Common Grace by Cornelius Van Til, Th.M., Ph.D., Professor of Apologetics in Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1947. viii plus 95 pages. $1.25.

Professor Van Til in the book here reviewed does not make the distinction (a distinction which seems to me a mere quibble) between the “system” of unbelieving thought, and unbelieving thought not designated by the word “system.” If it is insisted, contrary to all common usage, that the word “system” can be used only to designate a perfectly coherent integration of thought, without the slightest contradiction in it, it would still remain true that the atheistic proposition, “The material universe is uncreated,” would have certain intelligible elements in common with the contradictory Christian proposition, “The material universe is created.” No two propositions could be contradictory if they did not have certain terms and meanings in common. As a matter of fact, however, whenever we wish to indicate that a “system” of thought is perfectly consistent with itself, as the “system of doctrine” taught in the Scripture is, we are obliged to add adjectival elements. The Cartesian philosophy is a remarkable “system” but is not perfectly consistent. The “system or doctrine” taught in the infallible Word of God is perfectly consistent, not because it may be designated by the word “system” but because the Word of God itself is infallible.

Westminster Theological Journal, Vol. V, No. 1, p. 24f. Italics not in the original.

See my review in The Bible Today, October 1946.

Common Grace, p. 9.

See his Systematic Theology, Vol. II, p. 46.

The Christian View of God and the World, p. 271.

Ibid., p. 10.

Westminster Confession, Chapter III, Paragraphs I and VII.

Ibid., p. 27.

Ibid., p. 67.

Ibid., p. 66.

Ibid., p. 78.

Westminster Confession, Chapter III, Paragraph 1.

Van Til, p. 74.

Ibid., p. 8, italics not in original.

Ibid., p. 64, italics not in original.

Ibid., p. 11.

Ibid., p. 28.

Ibid., p. 38.

Ibid., p. 43.

Ibid., p. 69.

Ibid., p. 71.

Ibid., p. 73.

The idea or limiting concept or analogical thinking, is also similarly discussed on pp. 9, 26, 37, 73, 83, 84.

Ibid., p. 5.

Ibid., p. 4.

Ibid., p. 3.

Sir Arthur Eddington, The Philosophy of Physical Science, Macmillan 1939, p. 17.

Vol. V, No. 1, p. 92.

Ibid., p. 52.

Common Grace, p. 61.

Ibid., p. 75.

Ibid., p. 5.

Ibid., p. 7. The idea of “would-be autonomous man” is further rejected on pp. 39 and 46.

Ibid., p. 72.

Ibid., p. 74.

Ibid., p. 34.

Ibid., p. 35.

Ibid., p. 36.

Ibid., p. 38.

Ibid., p. 39.

Ibid., p. 40f.

Ibid., p. 42.

Ibid., p. 61.

Ibid., p. 3.

Ibid., p. 5.

Ibid., p. 9.

Ibid., p. 12.

Ibid., p. 24f.

Ibid., p. 27.

Ibid., p. 28.

Ibid., p. 29.

Ibid., p. 49.

Ibid., p. 63.

Ibid., p. 63.

Ibid., p. 85.

Ibid., p. 94.