The Defense of the Faith

Cornelius van Til

• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781839743429
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In this book Dr. Van Til indicates what the Reformed Faith is and how it should be defended and propagated. In so doing he at the same time replies in detail to his various critics. However, his main purpose is to show in broad outline the nature of the true Christian because truly Biblical, life and world view and how it alone enables men to find meaning in life.

PART ONE—THE STRUCTURE OF MY THOUGHT

CHAPTER I—CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

Detailed replies to the detailed criticisms made of my views by the critics mentioned would not be very useful unless seen in the light of the general structure of my thought. Then too, Daane has specifically dealt with this general structure so far as he found it expressed in Common Grace. It would be quite impossible to deal with his criticism otherwise than by stating what I myself consider the structure of my thought to have been, and to be.

Now the basic structure of my thought is very simple. I have never been called upon to work out any form of systematic theology. My business is to teach Apologetics. I therefore presuppose the Reformed system of doctrine. I try to show my students that it is this system of doctrine that men need. Since most students have not had much systematic theology when they first come to my classes, I give them a brief survey of it. Then as they take courses in systematic theology with my colleague, Professor John Murray, they come to me again and look at the apologetic problem afresh.

An examination of my syllabus on Apologetics shows that the first chapter deals with the question what we are to believe and defend. We must defend Christian-theism as a unit.

It is impossible and useless to seek to defend Christianity as an historical religion by a discussion of facts only. We say that Christ arose from the grave. We say further that this resurrection proves his divinity. This is the nerve of the historical argument for Christianity. Yet a pragmatist philosopher will refuse to follow this line of reasoning. Granted he allows that Christ actually arose from the grave, he will say that this proves nothing more than that something very unusual took place in the case of that man Jesus. The pragmatists philosophy is that everything in this universe is unrelated and that such a fact as the resurrection of Jesus, granted it were a fact, would have no significance for us who live two thousand years after him. It is apparent from this that if we would really defend Christianity as an historical religion we must at the same time defend the theism upon which Christianity is based and this involves us in philosophical discussion.{59}

But to engage in philosophical discussion does not mean that we begin without Scripture. We do not first defend theism philosophically by an appeal to reason and experience in order, after that, to turn to Scripture for our knowledge and defense of Christianity. We get our theism as well as our Christianity from the Bible.

The Bible is thought of as authoritative on everything of which it speaks. And it speaks of everything. We do not mean that it speaks of football games, of atoms, etc., directly, but we do mean that it speaks of everything either directly or indirectly. It tells us not only of the Christ and his work but it also tells us who God is and whence the universe has come. It gives us a philosophy of history as well as history. Moreover, the information on these subjects is woven into an inextricable whole. It is only if you reject the Bible as the word of God that you can separate its so-called religious and moral instruction from what it says, e.g., about the physical universe.{60}

It is therefore the system of truth as contained in Scripture which we must present to the world. The various theological disciplines contribute to the setting forth of this system. It is the business of dogmatic or systematic theology to set forth this system under several main headings. So we take the headings of systematic theology as we find them worked out, for instance, in such manuals as Professor Louis Berkhof has written. In them we find discussions on (a) the doctrine of God, (b) the doctrine of man, (c) the doctrine of Christ, (d) the doctrine of the church, (e) the doctrine of salvation, and (f) the doctrine of the last things.

In each case the Reformed position is shown to be that which Scripture teaches. The Romanist, the Arminian and other views are shown not to be fully Biblical. So before turning to the question of the defense of the Reformed Faith, we must know, in general, what it is.

I—THE DOCTRINE OF GOD

Naturally in the system of theology and in apologetics the doctrine of God is of fundamental importance. We must first ask what kind of a God Christianity believes in before we can really ask with intelligence whether such a God exists. The what precedes the that; the connotation precedes the denotation; at least the latter cannot be discussed intelligently without at once considering the former.

What do we mean when we use the word God? Systematics answers this question in its discussion of the attributes or properties of God. These attributes are divided into incommunicable and communicable. Under the incommunicable attributes we have:

First, independence or aseity of God. By this is meant that God is in no sense correlative to or dependent upon anything beside his own being. God is the source of his own being, or rather the term source cannot be applied to God. God is absolute. He is sufficient unto himself.

Secondly, we speak of the immutability of God. Naturally God does not and cannot change since there is nothing besides his own eternal Being on which he depends (Mal. 3:6; James 1:7).

