APPENDIX BA Critique of Presuppositionalism: Cornelius van Til
APPENDIX B
A Critique of Presuppositionalism: Cornelius van Til
In the late 1920s, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America was shaken by a series of controversies between conservatives and liberals. Eventually, these controversies led to one of the most important shake-ups in religious higher education: the departure of four members of the Princeton Theological Seminary faculty to form Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia.1 Convinced that Princeton had abandoned its commitment to the “old theology,” J. Gresham Machen and three Princeton colleagues (including Cornelius van Til) became the nucleus of the faculty of the new seminary, dedicated to maintaining the tradition from which Princeton now seemed to have departed. Yet paradoxically, the approach to apologetics that has come to be closely linked with Westminster Seminary bears little relation to the “old Princeton school” of apologetics, which had dominated American reformed thought until the 1920s. The apologetic system of Cornelius van Til, generally designated “presuppositionalism,”2 represents a conscious and deliberate move away from the position of writers such as Benjamin B. Warfield toward a position more similar to that associated with later Dutch Reformed writers such as Abraham Kuyper.
One of the central presuppositions of presuppositionalism (for our purposes here, the central presupposition) is a critique of “autonomy.” For van Til, the logical starting point of apologetics must be the biblical notion of God. Yet classical evangelical apologetics, as found in the writings of Calvin or Edwards, begins its thinking without the presupposition of God, on the basis of the pedagogical assumption that one proceeds from the known (such as nature or human experience) to the unknown (the existence of God). To rework a turn of phrase deriving from Anselm of Canterbury’s Cur Deus homo, traditional apologetics begins remoto Deo, “apart from God,” and aims to end up showing that God is the most reasonable explanation of the way the world is. Van Til summarizes this approach, as it is found in the Old Princeton theology:
According to this method, natural man was assumed to be able:
Van Til argues that this approach can lead only to human beings creating God in their own image and using human criteria of rationality and evidence instead of divinely authorized criteria. They are guilty of idolatry—the creation and worship of a god made in their own image. Why? Van Til’s reply is somewhat complex and often couched in rather tortuous English. The basic structure of his argument, however, appears to be as follows. If we begin our thinking about God without presupposing his existence, we are, in effect, already precommitted to a nonbiblical worldview from which God is excluded, or which will conceive of him in purely human terms. We have begun our thinking from an autonomous starting point—and that very starting point, in effect, predetermines our conclusions. The only valid starting point is the presupposition of the existence of God—not just any idea of God, however, but the view of God explicitly set forth in Scripture. Apologetics must therefore, according to van Til, begin from above (with God), rather than from below (with the everyday world of experience and events).
Van Til thus declares that the possibility of a dialogue with those outside the Christian faith is excluded. There is no common ground. If you accept the presupposition of God, with all that this entails, you are already Christian; if you do not, then you cannot even begin to see the merits of the Christian case. Only by total surrender to the presupposition of God can the non-Christian see the merits of the Christian case.
Yet van Til is confronted by an arsenal of texts, from Scripture and the reformed tradition, which affirms that sinful human beings do have access to knowledge of God from creation—that is to say, from below. Van Til recognizes this point:
The Apostle Paul speaks of the natural man as actually possessing the knowledge of God (Romans 1:19–21). The greatness of his sin lies precisely in the fact that “when they knew God, they glorified him not as God. No man can escape knowing God. It is indelibly involved in his awareness of anything whatsoever. Man ought, therefore, as Calvin puts it, to recognize God. There is no excuse for him if he does not. The reason for his failure to recognize God lies exclusively in him.4
This is an admirable summary of the situation. But where does van Til take us next? He declares that “all men, due to the sin within them, always and in all relationships seek to ‘suppress’ this knowledge of God. The natural man constantly throws water on a fire he cannot quench. He has yielded to the temptation of Satan and has become his bondservant.”5 It is this notion of the deliberate and systematic suppression of a natural knowledge of God that requires critical examination.
The theology of this position is exceptionally vulnerable. Its apologetic implications are as disastrous as they are unwarranted. Dialogue with the world is excluded. Yet there is a curious inconsistency in van Til’s approach. Conceding that all have access to knowledge of God, he insists that all (apparently without exception) suppress that knowledge. Yet if there exists a real, yet suppressed, knowledge of God outside the Christian community, the apologist has the opportunity to uncover this knowledge and raise it to the level of articulated consciousness. Van Til seems to refuse to recognize the apologetic propriety of this approach, apparently believing that it represents a capitulation on the part of the apologist to the presuppositions of an agnostic audience. Yet this is not the case; the apologist is merely maneuvering for position—reculer pour mieux sauter, as it were. Those who have not suppressed such knowledge of God can, by judicious use of an arsenal of apologetic techniques, bring out the memory of this repressed knowledge of God.
