Van Til On Bavinck: An Assessment

By Brian G. Mattson

[Brian G. Mattson is a Ph.D. candidate in systematic theology at King’s College, University of Aberdeen, Scotland.]

I. Introduction

Cornelius Van Til wrote that “Herman Bavinck has given to us the greatest and most comprehensive statement of Reformed systematic theology in modern times,” an indication of his great admiration for the Dutch theologian.[1] References to Bavinck abound in Van Til’s works, and even where absent, the deep impressions made by Bavinck’s four-volume Gereformeerde Dogmatiek are evident in Van Til’s theological writings. He appreciated Bavinck’s commitment to truth and his ability to learn from others:

[Bavinck] was deeply concerned to make the Christ of the Scripture speak to his age. In this sense he was a truly modern theologian. He studied the development of modern philosophy and science with great care. He knew that true unity of thought and harmony of life could come to man only if he made every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. But he also knew that those who did not center their life and thought in Christ had, in spite of this, much to teach him. As a true Protestant he learned much from Romanism and as truly Reformed he honored Luther. Bavinck’s magnum opus shows true catholicity of spirit as well as unswerving loyalty to the truth as he saw it.[2] 

Van Til admired Bavinck not only for his erudition and catholicity, but also for his character: “Humble before God and courteous to his fellow-man, Bavinck always refused to compromise his Saviour whose voice he heard in the Scriptures.”[3] As was the case with most theologians Van Til revered, however, he occasionally felt compelled to critique Bavinck. These criticisms to an extent challenge his assessment that Bavinck “always” refused to compromise his Savior. Van Til maintained that, in fact, Bavinck did sometimes compromise Christian theism in his apologetic toward unbelief.

This article will freshly examine Van Til’s critique, with the added advantage of having Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics in English. Careful review of their views without the hindrance of a language barrier can only be beneficial in understanding—and appreciating—both Van Til and Bavinck.

II. Toward a Consistently Reformed Apologetic

Readers familiar with Van Til’s writings are well aware that his polemical targets were not always non-Christian philosophies of thought. He devoted a great deal of space to setting his own “transcendental” approach to apologetics over against other broadly Christian alternatives. He took issue, for example, with Roman Catholic Thomism, the generally Arminian method of Bishop Butler, as well as the writings of a wide array of broadly evangelical apologists.

He also disagreed with fellow Reformed theologians on the issue of apologetic method. It was his contention—arguably his preeminent concern—that Reformed theology requires a distinctively Reformed apologetic. To his mind, for far too long theologians had been Reformed in theology, but less-than-Reformed in apologetics; faithful to Calvin in the things of God, so to speak, and faithful to Aquinas and Aristotle in other disciplines. He urged his Reformed brothers to make their apologetics, no less than their theology, captive to Christ: “In apologetics we must use the same principle that we use in theology, namely the principle of the self-attesting Scripture and of the analogical system of truth which it contains.”[4] Van Til expected Rome to use Thomistic arguments; it seemed to irritate him far more when Reformed theologians did so. Of Bavinck he wrote, “He himself has told us again and again that dogmatics must live by one principium only. It is difficult to see how dogmatics is to live by one principle if it is not the same principle that is to guide our thinking both in theology and in other science.”[5] Or again, “Bavinck is inconsistent with the main thrust of his own as well as of Calvin’s theology.”[6]

This kind of critique is a familiar refrain, especially in connection with Van Til’s almost “two-front battle” with two men whom Greg Bahnsen aptly described as “two exceptional elder statesmen” of the Reformed world, representing “Old Princeton” and “Old Amsterdam” respectively: B. B. Warfield (1851–1921) and Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920).[7] On the one hand, Van Til opposed Warfield’s natural theology, which sought to vindicate the principles of thought without reference to Christian theism in order to, in turn, use those very principles to vindicate Christian theism. This was, in Van Til’s estimate, no different than the Roman Catholic method of beginning with so-called “natural” truths—knowable to the natural man as such—in order to build up logically to “supernatural” or “revealed” truths. This method, Van Til often observed, in essence denies the absolute ethical and epistemological antithesis between belief and unbelief; it grants to the unbeliever genuine knowledge without the requisite “fear of the Lord.”

On the other hand, Van Til also opposed aspects of the Amsterdam approach, chiefly represented by Kuyper. Kuyper, by way of contrast, so stressed the antithesis that he despaired of the possibility of genuine apologetics as such.[8] Van Til responded to these divergent approaches by noting that each was inconsistent with its own Reformed convictions.

On the side of “Old Princeton” Van Til concludes, “It is evidenced that the basic loyalty of these men is the full-orbed Reformed Faith. None the less it remains true that in their avowed apologetical procedure they embraced a method that resembled that of Bishop Butler, rather than that of Calvin.”[9] And in spite of Kuyper’s staunch opposition to natural theology and a “neutral area of interpretation between believers and unbelievers,” Van Til notes that at points Kuyper “does the very same thing that Warfield does.”[10] Bavinck is allegedly guilty too, in this respect: “Yet while showing that the natural man is bound to seek to destroy the truth of God that speaks to him, Kuyper and Bavinck at times seek comfort in the fact that the natural man will approve their sayings even when he is not asked to change his assumption of autonomy.”[11]

Van Til critiques Kuyper and Bavinck in The Defense of the Faith, in part “to have a balanced view of the relation of the ‘old Princeton’ and the ‘Amsterdam’ apologetics.”[12] His balanced view, in the final analysis, is that both lapse into “neutral common ground” thinking; both, at least occasionally in the case of Kuyper and Bavinck, suppose that the unbeliever can have genuine knowledge while assuming his moral and epistemic autonomy; and above all, by implication, both tone down the claims of God’s general and special revelation to the natural man.

