(1) Summary of Dennison’s Critique
William D. Dennison has published a critique regarding Van Til’s apologetic method, namely, that it is biblically-theologically lacking in its rationale of the antithesis, and that if he had only integrated Vos’s two-age eschatology into his understanding of the nature of the relationship between the unbeliever and God, he would not have abstracted the antithesis, and fell, as he did, into the rationalistic, abstractionist tendencies of his Old Princetonean ancestors.[1] Dennison argues,
Van Til simply fails to apply his concept of analogy to the historical process of God’s revelation, and therefore, we can understand why he fails to correct the order of the traditional topics of systematics. For our theological task to be truly analogical, it must be organized in submission to God’s organic plan of redemption revealed to us in His word. In other words, the ordo salutis is subordinate to the historia salutis.[2]
Furthermore, Dennison argues,
Van Til falls into…the ‘tendency to abstraction,’ or more pointedly a ‘tendency to dehistoricize, the tendency to arrive at ‘timeless formulations’ in the sense of topically oriented statements which do not adequately reflect the fact that God’s self-revelation (verbal communication) is an integral part of the totality of his concrete activity in history as sovereign creator and redeemer.[3]
For Van Til, the rationale for the notion of history having any meaning whatsoever flows from the relationship between the eternal mind of God in its economic participation in the pactum salutis and the historical progression of history as it unfolds in what Van Til explicitly states is a two-Adam structure of understanding history.[4]
Dennison makes his case against this understanding of Van Til from Van Til’s articulation of his theological method, in which he describes eschatology as the doctrine of the future. Dennison dislikes this notion, because, as a Th.M student writing this thesis, his recent encounter with the sound bite “eschatology precedes soteriology” has apparently given him insight deeper into the meta-structure of Scripture than Van Til could have ever fathomed. Dennison says regarding a brief sentence in Van Til regarding the relationship between biblical theology and systematic theology, “To my knowledge, this is the most comprehensive statement in Van Til’s writings concerning the relationship of biblical theology to systematic theology.”[5]
Dennison also summarizes Van Til’s understanding of God’s analytic knowledge of himself as prescriptive for our understanding of his revelation. However, Dennison does not cite one example in which Van Til negates the role of historical progress in God’s revelation or its necessity for understanding the system of truth set forth in Scripture. Since there are therefore no texts in the work of Van Til which Dennison brings to the debate, it is appropriate for the apologist sympathetic to Van Til’s rationale to bring whatever text might disprove Dennison’s contention.
What, I wonder, are Dennison’s sources for his understanding of eschatology which gives him this insight into Van Til’s theological shortcoming? He says in his introduction, “It is imperative, in my estimation, that the Reformed community reflect fruitfully upon the Vos-Ridderbos-Gaffin interpretation of St. Paul, for a restatement of Reformed theological formulations.”[6] The task, then, in order to vindicate Van Til’s rationale for the ultimate ethical antithesis, is to see if he anywhere qualifies his conception of antithesis with the criteria Dennison sets forth.
(2) Van Til Wrote These Things for Our Instruction
Does Van Til use Vos? This may seem clear, for he references Vos quite often; but did he, as Dennison claims he does not, yet should have, “reflect fruitfully upon the Vos-Ridderbos-Gaffin interpretation of St. Paul, for a restatement of Reformed theological formulations?” Perhaps we shall consider each of these names one at a time.
