“That knowledge, though not identical at any point with divine knowledge, is analogous to divine knowledge and an expression of genuine truth from a creaturely point of view” (104).

“Recently, Scott Clark . . . of Westminster Seminary California echoed Klooster’s point by locating Van Til’s views within the context of Reformed scholasticism. Post-Reformation Reformed orthodoxy posited two kinds of knowledge, God’s knowledge and the knowledge that God revealed to humanity. This “archetypal/ectypal” distinction “became the basis for Protestant theological method,” and scholastic theologians introduced the necessity of speaking analogically about the knowledge of God, and of understanding theology as it is revealed to us as an analogue of what is proper to God. Scott Clark has argued that Van Til’s doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God was an effort to maintain this distinction, although Van Til employed a different vocabulary” (John R. Muether, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman, 110).

“Van Til believed that faith is deeper than mere assent, because the Word of God makes an impact on the believer’s heart. . . . The Bible shapes what one knows, but also what one loves and how one behaves” (John R. Muether, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman, 102).

“Treason destroys itself and others too” (Song of Roland, Line 3959).

“In 1927 Princeton University granted Van Til the PhD in philosophy for a dissertation on “God and the Absolute.” Upon graduation, Van Til received a call from the Spring Lake, Michigan, Christian Reformed Church. . . .  His pastoral relationship drew to a close in less than a year when Princeton Seminary called him as an instructor in apologetics in 1928. Van Til did not see the invitation as a choice between two vocations. Both the pastorate and a professorship were at heart the same calling. Every minister, he once wrote, had a “V.D.M degree” (that is, a “Verbum Dei Minister,” or “minister of the Word of God”): “When therefore I became a teacher of apologetics it was natural for me to think not only on my Th.M. and my Ph.D. but above all of my V.D.M. The former degrees were but means whereby I might be true to the latter degree.” Preaching and teaching, for Van Til, were not two distinct vocations, and often the preacher emerged in his classroom lectures” (John R. Muether, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman, 58-59).

“Christian dogma is about the only thing left in the world that surely guards and respects mystery” (Flannery O’Connor).

“Together, the two young scholars [John Murray and Cornelius Van Til] expressed common indebtedness to the biblical theological approach of Geerhardus Vos, and each oriented his own approach to systematic theology around the history of redemption” (John R. Muether, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman, 72).

“He that has suffered learns many things in life” (Song of Roland, Line 2524)

“Van Til was remarkably productive in his Princeton days. Equipped with a year of advanced standing, he secured four degrees in five years, including his ThB from the seminary in 1924 and an MA from the university in that same year, followed by a ThM in systematic theology in 1925 and his PhD in 1927 (awarded after he defended his dissertation on “God and the Absolute”)” (John R. Muether, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman, 52).

“[Van Til in an undergraduate paper] challenged other interpretations that dismissed Calvinism as “merely a passing view of life” that inevitably gave way to higher forms of religious expression such as modernism. Though small and embattled in a hostile American context, Calvinism “embodies the eternal truth of God that must be the guide for men everywhere and through all ages.” To see it rise again, he challenged his Calvin [College]  classmates, “we should make the maxim of ora et labora once more part and parcel of ourselves. “Pray and work” were words that would become his credo well beyond his Calvin days” (John R. Muether, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman, 46).

“The psalmist says all creation declares the glory of God (Ps. 19:1). Nothing, however, glorifies God as much as the Incarnation of His Son. As Charles Spurgeon exclaimed, “Sing, sing, O universe, till thou hast exhausted thyself, yet thou canst not chant an anthem so sweet as the song of the Incarnation!” John Owen observed, “We can only adore the mysterious nature of it;–‘great is this mystery of godliness'” (1 Tim. 3:16)” (Joel R. Beeke & William Boekestein, Why Christ Came: 31 Meditations on the Incarnation, viii).