Van Til is often [completely] misunderstood regarding his teaching on brute facts.  For those unfamiliar with Van Til, a brute fact is one that is completely uninterpreted.  It is a piece of “data” that exists “out there” and “on its own” without being interpreted by any mind whatsoever.  Van Til gets the idea and the term from British absolute idealism and he clearly rejects the possibility of such a thing.  But many readers misunderstand the reason for rejecting brute facts.

The postmodernist wants to reject the existence of brute facts by saying that all facts are interpreted by subjects who exist in a socio-cultural milieu.  Therefore, we can never access “objective” truth because there are no brute facts. All our knowledge is colored by our socio-cultural situation.  Van Til’s point in rejecting brute facts is not that human subjects are bound by culture and are therefore unable to interpret facts without bias, but that God is the all-knower.  The self-sufficient Triune God knows all facts and pre-interprets them.  Therefore we can never come to any fact without approaching it as one that is already known and has been interpreted by the all-knowing Triune God.

On page 101 of his book The Next Reformation: Why Evangelicals Must Embrace Postmodernity, Carl Raschke speaks of Van Til’s as a transitional theology on its way toward postmodernism.  This is a terrible case of misreading a theologian – using a gross misrepresentation for one’s own doctrinal wiles.  Our task as human knowers is to reinterpret the facts, thinking God’s thoughts after him on a created level.  We think analogically as our knowledge is firmly planted on the one who knows all things.  As such we are not hopelessly trapped within our socio-cultural context, but can escape that context because God has clearly revealed himself and that he is the reference point for all knowledge.  Perhaps readers are interpreting Van Til according to their own postmodern inclinations.

At least from the Christian position, tracing the boundaries of philosophy and theology has proven to be quite difficult.  This is due in part to the fact that classic theological loci have so much to say about philosophy’s subject matter.  Cornelius Van Til once remarked that if one’s philosophy was Calvinistic, then it isn’t philosophy anymore – it is theology.  Herein lies the difficulty.  If the philosopher consciously presupposes the Triune God of the Bible in his system and presents Him as the foundation for epistemology, metaphysics and ethics, what distinguishes the philosophic discipline from the theological? (more…)

Modern scientists inherited this false ideal of knowledge from the Greeks. Parmenides saw the vision of reality as one, to which nothing had ever been or could ever be added. Kant followed his modern predecessors; the idealists followed Kant; the “logial atomists” and the “logical positivists” in turn follow the idealists. The “revolution in philosophy” which we have traced so far is a revolution within the Kantian revolution, within the Renaissance revolution, within the Greek revolution, within the revolution of Adam.

Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theistic Evidences . Also found in Bahnsen, Greg L. Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis , 372.

In Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis Greg Bahnsen brings up an interesting point regarding the role of special revelation.

Supernatural verbal revelation is, according to Van Til, inherent in the human situation and the intended concomitant to supernatural revelation in nature and in man’s inner constitution.  In that case, man was never – and is not now – expected simply to observe the natural world or consider his own rational, moral personality and figure out for himself how they are to be interpreted and how their truths are to be verbally expressed.  Man’s Creator has provided the linguistic framework for “exegeting” the truth of God in natural revelation and in man himself.¹

(more…)

Van Til’s editorial Students and Controversies has been posted to the OPC’s website.

A student’s attitude toward a controversy may be said to be normal if it reveals an intelligent and diligent following of all points in dispute. A student wants to learn. He is filled with an insatiable desire for knowledge. To gain knowledge, in the broad sense of the term, is his exclusive aim. For the purpose of acquiring knowledge he goes to the class-room. For that purpose he reads, reads much. With that purpose in mind he views current events and tries to ascertain the principles that impel men to act. With that purpose in mind he is to view, chiefly, any and all controversies of whatever nature.

But now in actuality we find that ofttimes we are not normal, but abnormal students. We are either too cold or too hot. If the controversies that fill the very air about us with their din do not even reach our ears, if we seal ourselves hermetically within the circle prescribed by our text-books, we are too cold or too narrow. We either overemphasize the student virtue of concentration on our school work, so that it becomes a vice, or our pulsebeat is too slow, so that we need a tonic to restore our lost vitality.

Introduction

In 1953, Cecil De Boer, the editor of Calvin Seminary’s Calvin Forum published a series of articles criticizing the “new apologetic” of Cornelius Van Til.¹ Jesse De Boer,² the sharpest of Van Til’s critics in these issues, wrote a three-part series published from August to November criticizing Van Til’s use of categories borrowed from idealist philosophy. De Boer³ felt it was impossible to borrow these categories without compromising Reformed orthodoxy. The collective response in the Calvin Forum, led by Jesse De Boer’s articles, has become infamous in Van Tilian circles. The character and tone, coupled with superficial critiques, have placed the August-September 1953 Calvin Forum as the forefather of a series of mischaracterizations of Van Til’s apologetic system. (more…)

Who was the lovely critic of Van Til who penned these fine words?

I suggest that Van Til’s apologetics, because it does not grow out of painstaking and complete mastery of great Christian texts, ancient, medieval, and modern, is twisted and victimized by the categories and techniques of the idealists whose works he read in his student days.

We recently interviewed John Muether on Christ the Center. Professor Muether has written a new biography of Cornelius VanTil, focusing on the ecclesiastical commitment of the great Christian apologist. You can listen here.

I recently stumbled upon this interesting quote:

from The Brothers Karamazov, page 31 of the 2004 Barnes & Noble Classics edition.

           Having just finished reading John Muether’s biography Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman, and having written a review of it for Modern Reformation, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of the strengths of Muether’s work. Professor Muether has sought to give us a picture of Cornelius Van Til as a man deeply committed to the church of Jesus Christ. It was controversy and doctrinal deviations from the Reformed Confessions that shaped the ministry of Dr. Van Til. He was here, first and foremost, to serve the church–even if that service was polemical or militant in nature.  What an example for young seminarians in our own day. We live in a time when theological academia is the goal for so many young men. The church does not seem to lie close to the hearts of most in our seminaries. Building a name appears to be more important to many than building up the church. Muether shows us a Van Til that was not interested in notoriety or self aggrandizement. He also shows us a Van Til who was ready to admit his faults.