"VAN TIL MADE ME REFORMED"

"New Horizons" ^ | October, 2004 | Eric H. Sigward

[Dr. Eckleburg]

A short and wise summation of one man finding clarity in Scripture.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Bump to a great piece of writing and witnessing to God's glory.

[D Edmund Joaquin]

I always wondered what all the excitement over Lewis was, glad to know there's more of us, lol

[RnMomof7]

An excellent article.. to the point, " The Bible says that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for our sins and was raised from the dead, according to the Scriptures. You can't tell if someone has faith by looking at them. Do you have faith in Jesus Christ?" "

I love it

[FreeRep]

Calvinism vs Arminianism--- What a "paradox" in which something seems both true and false. I have no choice but to believe in free will or I have the free will to believe in no choice. Most SBC baptists walk the 'razor's edge' so I believe our task is to preach the Gospel and "let the chips fall where they may." Most the time, I think all you need to do is believe in Jesus Christ as your savior. "If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you 'will be saved.'" (Eph. 2:8)

[HarleyD]

Your comment is reminiscences of Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist (and yes, Calvinist) speaker where he stated:

We do not regard it to be soul-winning to steal members out of churches already established, and train them to utter our peculiar Shibboleth: we aim rather at bringing souls to Christ than at making converts to our synagogue. There are sheep-stealers abroad, concerning whom I will say nothing except that they are not "brethren", or, at least, they do not act in a brotherly fashion. To their own Master they must stand or fall. We count it utter meanness to build up our own house with the ruins of our neighbours' mansions; we infinitely prefer to quarry for ourselves. I hope we all sympathize in the largehearted spirit of Dr. Chalmers, who, when it was said that such and such an effort would not be beneficial to the special interests of the Free Church of Scotland, although it might promote the general religion of the land, said, "What is the Free Church compared with the Christian good of the people of Scotland?" What, indeed, is any church, or what are all the churches put together, as mere organizations, if they stand in conflict with the moral and spiritual advantage of the nation, or if they impede the kingdom of Christ? It is because God blesses men through the churches that we desire to see them prosper, and not merely for the sake of the churches themselves. There is such a thing as selfishness in our eagerness for the aggrandisement of our own party; and from this evil spirit may grace deliver us! The increase of the kingdom is more to be desired than the growth of a clan. We would do a great deal to make a Paedobaptist brother into a Baptist, for we value our Lord's ordinances; we would labour earnestly to raise a believer in salvation by free-will into a believer in salvation by grace, for we long to see all religious teaching built upon the solid rock of truth, and not upon the sand of imagination; but, at the same time, our grand object is not the revision of opinions, but the regeneration of natures. We would bring men to Christ and not to our own peculiar views of Christianity.

Ref: Soul Winning by Charles Spurgeon

A great man and Baptist who’s sermons I would encourage reading.

[jude24]

Wow... Van Til. There's a guy who certainly isn't light reading. I tried The Defense of the Faith three or four times, and got stuck about 20 pp in each time. The writing was absolutely impenetrable - as bad as any legal case I've ever slogged through.

What I understand of him, however, is profound - that the fundamental flaw in classical apologetics, as defined by Thomas Aquinas et seq., is the assumption that one can rationally and independently come to the Christian God. Classical apologetics, therefore, tries to speak solely to man's intellect, and prove that God exists solely through reason, and from this, that Jesus Christ is God.

Van Til is absolutely right in saying this puts the cart before the horse. Unless a person accepts the basic presuppositions of the Christian faith, no amount of discussion will change their mind, and the apologist cannot convince a person of these fundamental assumptions. You either accept or reject the authority of Scripture; arguing little pieces of evidence is pure obfuscation, IMHO. At the same time, I think he may overstate his own case when he claims the Christian has no common ground with the unregenerate man. I would argue (and believe Reformed presuppositionalists like Francis Schaeffer would agree) that there is common ground with our shared human experiences. These would certainly not be dispositive, but they're a starting point.

Still, what do I know? I'm just some punk behind a keyboard.

[blue-duncan]

This article is one of the better illustrations of intentional evangelism that I have seen. He covers all the major objections and lets the Holy Spirit work on the mind and heart of the listener.

http://www.reformed.org/apologetics/index.html?mainframe=why_I_believe_cvt.html

[connectthedots]

One cannot possibly imagine Jesus Christ speaking in the manner of the writings of Van Til. The Gospel is not that complicated. for every person who has read Van Til, there are likely thousands who have read C.S. Lewis.

[suzyjaruki]

Classical apologetics, therefore, tries to speak solely to man's intellect, and prove that God exists solely through reason, and from this, that Jesus Christ is God.

Is the Classical Apologetics approach "solely" through reason, or "primarily" through reason?

[D Edmund Joaquin]

I suppose. I just never got into him, thanks.

[jude24]

Classical apologetics, in its pure form, uses Scripture fairly late. You don't hear much about classical apologists these days. William Lane Craig is about the only modern classical apologist I can think of, off the top of my head.

Writers like C.S. Lewis are at most "impure" classical apologists; he has a lot of presuppositionalism in Mere Christianity (but I can't seem to locate my copy). Frankly, I think the difference between C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer (who is generally considered a presuppositionalist) is one of degrees.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

for every person who has read Van Til, there are likely thousands who have read C.S. Lewis.

And even thousands more who've read "Harry Potter."

[AZhardliner]

R. C. Sproul is a classical apologist.
As for me, I'm a Van Tillian but I also love C. S. Lewis.

[suzyjaruki]

Thanks for making my day with this post!

The Christian Education Committee of the OPC does a great job to further the education of members with the articles in New Horizon each month.

[BibChr]

That was fun, thanks. Van Til played a significant part in my own Calvinization!

(c8

Dan

[jude24]

R. C. Sproul is a classical apologist.

Sproul? Not according to my notes. He's pretty presuppositionalist. You don't generally see Calvinist Classical Apologists.

[thePilgrim]

I would liken Van Til to a thinking man's theologian. Some people simply don't have the God given ability or desire to sit for hours thinking about theology. In that regard, he probably intimidates a lot of people.

Still, he is a good and meaty chew for any serious theologian.

In the service of the Lord,
Christian.

[blue-duncan]

For the most part you read them for different reasons. I suspect those that have and are reading Van Til are either teaching others or are in an apologetic ministry like Os Guiness, Ravi Zacharias, R.C. Sproul, or the like. Lewis was more popular in his apologetics while Van Til was not only teaching at the graduate level, he was debating and demonstrating to a highly skeptical professional class that we have a reasonable faith, not a credulous dogmatism.

Both, however, stretch your faith and reason and are not to be read when you are drinking, tired or driving.