“To be an effective minister of the gospel, [Van Til] told graduates, ‘one must be certain that this gospel is not some cunningly devised fable, but that it is true and that all truth everywhere springs from this gospel'” (John R. Muether, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman, 209).

“In this ruin of mankind no one now experiences God either as Father or as Author of salvation, or favorable in any way, until Christ the Mediator comes forward to reconcile him to us” (Translated by Ford Lewis Battles, John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 40).

“Van Til’s early and penetrating critique of evangelical apologetics (classical or evidential) anticipated the collapse of Cartesianism and the rise of the role of interpretation, even though the writings of self-styled post-foundational evangelicals a half-century later rarely documents any acknowledgement of Van Til’s influence” ( (John R. Muether, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman, 181).

“Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself. . . . Suppose we but once begin to raise our thoughts to God, and to ponder his nature, and how completely perfect are his righteousness, wisdom, and power — the straightedge to which we must be shaped. Then, what masquerading earlier as righteousness was pleasing in us will soon grow filthy in its consummate wickedness. What wonderfully impressed us under the name of wisdom will stink in its very foolishness. What wore the face of power will prove itself the most miserable weakness. That is, what in us seems perfection itself corresponds ill to the purity of God” (Translated by Ford Lewis Battles, John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 37-38).

“Van Til noted that both Calvin and Machen, at the very end of their lives, were concerned with covenant faithfulness in the generations that followed them. It is no stretch to imagine that Van Til was filled with the same sense, and as he neared the end of his life, he admonished the next generation in the church to continue in covenant fidelity”  (John R. Muether, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman, 207).

“For Van Til, creation did not merely establish the self-existence of God. The Creator-creature distinction, rightly understood, did not devolve into the Barthian skepticism of a “wholly other God” of pure transcendence. Just as integral to Van Til’s doctrine of creation was the Creator-creature relationship. As Van Til learned especially from his Princeton Seminary professor Geerhardus Vos, creation was synonymous with covenant. To be fashioned in the image of God was to be in covenant with God. All of God’s words and works entail his covenant relationship with humanity, and thus human beings were divided into two camps: covenant keepers who worshiped and served the Creator as his image bearers, and covenant breakers who worshiped and served the creature, in whose image they fashioned God. This way of articulating a philosophy of history, “baldly stated” by Van Til’s own admission, was foundational for a Reformed apologetic” (John R. Muether, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman, 128).

“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).