3 Ways Van Til Serves the Church Today
Thesis
This paper will argue that the presuppositional apologetic argument for the existence of God pioneered by Cornelius Van Til is Biblical, historical, and of service to the Church today.
Introduction
Since the fall of Adam in the garden, the people of God have had a task to respond to Satan’s attacks. These attacks have largely been intellectual in focus. Throughout the history of the people of God, there have been different methods that have been used to do this. The method that will be the focus of this paper is the method pioneered in our modern day by Cornelius Van Til called the presuppositional or transcendental argument for the existence of God.
Who is Cornelius Van Til?
Cornelius Van Til was a significant Christian Apologist of the twentieth century. He was born in Grootegast in the Netherlands in 1895 to Calvinist parents. His family migrated to the United States in 1905 and was part of the Christian Reformed Church. His education included studying at the Christian Reformed Calvin College and Princeton Seminary and University. The primary teachers who influenced Van Til included names such as J. Gresham Machen, Geerhardus Vos, B. B. Warfield, and A. A. Bowman. In 1925, Van Til married Rena Klooster. In 1927, he pastored for a short time the Spring Lake Church in Classis Muskegon, Michigan. The majority of his calling was in teaching apologetics, which he began at Princeton Seminary in 1928, along with the leave of several other conservative faculty. Van Til exited his teaching post a year later and founded Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia with men such as John Machen. The reason was due to the liberal drift in the faculty at Princeton that was forming at this time. Van Til held his teaching post at Westminster Seminary until 1975, when he retired. Van Til is most known for his work in apologetic method, arguing that a Calvinistic theology should consistently lead to an apologetic method that rests on the certainty of the Triune God of scripture and challenges the inconsistencies and irrational nature of anti-Christian presuppositions.[1]
What is the Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God?
The transcendental argument for the existence of God can be explained this way: in order for knowledge to be possible, one must believe that the world is the kind that the God of the Bible says it is. What is meant by “believe that the world is the kind that the God of the Bible says it is” concerns presuppositions. Presuppositions are foundational convictions about reality; they are the starting points and ultimate assumptions that one carries with them each moment of their conscious existence. These presuppositions serve as the controlling lenses through which all data is interpreted. Because this apologetic focuses on presuppositions, Van Til argued that it is an indirect way of defending Christian Theism. He writes in The Defense of the Faith, “The method of reasoning by presupposition may be said to be indirect rather than direct.”[2] Van Til saw that the debate on God’s existence does not hinge simply upon the neutral facts or evidence found in the world, but rather on the presuppositions by which people interpret those facts. He says, “The issue between believers and non-believers in Christian Theism cannot be settled by a direct appeal to ‘facts’… The question is rather as to what is the final reference point required to make the ‘facts’ and ‘laws’ intelligible.”[3] By “final reference point,” Van Til refers to one’s paradigm by which one is viewing the world. The point made here is that since it is always the case that one will interpret the world (facts and evidence) through one's presuppositions, the way to defend the faith is by discussing issues at the level of worldviews. Which worldview can make knowledge possible? If what the atheist says about the world is true, what conclusions does that lead to? If what the Christian says about the world is the case, what does that imply? If pantheism is true, how should one live in light of that? If the world is really simply matter in flux, how can one come to know something? Questions like these are the thrust of presuppositional thinking and discussion.
Is Presuppositional Apologetics Biblical?
As is stated above, presuppositional apologetics involves convictions including the certainty of Christianity, the inexcusability of man before God, and the method of comparing and contrasting worldviews. Where do we find these concepts in Scripture? To begin with, the claim that the apologist should deal with man as being without excuse, there is ample attestation of this fact in Romans 1:19-20, which reads, “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.” (English Standard Version). The key phrase here is man being without excuse. This statement could not be said if it were the case that unregenerate man needed more evidence in order to believe in God, which shows us that the issue of unbelief cannot be an issue of the amount of evidence or lack thereof. The issue must be what verse 25 speaks in the same chapter, namely, “… they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” The problem is that depraved man is interpreting the world through the lens of a lie and has chosen to submit his ultimate allegiance to something created rather than the creator. This ultimate allegiance can be anything from autonomy to adherence to the philosophy of another sort, based finally on man rather than on the Triune God’s clear revelation in Scripture.
The certainty of the Christian position is seen in the preaching of the apostle Peter on the day of Pentecost, when he says in Acts 2:36, “Let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Here, Peter does not believe that Christian Theism is probably true, but is rather certain of the matter.
