The Protestant Doctrine of Scripture

by Cornelius Van Til

THE PROTESTANT DOCTRINE OF SCRIPTURE. Vol. 1 of In Defense of the Faith/Biblical Christianity.Nutley, 1967. 156 pp.The first in a series of six volumes. In this volume the Reformed defense of Scripture is compared to evangelical approaches. Van Til stresses that the doctrine of the inspiration and authority of Scripture must be understood in relation to and in unity with its doctrinal content. Preface 1. The Reformed Doctrine of Scripture [cf. 1946.C] 2. The Roman Catholic View of Analogy 3. The Reformed Doctrine of Inspiration (Warfield, Bavinck) 4. The Roman Catholic View of Scripture (Aquinas, Trent) 5. Neo-Orthodoxy and Christ Mysticism 6. Modern Attacks on Scripture (Francis L. Patton, Bernard Ramm) 7. Evangelical Approaches to the Defense of Scripture (Warfield, Gordon Clark, Dewey M. Beegle, Stuart C. Hackett) Appendix I-General and Special Revelation [1954.H, 1964.F3] Appendix II-Berkouwer’s Recent View of Scripture [cf. 1975.B2] “The present paper deals with only one phase of this doctrine, namely, that the Protestant doctrine of Scripture is involved in the Protestant view of the content of Scripture. More particularly, it takes notice of the unbiblical character of the views of such Protestants as fail to see this basic point. There can be no proper statement of defense of the Protestant view of Scripture unless it be made in terms of the proper statement and defense of Protestantism as a whole. . . . We must, therefore, look anew into the works of such men as Herman Bavinck and Benjamin B. Warfield, to discover what the historic Protestant view of Scripture is and how we may, by holding to it, be of service to the Church of our day. “The doctrine of Scripture is intricately interwoven with all the main teaching of Scripture. This doctrine is interwoven with the idea of the world’s creation and its all comprehensive providential control by God the Father. We may say that the doctrine of creation and of providence form the foundation of the idea of Scripture. But on the other hand we should know nothing about the truth of creation and providence if it were not the Scripture as God’s Word that tells us of them. Then, secondly, the doctrine of inspiration is interwoven with that of the historic redemption of the world through Christ as the Son of God. The work of redemption through Christ is also the foundation of the idea of Scripture . . . Finally, the work of the Father and the work of the Son and the work of the Spirit constitute the one work of the triune God.”.

Genres: Theology

165 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 5, 2012

About the author

Cornelius Van Til, was a Christian philosopher, Reformed theologian, and presuppositional apologist.

Biographical sketch

Born on May 3, 1895, in Grootegast, The Netherlands he was the sixth son of Ite and Klazina Van Til, who emigrated to the United States when "Kees," as he was known to friends, was 10. He grew up helping on the family farm in Highland, Indiana.

Van Til graduated from Calvin College in 1922, receiving a ThM from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1925 and his PhD from Princeton University in 1927. He began teaching at Princeton, but shortly went with the conservative group who founded Westminster Theological Seminary, where he taught for forty-three years of his life as a professor of apologetics.

He was also a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church from the 1930s until his death in 1987, and in that denomination, he was embroiled in a bitter dispute with Gordon Clark over God's incomprehensibility known as the Clark-Van Til Controversy in which, according to John Frame, neither man was at his best and neither quite understood the other's position.

Van Til's thought

Van Til is perhaps best known for the development of a fresh approach to the task of defending the Christian faith. Although trained in traditional methods he drew on the insights of fellow Calvinistic philosophers Vollenhoven and Herman Dooyeweerd to formulate what he viewed as a more consistently Christian methodology. His apologetic focused on the role of presuppositions, the point of contact between believers and unbelievers, and the antithesis between Christian and non-Christian worldviews.