Thirdly, we speak of the infinity of God. In relation to the question of time we speak of the eternity of God while with respect to space we speak of the omnipresence of God. By the term eternity we mean that there is no beginning or end or succession of moments in Gods being or consciousness (Ps. 90:2; 2 Pet. 3:8). This conception of eternity is of particular importance in Apologetics because it involves the whole question of the meaning of the temporal universe: it involves a definite philosophy of history. By the term omnipresence we mean that God is neither included in space nor absent from it. God is above all space and yet present in every part of it (1 Kings 8:27; Acts 17:27).

Fourthly, we speak of the unity of God. We distinguish between the unity of singularity (singularitatis) and the unity of simplicity (simplicitatis). The unity of singularity has reference to numerical oneness. There is and can be only one God. The unity of simplicity signifies that God is in no sense composed of parts or aspects that existed prior to himself (Jer. 10:10; I John 1:5).

The attributes of God are not to be thought of otherwise than as aspects of the one simple original being; the whole is identical with the parts. On the other hand the attributes of God are not characteristics that God has developed gradually; they are fundamental to his being; the parts together form the whole. Of the whole matter we may say that the unity and the diversity in God are equally basic and mutually dependent upon one another. The importance of this doctrine for Apologetics may be seen from the fact that the whole problem of philosophy may be summed up in the question of the relation of unity to diversity; the so-called problem of the one and the many receives a definite answer from the doctrine of the simplicity of God.

Man cannot partake of these incommunicable attributes of God. Man cannot in any sense be the source of his own being; man cannot in any sense be immutable or eternal or omnipresent or simple. These attributes therefore emphasize the transcendence of God. Under the communicable attributes we have:

Spirituality. God is a Spirit (John 4:24).

Invisibility.

Omniscience. God knows his own being to its very depths in one eternal act of knowledge. There are no hidden depths in the being of God that he has not explored. God’s knowledge of himself may best be said to be “analytical.” This does not mean that God must by a slow process analyze himself but it emphasizes that which needs most emphasis, namely, that God does not need to look beyond himself for additions to his knowledge.

Then what about God’s knowledge of the facts of the created world, of the things that exist besides himself? As human beings we must know or interpret the facts after we look at the facts, after they are there and perhaps after they have operated for some time. In the case of God, on the other hand, God’s knowledge of the facts comes first. God knows, or interprets the facts before they are facts. It is God’s plan or his comprehensive interpretation of the facts that makes the facts what they are (P. 6).

The incommunicable attributes of God stress his transcendence and the communicable attributes stress his immanence. The two imply one another. A Christian notion of transcendence and a Christian notion of immanence go together.

It is not a sufficient description of Christian theism when we say that as Christians we believe in both the transcendence and the immanence of God while pantheistic systems believe only in the immanence of God and deistic systems believe only in the transcendence of God. The transcendence we believe in is not the transcendence of deism and the immanence we believe in is not the immanence of pantheism. In the case of deism transcendence virtually means separation while in the case of pantheism immanence virtually means identification. And if we add separation to identification we do not have theism as a result. As we mean a certain kind of God when as theists we speak of God, so also we mean a certain kind of transcendence and a certain kind of immanence when we use these terms. The Christian doctrine of God implies a definite conception of the relation of God to the created universe. So also the Christian doctrine of God implies a definite conception of everything in the created universe (p. 6-7).

a. The Personality of God

What we have discussed under the attributes of God may also be summed up by saying that God is absolute personality. The attributes themselves speak of self-conscious and moral activity on the part of God. Recognizing that for this intellectual and moral activity God is dependent upon nothing beyond his own being, we see that we have the Reformed doctrine of the personality of God. There were no principles of truth, goodness or beauty that were next to or above God according to which he patterned the world. The principles of truth, goodness, and beauty are to be thought of as identical with God’s being; they are the attributes of God. Non-Christian systems of philosophy do not deny personality to God, at least some of them do not, but, in effect, they all agree in denying absolute personality to God. As Christians we say that we can be like God and must be like God in that we are persons but that we must always be unlike God in that he is an absolute person while we are finite persons. Non-theists, on the other hand, maintain that though God may be a greater person than we can ever hope to be yet we must not maintain this distinction between absolute and finite personality to be a qualitative one.

b. The Trinity

Another point in the Christian doctrine of God that needs to be mentioned here is the trinity. We hold that God exists as a tri-personality. “The trinity is the heart of Christianity.”{61} The three persons of the trinity are co-substantial; not one is derived in his substance from either or both of the others. Yet there are three distinct persons in this unity; the diversity and the identity are equally underived.

