Cornelius
van til
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American Reformed Biographies
D. G. Hart and Sean Michael Lucas
Series Editors
Robert Lewis Dabney: A Southern Presbyterian Life
John Williamson Nevin: High Church Calvinist
Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman
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Cornelius
van til
Reformed Apologist and Churchman
John R. Muether
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© 2008 by John R. Muether
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval sys-
tem, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy,
recording, or otherwise—except for brief quotations for the purpose of review or
comment, without the prior permission of the publisher, P&R Publishing Company,
P.O. Box 817, Phillipsburg, New Jersey 08865-0817.
Page design by Lakeside Design Plus
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Muether, John R.
Cornelius Van Til : Reformed apologist and churchman / John R. Muether.
p. cm. — (American Reformed biographies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-87552-665-2 (cloth)
1. Van Til, Cornelius, 1895– 2. Theologians—United States—Biography. I. Title.
BX9225.V37M84 2008
230'.51092—dc22
2007018475
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To Kathy
Steadfast, Unmovable, and Abounding
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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
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Series Preface
!
A ll history is biography,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once
remarked. Emerson’s aphorism still contains a good
deal of truth. History is the memory and record
of past human lives, thus making biography the most basic form of
historical knowledge. To understand any event, period, or text from
the past, some acquaintance with specific persons is crucial.
The popularity of biography among contemporary book buyers
in America supports this insight. Recent biographies of John Adams
and Ben Franklin have encouraged many—who fear for America’s
historical amnesia—to believe that a keen and formidable interest in
history still exists among the nation’s reading public. To be sure, the
source of this interest could be the stature and influence of the subjects
themselves—the founding fathers of the United States. Still, the acces-
sibility of biography—its concrete subject matter, intimate scope, and
obvious relevance—suggests that the reason for the recent success of
these biographies is in the genre of writing itself.
American Reformed Biographies, coedited by D. G. Hart and Sean
Michael Lucas, seeks to nurture this general interest in biography as a
way of learning about and from the past. The titles in this series feature
American Reformed leaders who were important representatives or
interpreters of Reformed Christianity in the United States and who
continue to be influential through writings and arguments still pertinent
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Series Preface
to the self-understanding of Presbyterian and Reformed theologians,
pastors, and church members. The aim is to provide learned treatments
of men and women that will be accessible to readers from a wide
variety of backgrounds—biography that is both sufficiently scholarly
to be of service to academics and those with proficiency in American
church history and adequately accessible to engage the nonspecialist.
Consequently, these books are more introductory than definitive, with
the aim of giving an overview of a figure’s thought and contribution,
along with suggestions for further study.
The editors have sought authors who are sympathetic to Reformed
Christianity and to their subjects, who regard biography not merely
as a celebration of past accomplishments but also as a chance to ask
difficult questions of both the past and the present in order to gain
greater insight into Christian faith and practice. As such, American
Reformed Biographies is designed to make available the best kind of
historical writing—one that yields both knowledge and wisdom.
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Acknowledgments
!
W hen Cornelius Van Til delivered a lecture on Boston
Personalism before the faculty of the Boston University
School of Theology, on March 6, 1956, he began with
characteristic modesty. “I would have indeed been happier,” he said,
“if you had invited me to listen to you instead of to speak to you. But,
in a sense, I have already listened to you a good deal. I have listened
to you by reading the great books of your truly great men.”1
It is a daunting task to expect readers to listen to me on the life of
Cornelius Van Til, and so I too must begin on Van Til’s note of grati-
tude. It has been my privilege over the past several years to study the
life and teachings of this truly great man. I met Cornelius Van Til on
only a handful of occasions, but it seems that I have lived with him
for all my life. As a baptized member of Franklin Square Orthodox
Presbyterian Church (New York), I sat under the ministry of Van Til’s
students. My first pastor, Elmer Dortzbach (who earned his BD from
Westminster Seminary in 1959), claimed that Van Til brought him
“kicking and screaming” into the “delightful rigors” of the Reformed
faith. He remembered being “devastated before the Scriptures as [they
were] so beautifully and consistently proclaimed” in Van Til’s class-
room.2 Likewise, my second pastor, John C. Hills (ThB, Westminster,
1941), who followed Dortzbach at Franklin Square, faithfully preached
the self-attesting Christ of the Scripture for twenty-two years. Van Til
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Acknowledgments
continued to influence my life and thinking during my undergraduate
studies with T. Grady Spires and at Westminster Seminary under John
Frame, Richard Gaffin, Meredith Kline, Robert Strimple, and many
others. I am grateful for the influence of these faithful pastors, teach-
ers, and friends in my understanding of Van Til’s work.
