Gwallard
Puritan Board Freshman
As I read through Van Til's works, I find myself getting excited, then getting confused, then being let down when he doesn't address things. His emphasis on how, on the one hand, incomprehensible the things of God are to unregenerate man, and, on the other, how they know God is undeniably similar to myself. In Common Grace and the Gospel Van Til shows how similar the reprobate and the elect are in appearance - one looking back at the father's house periodically, and the other walking back to the father's house while often looking at the pig sty. This does not in fact help my spiritual disposition.
Throughout his writings I am faced with his ethical directives, which leave me frustrated. It is the unbeliever and the unwise who do not accept or understand the things of God on Scriptural authority. Yet it is I who do not understand Van Til after years of trying in - what I would characterize as - legitimate and Charitable reading of him. Amid questions of mystery and certainty within my heart, the answers he offers are in my own heart unsatisfactory, whether that disposition is sinful or no. Van Til would most likely call this unbelief, but is it so?
I am not sure if any of you have dealt with similar times of difficulty, but it has been nearly 6 years of confusion over this Reformed system of doctrine and apologetics and how it interacts with philosophy and the other disciplines, and at the end of it all I simply wish I could say I knew anything. Truly in much study there is much weariness if the flesh, and in it I feel quite a bit dumber than before.
It seems that Van Til is trying to do something which turns much of normal philosophic discussion on its head - I appreciate this, as far as it goes, if it is Scriptural, then why worry - but I am far from being close to understanding him. His method is seemingly to point at all times in all directions.
At one time nearly a decade ago I felt as if I understood him and generally had wonderful discussions with pagans, but for years it has been a great struggle to understand him. Perhaps my mind is not wired his way - yet his response would be it is not about wiring, but the heart changed by Christ.
In Van Til's ethical understanding of knowledge, this would seem to be a culpable backsliding into earthly ways of thinking. I do not know if this is the case, but I find myself increasingly frustrated with his project and some of its methods. Perhaps it is simply because his project was such momentis of a shift in the water that it is so, but it seems as if Van Til's waters are all murky. At bottom, I want to be Van Tillian, but I can barely follow what the man has to say, and if I do it seems I do not have the intellectual or spiritual fortitude to understand his conclusions. And yet it is "Something Much Too Plain to Say"!
After reading Turretin and the other Reformed Scholastics, I feel a breath of fresh air pumped into me. I can actually remember some of their categories, and yet they are too abstract - for our thinking must be concrete - for Van Til and therefore ought not to be too closely followed. So, the murky waters creep in. I feel I might know more if I listened to Van Til less. But his answer, as I imagine it, would be a call to repentence for autonomous reasoning.
Yet Van Til never seems to be understood, for once someone critiques him his followers say they are not understanding him correctly. The question for those of the Van Tillian disposition is to diagnose my problem from your view, and to speak on the subject of the ethical culpability of not understanding what apparently should be understood by each Christian.
Throughout his writings I am faced with his ethical directives, which leave me frustrated. It is the unbeliever and the unwise who do not accept or understand the things of God on Scriptural authority. Yet it is I who do not understand Van Til after years of trying in - what I would characterize as - legitimate and Charitable reading of him. Amid questions of mystery and certainty within my heart, the answers he offers are in my own heart unsatisfactory, whether that disposition is sinful or no. Van Til would most likely call this unbelief, but is it so?
I am not sure if any of you have dealt with similar times of difficulty, but it has been nearly 6 years of confusion over this Reformed system of doctrine and apologetics and how it interacts with philosophy and the other disciplines, and at the end of it all I simply wish I could say I knew anything. Truly in much study there is much weariness if the flesh, and in it I feel quite a bit dumber than before.
It seems that Van Til is trying to do something which turns much of normal philosophic discussion on its head - I appreciate this, as far as it goes, if it is Scriptural, then why worry - but I am far from being close to understanding him. His method is seemingly to point at all times in all directions.
At one time nearly a decade ago I felt as if I understood him and generally had wonderful discussions with pagans, but for years it has been a great struggle to understand him. Perhaps my mind is not wired his way - yet his response would be it is not about wiring, but the heart changed by Christ.
In Van Til's ethical understanding of knowledge, this would seem to be a culpable backsliding into earthly ways of thinking. I do not know if this is the case, but I find myself increasingly frustrated with his project and some of its methods. Perhaps it is simply because his project was such momentis of a shift in the water that it is so, but it seems as if Van Til's waters are all murky. At bottom, I want to be Van Tillian, but I can barely follow what the man has to say, and if I do it seems I do not have the intellectual or spiritual fortitude to understand his conclusions. And yet it is "Something Much Too Plain to Say"!
After reading Turretin and the other Reformed Scholastics, I feel a breath of fresh air pumped into me. I can actually remember some of their categories, and yet they are too abstract - for our thinking must be concrete - for Van Til and therefore ought not to be too closely followed. So, the murky waters creep in. I feel I might know more if I listened to Van Til less. But his answer, as I imagine it, would be a call to repentence for autonomous reasoning.
Yet Van Til never seems to be understood, for once someone critiques him his followers say they are not understanding him correctly. The question for those of the Van Tillian disposition is to diagnose my problem from your view, and to speak on the subject of the ethical culpability of not understanding what apparently should be understood by each Christian.