The significance of this critique for Van Til’s overall apologetic method is clear, and need not be rehashed here. But the present question is whether Van Til is accurate in his assessment of Herman Bavinck in particular. Is it true that Bavinck sometimes engages in “neutral ground” thinking? Is he guilty of “lowering the claims of both general and special revelation”?[13] Does he conveniently “leave out” the notion of God as creator and governor “in order to meet non-Christian philosophers on their own ground”?[14] Does he make Descartes’ cogito “as such” the foundation of human knowledge rather than God’s revelation?[15] Does he make certainty lie in a priori principles “regardless of the foundation of these principles”?[16]

These are but a few of the criticisms of Bavinck, the man who at the outset of his dogmatic labors declares his foundational commitment:

The dogmatician remains bound to the revelation from beginning to end and cannot bring forth new truth; in his activity as thinker he can only reproduce the truth God has granted. And because revelation is of such a nature that it can only be truly accepted and appropriated by a saving faith, it is absolutely imperative that the dogmatician be active as a believer not only in the beginning but also in the continuation and at the end of his work.[17]

Further, in contrast to Old Princeton, Bavinck denied the very possibility of epistemological neutrality and allowed himself no intellectual recourse outside the circle of God’s revelation.[18] Referring to the liberal theology of Albrecht Ritschl, he writes:

In that scenario [i.e., Ritschl’s] dogmaticians would first take their position outside of and prior to the Christian faith and then position themselves in that faith in dealing with the later dogmas. But this was not the method of reformational dogmatics, at least not in the beginning. When Christians confess their faith in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth—that is Christian faith in the full sense of the term. And dogmaticians do not first divest themselves of their Christian faith in order to construct a rational doctrine of God and humanity and in order later to supplement it with the revelation in Christ. But they draw their knowledge solely and alone from special revelation, i.e., from Scripture. This is their unique principle.[19]

Van Til knew that this was Bavinck’s teaching. It is the very soil from which Van Til’s own convictions grew, as is evident from his frequent complaint, “Has not Bavinck himself said?” Bavinck, at least formally then, wholeheartedly shares Van Til’s enthusiasm in rejecting so-called “neutral” reasoning and, positively, for making God’s revelation the sole principium of all human knowledge. But Van Til suggests that Bavinck occasionally “sins” against these commitments.

A closer examination reveals that Van Til’s overall concerns have great merit when considered abstractly, or even when applied to the Old Princeton approach, but when aimed at Herman Bavinck they largely do not withstand scrutiny.[20] What follows is an examination of Van Til’s criticisms of Bavinck in his review article, “Bavinck the Theologian,” and in his two books, The Defense of the Faith and An Introduction to Systematic Theology.[21]

III. Van Til’s “Bavinck the Theologian”

This article, reviewing R. H. Bremmer’s seminal work on Bavinck,[22] is in two respects the easiest of the three texts to examine. First, in it one is confronted with Van Til’s peculiar practice of not writing on the “assigned topic.”[23] Instead of writing on “Bavinck the Theologian,” he takes the opportunity to critique Herman Dooyeweerd, Karth Barth, Jan Lever, and Bremmer himself.

Second, the article largely grants a point “for the sake of argument.” Bremmer contends that Bavinck was beholden to a “scholastic” tendency and dominated by a neo-Platonic ontology, and he desires that modern theology “go beyond” Bavinck in this regard.[24] Van Til grants these generalizations to test whether Bremmer and the others are successful in “going beyond” Bavinck. Only later does it emerge that Van Til believes the very claim that Bavinck was dominated by neo-Platonic ontology to be greatly exaggerated: “It may be doubted whether Bremmer does justice to Bavinck in this section.... To be sure, Bavinck was influenced by ‘ontology’. But this influence was not dominant. And it was not, it seems to us, as great as Bremmer thinks it to have been.”[25]

But there are nevertheless hints that Van Til himself is somewhat dissatisfied with Bavinck’s approach to unbelieving science and philosophy. He writes, “The question now is whether Bavinck realized the full implication of his own view of the centrality of Christ and the Scriptures when he dealt with modern science and modern philosophy?”[26] His answer is conclusory:

Bavinck’s own truly Protestant view of Christ and his Word should have made him insist that organic unity between man’s ‘religion’ and his ‘science’ can be had only if every thought of man, not only religious but also scientific, is made subject to the obedience of Christ. Basically he did this very thing but he did not do it constantly and at every point. Often enough he did maintain, in effect, that there is no intelligible philosophy of factuality except upon the biblical presuppositions of creation and redemption. But then again he seemed to drop to a lower level and to take a virtually scholastic position.[27]

Although lacking specifics, the contours of Van Til’s criticisms are clear: Bavinck allegedly failed to apply consistently his truly biblical presuppositions concerning the absolute necessity of God’s revelation for human knowledge. Then again, “basically he did” tell the natural man that every thought must be captive to Christ; but he did not do it “constantly and at every point.” What “constantly” and “at every point” means is something to which we will return.

One other feature of this article is noteworthy, and that is, in spite of Van Til’s personal reservations he defends Bavinck against attacks by those whom he deems of a less-than-Reformed persuasion. This recurring motif provides a glimpse into something of Van Til’s “relationship” to Bavinck, though there is no indication the two ever met: a younger brother may criticize the older, but is quick to defend when a perceived interloper does the same.[28] This explains why he often seems comparatively reluctant to criticize Bavinck; he shows no such reticence toward scores of others, even to those with the unparalleled statures of, say, Warfield and Kuyper. Might one suspect that Van Til at bottom realized that Herman Bavinck was, in fact, the one theologian closest to his own views?

