Notes
1
The reader will remember that the point at issue is not Professor Van Til's theology in general, but his denial that there is common ground of knowledge on which the believer may deal with the unbeliever. In connection with this denial he advances the doctrine of paradoxes, which he says, he accepts and embraces with great joy. I have not denied that with one side of his paradoxes he has always affirmed the Biblical truths of the Reformed faith, but it is the other side of his paradoxes to which exception has been taken. B.
2
In the words in quotation marks Professor Van Til has fallen into an error, by changing the plural to the singular. If I have only the work of the Spirit “in my heart” as an individual, I am led into subjectivism and mysticism. The Words in the original (Westminster Confession, Chapter 1, paragraph 5) are “in our hearts.” This gives the most important of the objective criteria, the testimony of the Holy Spirit in the true church. B.
3
But, the words “correlative” and “interdependent” are not synonyms. If God is our Creator and we are His creatures, made in His image, therefore there is correlativism between God and man. To deny it is to deny creation. Furthermore, the decrees of God are eternal, His purpose to create is eternal, therefore God has always been correlative to the futurition of His creation. To deny this is to deny the doctrine of the eternal decree. B.
4
Not, by the “sound” of the term, but by the universally recognized meaning of the words. This is a Hegelian term and it is used by our brother in such a way as to suggest the Hegelian meaning of the term. B.
5
God's consciousness is completely aware of His being, but His being is not “coterminous,” or identical in boundary, with His consciousness. God's eternal decree is in his consciousness, and includes complete and perfect consciousness of all that is ever to come to pass. It included me, before the foundation of the world. If this is coterminous with His being we have nothing but extreme pantheism. B.
6
Professor Van Til is very fond of quoting “Henry Cole's ‘Calvin's Calvinism’.” This work is not to be found in the New York Public Library or in the Union Library, both of which are among the most complete theological libraries in the world. It is listed in the index of the British Museum, Henry Cole being the translator, not the author. It was published in two parts in 1856 and 1857 in Wertheim and Macintosh in London. Part I is said to be “A treatise on the eternal predestination of God”; Part II, “A defense of the Secret Providence of God…being a reply to the ‘slanderous reports’…of a certain worthless calumniator, etc.” I have asked our librarian to see if we can secure a copy on inter-library loan from the Library of Congress. In the meantime I should suggest that if Professor Van Til wishes to establish his own Calvinism and to question the Calvinism of others, he should be able to prove his point by references to the Institutes and the commentaries which are available to us all. I must decline to comment on Professor Van Til's interpretation of Calvin's doctrine of cause in his argument with Pighius, until I can read the work for myself. I should like to point out that in Calvin on Secret Providence translated by James Lillie in 1840 and published by Robert Carter, N.Y.C., I find Calvin stating the case for secret providence very differently from the way in which Professor Van Til says he stated it in the Pighius argument. B.
7
“Determinism” and “indeterminism” are well known scientific terms in the field of philosophical psychology. Neither term is identical with Calvinism or with fatalism. Determinism in psychology is practically identical with “mechanism” as found in materialistic philosophy. To deny determinism is not in any sense to deny that God “worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.” Taking the plain and simple dictionary definition of the words, nothing which is quoted here from my writings can be construed as contrary to the great principles of Calvinism. I cannot be governed by Professor Van Til's “reproduction” of Calvin's argument until I see the obscure work to which he confines his references on this point. Calvin's voluminous writings are abundantly available under familiar titles. B.
8
Professor Van Til is correct. There was a typographical error; “this” was erroneously given instead of “his.” But my argument was in no sense based upon this word, but rather upon the following sentence of Professor Van Til's, “From the point of view of a non-Christian logic the Reformed Faith can be bowled over by means of a single syllogism.” That is, the “basis” of Pighius is specified by Van Til as secular logic, on which basis Pighius, says Professor Van Til, could “rightly insist that God is the author of sin.” Rejecting, as most of us do, Professor Van Til's doctrine of “double truth,” we would say that if Pighius could rightly argue on the basis of secular logic to any given conclusion, then that conclusion must be held to be true unless, contrary to the Scripture, it is possible for God to lie. B.
9
The great Calvinistic tradition in Holland and in America with which Professor Van Til has parted company, and the Westminster Confession (Chapter III, Paragraph 1), uniformly agree that “neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.” If Calvin taught, contrary to this plain statement, what Professor Van Til says he taught in arguing against Pighius, surely that teaching could be found in some of Calvin's works available to us in the great libraries in New York. B.
10
The distinction between the character of God and the will of God is by no means original with me. It is an important matter. I do hope that some of the readers will look back and review what I said on that point. There are extra copies available. B.
11
My “bit of justification” was in the precise words which Professor Van Til used on page 74 of his book, Common Grace, lines 5 to 3 up, “and it was mankind, not some individual…that sinned against God.” If Professor Van Til did not intend to say that it was not an individual who sinned when Adam sinned, then he could easily retract his statement. As it is he merely emphasizes the other side of his paradox, which I have not denied.
The question, how he could believe the infallibility of the Bible, and still believe Adam was, as he says, “not an individual,” is a question for him to answer. All I know is that he says he loves paradoxes and embraces them with joy, and he abundantly proves it.
The Calvinistic doctrine of original sin holds that an individual, Adam, represented all mankind. The notion that it was, as Professor Van Til says, “not some individual,” is generally known as anti-Calvinistic realism of the Platonic variety. B.