The method of comparing and contrasting worldviews can be seen in passages such as Mark 11:27-33, where Jesus responds to the challenge of the religious leaders on where He gets His authority to perform His miraculous works. Jesus does not give them positive evidence from His position to satisfy their demand, but rather He challenges the consistency of their worldview. Jesus asks them where the baptism of John originated. They found themselves stuck in a contradiction and were unable to answer Jesus. Another example is of the Apostle Paul in Acts 17:22-34. Here, Paul reasons with the philosophers in Athens. In doing this, he shows a method of comparing worldviews and showing the inadequacies and inconsistencies of the anti-Christian view while showing the consistency and intelligibility of the Christian position. He critiques the fact that the Athenians had an altar to a god they had no knowledge of. Paul shows that his worldview provides knowledge of this God and presents this position to them. Then Paul critiques their worldview again by quoting their own philosophers who stated that we humans are the offspring of god. He says in verses 28-29, “as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.” Paul argues then that it is inconsistent to believe on the one hand that we humans are personal beings, but on the other hand to assert that we are the offspring of an impersonal god.
Application to Atheism
Atheism is a common presupposition held by many since the fall of Adam. Van Til remarks in his work Common Grace and The Gospel that there are no true atheists since they are only claiming something they know is not true internally.[4] Nevertheless, people adhere to atheism and it tends to be defined either by the assertion that god does not exist, or more softly, that one lacks belief in god’s existence. Atheism often carries a materialistic outlook on the world, meaning that only that which is material in some form exists, and there is no immaterial aspect to reality. Here are several ways to apply the transcendental argument to atheism. One way could be to do what Jason Lisle calls reductio ad absurdum in his book on this topic, The Ultimate Proof of Creation. Lisle explains this in the following terms: “In this type of inconsistency, a principle taken to its logical conclusion will yield an absurd result.”[5] The approach of the Christian apologist could be to point out to the atheist that if only matter exists, how does the immaterial concept of atheism exist also? The comparison could come back to the Christian position, noting that when the Christian worldview is presupposed, both matter and immaterial concepts can be accounted for.
Another application could be in a conversation where the atheist challenges the Christian to explain the existence of evil in a world where God is allegedly all-powerful and absolutely good. The apologist could respond by challenging the basis of the objection from the atheist's vantage point. If there is no god, by what standard is anything ultimately evil? The Christian could explain from his worldview that the Bible teaches that God has a plan for all evil that exists that is ultimately good and for God’s own glory. As Greg Bahnsen explains in his book Always Ready, “If God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil which exists, as the Bible teaches, then His goodness and power are not challenged by the reality of evil events and things in human experience.”[6]
Application to Islam
In the seventh century A.D., a religion rose up in the Middle East by an alleged prophet named Muhammad, claiming to be a continuation and completion of the religion laid down prior in the Old and New Testaments. In the authoritative book, the Quran, it is claimed in Surah 5:46-47 that the Gospel was given by Allah to confirm what was revealed in the prior revelation in the Torah. The Gospel, which is the New Testament and the Torah are a guide, it is claimed. It then goes on to assert that those who follow the Old and New Testaments should judge all things by the standard of those books. This includes judging the contents of the Quran itself.
What needs to be recognized is that in Surah 4:157 in the Quran, the crucifixion of Jesus is denied emphatically. The Christian apologist could respond by challenging the Islamic worldview internally to show the contradiction here. Why should one believe the Quran on the one hand when it tells the reader to follow the words of the Old and New Testaments, when on the other hand, the Quran denies the central teachings of that prior revelation? Stated simply, one could ask the Muslim: Was Jesus crucified? Like Jesus’ encounter with the religious leaders in Mark 11, He asked them a question revealing a contradiction in their belief system.
Application to Pantheism
Pantheism is a prominent belief system in the Eastern world. Religions such as Hinduism are pantheistic. However, in the West, pantheism has made its way here as well in the form of the New Age philosophy and spiritualism. Pantheism asserts that all of reality is divine or sacred. All of reality is one. And ultimately, the divine is impersonal. Any distinction in being or morally speaking is due to illusion. An application of the transcendental argument to this worldview could go something like this: if the divine is ultimately impersonal, and propositional communication is reserved for personal beings, how do you know that the divine is impersonal (seeing it can’t communicate)? Another example could be to ask the pantheist morally, “If all things are equally sacred, by what standard is evil recognized?” A final point of critique could be to ask the pantheists, “If all of our present experience of distinctions and materiality is illusory, would that not also include the philosophy of pantheism itself, making it illusory?”