IV. Van Til’s The Defense of the Faith

It is in The Defense of the Faith that Van Til provides specific examples of his more general argument that Bavinck “leaves [the] high ground and argues neutrally” with modern philosophers, and that he abandons his principle of Scripture as the principium of all human thought and “reverts to the idea that man can without this principle interpret much of experience truly.”[29]

Van Til takes issue with Bavinck’s Stone Lectures, delivered in Princeton in 1908 and published under the title The Philosophy of Revelation.[30] In a lecture entitled “Revelation and Philosophy” Bavinck reasons on the subject of self-consciousness, over against the prevailing philosophies of idealism and pragmatism. He argues that self-consciousness cannot be accounted for on idealistic or pragmatic principles, and yet it is an epistemological sine qua non. Van Til quotes Bavinck:

In self-consciousness, therefore, we have to deal not with a mere phenomenon, but with a noumenon, with a reality that is immediately given us, antecedently to all reasoning and inference. Self-consciousness is the unity of real and ideal being; the self is here consciousness, not scientific knowledge, but experience, conviction, consciousness of self as a reality. In self-consciousness our own being is revealed to us, directly, immediately before all thinking and independently of all willing.[31]

From this Van Til draws the conclusion that Bavinck “seeks for incontrovertible reality in the idea of human self-consciousness as such.”[32] Further, he writes that Bavinck

does not bring into the picture the fact so greatly stressed in his theology, that the reason why men find reality in self-consciousness is because it is at the same time consciousness of God as Creator and controller of all things. Bavinck leaves out this fact in order to meet non-Christian philosophers on their own ground.[33]

Van Til also views Bavinck’s assertion that in self-consciousness one finds the “unity of real and ideal being” as contrary to his teaching elsewhere, namely, that the unity of real and ideal being “can be found only in God.” Bavinck is guilty of “abstracting” human self-consciousness from the world “as though in this self-consciousness, more immediately and more certainly than elsewhere, reality is found.”[34] Van Til finds this at odds with Bavinck’s emphasis in his Dogmatics, where “the revelation of God to man through his environment and the revelation to man through his own self-consciousness is equally, and equally clearly, indicative of reality as God has made it and as he controls it.” This is precisely what Old Princeton forgot, and “it is also, for the moment, forgotten by Bavinck when he would start with the cogito as such as the foundation of human knowledge.”[35]

A sound reminder, surely, but not applicable in this case. Near the close of this very lecture Bavinck declares:

By nature, in virtue of his nature, every man believes in God. And this is due in the last analysis to the fact that God, the creator of all nature, has not left himself without witness, but through all nature, both that of man himself and that of the outside world, speaks to him. Not evolution, but revelation alone accounts for this impressive and incontrovertible fact of the worship of God. In self-consciousness God makes known to us man, the world, and himself.[36]

Van Til has it that Bavinck seeks for “incontrovertible reality in human self-consciousness as such,” and fails to “bring into the picture” God as creator and controller of all things. But Bavinck manifestly does bring into the picture God as creator (and revealer), and attributes the reality found in human self-consciousness, “in the last analysis,” precisely to that. Additionally, Bavinck cannot be arguing for self-consciousness “as such,” (i.e., without reference to God) or starting with Descartes’ cogito “as such” when he concludes that it is precisely God’s revelation in human self-consciousness that makes known to human beings man, the world, and themselves. This is nothing less than a sophisticated application of Calvin’s famous conjunction of the knowledge of God and knowledge “of ourselves” in his Institutes 1.1. Calvin expressed that “no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he ‘lives and moves’.”[37] Bavinck’s lecture expands this theme over against idealism and pragmatism.

Van Til chides Bavinck for forgetting “for the moment” that God’s revelation to man in his self-consciousness and in his environment is “equally, and equally clearly, indicative of reality as God has made it and as he controls it.” But Bavinck in this very context declares that God the creator, “through all nature, both that of man himself and that of the outside world,” speaks to humanity! When Bavinck moves on, grounding his epistemology on a “firm theistic foundation,”[38] describing all phenomena as “being the realization of the decree of God,”[39] asserting that God has “deposited the truth in nature and Scripture, that we might know it”[40] he is hardly “leaving out” and “forgetting” God’s revelation in order to “meet non-Christian philosophers on their own ground.” There is little here that idealists and pragmatists could possibly affirm.

Van Til brings into view another of Bavinck’s Stone Lectures entitled “Revelation and Christianity.” Bavinck’s opening paragraph reads:

The arguments for the reality of revelation, derived from the nature of thought, the essence of nature, the character of history, and the conception of religion, are finally strengthened by the course of development through which mankind has passed, and which has led it from paradise to the cross and will guide it from the cross to glory.[41]

Van Til concludes here that “Bavinck has to some extent sought the proof of the identity and significance of the system of truth found in Scripture in an interpretation of the universe in terms other than those of Scripture.”[42] But can it really be said that Bavinck seeks the proof of the Scriptural system of truth in terms “other than those of Scripture” when he seeks it here in the “course of development … which has led [humanity] from paradise to the cross and will guide it from the cross to glory”? These are not normally terms used in an intellectually “neutral” philosophy of history; only one presupposing the Scriptures describes history as “from paradise to cross” and “cross to glory,” and then, further, paradoxically, uses that history as an argument for divine revelation![43]

