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Would Machen Have Stood By Van Til - Or Opposed Him?

By Dr. Paul M. Elliott
We cannot know the answer for certain, but the evidence indicates that had J. Gresham Machen lived longer, he would have opposed Cornelius Van Til.

From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

We cannot know the answer for certain, but the evidence indicates that had J. Gresham Machen lived longer, he would have opposed the theological errors of Cornelius Van Til.

Cornelius Van Til, professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia for over four decades, and theological mentor to thousands of pastors today, taught an un-biblical view of the incomprehensibility of God that entailed a totally deficient view of the nature of the Bible. In his introduction to an edition of Benjamin B. Warfield's The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, Cornelius Van Til asserted:

When the Christian restates the content of Scriptural revelation in the form of a "system," such a system is based upon and therefore analogous to the "existential system" that God himself possesses. Being based upon God's revelation it is on the one hand, fully true and, on the other hand, at no point identical with the content of the divine mind.[1]

Van Til also asserted that both theology and apologetics must be based on the principle that Scripture contains only an "analogical system of truth."[2]

Van Til looked backward to Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck for support, asserting that Bavinck was "insistent...that the Scriptures are the Word of God and that its system of truth is an analogical system."[3] In other words, the Scriptures contain a system of "truth" that is "at no point identical with" but somehow resembles the unknowable truth in God's mind. The statements of Scripture are not God's truth itself.

Making God Irrational

Dr. Robert L. Reymond observes that Van Til's depiction of God's self-interpreting revelation in Scripture

is no longer analogy at all but a form of equivocality, which God, according to Van Til, chooses to call true although it coincides at no point with the truth. This contention ultimately ascribes irrationality to God and ignorance to man.[4]

In answer to this key principle in Van Tilian thought, Dr. Gordon H. Clark maintained that if God possesses the truth, and man possesses in Scripture only an analogy of God's truth - containing only that which is, in Van Til's words, "at no point identical with the content of the divine mind" - then it follows that man does not have the truth at all.[5] (And, we would quickly add, the Bible therefore cannot be inspired, inerrant, or fully authoritative.) Clark contended that:

To avoid this irrationalism, which of course is a denial of the divine image, we must insist that truth is the same for God and man. Naturally, we may not know the truth about some matters. But if we know anything at all, what we must know must be identical with what God knows. God knows all truth, and unless we know something God knows, our ideas are untrue. It is absolutely essential, therefore, to insist that there is an area of coincidence between God's mind and our mind. One example, as good as any, is the one already used, namely, David was King of Israel.[6]

Van Til was a faculty colleague of Dr. J. Gresham Machen at Princeton Seminary in the 1920s before Machen left to become the founder and first president of Westminster Theological Seminary. Machen soon hired Van Til to be professor of apologetics at the new seminary. Machen died on January 1, 1937 at age 55. At that time, Van Til was only 41.

Van Til's aberrant views of God and of Scripture did not become generally evident outside the seminary's walls until several years after Machen's death. Beginning in 1943, Van Til's opposition to the position of Dr. Gordon Clark within the Orthodox Presbyterian Church began to reveal his views more publicly. Van Til's erroneous written statements concerning the nature of God and Scripture quoted above, which are representative of a much larger body of work, appeared in 1948 and 1955.

What If Machen Had Lived Longer?

I have been asked, "If Machen had lived into the 1940s and 1950s, would he have supported Van Til, or opposed him?" Of course we cannot know the answer with certainty. We do know that Machen supported Van Til during his lifetime. But it is doubtful that Machen comprehended the full import and implications of Van Tilian apologetics, and his aberrant views of God and Scripture, before he died. Men cannot always see or predict what the effects of a theological novelty will be, even if they are aware of it, and the bulk of Van Til's written work was published years after Machen's death. Less than four weeks before Machen died, J. Oliver Buswell, who was then president of Wheaton College, warned Machen about aspects of Van Til's theology in a private letter. There is no record of Machen's having answered that letter before his death on the first day of the following month.

But in contemplating the question, I believe another case gives useful insight - another in which godly men at first heartily supported, but then very publicly withdrew their support, from a man who seemed to begin well but later moved into apostasy. In the 1940s, Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. and Dr. Bob Jones, Jr. both enthusiastically supported Billy Graham. They made the radio, television, and film production facilities of Bob Jones University freely available to Graham for the production and distribution of his Hour of Decision programs and first ventures into film. They also made the university's 3,000-seat Rodeheaver Auditorium available to Billy Graham for one of his early evangelistic crusades.

