The title of this article is the title of a new book by John C. Vander Stelt with the sub-title, A Study in Old Princeton and Westminster Theology. It is his doctoral thesis for the Free University at Amsterdam in the Netherlands and is published by Mack Publishing Co., Marlton, New Jersey. Dr. Vander Stelt who was for a short time a Christian Reformed minister is since 1968 a Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Dordt College at Sioux Center, Iowa.
An Inviting Subject
The Presbyterian and the Reformed traditions with their common Calvinistic origin and holding the same basic convictions but having diverse cultural backgrounds have much that should draw them together in the North-American melting-pot of cultures. Efforts to draw them together might be helpful to Christians of both traditions as they should seek to hold and live by the faith of the gospel instead of thoughtlessly fellowing their own national and cultural traditions. To promote such a drawing together of Christians who in principle belong together, appreciatively critical studies of Presbyterian traditions from a reformed point of view and of Reformed traditions from a Presbyterian point of view would appear to be highly desirable. This book funning to about 350 pages and revealing a great deal of research (there are 2,156 footnotes!) proposes to be such a study, as the author says, “to contribute in some small way to a better and more meaningful dialog within and between Reformed and Presbyterian communities in North America.” He proposes “also to promote a more relaxed and trustful debate within the larger evangelical world on such crucial and complicated issues as the nature and role of Christian philosophy and theology, the historical cultural conditionedness of a believer’s understanding of Scripture, the relationship between the written Word and human theorizing, and the source and nature of truth and certainty” (pp. 7, 8).
Philosophy Before Scripture
The author states in the opening sentence of his introduction that “Man‘s understanding of Scripture is always influenced by the perspective of the . . . period and cultural context in which he lives.” “There is no . . . realm that a man can live in, where he is supposedly able to receive rationally absolute, propositionally infallible, and scientifically accessible supra-human knowledge of faith.” It is the specific purpose of the dissertation to “study” “the manner in which several Old Princeton and a couple of Westminster Seminary theologians have understood and defended the Bible.” Throughout this thesis the author tries to show by a study of Scottish Common Sense Philosophy first in Scotland, then in North America, then by a study of the Old Princeton College and Seminary theologians, from the middle 1700s’ on, Witherspoon, Smith, Green and McCosh, Alexander, Miller, the Hodges, Warfield and Patton and finally Machen and Van Til of Westminster Theological Seminary, that these Presbyterians’ views of the Bible were not derived, as they thought from the Bible but from their really no-Christian philosophy. To it he traces “the subtle error in its (Princeton-Westminster’s) position on a certain form of inerrancy” (p. 2). Without considering this erroneous philosophy, he maintains, “it is impossible to comprehend fully the notion, for example, that the Bible is really a system of truths” (p. 3). In this introduction we are informed that the title placed “Philosophy” before “Scripture” in order to stress the role of philosophy. Throughout this essay, the stress of the analysis will be on the nature of the main philosophical tenets, on the essence of the truth-character of Scripture, and on the influence of the former upon the latter, rather than of the scriptural upon the philosophical” (p. 3). In other words, we are plainly told that the book’s aim is not to determine whether in these Presbyterians’ work their Philosophy or Scripture held the dominating influence, but to prove that their Philosophy determined their view of Scripture.
A footnote at this point informs liS that the writer’s original intention was to use “Common Sense Philosophy” in the title but that he “decided to use simply ‘Philosophy in order to include the views of . . . Cornelius Van Til” who did not hold to this philosophy. We might ask why, if Van Til admittedly did not hold this philosophy, he is still included with the Princeton men. The answer is that “Van Til claims to have remained in fundamental agreement with the Old Princeton view of Scripture” (p. 7).
That the real target of the study is the Presbyterians’ view of the Bible becomes obvious when Dr. Van Til who does not hold to the philosophy is still classed with and repudiated with them for holding the same view of Scripture, (p. 201, cf. p. 302) a view which the author, as becomes increasingly clear throughout the book, emphatically rejects.
“New” Dutch Views Oppose Presbyterian Orthodoxy
Vander Stelt’s own point of view comes out especially clearly in this evaluation of Van Til. “Although he (Van Til) would tell his non–Christian friends that his ‘view of reality and knowledge . . . is taken from Scripture,’ and though he asserted that ‘My “system” is attained by thinking . . . in the light of the Christ of Scripture,’ it cannot be denied that he has remained closer to the scholastic spirit of Princeton thinkers . . . than to the more reforming thrust in the philosophical and theological thought of such men as Berkouwer and Dooyeweerd” (p. 264).