Van Til objects to another quote from the same lecture: “Nevertheless there are phenomena that point back with great probability to a common origin.”[44] He writes, “Here again Bavinck seeks to understand the universe first in order to introduce the necessity of revelation for the understanding of it.” This has at least initial plausibility. It does appear that Bavinck attempts to build up, by inductive argument, evidence to support a Christian-theistic view of history as though a Christian-theistic view of history does not itself affect the “evidence.” Van Til summarily concludes that this is, in fact, what Bavinck is up to, and offers his critical judgment: “[Bavinck] naturally lowers the claims of God’s general revelation on man.”[45] This is not so obvious, however. Bavinck surveys the state of then-contemporary anthropological science, and proceeds to account for its findings by relating them to divine revelation:

All these fundamentals [religion, morality, law, true, good, beautiful, etc.] are given from the beginning in human nature; they are transmitted from generation to generation, and are at the same time grounded in the very nature of man, so that dependence and independence work together here. And they all point back to a divine origin: ‘all knowledge is,’ at least so far as principles and foundations are concerned, ‘of divine origin.’ Knowledge in this sense flows from revelation.[46]

The argument is not formulated in the “transcendental” fashion Van Til pioneered, but Bavinck does appear to indicate that divine revelation is the presupposition for “the principles and foundations” of knowledge.

What of Van Til’s charge that Bavinck “naturally lowers the claims of God’s general revelation on man”? Is the mere entering into a discussion with anthropologists over the question of human origins a “lowering of the claims” of God’s revelation on man? This cannot be the case, on Van Til’s own terms.[47] The fact is that Bavinck, inductive though his argument is,[48] does not for a moment suggest that non-Christian anthropologists are in any way justified in reaching non-Christian conclusions. On the contrary, his argument is that anthropology, illumined and surrounded by revelation at every turn (general revelation in the case of the ancient cultures, special revelation with respect to the history and religion of Israel), ought to arrive at genuinely Christian conclusions.

The central facts of the incarnation, satisfaction, and resurrection are the fulfillment of the three great thoughts of the Old Covenant, the content of the New Testament, the kerygma of the Apostles, the foundation of the Christian Church, the marrow of its history of dogma and the centre of the history of the world. Without these facts history breaks into fragments. Through them there is brought into it unity and variety, thought and plan, progress and development. From the protevangel to the consummation of all things one thread runs through the history of mankind, namely, the operation of the sovereign, merciful, and almighty will of God, to save and to glorify the world notwithstanding its subjection to corruption.[49]

Without “these facts,” that is, the great revelatory and redemptive facts of the Christian faith, Bavinck writes, history is unintelligible. The whole of history—as a general revelation of God—is the operation of the sovereign will of God, and it must be seen as that for history to be interpreted rightly. These are claims for general revelation in history that do not appear “lowered” in any meaningful sense of the term.

Van Til maintains that “this approach”—presumably that which lowers the claims of revelation on the natural man—is something Bavinck does “again and again” in his Reformed Dogmatics.[50] He cites, for example, apparent agreement with Thomas Aquinas in “maintaining that supernatural revelation is necessary for man because natural revelation is uncertain.” After a brief quotation to that effect, Van Til asserts: “Bavinck here fails to distinguish between the revelation which is clear and the interpretation of that revelation which is worse than uncertain, but is a perversion of the revelation.”[51] In other words, Bavinck fails to make clear that sin is the problem, not the clarity of divine revelation.

But in the immediately preceding paragraph, Bavinck states unequivocally: “General revelation, therefore, is insufficient for human beings as sinners; it knows nothing of grace and forgiveness; it is frequently even a revelation of wrath.”[52] And just a few pages further, concluding his treatment of general revelation, he writes:

To deny that natural religion and natural theology are sufficient and have an autonomous existence of their own is not in any way to do an injustice to the fact that from the creation, from nature and history, from the human heart and conscience, there comes divine speech to every human. No one escapes the power of general revelation.[53]

Ironically, Van Til elsewhere actually defends Bavinck against this very charge! With reference to Gordon Clark’s view of general revelation, Van Til writes:

Reformed theologians have, of course, spoken of the inadequacy of general revelation. By this they meant first that it is inadequate for men as sinners. Sinners need God’s revelation of grace in Christ and only Christ himself reveals his work of grace in Scripture. By this they meant, secondly, that general revelation was inadequate even for men as creatures. God therefore spoke to Adam directly even before the Fall.... But both of these points with respect to the inadequacy of general revelation do not, for Reformed theologians such as Bavinck and Warfield, indicate any lack of clarity in this revelation.[54]

Van Til is obviously aware that this is Bavinck’s position, and he even calls attention to it in the midst of his Defense of the Faith treatment: “It is when Bavinck reasons thus that he does full justice to the objective claims of God in both general and special revelation. Every man must recognize God’s voice. No man can escape it.”[55] But thus far Van Til has not offered a compelling reason to think Bavinck abandons this conviction.