Richard Gaffin was a student of Van Til, and said regarding Van Til’s concession to his critics that his theological and apologetic work was not biblically-theologically qualified enough, “In my view Van Til was too hard on himself and conceded too much to his critics. Many of them have not read him as carefully as they might.”[7] Moreover, Gaffin asserts, “He was…not only knowledgeable in but thoroughly committed to the kind of biblical theology fathered by…Geerhardus Vos. A reflective reading of Van Til shows a mind (and heart) thoroughly permeated by Scripture.”[8] Finally, in his concluding footnote, Gaffin says, “But I am convinced that…Reformed anthropology and soteriology…control Van Til’s epistemology and apologetics.”[9]
If Dennison is correct in presenting Gaffin’s understanding of Reformed soteriology as essentially eschatological, then Gaffin’s last statement directly contradicts Dennison’s thesis that Van Til is “unlike” Gaffin in his eschatology, and therefore his transcendental method.[10] Van Til himself writes to Gaffin, “You are wise to make good use of the work of Geerhardus Vos...We who are about to die, salute you!”[11]
Now, regarding Vos and Ridderbos, it will be most helpful to quote Van Til at length at this point, since he speaks quite densely regarding the significance of the Vos-Ridderbos eschatological structure to “the Great Debate,” or, the fundamental apologetic question in The Great Debate Today. Let us keep in mind Dennison’s contention that “For [Van Til]…eschatology concerns only the future, just as it does for Hodge and Berkhof.”[12] Van Til says, with specific regard to the question of the existence of God,
It is of particular interest for us as we conclude our discussion of the great debate today in this chapter, that we note how inextricably Paul’s teaching on eschatology is interwoven with the general principles of his theology. In his book on The Pauline Eschatology, Geerhardus Vos says that to “unfold the Apostle’s eschatology means to set forth his theology as a whole.” Reversing this statement we may add that one cannot set forth Paul’s theology as a whole without indicating that his eschatology is its climax. The entire structure of Paul’s theology may be said to be Christ-centered. Everywhere and always Paul proclaims the self-attesting Christ. By his coming into the world Christ has “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tm 1:10). It is thus that Paul’s eschatological motif is built into his Christology.
Paul’s preaching of Christ is a preaching of salvation history. “It is controlled,” says Ridderbos, “by that which has happened in Christ, by the acts of God, which he wrought in him for the fulfilment of his plan of salvation, of which the death and resurrection of Christ form the all-important central point.” Ridderbos continues: “Here lies the ground of the whole of his preaching and with the historical reality of this eventuation, in the past as well as in the future the apostolic kerygma stands or falls as the faith of the congregation, 1 Cor: 15:14, 19.”
Still further it is this “historic-eschatological character of Paul’s theology that sets it in organic relation with the Old Testament revelation. What happened in Christ forms the conclusion and fulfilment of a great series of divine acts of Israel and the presupposition of the progress and conclusion of the history of the world.”
Paul sets forth this “all inclusive character of his eschatology” with special fulness in his letters to the Ephesians and to the Colossians. But it is the great presupposition of all of Paul’s preaching…The whole eschatology of Paul is, in the last analysis, controlled by the “acts of God in Christ.”…
“Summing up the matter,” says Ridderbos, “we may say that Paul’s kerygma of the great aeon of salvation that has come in Christ is primarily controlled by the death and resurrection of Christ. It is in this fact that the present age has lost its power and its grasp on the children of Adam and that new things have come. It will therefore appear that the entire unfolding of the salvation that has come in Christ constantly reaches back to his death and resurrection, because all the facets in which this salvation manifests itself, and all the names by which it is indicated are, in the final analysis, nothing else than a breaking through of life in death and of the kingdom of God in the present world.”[13]
Dennison’s critique of Van Til is shown to be untenable here. Van Til puts Dennison’s entire framework together here in this passage: “It is thus that Paul’s eschatological motif if built into his Christology. Paul’s preaching of Christ is a preaching of salvation history.” We have here Van Til’s explicit requirement that all theological formulation be done with reference to God’s redemptive revelation qualified by its historical and two-age nature. Below, he quotes Ridderbos explicitly mentioning the “great aeon of salvation,” "the present age” losing power, and the “breaking through…of the kingdom of God in the present world.” What more could Dennison ask for? This is Van Til saying, essentially, “If you want to answer the question of the ‘Great Debate,’ reflect fruitfully upon the Vos-Ridderbos interpretation of St. Paul, for a restatement of Reformed theological formulations,” to use Dennison's formula.
Van Til connects the Vos-Ridderbos eschatological framework with apologetics more explicitly, and in his own words, a few pages later, saying,
Jesus shows these Pharisees the absurdity of their view. At the time of the healing of the paralytic, Jesus challenged them to understand Moses and the prophets as speaking of him. Now, in connection with the incident of the healing of the blind and dumb demoniac, Jesus challenges them to see that he did this healing “by the Spirit of God” and that this was evidence of the fact, as he said: “that the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Mt 12:28, RSV
In this new age, in this final age, it is true, more obviously true than before that: “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.” Mt 12:30, RSV. Let men then beware! “Therefore, I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” Mt 12:31, RSV.
