John R. Muether

Review first appeared here: http://stevebishop.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/muethers-van-til-review.html

Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) is seemingly something like marmite: either loved or hated. Or as Muether puts it: "…Van Til's readers could be divided into those who did not agree with him and those who did not understand him." (p 15) This excellent biography has certainly helped me to understand Van Til as a person a little more.

Van Til was the longest serving member of J Gresham Machen's then newly founded Westmister Seminary. He remained there teaching apologetics until his retirement in 1972. As a polemicist and controversialist he fought against modernism, arminianism, Barthianism, new evangelicalism, and Catholicism. He wasn't a populariser, and he regretted that he couldn't write as clearly and accessibly as Machen in Christianity and Liberalism. Nevertheless, John Frame described him as "perhaps the most important Christian thinker since Calvin.”

Van Til developed an apologetic method known as presuppositionalism. He maintained that
"that unless God is back of everything you cannot find meaning in anything. I cannot even argue for belief in Him without already having taken Him for granted. And, similarly, I contend that you cannot argue against belief in Him unless you also first take Him for granted. Arguing about God's existence, I hold, is like arguing about air. You may affirm that air exists, and I that it does not, but as we debate the point we are both breathing air all the time. (In Why I Believe in God)
He attempted to forge a path between the views of Kuyper and Warfield. Francis Schaeffer was influenced by his approach though Van Til didn't fully approve of Schaeffer's adaptations; he thought that it wasn't consistent. For Van Til Calvinism was the most logical and consistent worldview. No other approach was consistent and he took it upon himself to point out where inconsistencies lay.

Muether posits that we can't understand Van Til's theological commitments without understanding his ecclesiology: "His apologetic was self-consciously ecclesiastical as much as theological" (p 15). Consequently, the biography focuses more on Van Til's ecclesiastical life than on other aspects of his long academic career. But this means that what it doesn't do in any depth is explain Van Til's more novel ideas. But then perhaps that's going beyond what Muether aims to do. As Muether notes "To focus solely on Van Til's novelty fails to appreciate the many ways in which he tried to preserve tradition by standing on the shoulders of those who went before him."

For Van Til, and Kuyper before him, Calvinism alone does "full justice to the cultural mandates of Christ." The touchstone for Van Til was consistency. The problem with everyone else such as Schaeffer, Gordon Clark, Oliver Buswell and Barth et al was that they were not being, as Van Til saw it, consistent Calvinists.

Van Til comes over as someone who is zealous for truth and is keen to defend it at any cost. He seems to see things in black and white there are few greys. Perhaps because of this he was involved with a number of controversies. These are dealt with well in the book. Murther even suggests that the Clark-Van Til controversy should really be the Murray-Van Til controversy. His disagreements with Dooyeweerd are mentioned only briefly. The issue of common grace is dealt with somewhat more fully.

In the useful bibliographic essay that concludes the book Muether suggests books and papers that could provide more information on the novelties of Van Til. (Muether recommends Banshan's Van Til's Apologetic and Frame's Cornelius Van Til)

Muether writes with great respect and understanding for Van Til. He has drawn on a wide range of resources, including interviews with many of Van Til's colleagues, family, and friends, as well as having access to many of Van Till's personal letters.

The book is a pleasure to read. It is well produced - a rarity in these days of POD - and well written. It explains Van Til the man. It gave me a much better understanding of the motivations of Van Til and helped me to appreciate the man more. We can't ask more from a biography.



Contents
Series Preface 9

Acknowledgments 11
Introduction: Apologist and Churchman 15
1. A Child of the Afscheiding 21
2. “Fit Modesty and Unreserved Conviction” 41
3. From Dutch Reformed to American Presbyterian 65
4. Reformed or Evangelical? 91
5. The New Machen against the New Modernism 119
6. Through the Fires of Criticism 149
7. Presbyterian Patriarch 179
8. Steadfast, Unmovable, and Abounding 207
Conclusion: Against the World, for the Church 229
Notes 241
Bibliographic Essay 265
Index 279… (mere)

Review first appeared here: http://stevebishop.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/muethers-van-til-review.html

Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) is seemingly something like marmite: either loved or hated. Or as Muether puts it: "…Van Til's readers could be divided into those who did not agree with him and those who did not understand him." (p 15) This excellent biography has certainly helped me to understand Van Til as a person a little more.