Van Til’s point is that a natural knowledge of God, which arises from human autonomy, leads to idolatry. But the sixteenth-century reformers, such as Luther and Calvin, were perfectly aware of this danger. Calvin stresses that a natural knowledge of God can easily degenerate into idolatry. Such a knowledge of God is inadequate; it must be supplemented by revelation. Yet, rightly understood, a natural knowledge of God is a starting point—and nothing more—for the full richness of God’s self-revelation.
The error in question is not making use of a natural knowledge of God, but making improper use of such knowledge. If a starting point (natural knowledge of God the Creator) is confused with the end point (revealed knowledge of God the Redeemer), a serious distortion of the kind feared by van Til will result. But, as Calvin stresses, it need not. It is up to the apologist to uncover—that is to say, raise to explicit consciousness—and to make the best use of that “suppressed knowledge” and allow it to lead on to greater and better things.
As we noted earlier, the dangers of abusing a natural knowledge of God are well known in classical apologetics. Van Til, like Barth, reminds us of the need to be responsible and scriptural in our apologetic appeal to nature and human experience; yet neither of these writers succeeds in undermining the foundations that give theological justification to a limited and informed appeal to nature.
Van Til’s position is thus seriously vulnerable, both historically and theologically. We have already explored the importance of these points and indicated our anxieties concerning the type of approach advocated by van Til. Theologically, it fails to integrate the Christian doctrines of creation and redemption. Historically, van Til’s position is not characteristic of the reformed tradition as a whole.
Van Til claims to represent the integrity of the reformed tradition. But does Calvin himself, who may reasonably be argued to be the fons et origo of this distinguished school, actually endorse van Til’s position? Surely not. Is not Benjamin B. Warfield, whose distrust of Abraham Kuyper is well documented, a more faithful representative of this school? It is difficult to see how van Til can claim Calvin as a representative of the presuppositionalist position. Warfield seems to summarize Calvin’s position on the relation of general and special revelation superbly when he writes:
Each is incomplete without the other…Without general revelation, special revelation would lack that basis in the fundamental knowledge of God as the mighty and wise, righteous and good, maker and ruler of all things, apart from which special revelation of this great God’s intervention in the world for the salvation of sinners could not either be intelligible, credible or operative.6
General revelation provides the point of contact for special revelation, this latter alone being saving knowledge of God.
Further, the attitude that van Til espouses does not appear to be characteristic of post-Calvinian reformed theology. The basic difficulty here can be illustrated from a study by my Oxford colleague, Dr. John Platt, into the function of arguments for the existence of God within Dutch reformed theology during the period 1575–1650.7 If van Til is correct in his presentation and application of the reformed tradition (especially, one might add, Dutch reformed theology), one would expect its leading writers to explicitly disavow a rational apologetic. In fact, one finds nothing of the sort. There is no suggestion that a rational apologetic amounts to a crude and irresponsible human declaration of autonomy. Nowhere is rational apologetics treated as a gesture of defiance against God; rather, it is treated as an entirely proper and natural means of laying a reliable and persuasive rational foundation for the reformed doctrine of God.
My own modest studies in the history of apologetics suggest that van Til’s ideas may be reasonably suggested to rest upon a later school of thought, grounded in the writings of the noted Amsterdam theologian and philosopher Abraham Kuyper, rather than in the classical reformed tradition itself. The “Old Princeton” apologetic, as developed in the writings of Warfield and others, has a far greater claim to be considered as the most faithful representative of the reformed tradition. The approach to apologetics that is developed in this book reverts to the central insights of this older tradition, believing—with the greatest reluctance—that the approach developed by van Til fails to make the maximum use of God-given resources for apologetics.
But whatever our criticisms of van Til might be, there can be no doubt that he has shown the necessity of grounding apologetics in a sound theological foundation. Indeed, it might be fair to suggest that it is van Til’s theological rigor in itself, rather than the specific results of its application, that gives him a place of honor among contemporary apologists.