Van Til’s final criticism of Bavinck in The Defense of the Faith, a discussion of apologetics proper, has far more merit. In the context to which Van Til refers, Bavinck maintains that the Christian believer’s faith is a “properly basic” belief, cannot be “proven” as a logically derivative proposition, and that the deepest ground for both belief and unbelief are, in the final analysis, “presuppositional.”[56] It is remarkable how Bavinck anticipates several bedrock features of Van Til’s own transcendental method. God’s revelation in Scripture is, for Bavinck, “autopistos,” self-attesting and self-authenticating.[57] The Christian may indeed

appeal to the marks and criteria of Scripture, to the majesty of its style, the sublimity of its content, the depth of its ideas, the abundant fruit it has borne, etc. But these are not the grounds of his or her faith; they are merely the attributes and characteristics that the believing mind later discovers in Scripture, just as the proofs for God’s existence do not precede and undergird faith but flow from it and are constructed by it. All the proofs for belief in Scripture derived from its marks and criteria show with utter clarity that no deeper ground can be indicated. ‘God said it’(Deus dixit) is the foundational principle ( primum principium) to which all dogmas, including the dogma of Scripture, can be traced.[58]

Further, the Christian believer can at no point relinquish this conviction, no matter the challenge: “Just as the human eye, seeing the sun, is immediately convinced of its reality, so the regenerate person ‘sees’ the truth of God’s revelation.... Believers cannot relinquish this faith anymore than they can relinquish themselves.”[59] Conversion is completely a work of God, and assent to the Christian faith “presupposes a change in the relation of the whole person to God: it presupposes the new birth, the transformation of the will.”[60] God’s revelation is nevertheless clear and renders unbelievers “inexcusable.”[61]

It is in the light of these affirmations that Bavinck’s brief comment should be read: “Historical and rational proofs will not convert anybody. Still, for the defense of the faith they are as strong as the arguments advanced by opponents for the justification of unbelief.”[62] For Van Til this is unacceptable, to put it mildly; to say that belief in God, Christ, and Scripture is “at least” as legitimate as unbelief, or that Christian and non-Christian arguments are “at least” as equally compelling is tantamount to denying the absoluteness of Christian theism and the clarity of God’s revelation. It follows, by implication, that a Christian apologist may establish the legitimacy of Christian belief without pressing, conversely, the illegitimacy of unbelief.[63] There is not mere “warrant” to believe; it is completely unwarranted to not believe.

Van Til has a legitimate claim here. “It is not true,” he writes, “that the arguments of those who seek to flee the voice of God are rationally as good as the arguments of those who admit and insist that God’s voice is everywhere present.”[64] Building on this fair criticism, Van Til proceeds to exaggerate his case. He accuses Bavinck of building up by means of theistic proofs “the theistic position piecemeal, link by link, the causal argument proving one point, the teleological argument proving another point, and the ontological argument proving still another point; but together having failed to bring us to God, the God who alone exists.”[65] And pressing further, “Surely we must not follow Bavinck when, starting from man as ultimate, he leads on to an ultimate Cause that is not clearly God, to an ultimate Purpose that is not clearly God’s, and to an ultimate Being who does not help us out of the vicious circle of our thought.”[66]

Bavinck’s actual discussion of the theistic proofs reveals that Van Til is rhetorically carried away with himself. Bavinck is ambivalent as to the value of any of the traditional arguments, and he would not commend any of them in an unqualified fashion. He rejects that they are, as such, “proofs.”[67] Far from attempting to “build up” the theistic position “by piecemeal,” Bavinck denies that the proofs form the ground of Christian theism at all: “The so-called proofs may introduce a greater distinctness and lucidity, but they are by no means the final grounds on which our certainty regarding God’s existence is ultimately based.”[68] Or again, “The proofs, as proofs, are not the grounds but rather the products of faith.”[69] Far from “starting with man as ultimate” Bavinck indicates that whatever value the proofs have, they have as revelations of God: “No one should ever think that these six proofs are the sole, isolated testimonies God sends us. On the contrary; to the believer all things speak of God; the whole universe is the mirror of his perfections. There is not an atom of the universe in which his everlasting power and deity are not clearly seen.”[70] These are not the words of a theologian seeking to autonomously build up Christian theism piecemeal with isolated arguments. In fact, Van Til himself could have written these sentences.

In reality, Van Til establishes a relatively narrow point; namely, that Bavinck does not self-consciously deploy his Reformed principles into a transcendental method of apologetics. But this is, of course, something of a truism; before Van Til no Reformed theologian did so. Lost in the heat of the argument is the obvious and easily established fact that Herman Bavinck is in no way a “traditional” apologist. Van Til seizes on an infelicitous comment and proceeds to paint what can only be called a caricature. The impression is left to Van Til’s readers that Herman Bavinck may as well be Bishop Butler, instead of the reality: Bavinck is the one Reformed theologian intellectually closest to Van Til.

V. Van Til’s An Introduction to Systematic Theology

A notably more conciliatory tone is struck at the outset of Van Til’s An Introduction to Systematic Theology. His objective here is “to note something of the breadth and depth of Bavinck’s presentation, and then point out where we believe he might have gone somewhat further than he has along the path that he has laid out for us.”[71] After presenting Bavinck’s view that revelation is the sole principium externum of human thought, Van Til again suggests that “Bavinck has himself not been fully consistent in the application of the principle here laid before us.”[72] Specifically, there are four areas where Bavinck allegedly relinquishes this conviction: first, his appeal to “brute facts” in his critique of rationalism and empiricism; second, his failure to specifically ground his epistemological “moderate realism” on the presupposition of the God of Scripture; third, his failure to distinguish between Christian and non-Christian notions of certainty; and, finally, his failure to carefully distinguish his view of natural reason from Greek thought.