Van Til was the longest serving member of J Gresham Machen's then newly founded Westmister Seminary. He remained there teaching apologetics until his retirement in 1972. As a polemicist and controversialist he fought against modernism, arminianism, Barthianism, new evangelicalism, and Catholicism. He wasn't a populariser, and he regretted that he couldn't write as clearly and accessibly as Machen in Christianity and Liberalism. Nevertheless, John Frame described him as "perhaps the most important Christian thinker since Calvin.”

Van Til developed an apologetic method known as presuppositionalism. He maintained that
"that unless God is back of everything you cannot find meaning in anything. I cannot even argue for belief in Him without already having taken Him for granted. And, similarly, I contend that you cannot argue against belief in Him unless you also first take Him for granted. Arguing about God's existence, I hold, is like arguing about air. You may affirm that air exists, and I that it does not, but as we debate the point we are both breathing air all the time. (In Why I Believe in God)
He attempted to forge a path between the views of Kuyper and Warfield. Francis Schaeffer was influenced by his approach though Van Til didn't fully approve of Schaeffer's adaptations; he thought that it wasn't consistent. For Van Til Calvinism was the most logical and consistent worldview. No other approach was consistent and he took it upon himself to point out where inconsistencies lay.

Muether posits that we can't understand Van Til's theological commitments without understanding his ecclesiology: "His apologetic was self-consciously ecclesiastical as much as theological" (p 15). Consequently, the biography focuses more on Van Til's ecclesiastical life than on other aspects of his long academic career. But this means that what it doesn't do in any depth is explain Van Til's more novel ideas. But then perhaps that's going beyond what Muether aims to do. As Muether notes "To focus solely on Van Til's novelty fails to appreciate the many ways in which he tried to preserve tradition by standing on the shoulders of those who went before him."

For Van Til, and Kuyper before him, Calvinism alone does "full justice to the cultural mandates of Christ." The touchstone for Van Til was consistency. The problem with everyone else such as Schaeffer, Gordon Clark, Oliver Buswell and Barth et al was that they were not being, as Van Til saw it, consistent Calvinists.

Van Til comes over as someone who is zealous for truth and is keen to defend it at any cost. He seems to see things in black and white there are few greys. Perhaps because of this he was involved with a number of controversies. These are dealt with well in the book. Murther even suggests that the Clark-Van Til controversy should really be the Murray-Van Til controversy. His disagreements with Dooyeweerd are mentioned only briefly. The issue of common grace is dealt with somewhat more fully.

In the useful bibliographic essay that concludes the book Muether suggests books and papers that could provide more information on the novelties of Van Til. (Muether recommends Banshan's Van Til's Apologetic and Frame's Cornelius Van Til)

Muether writes with great respect and understanding for Van Til. He has drawn on a wide range of resources, including interviews with many of Van Til's colleagues, family, and friends, as well as having access to many of Van Till's personal letters.

The book is a pleasure to read. It is well produced - a rarity in these days of POD - and well written. It explains Van Til the man. It gave me a much better understanding of the motivations of Van Til and helped me to appreciate the man more. We can't ask more from a biography.



Contents
Series Preface 9

Acknowledgments 11
Introduction: Apologist and Churchman 15
1. A Child of the Afscheiding 21
2. “Fit Modesty and Unreserved Conviction” 41
3. From Dutch Reformed to American Presbyterian 65
4. Reformed or Evangelical? 91
5. The New Machen against the New Modernism 119
6. Through the Fires of Criticism 149
7. Presbyterian Patriarch 179
8. Steadfast, Unmovable, and Abounding 207
Conclusion: Against the World, for the Church 229
Notes 241
Bibliographic Essay 265
Index 279… (mere)

The subtitle of this biography of Cornelius Van Til is "Reformed Apologist and Churchmen" and that subtitle succinctly summarizes the essence of Van Til's life and work. Van Til's long and productive life as a theologian and professor was relentlessly focused on exalting Christ from a distinctly Reformed perspective, believing it was the most faithfully biblical of all Christian theologies and the only one that, in its confessional identity, maintained the sharp, antithetical difference between God and humans.

I have never read Van Til directly but found as I read this biography an understanding of things I read earlier this year in Francis Schaeffer, as well as parallels in the current work by Peter Jones. Another thing I appreciated from the story of Van Til's life was his commitment to working through the church as the primary vehicle to show the glory of God in the world.