What emerges in this biography is a focus on Van Til the Orthodox
Presbyterian, with the modifier in uppercase. Often neglected in the
many evaluations of Van Til’s thought is attention to his ecclesiastical
life. A study of Van Til’s Reformed apologetics apart from his Reformed
ecclesiology risks a reduction of his work merely to the classroom. By
tracing his labors as a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church,
this book is written with the hope of contributing to Van Til’s legacy
both to his denomination and to the universal church.
My debt to many friends is great. I am thankful to the trustees of
Reformed Theological Seminary for granting me a sabbatical in the fall
of 2004, when I conducted much of the research for this book (while
distracted by a busy hurricane season). The editors of the series, Dar-
ryl Hart and Sean Lucas, were encouraging in their confidence that I
could pull this off and patient when it appeared that I might not. Of
course, I knew to rely on librarians, and many came through for me,
including Harry Boonstra and Paul Fields at Calvin Seminary, Wayne
Sparkman at the PCA Historical Center, Alan Strange at Mid-America
Reformed Seminary, and especially Grace Mullen of Westminster Sem-
inary in Philadelphia. Grace not only navigated me expertly through
the Van Til archives at Westminster Seminary; she also fact-checked
(often off the top of her head) so many details in this story that I was
often left wondering why she hadn’t written this book.
I am also eager to document my gratitude to my predecessor as his-
torian of the OPC, Charles G. Dennison. Charlie’s interviews with many
Orthodox Presbyterian pastors turned up some wonderful episodes of
Van Til’s life and ministry. More importantly, Charlie modeled for me
and many others the importance of history for the life and health of
a Reformed denomination. His insight into Van Til’s role in shaping
the OPC’s identity is echoed throughout this book.
My library colleagues at the Orlando campus of Reformed
Theological Seminary, Michael Farrell, Keely Leim, and Karen Mid-
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Acknowledgments
dlesworth, were gracious and efficient during my periodic absence
and absentmindedness throughout the course of this project. Simon
Kistemaker kindly translated for me several of Van Til’s Dutch letters
and articles.
Family and friends of Van Til’s provided stories, letters, and hos-
pitality during my visits, including Thelma Van Til (daughter-in-law),
Case Van Til (nephew), Reinder Van Til (Henry Van Til’s son and
Cornelius’s grand-nephew), and two children of John J. DeWaard,
Leona DeWaard Klooster and John R. DeWaard. I must also express
my thanks to Reinder Van Til for sharing his family’s collection of
letters between Uncle Kees and his nephews Henry and Nick Van Til.
Often those letters found Van Til expressing himself in a most candid
and intimate way.
Though not technically family, Bob den Dulk offered his memories
of Oome Kees, and Robert Cara related his family connection to a
grade-school teacher of Van Til’s. Several friends and associates who
are far more gifted in Reformed apologetics willingly served as con-
versation partners, including William Dennison, William Edgar, John
Frame, Richard Gaffin, Scott Oliphint, and Lane Tipton. All of them
encouraged me in fruitful directions and gently redirected me when
I strayed. Thanks to readers of the manuscript who offered helpful
suggestions: George Harinck, Stephen Oharek, Danny Olinger, Jack
Sawyer, and David VanDrunen; and special thanks to my research
assistant Laurence O’Donnell.
To paraphrase Abraham Kuyper, there was not one square inch of
our home that this project did not claim as its own. My children and
especially my wife patiently endured the domestic disorder that the
book generated. I am glad to acknowledge Kathy’s faithful encourage-
ment in a small way by dedicating the book to her.
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Introduction:
Apologist and Churchman
!
W hile he was alive, it was often observed that Cornelius
Van Til’s readers could be divided into those who did
not agree with him and those who did not understand
him. Little seems to have improved in the twenty years that have passed
since his death in 1987. Debates over Van Til’s teaching have divided
his followers, who have created competing versions of the Reformed
apologist. There are Van Tilians among mainline Protestants and fun-
damentalist Baptists; they are found both within his denomination, the
Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), and without. However, what
his students often overlook is that to separate Van Til the apologist
from Van Til the churchman is to eclipse the very heart and underly-
ing simplicity of his thought and life. Thus, many of his followers are
searching for Van Til’s significance apart from the context in which
he served.