It somewhat surprises that Van Til criticizes Bavinck’s treatment of rationalism and empiricism, since it anticipates so clearly Van Til’s own transcendental critique. Rationalism and idealism fail, in the final analysis, according to Bavinck, because they cannot account for plurality and diversity: “The rock on which all pantheism runs aground is multiplicity; there is no discoverable passage from the abstract to the concrete, from the general to the particular.”[73] Van Til appreciates this, but writes, “Our only complaint is that Bavinck did not go far enough. The criticism he makes might have been made by a non-Christian realist. Bavinck does not tell us that the basis of his criticism is the presupposition of the self-existent God.”[74]

This amounts to a variation of Van Til’s complaint that Bavinck does not make his presuppositions clear “constantly and at every point.”[75] It is true that in this three-page critique of rationalism, Bavinck does not explicitly reiterate his foundational principium of thought: the self-revelation of the triune God. But note that Bavinck’s lengthy discussion of the principia of human knowledge immediately precedes the discussion under review. He there concludes that the principium essendi, principium cognoscendi externum, and the principium cognoscendi internum, “distinct yet essentially one, are rooted in the trinitarian being of God. It is the Father who, through the Son as Logos, imparts himself to his creatures in the Spirit.”[76] Van Til’s complaint, that Bavinck failed to repeat this foundational, unequivocal assertion in the following three pages, is less than compelling. This at best concerns style, not substance.

So also with Bavinck’s critique of empiricism, in which he argues that all empirical science must begin with unproved a priori assumptions that are not derived from experience. Van Til rhetorically asks: “On what basis does Bavinck think the a priori principles of science rest? A non-Christian idealist might readily say what Bavinck has said on this point.”[77] The better question might be, on what basis does Van Til think Bavinck rests the a priori principles? Again, because Bavinck does not repeat his convictions on the foundations of human thought, given just five pages earlier, Van Til thinks Bavinck has left the matter obscure. It is unlikely that Bavinck forgets, in the space of a few pages, so fundamental a point, nor is it likely his readers would do so.

Bavinck further cites favorably a maxim from Thomas Aquinas, taken from Aristotle: “The slenderest acquaintance we can form with heavenly things is more desirable than a thorough grasp of mundane matters.”[78] Van Til immediately asks,

Is there no need of pointing out the difference between a Christian and an Aristotelian notion of gradation in the created universe? Surely the Christian, who believes in the doctrine of creation, cannot share the Greek depreciation of the things of the sense world.[79]

It is no exaggeration to say that it is next to impossible for Bavinck’s readers to mistake his convictions on this very matter. Arguably the most persistent theme in his entire dogmatics is his opposition to Greek depreciation of matter; it forms an important impetus for his “restorational eschatology,” the notion that grace “restores and perfects nature.” The purpose of quoting Thomas is to underscore that even if empiricism were true, it would result in an impoverished view of human knowledge, nothing more.[80]

Van Til, secondly, charges that Bavinck fails to ground his epistemological “moderate realism” on explicitly Christian-theistic grounds:

The net result of Bavinck’s investigation is a moderate realism which seeks on the one hand to avoid the extremes of realism, but on the other hand to avoid the extremes of idealism. It is not a specifically Christian position based upon the presupposition of the existence of the God of Scripture that we have before us in the moderate realism of Bavinck.[81]

It is true that Bavinck seeks to avoid the one-sidedness of both realism and idealism. But is this “not a specifically Christian position” and not “based on the presupposition of the existence of the God of Scripture”? Once again, the very text Van Til is criticizing indicates otherwise. Writing against nominalism, Bavinck asserts:

It seems strange, even amazing, that, converting mental representations into concepts and processing these again in accordance with the laws of thought, we should obtain results that correspond to reality. Still, one who abandons this conviction is lost. But that conviction can, therefore, rest only in the belief that it is the same Logos who created both the reality outside of us and the laws of thought within us and who produced an organic connection and correspondence between the two.[82]

In other words, Bavinck’s moderate realism is grounded by, and presupposes, the Logos as the creator of both human beings and their environment.[83]

Thirdly—and in the same vein—Van Til takes Bavinck to task for failing to distinguish between Christian and non-Christian certainty. But Van Til overreaches when he argues, “[Bavinck] tells us at one moment that our certainty lies in the Logos of creation, but then forgets about this Logos in the course of his argumentation and makes certainty to exist merely in the fact that there are a priori principles regardless of the foundation of these principles.”[84] In Bavinck’s account of rational principles, both the capacity to abstract by virtue of a priori principles and to acquire concepts by way of a posteriori investigation are grounded in Christian theism:

In both ways we owe that light [of reason] to God, or, more specifically, to the Logos (Ps. 36.9; John 1.9). It is he who causes this light to arise in us and constantly maintains it. And so, when the truth discloses itself to our mind by the rays of that light, we owe it to God and not to human beings, who are merely the instrument.[85]

It is not true that Bavinck rests certainty in a priori principles, “regardless of the foundation of these principles.” He grounds the whole of human rationality in the principle of analogical reasoning, one of the very points Van Til stressed in his own work:

God is the first principle of being ( principium essendi); present in his mind are the ideas of all things; all things are based on thoughts and are created by the word. It is his good pleasure, however, to reproduce in human beings made in his image an ectypal knowledge that reflects this archetypal knowledge (cognitio archetypa) in his own divine mind. He does this … by displaying them to the human mind in the works of his hands.[86]