As Paul met the Greeks he met with the same sort of hostility to his message of Christ and the resurrection as Jesus himself met on the part of the Pharisees. What Paul said about Christ, the Greeks argued, could not possibly be true….Accordingly, what Paul said about Christ’s resurrection and about the coming judgment could not possibly be true….If Paul’s message were true they, the Greeks, would have to admit that they were wrong in their view of reality, in their view of knowledge, and in their view of ethics. In short, they would have to admit that they were wrong in their interpretation of everything, and that their wrongness on everything had its root in Satanically inspired hatred of the truth.[14]
It seems, then, that there is no conflict between Van Til’s apologetic method and the “Vos Ridderbos-Gaffin interpretation of St. Paul.” Let us consider again Dennison’s position. He says, “In a rare point of weakness, Van Til does not follow through with the implications of his thought at this point…It is clearly evident to me that if man is to acquire a proper rational formulation of God’s knowledge, he must submit to the manner in which God rationally reveals Himself to man. God has made Himself rationally understandable through the progressive revelation of Himself in redemptive history. Van Til simply fails to apply his concept of analogy to the historical process of God’s revelation…”[15] This position must be considered, again, based on Van Til’s statements in The Great Debate Today and Gaffin’s statements in “Epistemological Reflections on 1 Corinthians 2:6-16,” untenable.
[1] William D. Dennison, Paul’s Two-Age Construction and Apologetics (Eugene, Or: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1985), 89-98.
[2] Dennison, Paul’s Two-Age Construction, 92.
[3] Ibid., 94. What is strange about Dennison’s second quote here is that it is from an article by Richard Gaffin which, in the context, has nothing to do with Van Til, and I think that Gaffin would not appreciate his words being used in that way against a man who clearly took seriously the necessity to qualify all systematics with biblical theology. Richard Gaffin, “Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology,” The New Testament Student and Theology, III, (n. p.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1976), 43.
[4] “ Only when it is seen that God’s grace comes to men who are covenant breakers in Adam, to such as were from the outset of history, even when they did not exist, that is when they did not yet exist as historical individuals, already the objects of God’s favorable attitude, that grace is seen truly to be grace.” Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 338; “[The gospel] comes to a generality that has once in common, in one moment, in one man, rejected the offer of eternal life through Adam. Mankind is now, to use the words corresponding to the earlier stage, placed in a way of death.” Common Grace, 81. "It was because in the pactum salutis that Christ took it upon himself to save the world, which would fall into sin and try in vain through its own ethics and its own virtues to save itself, that he now put forth his righteousness as the foundation of the virtues of those who should be in him. The whole question of Jesus' being acquainted with or not being acquainted with Greek ethics is therefore beside the point." Christian Theistic Ethics (den Dulk Christian Foundation, 1971), 12-13.
[5] Dennison, Paul’s Two-Age Construction, 93. Dennison is referencing Van Til’s Introduction to Systematic Theology (Philadelphia, Pa.: Class Syllabus, n.d.), 2.
[6] Ibid., xi.
[7] Richard Gaffin Jr., “Epistemological Reflections on 1 Corinthians 2:6-16,” Revelation and Reason (Phillipsburg, Nj.: Presbyterians and Reformed Publishing, 2007), 14.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 40, fn. 59.
[10] Dennison, Paul’s Two-Age Construction, 96. Dennison says, “Unlike Van Til…Gaffin sees…that eschatology is to be defined not only with reference to the immediate state of individuals following death and to the second coming of Christ but as also inclusive of His first coming and the present existence of the church in the world.”
[11] Van Til, “Response to Richard B. Gaffin Jr. by Cornelius Van Til,” Jerusalem and Athens ed. E. R. Geehan (Phillipsburg, Nj.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1993).
[12] Dennison, Paul’s Two-Age Construction, 90.
[13] Van Til, The Great Debate Today (Nutley, NJ.: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1970), 170-172. Van Til is here citing from Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 1961), and Herman Ridderbos, Paulus: Ontwerp van Zyn Theologie (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1966). Emphases mine.
[14] Van Til, The Great Debate Today, 177-178.
[15] Dennison, Paul’s Two-Age Construction, 92.
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