Cornelius Van Til was one of the truly great thinkers that the LORD gave to the Church. His books, as I am well aware, abound in unusual phrases and difficult combinations of words, but the depth of his insight and the implications of his theological-philosophical thought are, I believe, revolutionary. I think John Frame is correct to call Van Til “the most important Christian thinker since Calvin.”
Van Til taught that God has flooded the creation with clear revelation of His Divine nature (theotes), and that man, as the image of God, is both himself revelatory to himself and is equipped – at least as he came from the hand of the Maker – to interpret the revelation which God puts forth. Only we do not interpret autonomously, that is, outside our God-intended parameters. We were made for exalted communion with Yahweh, the “I Am” (Exod. 3:14; Jn. 8:58), and this communion is predicated upon our sustained worshipful dependence on Him.
Our dependence on God is achieved when we realize that God has not created us to ‘go our own way and do our own thing.’ Instead, He has spoken to us. Even in the Garden of Eden, God spoke to Adam and Eve, and they were to live together with Him in joyous subordination to the revealed verbal revelation they received. Not as well-trained pets, but as responsible and free persons whose job it was to (as I believe Kepler put it), “think God’s thoughts after Him.” This phrase pops up again and again in Van Til’s writings and summarizes much of his approach.
Hence, for us to think anything without reference to God is to cross into prohibited territory. It is the prelude to sin, since it prepares us to “size things up” independently of God and to come to conclusions about God’s works which are out of sync with the Divine intention. This is the position that Satan got Eve into in Gen. 3:6. She was tricked, but Adam opted for the autonomous lifestyle knowingly and willingly (1 Tim. 2:14). So, when God asks the man “who told you you were naked?” in Gen. 3:11, he is getting to the heart of the matter. Did Satan tell them that? Nope. Well, who did then? They told themselves!
From this stark truth comes all of our trouble. We will never know reality aright until we “think God’s thoughts after Him.” Even when we, like Eve, state true propositions about the world (see again Gen. 3:6), we will go awry because we will not relate them to their Creator and Interpreter and His purposes. We will lose their significance and, in so doing, will lose ourselves.
Van Til’s vision is a great vision. Often misrepresented (fideistic), co-opted for causes he did not espouse (theonomy), and caricatured (viciously circular, no point of contact with the unbeliever), it deserves better treatment than it sometimes gets. For Van Til, as for all true “presuppositionalists,” we start with the Triune God who has revealed Himself in His self-attesting Scriptures, through which we again have access to the Divine interpretation, and by which we can re-assume the dependent place we were always intended to have. “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever, Amen.” (Rom. 11:36). Now that’s a circle I like!