Source: Theopedia

Reviews

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author Cornelius Van Til is considered the father of Presuppositional Apologetics. Most who have read him have probably first read his book Defense of the Faith as the introduction to Van Til’s writing. But what should one read next after finishing that introductory work? Van Til himself have said he thinks the second book should be The Protestant Doctrine of Scripture. In the preface of Defense of the Faith, Van Til said “They may be most profitably consulted in the following order: First, The Protestant Doctrine of Scripture; second, Introduction to Systematic Theology…” I can see why Van Til recommend that; this book on a right view of the Bible is foundational for many other things and it is also the departure point with bad theology, if one have a bad view of the Bible to begin with.
This book was originally a syllabus for class. There are seven chapters in the book and two appendixes. After a general introduction and Perface chapter one is on the reformed doctrine of Scripture with four subpoints here on the necessity, authority, sufficiency and perspicuity of Natural revelation before there’s a discussion of Scripture. Chapter two then examines theologically the Roman Catholic view of analogy and doctrine of Scripture with the third chapter covering the Reformed doctrine on Inspiration. Chapter four looks at Roman Catholicism again specifically with their view of Scripture and the next chapter is on Neo-Orthodoxy and Christian mysticism. Chapter six then looks at modern attacks on Scripture and chapter seven is on Evangelical approaches to defense of the faith looking at scholars like B.B. Warfield, Gordon Clark and others. The first appendix is on the relationship of General and Special Revelation and the second one is on Berkouwer’s recent view of Scripture.
Van Til isn’t always easy to read; yet putting the effort always reveal insights that are theological, apologetics and philosophy. I found it helpful that Van Til explain how general revelation in nature is clear, contrary to some who think Van Til denied the doctrine of general revelation. Van Til in the book also explore the assumption behind the assertion people make that we cannot know things that is religious and theological; and those assumptions are not neutral. I always found it helpful to see inter-relationship of doctrines and Van Til notes this too: “The doctrine of Scripture is intricately interwoven with all the main teachings of Scripture. This doctrine is interwoven with the idea of the world’s creation an its all comprehensive providential control by God the Father. We may say that the doctrine of creation and of providence form the foundation of the idea of Scripture. But on the other hand we should know nothing about the truth of creation and providence if it were not the Scripture as God’s Word that tells us of them” (29). From this view Van Til brings the Bible to bear on various theological and apologetics method issues, including how to interpret the inconsistencies of believers and believers. Van Til cites a lot of primary sources of the guys he’s critiquing and I appreciate that although some Christians today might wonder how relevant some of these people are; yet at the time Van Til was critiquing those who were pressing forward academic scholarship at the time.
I do recommend this book.

[Matthew Hodge · Rating 3 out of 5]

My reading on the Christian faith, and how you defend it, was eventually bound to lead to this author, the late Cornelius Van Til. Not really a household name outside of certain academic Christian circles, more than likely because a) there is nothing remotely reader-friendly about his writing, especially in this book and b) even if there were, it involves such a mind-bending trip of thinking through philosophy and theology to get your head around it.

This little book (small in size, but it feels a lot bigger because it's dense) was originally a syllabus that Van Til wrote for his theology students, looking into the issue of the Doctrine of Scripture from a distinctly Reformed perspective, as compared with other perspectives that were existing at the time. (The two he seems most concerned with are Catholicism and various versions of neo-orthodoxy, which I would actually have to do more reading to understand myself.)

But essentially, what Van Til was putting forward was a rather radical idea, and one that would be even more difficult to get across in today's Christian or secular environment: namely, that you simply cannot start in a neutral position in order to evaluate whether the Christian faith as revealed in the Bible is true or false and, in fact, that you must believe it first, and then you can deal with questions of true or false, right and wrong.

At first glance, this seems almost ridiculously anti-intellectual. So I'm supposed to just believe the Bible, take its word that it's true, and then everything else will make sense? You can understand why there were so many opponents (and still would be) to such a position. After all, what happens if you're secular or from another religion and don't believe the Bible? (And most people don't, in Western countries.) What kind of sales pitch can I offer you that begins with, "Now first off, I want you to believe everything I say without question ..."?

But Van Til was not actually a mindless zealot who just wanted to cling to one idea, and avoid all others. While you will certainly meet many people in Christian circles who believe the faith "just because" and would like you to simply do the same thing, Van Til wasn't that kind of guy.

Instead, his position was based upon a rather complex - at least in this book - set of philosophical and theological concepts. I'm giving it the most brief of gloss-over treatments here, but the theological side of things was that Van Til believed that God created the world, gave it order and meaning, and created man to receive that understanding - provided that man accepted that God was there and that he had revealed himself.

So it works a little bit like this (though it is difficult to create a perfect analogy for this): let's say I created a painting for my children, for them to pass along from generation to generation. The painting is of something that I want my children to remember- say, the house and countryside that I was born in. So it's a picture of a house in a particular location. It's a perfectly good rendition of the house - anybody who knew that house and that location would say instantly, "Ah, yes, that's that house. I remember that one. It's a perfect likeness." However, for whatever reason, we needed to move from that area, so the painting is the only thing that exists at this stage to point back to the original location.

To make sure that my children never forget what that painting is about, I have an accompanying booklet that explains why I painted it, what it's all about, where it is located, etc. So as long as you read and, more importantly, believe what's written in the booklet that describes the painting, then you will always know instantly what that painting is about and its meaning will be perfectly clear to you.

