Is Van Til Still Relevant?
No.145: February 3, 2023
Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This publication is free for now, but please consider clicking on the button at the bottom to become a paid subscriber to enjoy this along with Monday’s “Off The Shelf” feature about books and Wednesday’s “The Quarter Inch,” a quick(er) commentary on current events.
Dear Friends,
The Chinese are spying on me. Yes, the TikTok app is spyware, but since I never signed up for TikTok they are now sending high-altitude spy balloons to figure out what I’m up to.
If you missed it, my hometown of Billings, Montana made international news yesterday because we shut the airport down for a few hours. The reason was an unidentified flying object floating high above Montana—a massive high-altitude balloon seemingly equipped with some kind of technological equipment. The Chinese government confirms that the balloon is theirs, but they assure us that it is a “civilian vessel” that has been blown off course. Sure.
It is really odd, isn’t it? Doesn’t China have, you know, satellites? It is difficult to imagine what advantage a balloon might have, although Jim Geraghty over at National Review gives a very good “explainer” (paywalled) about the benefits of high-altitude balloons. Someone on Twitter was making fun of them, wondering what in the world they are expecting to see in Montana: cows? We do have a lot of cows, but you know what else we have? Silos containing intercontinental ballistic missiles. Lots of them. I can fathom the Chinese being interested in the locations and security of those.
The U.S. government is so far reluctant to shoot down the balloon because it is massive and falling debris could cause a lot of damage. But one hopes they figure out a way to bring it down safely so we can check out what kind of technology it’s carrying.
Later this month I will be speaking at a conference at Westminster Theological Seminary on the apologetic method of Cornelius Van Til, a method that remains controversial for some. His “transcendental argument” for the truth of the Christian faith is an uncompromising approach, designed to be every bit as uncompromising as, well, the Bible itself (which is pretty uncompromising—you can look it up). His argument is that human “predication”—using reason, affirming or denying logical propositions—presupposes the truth of Christianity. That is, one cannot meaningfully say “God does not exist” or “Christianity is a myth” without Christianity first being true.
It can be difficult to wrap your head around this sort of argument, so Van Til often used helpful illustrations. One of his more famous ones came to him one day while riding on a train. A little girl was sitting on her father’s lap, playfully slapping her father in the face. Van Til observed that she could only slap her father because she was supported and held by her father. So, too, thought Van Til, the unbeliever can only slap God in the face because he is at that very moment supported and held by God, using intellectual resources only meaningful because of God’s existence and presence. The unbeliever must necessarily rely on the very thing he is denying in order to even make the denial.
As I say, lots of people do not like Cornelius Van Til. Most often it is because they do not understand him—his writing can be inscrutable at times. His critics want to go back to what they call the “classical” approach to apologetics, which uses evidences to build up, bit by bit, to the conclusion that God probably exists. Van Til believed that this approach is insufficient not just because it is unacceptably feeble (given God’s absolute claims), but because it fails to get to the heart of the matter: believers and unbelievers do not just have a disagreement about the evidences or the facts. They have a fundamental disagreement about what counts as evidence or fact. The disagreement is about, as Van Til liked to say, the philosophy of “fact.” There is no neutral, shared perspective on that question and so “common ground” cannot be obtained at that level of discourse.
If you are familiar with the state of the debate about apologetic methodology, you might be justified in thinking that Van Til’s transcendental approach is on the wane. The trendy theological “retrieval” movement has sought to retrieve the older Thomistic approach to defending the faith, along with other things. And they do not disguise their antipathy to Van Til, whom they view as a harmful aberration in the Reformed tradition. (You can read James Anderson’s rather brutal review of that linked book here.)
I have some news. Well, okay: an opinion. Van Til’s relevance is not remotely on the wane. In fact, I would argue that he is becoming ever more relevant. After all, on what “natural law” or “shared” facts will we rely when our opponents seem dead-set on believing that men can have babies? I do not believe for a moment that our increasingly paganizing world will prove hospitable to the older classical approach. The accusation against Van Til was always, “You can’t presuppose the Bible! The unbeliever doesn’t believe in the Bible!” Well, the unbeliever increasingly doesn’t believe in nature, either, so appeals to “natural law” are about to have some rapidly diminishing returns.
But the real reason I bring all this up is because I am excited to share with you the latest episode of Uncommon Knowledge, hosted by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institute. If you are not familiar with that program, you should be. Robinson, a former Presidential speechwriter (most well-known as the man who wrote, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”), has a very unique and refreshing interview style. He just gets right to the point and doesn’t shy away from difficult questions.
In the latest episode, he gathers together three of the foremost advocates of Intelligent Design: Michael Behe, Steven Meyer, and John Lennox. That’s a pretty power-packed panel. The question for which Robinson seeks an answer is provocative: Who is dead? God or Charles Darwin?
The answer, of course, is Charles Darwin. For an hour and a half these gentlemen explain at length how Darwin’s theory spectacularly fails. Michael Behe brings expertise in microbiology; Meyer, expertise in geology and the fossil record; and Lennox, expertise in mathematics. The conversation is superb, and you will learn a lot. Behe explains that natural selection lacks the creative power to generate much of anything, much less something as irreducibly complex as a living cell. Meyer hammers on the fact that what we find at the basic foundational level of what we call “life” is information. Code. And we know of only one source for information: a mind.
Here I am, committed Van Tillian, reveling in these marvelous “evidences” that we are indeed creatures indebted to our Creator (so much for the “Van Tillians don’t believe in “evidences” canard). But it is John Lennox who truly steals the show. He is an absolute gem of a man and a gift to God’s kingdom. About halfway through the interview, he interjects with a presuppositional—a Van Tillian—point. The divide between the Darwinists and Intelligent Design is not just about “the facts.” It is about opposing views of what counts as fact. It isn’t enough to point to the natural world and say, “See? There is a God!” One must confront the underlying philosophy of materialism or naturalism that discounts God as a possible explanation at the outset.
I was cheering Lennox at this point, but then it got even better. Near the end he explains that the real reason he cannot embrace Darwinism is because of a problem Darwin himself wrestled with. If his theory is true, then it undermines the very concept of human rationality or the intelligibility of nature itself. It would, in other words, destroy science. This is something of a transcendental argument. He is saying, in effect, that Charles Darwin has to sit on God’s lap—he must presuppose the intentionality, the rationality, the stability and order of the created world—in order to then “slap God in the face.” He must presuppose the very thing he is seeking to deny.
And, if you can believe it, it got even better. All throughout the conversation the participants treaded carefully around the Who? question. Okay, if there is a designer, who is it? Two of the three dutifully kept their “scientist” hats on and left it an open question. John Lennox boldly declared his answer to the Who? question, making no secret of his Christian faith and giving an impassioned monologue about Jesus Christ and his trial before Pilate.
Straight out of the Van Til playbook. Is the Dutchman still relevant? Believe it.
Please take the time to check out the episode below:
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Superb.
It seems to me if you're fighting a war, there's space for frontal assaults as well as undermining. The more apologetics I read the more I see folks borrowing approaches from everywhere. Never could understand antipathy toward Van Til on those grounds.