but a rationalist. Surely, he says, the ‘rational man’ will accept nothing but what has intelligible meaning for him in accord with the law of contradiction. There must be coherence in experience. It is meaningless to talk about the ‘entirely single thing.’ But both in his irrationalist and in his rationalist features, the would-be autonomous man is seeking to defend his ultimacy against the claims of the Christian religion. If he is right as an irrationalist then he is not a creature of God. If he were a creature of God, he would be subject to the law of God. He would thus be ‘rationally related’ to God. He would know that he was a creature of God and that he should obey the law of God. If he is right as a rationalist, then too he is not a creature of God. The law that he then thinks of as above him, he also thinks of as above God; God and he are, for him, subject to a common law. If he were a creature of God, he would grant that what God has determined, and only that, is possible. He would then subject his logical manipulation of ‘reality’ to the revelation of God.
It is this Janus-faced covenant-breaker, then, who must be won for the gospel. It is he who walks the streets of New York and London. And no one but he does. All men are sinners; all are interested in suppressing the fact of their creaturehood. The irrationalist and rationalist have become friends in the face of their common foe. And this common foe is historic Christianity.
The implication of all this for Christian apologetics is plain. There can be no appeasement between those who presuppose in all their thought the sovereign God and those who presuppose in all their thought the would-be sovereign man. There can be no other point of contact between them than that of head-on collision. The root of both irrationalism and rationalism is the idea of the ultimacy of man. If this root is not taken out, it will do little good to trim off some of the wildest offshoots of irrationalism with the help of rationalism, or to trim off some of the wildest offshoots of rationalism with the help of irrationalism.

The Intellectual challenge of the Gospel, 16.

also, Dr. Bahnsen's article "The Crucial concept of Self Deception in Apologetics"

http://www.cmfnow.com/articles/PA207.htm


These three quotes hardly do justice to the tremendous contributions Dr. Van Til and Dr. Bahnsen have made in the cause of Christ.
It would have been nice if Dr. Carson pointed people in Van Til's direction, if only in a passing footnote, not to just "give him credit where credit is due" but for the benefit of those who might otherwise been introduced to his valuable insights.

[end]

I have since finished reading the book. It is a valuable, insightful critique of the Emerging Church movement but I (maybe I should use a lower case "i" when refering to myself in relation to Dr. Carson) do believe more use of Van Til (and Dr. Bahnsen) could have served Dr. Carson's purpose well.