Skip 150 years. The painting is still around, but my descendants are having some doubts about the booklet. "Is this booklet for real?" one says. "I'm not sure if I believe it." Or perhaps they don't even have the booklet any more. So now they're looking at the painting and saying, "Where is that house? Is that in Country X? Or Country B?" Or perhaps even, "Is that a house? Is it a shed? What is it?"

You can see the dilemma - the original painting was always clear, as long as you interpreted it correctly according to the designs of the original painter, as described in the booklet. But without the booklet (either because you haven't read it or you don't believe it all), the painting becomes obscure in its meaning.

So to get back to the idea of creation and God, Van Til is essentially saying that the natural world is like a painting given to us by God. It's perfectly clear from God's perspective - it points to him as the creator and shows his order, etc. But it is not sufficient in and of itself to point to God. In the same way that you couldn't really just look at the painting and work out everything there is to know about what the painting contained without looking at the booklet, in the same way, you can't really work out how the world works, if you don't first of all understand it from the perspective of the one who created it.

Otherwise, your only other alternative is to assume that the world is a much more random place that doesn't have an order behind it. And, if that's the case, you get into a philosophical dilemma (which is explored in more depth in other books) of how do you find any meaning or order at all?

So you get caught in a strange situation, almost a paradox. If you assume that you can work out the truth of God without just believing the Bible, or God's revelation, then you assume that the world is a sort of neutral place, with various facts in it that can point to different possibilities. You would actually have to make a starting assumption that the world is an open place with different possibilities of meaning, and you're trying to work out which one is true.

But if, in fact, the world was created with just one meaning - to point to God - then to assume that you can treat it as having an infinite number of meanings is already making a big mistake about the nature of reality.

But if the reverse is true, that the world has various possible meanings out there, which we have to work out as humans, then we have other problems - is the meaning of the world just what we as humans can work out? In which case, is it my meaning or yours? How do we tell which is right? And if we can't tell who is right, how do we work out any meaning at all to anything?

So using this sort of logic, Van Til argues that, in fact, in order to know or understand anything at all, we must first of all presuppose the Christian faith.

And to make the idea even more difficult to latch on to, he lays down the answer for an obvious question: if the creation is so clear, why isn't it so obvious that God is there, without having to have some sort of book or revelation to explain him being there? Van Til's answer: because everyone is sinful, we all suppress the truth of God's revelation to us to a greater or lesser degree. In other words, my painting is clear, and my booklet explains what it is about, my descendants know deep down that it is true, but my descendants are choosing to suppress that truth in their mind - they are in denial about the truth. Doctrinally, this idea is scattered throughout the Bible, but it makes it difficult to wonder how you can argue that sort of thing with a non-believer? "It's all true, but you're just denying it." It was difficult to swallow back in Van Til's day (thus a lot of his opponents in theological circles). It would be even more difficult to swallow today.

And yet, we can see examples all the time of people clinging to ideas, long after they have proven to be not true, or not proven to have any basis at all. It happens all the time. Why wouldn't it be going on at a cosmic level? (And isn't that the substance of much debate between religious and non-religious people? One party believes the other party has to be in some form of denial not to see what they see so clearly in the world around us.)

So, ultimately, it's a difficult book to recommend: for most Christian readers (the only people I could see being interested), it's far too dense and difficult to read to be of much benefit. And on the surface, could seem quite esoteric.

I'm also acutely aware that the secular world would be scratching its head at accepting any definitive meta-narrative about the world just on its own say-so. And as a Gen X, I have some sympathy for this position. If there's one thing the world of social media has taught us it's that, quite regularly, some clown will make up a story, and without fail, several thousand people from around the world will believe that idea without question and share it with all their friends. Who, in today's day and age, would accept *anything* on faith?

But yet, don't we do just that anyway? How many of these assumptions do we believe, even though we can't definitely prove them: The idea that our own senses can tell us everything we need to know about the world. The idea that logic always holds true. Even, perhaps, the idea that humanity has some sort of value. We hold these ideas, but based on what?

And it's that "what" part of the question that everybody needs to grapple with eventually, no matter your particular religious or non-religious persuasion. So while Van Til may not be widely read, he touches on issues that strike to the very heart of what it means to be human.

[Shelby Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is Scripture alone sufficient as the Word of God, or must it be interpreted and applied in conjunction with the word of man, according to his wisdom? Van Til tackles this issue straightforwardly and clearly, exposing the man-centered philosophy behind the modern understanding of the doctrine of Scripture.

[Cory M · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dry read but highly Biblical and profound. God brought it to me at the right time. This is reformed theology at its most intense.