Continuing to read through Van Til’s An Introduction to Systematic Theology.

Notes on Preface and Chap. 1.

Chapter 2 

Our method of systematic theology is foundational. Van Til says that Christian theism “has a methodology quite distinct from other general interpretations of reality” (27).

Nothing is neutral. This includes our methods. Christian theism presupposes the existence of God. Our initial position, our starting posture is founded upon the God who is there.

The God who is there has always existed. He existed before the world. A world that He created ex nihilo. God is God and we are part of creation, therefore, God is incomprehensible to us (but he is not incomprehensible to himself). “Man’s inability to comprehend God is founded on the very fact that God is completely self-comprehensive. God is absolute rationality.” To be more specific, the Triune God is full rationality. The Trinity has exhaustive knowledge. Nothing is a novelty to the Trinity. This God, the Triune God, reveals himself to the creation. By way of special revelation the Triune God reveals himself to the image bearers.

Man does not have comprehensive knowledge. A Christian theist believes in the Trinity and knows that in order to have any knowledge it must be analogical to the knowledge of the Triune God. “The distinguishing characteristic between the very non-Christian theory of knowledge, on the one hand, and the Christian concept of knowledge, on the other hand, is therefore that in all non-Christian theories men reason univocally, while in Christianity men reason analogically” (31). By this Van Til means that non-Christians assume that space, time, man, and God are on the same plane, and that God and man are correlative, both working beneath a higher system of logic, etc. That is false. God existed before everything created; God is “self-conscious and self-consistent” and the created beings (creation) “cannot furnish a novelty element that is to stand on a par with the element of permanency furnished by the Creator” (32). To elaborate, “Christians believe in two levels of existence, the level of God’s existence as self-contained and the level of man’s existence as derived from the level of God’s existence. For this reason, Christians must also believe in two levels of knowledge, the level of God’s knowledge, which is absolutely comprehensive and self-contained, and the level of man’s knowledge, which is not comprehensive but is derivative and reinterpretative. Hence we say that as Christians we believe that man’s knowledge is analogical of God’s knowledge” (CCS emphasis) (32).

“As man’s existence is dependent upon an act of voluntary creation on the part of God, so man’s knowledge depends upon an act of voluntary revelation of God to man. Even the voluntary creation of man is already a revelation of God to man” (34-35).

Van Til, therefore, calls our method for systematic theology a method of implication. “It is really only the Christian who can speak of implication, because no one but him really takes the idea of an absolute system seriously” (35). This method of implication may be referred to as transcendental, but not in the modern philosophic sense. It is a transcendental method because God is the method’s point of reference. “It is only the Christian who really interprets reality in exclusively eternal categories because only he believes in God as self-sufficient and not dependent upon time reality” (36).

This analogical knowledge is theological knowledge. Analogical knowledge makes God the point of reference, and all other knowledge and methods make man himself the final point of reference. Analogical knowledge is the only true Christian position or approach to true knowledge–“When consistently expressed, it posits God’s self-existence and plan, as well as self-contained self-knowledge, as the presupposition of all created existence and knowledge. In that case, all facts show forth and thus prove the existence of God and his plan. In that case, too, all human knowledge should be self-consciously subordinated to that plan. it’s task in systematics is to order as far as possible the facts of God’s revelation” (42-43).

Systematics does not, however, attempt to make an exact delineation point-by-point of the doctrine of the knowledge of God. That is not the point of systematics. If you collapse the sign of human knowledge into the signified (God’s knowledge), you break the proper relationship between the creature and the Creator. It would no longer be derivative but one in the same, “And when this dependence is broken man’s knowledge is thought as self-sufficient” (43). The method of systematic theology must be harmonious with the world-reality of the creature conducting the method, a creature (servant) who’s life and knowledge is derivative.

As John Frame put it, a servant-thinker is one who “adopts God’s world as his own.” Therefore, “the believer [servant-thinker] . . . is affirming creation as it really is; he is accepting creation as the world that God made, and he is accepting the responsibility to live in that world as it really is” (The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 28). That is our method of systematic theology. A method of implication, a method of transcendence, a method that accepts the creation of the world that God made.

Excerpt from Peter J. Leithart’s Miniatures and Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen. I know I will circle back to this in a few years. My son is three but I already know I will frame future conversations around this “first rule of courtship.”