Presuppositionalism Before Van Til
Augustine of Hippo
Aurelius Augustine was a Christian theologian and apologist from 354 to 430 A.D. in the town of Hippo in North Africa. His writings reveal a key shift in maturity in the development of Christian theology from the early Church into the Middle Ages. The argument presented here is not that Augustine presented a fully bloomed version of Van Til’s presuppositional apologetic, but rather that he held to the basic framework of transcendental thinking in theology and apologetic methodology. For example, as Van Til emphasizes the need for facts to be rooted in and interpreted by Christian presuppositions (that is, Christian faith), Augustine shows in his thinking that Christian faith precedes understanding. He says in his Homilies on the Gospel According to Saint John, “And we have believed, and have known. Not, have known, and believed, but, have believed and known. For we believed that we might know: since if we would fain know first and then believe, we should be able neither to know, nor to believe.”[7]
Though in Augustine’s early years in the faith, he was more inconsistent with these convictions, later in life, by the time he pens Confessions and The City of God, he is interpreting the world through the lens of Scripture. Van Til comments on this maturity in his work A Christian Theory of Knowledge, saying, “He merely seeks better to understand himself and his world in terms of God’s revelation in Christ through Scripture.”[8] This similar mentality on the presupposition of Christian faith preceding knowledge is seen in Augustine’s work On The Trinity, where he writes, “Faith seeks, understanding finds; whence the prophet says: ‘Unless ye believe, ye shall not understand.’”[9] For the mature Augustine, the world is not full of neutral facts without reference to God; rather, one must first believe in the Biblical God in order to rightly understand the world.
Regarding Augustine’s use of the apologetic method of internally critiquing the opposing paradigm, he writes in The City of God book ten, “Since, therefore, miracles are worked by some angels to induce us to worship this God, by others, to induce us to worship themselves; and since the former forbid us to worship these, while the latter dare not forbid us to worship God, which are we to listen to?”[10] Here, he challenges the pagans on their own presuppositions. They received instructions from what they believed were various angels, some even allegedly worked miracles, but they gave contradicting instructions on worship. Augustine challenges the
epistemology of his opponents from their worldview. Early in book ten of the same work, he shows how even the pagans themselves struggle to find a moral basis in their worldview since the pagans are constantly plagued with “... this race of deceitful and malicious spirits… who come into the souls of men and delude their senses…”[11] In other words, if the pantheon of gods is the foundation for moral norms, which god’s norms should one follow?
John Calvin
Following the Middle Ages, there came a second-generation reformer in Protestantism by the name John Calvin (1509-1564). Calvin’s primary ministry was in the city of Geneva. One of his many works includes his Institutes of the Christian Religion. In it, he lays out much of his thought and systematic thinking for his readers. Though Calvin was not writing in a context of modernity or enlightenment thinking (and thus did not focus on apologetics primarily), he did lay out convictions regarding epistemology, which is at the heart of the presuppositional apologetic. Again, it is the view that the Christian faith must be presupposed in order to make sense of anything in the human experience. In book 1, chapter 6, section 1, he writes that our confused minds as sinners need to be “… aided by the glasses…”[12] that is, the glasses of Scripture, in order to rightly perceive the works of God in creation. In the same chapter, section 2, Calvin writes that, “… all correct knowledge of God originates in obedience.”[13] In context, the obedience he refers to is the obedience of faith. It is without difficulty to see how, for Calvin, one does not reason from neutrality to Scripture, but rather, one must begin with (presuppose) Scripture logically in order to reason at all.
Van Til’s Critics
John Frame
John Frame was a disciple of Van Til studying directly under him at Westminster Theological Seminary. Frame holds in general to the presuppositional apologetic method, but also raises a challenge to Van Til’s dogmatism concerning whether the argument, to be faithful, must always be stated negatively. In other words, does the transcendental apologetic require one to argue “without presupposing the biblical God, knowledge is impossible”? Frame argues that a negative and indirect argument can easily be stated positively and directly.[14] In other words, one could just as faithfully argue “only with the Biblical presupposition is knowledge possible.” Frame’s assessment appears valid concerning this issue, and it does not undermine the presuppositional apologetic as a whole.
Jesse De Boer
Jesse De Boer interacted with Van Til’s apologetical thinking and epistemology and challenged Van Til’s claim on whether non-Christians have knowledge. De Boer raised the criticism, “As for Van Til’s radical statement that unless I presuppose God and his counsel I cannot distinguish a hawk from a handsaw, I see no point in hesitating to deny it.”[15]Van Til’s point, however, is not that unbelievers don’t know things, but rather that they can know nothing if their presuppositions are true.