This summation also counters Van Til’s fourth criticism, that Bavinck fails to adequately distinguish his view of “natural reason” from the Greek philosophical notion. By the mere act of quoting Thomas Aquinas, it seems Bavinck has, on Van Til’s terms, taken on the responsibility of distinguishing a genuinely Christian notion of natural reason from Thomas’s “Platonic” notion of participation. Bavinck has left this matter of participation ambiguous, writes Van Til: “[Bavinck] wishes our knowledge to rest in God. Why then, we ask, did he jeopardize what is most precious to him by reasoning as though what Thomas meant was essentially what he means?”[87] Van Til then suggests that an adequate distinction must rest on the biblical notion of analogical reasoning: “For a Christian position, the a priori of knowledge can be found in man only analogically. Thomas uses the idea of analogy, but has not with any adequacy escaped the Greek participation idea.”[88]

Yet in this very context Bavinck stresses a distinctively Reformed concept of analogical reasoning, based on the Creator/creature distinction, and its epistemological corollary, the “archetypal/ectypal” distinction.[89] Van Til’s critique may or may not apply to Thomas, but it does not apply to Bavinck. He again confuses a question of style with a question of principle. Not every salutary appeal to Thomas requires—as a matter of principle—an immediate qualification that the writer does not, by implication, mean everything that Thomas means. Regardless, Bavinck actually does meet Van Til’s demand by distinguishing his notion of participation from the Platonic, grounding it in an archetypal/ectypal notion of analogical reasoning.

VI. Conclusion

Cornelius Van Til, in his quest for a consistently Reformed apologetic, desired that every thought be taken captive to Christ. For decades he brilliantly and relentlessly diagnosed his own tradition, probing for thoughts less “captive” than others. It appears that on a number of occasions he misdiagnosed Bavinck’s theology. That the presence of the disease, as it were, is not nearly as serious here as Van Til supposed does nothing to diminish the overall necessity of his cure.

There is an inescapable temptation for readers to evaluate the intellectual relationship between the two men in such a way that a higher estimate of the one means a lower estimate of the other. Giving in to this temptation is unfortunate, however, because it perpetuates the very problem: it drives a wedge between the two where none exists. Van Til’s superficial and at-times uncharitable reading of Bavinck is unfortunate, but not nearly so unfortunate as the impression he gives that Bavinck has more in common with a “traditional” approach to epistemology and apologetics than he has in common with Van Til. If this article establishes anything it is the deep affinity in their theological instincts. Van Til never had an intellectual “friend” like Herman Bavinck. The fact that he sometimes failed to realize it is no reason for contemporary readers of Bavinck to do likewise. One hopes that those whose apologetic sympathies lie with Van Til, yet have new opportunity to study Herman Bavinck in English, might do so without Van Til’s often needless and excessive reservations; instead, may they eagerly and expectantly mine what truly is “the greatest and most comprehensive statement of Reformed systematic theology in modern times.”[90]

