Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 34:2 (May 1972)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

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WTJ 34:2 (May 72) p. 174

Book Reviews

ed. E. R. Geehan: Jerusalem and Athens. Critical Discussions on the Theology and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til. Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1971. xv, 498. $9.95.

This is an important, disappointing, and disturbing book. Readers of this Journal will be familiar with the distinguished career and the extensive writings of Cornelius Van Til. Many will wish, together with this reviewer, to add their congratulations to those of the authors of these 25 essays which are dedicated to Dr. Van Til on the occasion of his 75th birthday and 40th anniversary as Professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary. It would be a work of supererogation to add, on this occasion, an extensive personal and appreciative evaluation. We value the depth and grace of your response to Professor Gaffin (p. 243), Dr. Van Til, but you must allow us to say that we salute you. You it is who have explained to us in your apologetic and shown us by your presence among us the depth of the apostle’s meaning: “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In all your writing you have spoken to us of the self-attesting Christ and the cosmic significance of his work. You have taught us well. We trust we have learned well. We thank you. And now, to review.

The volume before us is divided into four parts, following a brief editorial and explanatory introduction: First, a new essay by Dr. Van Til, expressively titled “My Credo”; second, “Letters from Three Continents,” in which Hendrik G. Stoker and Herman Dooyeweerd discuss aspects of Van Til’s work together with, in each case, a response by Van Til; third, “Essays in Theology and Theological Method”; and fourth, “Essays in Philosophy and Apologetics.” Dr. Van Til has added responses to 14 of the 25 essays. For reasonably complete understanding the volume should be read in the order (notwithstanding the editor’s advice to the contrary) Parts I, II, IV, and III. By this means the reader is exposed initially to the philosophico-apologetic discussion between Stoker, Dooyeweerd, and Van Til, a grasp of which is necessary to the understanding of Van Til’s responses in other parts of the book. The volume, I have said, is important, and its importance resides precisely in these discussions in Parts I and II. It needs to be said as clearly as possible, in fact, that the single most

WTJ 34:2 (May 72) p. 175

important feature of the book is Van Til’s 38 page response to Dooyeweerd’s essay “Cornelius Van Til and the Transcendental Critique of Theoretical Thought.” It can be said immediately by way of evaluation that in this single essay Van Til has accomplished a definitive dismantling of the widely known, influ...

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