Norman Geisler
Norman Geisler has been a teacher of apologetics and theology in various evangelical institutions for some time. He has advocated for a classical approach to apologetics and has challenged whether or not the transcendental approach of Van Til has any actual advantage over other methods. He raises the concern that Van Til’s approach is unable to avoid the effects of depravity. He claims that Van Til supposes that his method avoids human depravity.[16] But that is not what Van Til’s apologetic supposes. Rather, the presuppositional method aims to silence the mouths of unbelievers and challenge them in light of what Romans one says about them, that they are “without excuse”. As John Frame says elsewhere about the goal of presuppositional apologetics that goes beyond traditional apologetics, “The goal of the apologist is not only to show that God exists, but also who He is: He is the source of all meaning and intelligibility in the universe.”[17]
How Van Til’s Apologetic Serves the Church Today
The first way this apologetic serves the Church today is by giving it a sense of certainty in its position. Many attacks have been raised against the Christian Faith since the Enlightenment, based on philosophies of man. No longer is the Church primarily responding to other religions; now the Church must respond to atheism, scientism, skepticism, and humanism. Arguments of probability are not only inconsistent with the testimony of Scripture, but are weakening to the confidence of the Christian. With this apologetic, we can stand with Peter and say, “Of these things we are certain!”
Second is that this apologetic causes the believer to rely more heavily on the Scriptures. In other apologetic methods, one can rely on alleged natural theology or some general tenets of Biblical theism, but with presuppositional apologetics, one must stand on the explicit testimony of Scripture that grounds and defines the character of God, the providence of God, and Biblical anthropology.
Thirdly, this apologetic provides believers with an opportunity to go on the offensive in spiritual warfare. As 2 Corinthians 10:5 states, we take every thought captive and destroy every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of Christ. No longer does the Church have to wait for an attack; now the Church can take ground in the world, boldly preaching the Gospel and exposing the folly of unbelief.
Conclusion
Though the people of God in every age have been led by the Spirit of God to make a defense to anyone who asks them for a reason for the hope that is in them, there are more Biblically consistent and effective ways to do this. Starting with Biblical teaching and examples with Jesus and Paul, the rationale for the apologetic that deals with the issues of unbelief at the level of presuppositions is compelling. Not only is it Biblical, but it is historical as seen in Augustine and Calvin, as well as relevant for the contemporary setting. To end with the summation of Van Til’s argument, only on the Christian presupposition can one find coherence or meaning in anything.[18] To this conviction, the reader must work in this day to persuade others.
Author: Troy Goldsmith, founder of Aletheia Ministries, husband to Elisha, father to four, and current graduate student at Liberty Theological Seminary.
Endnotes:
[1] Douglas F. Kelly, "Van Til, Cornelius (1895-1987)," in New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic, 2nd ed., ed. Martin Davie, Tim Grass, Stephen R. Holmes, John McDowell, and T. A. Noble (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 2016), 938-939.
[2] Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2008), 122.
[3] Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2008), 122.
[4] Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel, ed. Marcus J. Serven (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2017), 69.
[5] Dr. Jason Lisle, The Ultimate Proof of Creation: Resolving the Origins Debate (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2009), 100.
[6] Greg L. Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith, ed. Robert R. Booth (Nacogdoches, TX: Covenant Media Press, 1996), 173.
[7] S. Augustine, Homilies on the Gospel according to St. John, and His First Epistle: Hom. 1–124, S. John 1–21 and Hom. 1–10, 1 S. John, vol. 1 & 2, A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, Anterior to the Division of the East and West: Translated by Members of the English Church (Oxford; London: John Henry Parker; F. and J. Rivington, 1848–1849), 421.
[8] Cornelius Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge, ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Philadelphia: Westminster Seminary Press, 2023), 133-134.
[9] Augustine, On the Trinity, trans. Arthur Hadden and William Shedd, vol. 8 of A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 15.2.2.
[10] Saint Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2009), 287.
[11] Ibid., 282-283.
[12] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), 1.6.1.
12 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), 1.6.2.
[14] John M. Frame, Apologetics: A Justification of Christian Belief, ed. Joseph E. Torres, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2015), 83.
[15] Jesse De Boer, “Professor Van Til’s Apologetics: Part II: God and Human Knowledge,” The Calvin Forum 19, no. 3 (October 1953): 27.
[16] Norman L. Geisler. The Big Book of Christian Apologetics: An A to Z Guide. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2015, 574.
[17] John M. Frame, A History of Western Philosophy and Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2015), 601.
[18] Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003), 197.