Van Til’s theological commitments cannot be understood apart from
his ecclesiology. The faith that Van Til sought to defend was the faith
of Reformed churches that found expression in Reformed creeds. His
apologetic was self-consciously ecclesiastical as much as theological.
“Van Til,” Charles Dennison once wrote, “was nothing if he was not
a faithful churchman.”1
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Introduction
Failure to understand Van Til’s thought in its ecclesial context is
seen not only in his opponents, but also in his followers. Some of them
have made extravagant claims about Van Til and his legacy that would
have embarrassed him. Disciples have lauded him as the most creative
mind since Immanuel Kant and the greatest Christian thinker since John
Calvin. The allegedly innovative features of his apologetic approach
have been applauded for their proto-postmodernism and either credited
or blamed for distancing both Westminster Theological Seminary and
the Orthodox Presbyterian Church from their American Presbyterian
past. Yet, Van Til’s ecclesiology is among the least explored features
of his work, and for that reason many tend to overlook important
episodes in his life and to misinterpret others.
Van Til’s influence, to be sure, extends far beyond the church that
he helped to establish and served for so long. Indeed, the universe of
Van Tilians exceeds the modest membership of the OPC. Partly for this
reason, interpreters tend to characterize Van Til’s ecclesial interests as
idiosyncratic, avocational, and even tangential to his supposedly more
important apologetic insights. Absent an appreciation for Van Til’s pas-
sion for the church, for example, some have struggled to understand
how such an avowed evidentialist like J. Gresham Machen could hire
a presuppositionalist like Van Til for Westminster Seminary. And a
disregard for church politics during the early years of the OPC reduces
Van Til’s dispute with Gordon Clark to an embarrassing footnote in
his career. These events, rather than being analyzed abstractly, ought
to be understood within the context of Van Til’s love for the church.
While not ignoring his teachings, this biography focuses on Van
Til’s ecclesiastical life more than on other interpretations or aspects
of his career. This emphasis may appear surprising in an age of aca-
demic specialization where an ever-widening gap stands between the
pulpit and the classroom. But Van Til’s life demands that we reunite
these generally unconnected worlds; for he is constantly found serving,
teaching, and preaching from within this very gap.
Curiously, the failure to appreciate Van Til’s churchmanship is
often found among many who criticize him for the seemingly abstract
character of his work. A common impression found in assessments of
Van Til is that his focus in the ivory tower of apologetic methodol-
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Introduction
ogy left him distant from the actual practice of apologetics. In truth,
Reformed apologetics drove him to the pulpits of the Orthodox Pres-
byterian Church, to General Assembly study committees, to hospital
beds, and even to New York City street corners. Critics who score Van
Til for his alleged obsession with methodology may be most guilty of
overlooking his passionate and practical churchmanship. Van Til’s
desire to strengthen the faithfulness of the people of God was no mere
academic exercise, and his involvement in the church marked signifi-
cant chapters in Orthodox Presbyterian history. Many who claim to
be Van Til’s heirs, as well as his critics, would do well to imitate his
sensibilities as a Presbyterian churchman.
This book may also surprise readers who might have expected a
deeper analysis of Van Til’s apologetic approach. As useful as such
studies may be,2 I am persuaded that a proper assessment of Van Til’s
life and work yields an appreciation for the underlying simplicity of his
teaching. This simplicity is found in his singular passion for proclaiming
the glory of God from within the context of the Reformed faith.
In his own words, Van Til spent his lifetime attempting to raise the
banner of the Reformed faith on the highest mountain. He referred to
his system unpretentiously as “Reformed apologetics.” Simply put, Van
Til devoted himself to the insistence that only a Reformed apologetic
could properly defend and propagate the Reformed faith. Anything
less than a fully Reformed defense for the Reformed faith rendered the
theology of the church unequally yoked.
This simple claim, of course, had profound consequences. It meant
that a Reformed engagement with the world had to account for the
epistemological self-consciousness of modern unbelief. It required a
careful negotiation between guarding the antithesis and recognizing the
elements of common grace in the expressions of unbelief. Unbelievers,
Van Til was willing to concede, were capable of genuine good, but only
to the extent that they were living on borrowed capital and thus without
epistemological justification for their good accomplishments.
