“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).