Journal: Grace Journal
Volume: GJ 04:1 (Winter 1963)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

GJ 4:1 (Wtr 63) p. 47

Book Reviews

Van Til. By Rousas J. Rushdoony. Modern Thinkers Series. Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1960. 51 pp., $1.25.

The author, who is pastor of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Santa Cruz, California, draws much of his material from a book of his entitled By What Standard, an analysis of the philosophy of Cornelius Van Til. He includes a good bibliography of the various writings of Van Til.

He begins by showing that modern philosophy is actually a flight from reality. The current philosophical demand is for rootlessness, subjectivity, and relativism. “Reality” is very limited if permitted at all. The standard practice is to ignore orthodox Christianity. The last of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th saw the reformation principles restored to philosophy in the person of Abraham Kuyper. In his tradition today the two central figures in Europe are Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd, and in America, Van Til.

The author likens Van Til and his impact on philosophy to the old tale of “The Emperor’s Clothes.” Autonomous man has long been the emperor in every avenue of human thought. In the realms of philosophy and apologetics many see an area of knowledge that can be comprehended by the consistent natural man; an area of “neutral facts” which are available to God and man and which derive meaning from themselves. In the light of the biblical doctrines of total depravity, the self-contained Trinity, etc., Van Til insists that man cannot know anything apart from God; that every fact is a God-created and God-interpreted fact that can be known only as we think God’s thoughts after Him. The emperor has no clothes. The natural man thus can have no valid knowledge of his own and what he has is borrowed from Christian theism. He is epistemologically naked.

In some systems the autonomy of theoretical thought is assumed for apologetic purposes. According to Van Til this cannot be done because natural man is not able to judge reality nor is he impartial and neutral concerning the God whom, because of depravity, he despises. For Van Til there is no factuality or meaning apart from God. Therefore only theistic facts are possible and we must reason from God to God-given and God-interpreted facts. This is impossible for the autonomous mind.

The history of philosophy is briefly reviewed and criticized. The author contends that Van Til is one contemporary thinker, as perhaps no other, who is well known and little read. He concludes with the observation that “because Van Til brings to such clear focus the issues between Christian-theism and anti-theism, his philosophy constitutes a stone of stumbling and rock of offense…to those whose philosophic concern is to break down the offense of Christianity to ...