Notes

1. Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1978), 43.
2. Cornelius Van Til, “Bavinck the Theologian,” WTJ 24 (1961): 1-2.
3. Ibid., 1.
4. Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (3d ed.; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1967), 298. By “analogical system of truth” Van Til means one that eschews the autonomous human quest for absolute, exhaustive “univocal” knowledge—that is, “God-like” knowledge—and instead self-consciously rests on God’s self-revelation. “Since the human mind is created by God and is therefore in itself naturally revelational of God, the mind may be sure that its system is true and corresponds on a finite scale to the system of God. That is what we mean by saying that it is analogical to God’s system. It is dependent upon God’s system, and by being dependent upon God’s system it is of necessity a true system” (Van Til, Systematic Theology, 181).
5. Van Til, Systematic Theology, 46.
6. Van Til, Defense, 295.
7. Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1998), 596.
8. Cf. ibid., 596–600.
9. Van Til, Defense, 284.
10. Ibid., 284-85. Thus, Van Til’s critique of Kuyper is two-sided. On the one hand, Kuyper failed to apply his principle of common grace vis-à-vis the apologetic encounter (thus establishing a genuine “point of contact”), and yet, on the other hand, he occasionally argued in a mode similar to that of Warfield.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 295.
14. Ibid., 292.
15. Ibid., 293.
16. Van Til, Systematic Theology, 47.
17. Herman Bavinck, Prolegomena (vol. 1 of Reformed Dogmatics; ed. John Bolt; trans. John Vriend; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 42.
18. Ibid., 298-300.
19. Ibid., 321.
20. It appears that the merits of Van Til’s apologetic approach warrant particular stress at present, given Donald Macleod’s recent assessment that Van Til’s transcendental argument is “no more cogent than Warfield’s ‘proofs,”’ since neither is of itself able to secure the subjective persuasion of the unbeliever (Donald Macleod, “Bavinck’s Prolegomena: Fresh Light on Amsterdam, Old Princeton, and Cornelius Van Til,” WTJ 68 [2006]: 277-78). Unfortunately, this rather low estimate of Van Til’s genuine advance in apologetic method is rooted in a fallacy: whether or not one consents to an argument is irrelevant as to its cogency or soundness. The methodological divide between Van Til and Warfield cannot be relativized or minimized, as Macleod does, by simply observing that both are Calvinists (i.e., both recognize the need for the testimonium internum Spiritus Sancti ).
21. Defense, 290–96; Systematic Theology, 43–48.
22. R. H. Bremmer, Herman Bavinck als dogmaticus (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1961).
23. Greg Bahnsen notes this idiosyncrasy, writing, for example, that “it is disappointing to find a book entitled A Christian Theory of Knowledge not working through the standard questions pertaining to the nature of knowledge” (Van Til’s Apologetic, xx).
24. Van Til, “Bavinck the Theologian,” 2
25. Ibid., 14.
26. Ibid., 3.
27. Ibid., 4; emphasis in the original.
28. Concerning the interesting question whether Van Til and Bavinck ever met, Van Til was thirteen when Bavinck made his second and final journey to America in 1908, and was in his first year of seminary when Bavinck died in 1921. It is possible that Van Til met Bavinck either as a child in Holland, or a young adult during Bavinck’s 1908 trip, but they certainly never met as colleagues.
29. Van Til, Defense, 291.
30. Herman Bavinck, The Philosophy of Revelation (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1908; repr., Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2003). The Dutch edition was published as Wijsbegeerte der open-baring (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1908).
31. Van Til, Defense, 292; quoting Bavinck, Philosophy, 61–62; emphasis in Bavinck’s original.
32. Van Til, Defense, 292; emphasis added.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 293; emphasis in Van Til’s original.
35. Ibid.
36. Bavinck, Philosophy, 79.
37. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; 2 vols.; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1:35 (1.1).
38. Bavinck, Philosophy, 80.
39. Ibid., 81.
40. Ibid., 82.
41. Ibid., 170; cf. Van Til, Defense, 293.
42. Van Til, Defense, 293.
43. One senses here, in fact, hints of just the sort of transcendental “circularity” Van Til championed.
44. Van Til, Defense, 294; quoting Bavinck, Philosophy, 185.
45. Van Til, Defense, 294.
46. Bavinck, Philosophy, 188; emphasis added.
47. “We can begin reasoning with our opponents at any point in heaven or earth and may for argument’s sake present Christian theism as one hypothesis among many, and may for argument’s sake place ourselves upon the ground of our opponent in order to see what will happen. In all this it will remain our purpose to seek to reduce the non-theistic position, in whatever form it appears, to an absurdity” (Cornelius Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology [Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, n.d.], xi; emphasis in the original).
48. Van Til clearly did not have a problem with inductive reasoning as such; see A Survey of Christian Epistemology, 7–10.
49. Bavinck, Philosophy, 201; emphasis added.
50. Van Til, Defense, 294.
51. Ibid. Van Til has misunderstood the Aquinas reference found in Bavinck, Prolegomena, 314; Bavinck’s agreement with Aquinas pertains to the inadequacy of the Greek ideal of philosophers as the exclusive purveyors of doctrinal truth, not a supposed “lack of clarity” in revelation as such.
52. Bavinck, Prolegomena, 313; emphasis added.
53. Ibid., 321.
54. Cornelius Van Til, The Protestant Doctrine of Scripture (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1967), 62; quoted in Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, 677; emphasis in Van Til’s original. Recall the observation that Van Til, while critical of Bavinck, is quick to defend him against others. Here he is in the uncomfortable position of defending him—quite successfully, in fact—from a charge he himself made.
55. Van Til, Defense, 295.
56. Bavinck, Prolegomena, 590–93. Editor John Bolt includes the observation that Bavinck anticipates by decades the contemporary apologetic approach of Alvin Plantinga (590 n. 73). Cf. Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, eds., Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983).
57. Bavinck, Prolegomena, 589.
58. Ibid., 589-90; emphasis in the original.
59. Ibid., 590.
60. Ibid., 591.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid.; cf. Van Til, Defense, 295.
63. Without the latter, Van Til would argue, neither has the former been accomplished, given the absolute claims of Christian theism.
64. Van Til, Defense, 295.
65. Ibid., 296.
66. Ibid.
67. Bavinck, God and Creation (vol. 2 of Reformed Dogmatics; ed. John Bolt; trans. John Vriend; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 89.
68. Ibid., 90.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid.; emphasis added.
71. Van Til, Systematic Theology, 43.
72. Ibid., 44.
73. Bavinck, Prolegomena, 218.
74. Van Til, Systematic Theology, 45.
75. Van Til, “Bavinck the Theologian,” 4.
76. Bavinck, Prolegomena, 214.
77. Van Til, Systematic Theology, 45.
78. Bavinck, Prolegomena, 221.
79. Van Til, Systematic Theology, 45.
80. Note the subsequent (delightful!) quote from Schopenhauer: “People never stop praising the reliability and certainty of mathematics. However, what benefit is there for me in knowing with ever so much certainty and reliability something which I do not in the least care about?” (Bavinck, Prolegomena, 221).
81. Van Til, Systematic Theology, 46. The issue between realism and idealism is how to account for the continuity between subject and object, knower and the thing known, or the subjective mental representations and the extra-mental outside world. Extreme realism results in uncritical univocism—the representations of the mind are flawless replicas of the thing-as-such; and extreme idealism results in equivocism—the representations of the mind cannot be assumed to have any relationship to the thing-as-such (Kant). A “moderate realism,” accordingly, posits (against idealism) a real connection between the knower and the object known, but (against realism) acknowledges the possibility of error.
82. Bavinck, Prolegomena, 231; emphasis added.
83. Readers should note that this account of a “revelational epistemology” is precisely Van Til’s own; cf. A Survey of Christian Epistemology, 1.
84. Van Til, Systematic Theology, 47; emphasis added.
85. Bavinck, Prolegomena, 232.
86. Ibid., 233.
87. Van Til, Systematic Theology, 47.
88. Ibid.
89. Cf. the block quote immediately above. “Archetypal” refers to God’s self-knowledge; as such, it is absolute and exhaustive. “Ectypal” refers to the creaturely analogy of God’s knowledge; it is not absolute but derivative, not exhaustive but finite. The “archetypal-ectypal” distinction, then, is nothing less than the Creator-creature distinction applied to epistemology.
90. Van Til, Systematic Theology, 43.