Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 82:2 (Fall 2020)
Article: Junius And Van Til On Natural Knowledge Of God
Author: Nathan D. Shannon

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Junius And Van Til On Natural Knowledge Of God

Nathan D. Shannon

Nathan D. Shannon is assistant professor of systematic theology at Torch Trinity Graduate University in Seoul, S. Korea.

This article compares the views of Franciscus Junius and Cornelius Van Til regarding pre- and post-fall natural knowledge of God. It is argued that while differences are clear, Junius and Van Til both claimed that pre-fall natural theology was not intended to function independently of special revelation. Junius and Van Til also agree that post-fall natural theology, unaided by special revelation, is not theology in any meaningful sense. The conclusion, borrowed from Willem Van Asselt, is that for both Junius and Van Til the determining factor with regard to the structure and status of natural theology is the God-human relationship. This thesis, so far as it is true, enhances the historical credentials of Van Til’s characteristically neo-Calvinist view of natural theology and natural reason.

According to Franciscus Junius (d. 1602), since the fall, true theology is possible only where a redemptive divine-human relation is established “through the communication of grace.”1 For Junius this relational reconciliation is a necessary condition of true theology. Outside of this relational establishment, theology—dubiously so-called—may be found, but it is necessarily theologia falsa. There is for Junius no activity of the natural man which may properly be called “theology.”2 Cornelius Van Til’s (d. 1987) objection to natural theology is based on the same paradigm—divine-human relational breakdown renders illegitimate whatever cognitive theistic activity there is in the unregenerate; it is theology only in an equivocal because idolatrous sense. Since true theology is determined by redemptive relation, natural theology, lacking this redemptive relation, is not true theology, not in fact theology at

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all. Natural theology is in the end anti-theology. It is the burden of this article to demonstrate that the relational theme is constitutive of the structure and character of pre-fall Edenic and post-fall hamartic natural theology in Franciscus Junius’s Treatise on True Theology as well as in Cornelius Van Til’s view of natural theology.

The substance and viability of a “Reformed objection to natural theology” received renewed attention following upon the work of Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff.3 In addition, the role of natural reason, sometimes in the person of Thomas Aquinas, in all seasons...