Even without considering her strong male characters, Austen’s novels are highly instructive for men. The mere fact that her novels give men an opportunity to see romance through the eyes of an uncommonly perceptive woman should be enough to recommend them. Even if we men do not want to see courtship through a woman’s eyes, who can say we do not need to? She has a strong sense of a man’s role in courtship and his responsibility for the course that a courtship takes. More than one male character in her novels proves himself a scoundrel by playing with the affections of a woman. Austen’s first rule of courtship is one I have frequently repeated to my sons: Men are responsible not only for behaving honorably toward women but also for the woman’s response; if a man does not intend to enter a serious relationship, he has no business giving a woman special attention or encouraging her to attach herself to him. Austen sees clearly that men who play with a woman’s affections are fundamentally egotistical. They want the admiration and attention of women without promising anything or making any commitment. Few lessons of courtship are more needed in our own day (19).

nytimes has a write up about Brian McLaren’s homosexual son’s marriage. Even more saddening, after the wedding ceremony, “Later in the day, the Rev. Brian D. McLaren, Mr. McLaren’s father and the former pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Md., led a commitment ceremony with traditional Christian elements before family and friends at the Woodend Sanctuary of the Audubon Naturalist Society in Chevy Chase, Md.”

I am going to blog through the songs and lyrics of Blaster the Rocket Man’s album Blaster the Rocket Man in “The Monster Who Ate Jesus”. Blaster was a punk rock band formed in the 1990s. They were from Indiana. I started listening to their records in middle school, while they still performed under their original moniker Blaster the Rocketboy. Their name changed to Blaster the Rocket Man for their 1999 release TMWAJ.

TMWAJ is my favorite Blaster record. Unarguably a punk rock record, but it has influences ranging from country/western to surf rock. Some of the songs from TMWAJ can be streamed on the band’s myspace page. Finally, the following excerpt is from the album’s linear notes.

Beginning to read through Van Til’s An Introduction to Systematic Theology. The plan is to jot down brief thoughts, quotations, etc. I do not intend for this to be a review per se, therefore, it will probably be a fragmentation of loose thoughts.

Preface

This book is a published syllabus that “has an apologetic intent running through it. A Reformed theology needs to be supplemented by a Reformed method of apologetics. This involves relating the historic Christian position to that of modern philosophy, as well as theology” (12). Author admits his indebtedness to Louis Berkhof, Herman Bavinck, and Abraham Kuyper.

Chapter 1

Systematic theology seeks to teach truth about God taught in the Bible in a unified system. Theology is about God, that is, the Trinity, therefore, it theology should be God-centered (contra Barth’s Christomonism).

Exegesis takes the Scriptures and analyzes each part of it in detail. Biblical theology takes the fruits of exegesis and organizes them into various units and traces the revelation of God in Scripture in its historical development. It brings out the theology of each part of God’s Word as it has been brought to us at different stages, by means of various authors. Systematic theology then uses the fruits of the labors of exegetical and biblical theology and brings them together into a concatenated system. Apologetics seeks to defend this system of biblical truth against false philosophy and false science. Practical theology seeks to show how to preach and teach this system of biblical truth, while church history traces the reception of this system of truth in the course of the centuries (17).

Van Til clearly believes in doctrinal development. However, for this to occur the exegetical and systematic work must be accomplished up front, leading to additional clarity and precision to the creeds of the church. Doctrinal development is invalid if it is “retrogressive”, a stripping away creedal tenets.

Ministers need to be students of the Bible and systematics. “But systematics helps minsters to preach the whole counsel of God, and thus to make God central in their work” (22). And, “Well-rounded preaching teaches us to use the things of this world because they are the gifts of God, and it teaches us to possess them as not possessing them, inasmuch as they must be used in subordination to the one supreme purpose of man’s existence, namely the glory of God” (22).

Commenting on modern antithesis, “The fight between Christianity and non-Christianity is, in modern times, no piece-meal affair. It is the life-and-death struggle between two mutually opposed life-and-world views” (22). We must know our systematics because “When the enemy attacks the foundations, we must be able to protect these foundations” (24). Therefore, ministers and theologians must “undertake [their] work in a spirit of deep dependence upon God and in a spirit of prayer that he may use [them] as his instruments for his glory” (25).

My brother in law, Logan Hoffman, graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in the Spring, and last month he and my sister relocated to New Zealand to be Wesleyan church planters. You can keep tabs on them at The Well. Before leaving Logan told me about a new book co-edited by Bruce L. McCormack, the well known Barth scholar who teaches at PTS. The book is Mapping Modern Theology: A Thematic and Historical Introduction. This week I read the first four of the book’s fifteen chapters. It is a slam dunk. So much information and the articles are really well written, complicated information but clearly communicated.

Steven R. Holmes’ contribution maps the modern development of the doctrine of the divine attributes. At points a mind-bender, and at other points your skin crawls as he talks through some of the blasphemies of modern theology. What a brain full of information to process. And as if that wasn’t enough, Daniel J. Treier’s chapter on scripture and hermeneutics is easily the best summarization I have read; again, what a brain full of information to process.

The title really does describe what the book aims to accomplish . . . thus far the authors really do “map out” for the reader the past 200 years of theology. I am looking forward to the remainder of this book.