The Reformed character of Van Til’s apologetics also shaped his
understanding of the knowledge of the believer. The ontological gulf
between God and humanity removed any epistemological equality
between them. This Creator-creature distinction, foundational to all
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Introduction
that Van Til wrote, protected the incomprehensibility of God. So the
believer follows God’s thoughts after him in a true, yet analogical
fashion.
The close connection that Van Til maintained between apologetics
and Reformed theology demands that the reader see his apologetic work
in its ecclesial context. Van Til’s commitment to the whole counsel of
God as understood through the Reformed confessional hermeneutic
provoked a relentless consistency in the way he went about his work.
He desired to find the best defense of the faith, and that goal required
the diligent and often polemical work of identifying inconsistency and
exposing errors in both believing and unbelieving thought. Yet, what
fueled his polemics was not a penchant for vain argumentation but a
passion for the purity of the church.
Van Til’s passion for the church also meant that Reformed apologet-
ics served to shape the identity and direction of the church. Through
his life and work Van Til directed the church into a deeper appreciation
for the Reformed faith. Calvin’s theocentricity, Vos’s biblical insights,
Kuyper’s antithesis, Machen’s confessional consciousness—all of these
influences came to bear upon Van Til’s Reformed apologetics. Specifi-
cally, the Reformed faith produced in the pen of Van Til a Reformed
militance that characterized Westminster Seminary and the OPC during
his nearly half-century teaching career.
Without the ecclesial context of Van Til’s passion, his content
becomes confused and even anemic. If Van Til considered it schizo-
phrenic to establish Reformed theology on a non-Reformed apologetic,
the situation today, twenty years after his passing, may be reversed.
Van Tilian apologetics are often employed by apologists who are less
than fully committed to what he would have regarded as a full-orbed
Calvinism. In this way today’s church is expressing another form of
incoherence: a Reformed apologetic is servicing a theology that is more
generically Protestant. This de-contextualization eclipses the Reformed
distinctiveness at the heart of Van Til’s system.
In a less than full-orbed Calvinism, the antithesis is not on dis-
play, the confession is not worn on the sleeves, and the banner of the
Reformed faith is not raised as high as it should be. An apologetic
system that does not reinforce a militantly Reformed ecclesiology will
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Introduction
find only superficial similarities to Van Til’s thought. A cut-and-paste
approach to Van Til that promotes an “evangelical Van Tilianism”
is an abstraction that fails to measure up to the deepest concerns of
his work.
The present work is the second attempt to write a full-length biog-
raphy of Cornelius Van Til. In 1979, Thomas Nelson published William
White’s warm personal memoir, Van Til, Defender of the Faith. In his
review of White’s biography, John Frame faulted the book for saying
“very little about the main developments in Van Til’s thought and life
after 1945.”3 Frame is right, but his observation underscores the appar-
ent dilemma for Van Til’s biographer. By 1945, when Van Til turned
fifty, much of his life was settled. His classroom syllabi were mostly
written (at least in early editions). In that same decade he experienced
his two major skirmishes with Karl Barth and Gordon Clark, episodes
that have largely shaped the popular impression of his work. By this
time his habits of work, church, and family life were firmly established,
and the main contours of his theological system developed. Indeed,
after Van Til joined the faculty of Westminster Seminary in 1929, he
never switched vocations, nor did he serve another employer, and he
did not change his mind. In short, the last few decades of his life may
appear stagnant and uneventful.
Still, there is a story to tell that I trust will engage and challenge
the reader. In the last thirty years of his life, Van Til was embroiled in
plenty of controversies, which were not mere footnotes to his earlier
energetic life. Moreover, the seemingly unremarkable steadiness of Van
Til’s later years is important for the light it sheds on other stories that
engaged him intimately. For example, the schools and churches that he
joined (Westminster Seminary and the OPC) and left (Princeton Sem-
inary and the Christian Reformed Church) were shaped either from his
influence or from the ways they fell under his critical scrutiny. Further-
more, his work bears on larger developments in Protestant theology,
such as the American reception of Barthianism and the development
of the evangelical movement.
More importantly, throughout all the years of his life’s work Van Til
modeled a way of being faithfully Reformed and fully American. Amid
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Introduction
a culture of unbelief he embodied a distinctively Reformed spiritual-
ity that bears pondering for the church today. As Christians continue
to confront the challenge of unbelief in our age, we would do well to
examine the ways in which Van Til taught the church of his day to
meet that challenge in the previous century. If Reformed apologetics
required Van Til’s entire life and complete devotion then, we cannot
expect it to demand any less of us now.
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