We have now before us in bare outline the main points of the Christian doctrine of God. Christianity offers the triune God, the absolute personality, containing all the attributes enumerated, as the God in whom we believe. This conception of God is the foundation of everything else that we hold dear. Unless we can believe in this sort of God, it does us no good to be told that we may believe in some other sort of God, or in anything else. For us everything depends for its meaning upon this sort of God. Accordingly we are not interested to have any one prove to us the existence of any other sort of God but this God. Any other sort of God is no God at all and to prove that some other sort of God exists is, in effect, to prove that no God exists (p. 7).

II—THE DOCTRINE OF MAN

The whole question with which we deal in Apologetics is one of the relation between God and man. Hence, next to the doctrine of God the doctrine of man is of fundamental importance.

a. The Image of God in Man

Man is created in God’s image. He is therefore like God in everything in which a creature can be like God. He is like God in that he too is a personality. This is what we mean when we speak of the image of God in the wider or more general sense. Then when we wish to emphasize the fact that man resembles God especially in the splendour of his moral attributes we say that when man was created he had true knowledge, true righteousness and true holiness. This doctrine is based upon the fact that in the New Testament we are told that Christ came to restore us to true knowledge, righteousness and holiness (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:24). We call this the image of God in the narrower sense. These two cannot be completely separated from one another. It would really be impossible to think of man having been created only with the image of God in the wider sense; every act of man would from the very first have to be a moral act, an act of choice for or against God. Hence man would even in every act of knowledge manifest true righteousness and true holiness.

Then after emphasizing that man was like God and in the nature of the case had to be like God we must stress the point that man must always be different from God. Man was created in God’s image. We have seen that some of God’s attributes are incommunicable. Man can never in any sense outgrow his creaturehood. This puts a definite connotation into the expression that man is like God. He is like God, to be sure, but always on a creaturely scale. He can never be like God in God’s aseity, immutability, infinity and unity. For that reason the church has embedded into the heart of its confessions the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God. God’s being and knowledge are absolutely comprehensive; such knowledge is too wonderful for man; he cannot attain unto it. Man was not created with comprehensive knowledge. Man was finite and his finitude was originally no burden to him. Neither could man ever expect to attain to comprehensive knowledge in the future. We cannot expect to have comprehensive knowledge even in heaven. It is true that much will be revealed to us that is now a mystery to us but in the nature of the case God cannot reveal to us that which as creatures we cannot comprehend; we should have to be God ourselves in order to understand God in the depth of his being. God must always remain mysterious to man.

The significance of this point will appear more fully when we contrast this conception of mystery with the non-Christian conception of mystery that is current today even in Christian circles. The difference between the Christian and the non-Christian conception of mystery may be expressed in a word by saying that we hold that there is mystery for man but not for God while the non-Christian holds that there is either no mystery for God or man or there is mystery for both God and man.

b. Man’s Relation to the Universe

Next to noting that man was created in God’s image we must now observe that man was organically related to the universe about him. That is, man was to be prophet, priest and king under God in this created world. The vicissitudes of the world would depend upon the deeds of man. As a prophet man was to interpret this world, as a priest he was to dedicate this world to God and as a king he was to rule over it for God. In opposition to this all non-Christian theories hold that the vicissitudes of man and the universe about him are only accidentally and incidentally related to one another.

c. The Fall of Man

The fall of man needs emphasis as much as his creation. As we believe that man was once upon a time created by God in the image of God, so we also believe that soon thereafter man through disobedience fell into sin. After we have discussed what we mean by God and what we mean by the creation of man in the image of God, we can readily see what the nature of sin must be. As a creature of God man had to live in accordance with the law of God, that is, in accordance with the ordinances that God had placed in his creation. This law was for the most part not verbally transmitted to man but was created in his being. M...

Table of contents

• Title page
• Table of Contents
• DEDICATION
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• PART ONE-THE STRUCTURE OF MY THOUGHT
• PART TWO-OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED
• APPENDIX I
• APPENDIX II