But later in the 1950s it became apparent that Billy Graham was compromising the Gospel. He invited open apostates to be on the committees organizing and supporting his crusades in various cities, and had these men sit prominently on the platform and lead in prayer during the services. Graham also invited ministers and laymen from apostate mainline churches, and even priests of the Roman Catholic Church, to serve as counselors to people who came forward in the crusade meetings. Both Dr. Jones Senior and Junior pleaded with Graham to repent of these sins and to follow the Biblical course of separation from apostasy and unflinching adherence to the one true Gospel. When he refused, they very publicly and dramatically withdrew their support, cut all ties, and began to lead the Bible-believing opposition to Billy Graham.

I hope (and personally believe) that J. Gresham Machen would have done the same in the case of Cornelius Van Til. My thinking is founded upon three things: 1.) Machen's history of strong opposition, despite the ridicule of many colleagues in the ministry and academia, to the liberal forces within the mainline Presbyterian Church, which is so eloquently stated in his classic book, Christianity and Liberalism; 2.) Machen's own stated view of Scripture, which does not comport with the Van Tilian view; 3.) Machen's willingness to oppose the forces of unbelief even to the point of seriously compromising his health, and being ejected from the mainline Presbyterian Church.

During his ecclesiastical trial in the mainline church, Machen stated that "the Bible forbids a man to substitute any human authority for the Word of God." [7] In 1932, in an address to the Bible League of Great Britain, Machen said this:

In the first place, [our defense of the faith] should be directed not only against the opponents outside the church but also against the opponents within. The opponents of Holy Scripture do not become less dangerous, but they become far more dangerous, when they are within ecclesiastical walls. At that point, I am well aware that widespread objection arises at the present time. Let us above all, men say, have no controversy in the church; let us forget our small theological differences and all repeat together Paul's hymn to Christian love. As I listen to such pleas, my Christian friends, I think I can detect in them rather plainly the voice of Satan. That voice is heard, sometimes, on the lips of good and truly Christian men, as at Caesarea Philippi it was heard on the lips of the greatest of the Twelve. But Satan's voice it is, all the same.

Sometimes it comes to us in rather deceptive ways.

I remember, for example, what was said in my hearing on one occasion... "If you go heresy-hunting for the sin in your own wicked hearts," said the speaker, as nearly as I can remember his words, "you will have no time for heresy-hunting for the heretics outside." Thus did temptation come through the mouth of a well-meaning man. The "heretics," to use the term that was used by that speaker, are, with their helpers, the indifferentists, in control of the church within the bounds of which that utterance was made.... A man hardly needs to "hunt" them very long if he is to oppose them. All that he needs to do is to be faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ, and his opposition to those men will follow soon enough.

But is it true, as this speaker seemed to imply, that there is a conflict between faithfulness to Christ in the ecclesiastical world and the cultivation of holiness in one's own inner life? My friends, it is not true, but false. A man cannot successfully go heresy-hunting against the sin in his own life if he is willing to deny his Lord in the presence of the enemies outside. The two battles are intimately connected. A man cannot fight successfully in one unless he fights also in the other. Again, we are told that our theological differences will disappear if we will just get down on our knees together in prayer. Well, I can only say about that kind of prayer, which is indifferent to the question whether the gospel is true or false, that it is not Christian prayer; it is bowing down in the house of Rimmon.[8] God save us from it!...

But men tell us that instead of engaging in controversy about doctrine, we ought to seek the power of the living Holy Spirit.... A man can hardly receive the power of the Holy Spirit if he seeks to evade the question whether the blessed Book that the Spirit has given us is true or false....

Every really great Christian utterance, it may almost be said, is born in controversy. It is when men have felt compelled to take a stand against error that they have risen to the really great heights in the celebration of truth.[9]

We will never know for certain, this side of glory, if Machen would have opposed Van Til's great errors had he lived longer, although I believe the evidence says that he would have. But in any event, we must steadfastly oppose these errors in our own time.

 

References:

1. Cornelius Van Til, Introduction to B. B. Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1948), 33. Emphasis in the original.

2. Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1955), 298.

3. Defense of the Faith, 296. Here Van Til also asserts, wrongly, that 19th-century theologians at Princeton subscribed to his analogical view of Scripture.

4. Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), 103.

5. Gordon H. Clark, "The Bible as Truth," in God's Hammer: The Bible and Its Critics, John W. Robbins, editor (Unicoi, Tennessee: The Trinity Foundation [1982] 1995), 24-38.

6. Gordon H. Clark, An Introduction to Christian Philosophy (Unicoi, Tennessee: The Trinity Foundation, 1993), 76-77.

7. J. Gresham Machen, "Statement to the Presbytery of New Brunswick" in J. Gresham Machen: Selected Shorter Writings, D. G. Hart, editor. (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing Company, 2004), 340.

8. Rimmon was the Syrian god of storms. See 2 Kings 5:18.

9. J. Gresham Machen, "The Defense of the Faith" in J. Gresham Machen: Selected Shorter Writings, 146-149.

 

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