Van Til was a controversial figure during his life, in part due to his commitment to Reformed orthodoxy, believing that an uncompromised Reformed identity provided the best Christian witness to the world. I found his example to be refreshing and encouraging, as our day has many of the same dangers, albeit with a different vocabulary. I commend this book to anyone who wants to learn the life story of a giant of the Christian faith.… (mere)

This is from my review here: http://discerningreader.com/book-reviews/cornelius-van-til

Although Cornelius Van Til is one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century he remains relatively unknown outside of Reformed circles. A number of books have been written on Van Til’s thought, yet the only full treatment of his life and ministry has been William White’s memoir of 1979. While many insights can be gleaned from White his book is largely uncritical of its subject. Thankfully, John Muether has written Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman. In this biography the author treads new ground by providing a detailed look at Van Til within the context of the church at the local, denominational and trans-denominational level. Muether’s interpretation of Van Til is well rounded and paints a portrait “warts and all.” Such historical honesty frees readers to appropriate Van Til – positively and negatively – within his immediate context of American Reformed Christianity and in the larger contexts of Christian history and contemporary thought.

John R. Muether is librarian and associate professor of church history at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. Muether has published a number of scholarly works including two volumes that he co-wrote with Darryl G. Hart. The first is a history of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the second is an examination of Reformed worship. His Cornelius Van Til is the third volume in American Reformed Biographies which is a relatively new series edited by Hart and Sean Michael Lucas.

In a festschrift published for John Gerstner in 1976 Cornelius Van Til contributed an article entitled, “Calvin as a Controversialist.” In light of the events of Van Til’s ministry, Muether could well have subtitled his book “Cornelius as a Controversialist.” Van Til’s contribution to apologetics have rightly been understood in “Copernican” dimensions, yet it is beneficial to see that Van Til’s legacy is just as significant on an ecclesiastical spectrum. Muether has done an excellent job at exposing both of these emphases. While discussions of presuppositionalism appear in the book, they are left to the periphery. Therefore, if one wanted to develop a greater understanding of Van Til’s overall apologetic, readers should consult works by John Frame and Greg Bahnsen.

Much of what has been said of Van Til over the years is the stuff of legend. In light of this one of Muether’s most significant contributions to Van Tilian scholarship is the balanced perspective he gives to common misunderstandings. Take for instance the now infamous controversy between Van Til and Gordon Clark. While Frame has written that the debate between the two apologists was an unfortunate footnote on the career of Van Til, Muether argues that it “should be interpreted as one of his finest moments” (108) because of Van Til’s burden to maintain the purity of Christian theology within the church. Indeed, after explaining the role that John Murray had to play in critiquing Clark – and Van Til’s relatively lesser involvement – Muether suggests that the controversy could rightly be called “the Clark-Murray debate” (105). Instead of viewing Van Til in a negative light, one comes away from reading the section on Clark having learned a key pastoral insight from Van Til: the appropriate way to deal lovingly with a brother in error. Van Til sought out Clark and wanted to discuss their differences privately instead of allowing them to divide the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In this one controversy a clear example is given of Muether’s thesis that Van Til was at heart both an apologist and pastor. As an aside, Muether’s interpretation of the debate is a testimony to his mettle as an historian in that he is willing to expose some of the errors and omissions of his colleague John Frame.

A concern shared by those who read Van Til is that his writings are often obscure, dense and overabundant in philosophical language. What is interesting to learn is that Van Til was all too aware of his inability to write well. Muether explains: “Van Til believed that he lacked both the power of expression and the physical stamina to write as others did, and he frequently mocked his lack of productivity as ‘a lot of noise and no results’” (142). While recognising some of the difficulties of Van Til’s style, Muether sees that Van Til was too hard in his self-evaluation. One only has to consider Van Til’s legacy as a church leader as proof of the clarity of his scholarship. Van Til’s influential critique of Karl Barth, for instance, owed much to his ability to communicate to evangelicals the danger of Barthianism’s philosophical underpinnings.

As an historian Muether makes good use of primary sources such as letters written by and to Van Til that are housed in the library of Westminster Theological Seminary. He provides background information to many of the positive and negative relationships that Van Til had with key evangelicals such as James Daane, Herman Dooyeweerd, Herman Hoeksema, William Jellema and R. B. Kuiper. One comes away from reading this book believing that what was just read is an accurate portrayal of the events as they happened in Van Til’s time.

For those interested in the nexus of the academy and the church, Cornelius Van Til is a necessary read. Likewise, it is necessary to consult as the authority on Van Til’s life and ministry. The bibliographic essay at the end of the book should prove to be very helpful for those who want to continue in their study of this great Reformed theologian. Cornelius Van Til taught a generation of students to take every thought captive to Christ – John Muether provides insight into how Van Til lived out this philosophy in the life of the church.… (mere)