From this point of view he proceeds to criticize Van Til’s holding to “a Bible that is a ‘system of truth yielding information.’’” And for “an intellectualistic form of biblicism” that really leaves no room for philosophy, for, “Basically, all one has to do is repeat what the Bible says about any subject” (p. 267). He accuses Van Til of “by . . . trying to defend (the infallibility of) Scripture” having “obscured the central content of it” (p. 267) and of failing to “appreciate G. C. Berkouwer’s emphasis on the importance of the human dimension of Scripture” (p. 269).
In other words, it is plain especially from the last chapter (pp. 326–330) that the viewpoint expressed in this book is that of an uncritical following of Berkouwer (under whom this doctoral study was begun), and not the “old” Berkouwer but the “new” Berkouwer who, reversing his former hostility to the existentialist and Barthian modern philosophy and theology, today with his liberal followers has surrendered to them.
Considering this, increasingly liberal Dutch viewpoint of the author makes his consistently critical attitude towards the line of Princeton and Westminster Presbyterians completely understandable. A multitude of footnotes which are quotations from liberal or Barthian secondary critics rather than direct quotations from the men whose views are discussed, and the way he deplores the Modernist-Fundamentalist controversies in which these conservative Presbyterians took part reflect this point of view. Speaking, for example of their “increasingly strict and intellectualistic understanding of both Scripture and the Westminster Standards,” he says, “This extreme theological and ecclesiastical position of orthodox Presbyterianism which believed itself to be biblical but had unawares incorporated a number of unscriptural thought patterns, contributed its share to the vehement conflicts during the opening decades of the twentieth century between the supporters of the Portland Deliverance and the Auburn Affirmation. This struggle resulted in the educational split at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1929 and in the ecclesiastical schism of the Presbyterian Church in 1936” (p. 47). He would have us abandon such notions (involving their ideas of an “inerrant” Bible and credal “system of truth” to which men must subscribe) and in a more “relaxed and trustful” spirit, in “the joy of new insight” “move in the direction of ethical trust, confessional solidarity and religious shalom” (pp. 7, 8)*
A Significant Study
Does the book succeed in showing that the long line of Princeton scholars were heavily influenced by Common Sense Philosophy and often attempted to prove the infallibility of the Bible, for example, by scientific and philosophical arguments? Yes, he does. And on that point his book with its many references makes a real contribution.
Caricatures
The major fault in the study is that one senses again and again that the views being discussed are really being caricatured rather than fairly presented. Is it fair to Archibald Alexander to charge him with a merely “intellectualistic” view of faith—“Scripture is a system of truths, and this system of truths is really a set of propositional doctrines. To be orthodox means to accept this complete body of reliable, biblical truths” (p. 112)? One could hardly guess from this characterization that Alexander was the warm-hearted writer who in his major work, Thoughts on Religious Experience, wrote of the regenerated man‘s “new perception of truth” “whether you ascribe it to the head or the heart, I care not. It is a blessed reality” (p. 64) and who has been called “the Shakespeare of the Christian heart.”
A more glaring misrepresentation is Vander Stelt‘s attributing to Warfield’s prejudice against subjectivism, and “not doing full justice to that which is natural and subjective” in the Bible Warfield’s accentuating “the passive meaning of . . . (II Tim. 3:16), God-breathed rather than ‘God-breathing.’ The passive epithet is needed to be able to describe divine attributes to the Scriptures: ‘The Scriptures are spoken of as if they were God . . . God is spoken of as if he were the Scriptures” (pp. 174, 175). Anyone who takes the trouble to read what Warfield actually wrote in his The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (pp. 245–348) must recognize that Warfield, far from trying to justify personal prejudices by distorting his material, was showing by the most careful exegetical study, what the Bible unquestionably claimed about itself. He exposed the flimsy distortions of liberal critics who want to escape from that plain teaching of Scripture. What Vander Stelt attributes to Warfield’s philosophical prejudices are actually, as Warfield goes to endless efforts to show, nothing but the inescapable teachings of the Bible. Vander Stelt’s irresponsible treatment of this matter shows him opposing those Bible teachings in the same way that Warfield‘s liberal opponents of a hundred years ago did.
A similar distortion greets us in the portrayal of Machen as regarding the Bible as “an infallible collection of proof texts direct from God” (p. 217) and a “theologically accessible system of factual and propositional truths” (p. 218). To correct this kind of misrepresentation one only needs to read what Machen wrote. Machen found much of the church arguing that “faith . . . is not assent to a creed, but it is confidence in a person.” He cited Hebrews 11:6, “He that cometh to God must believe that He is,” and observed, “The words, ‘God is,’ or ‘God exists constitute a creed: they constitute a proposition; and yet they are here placed as necessary to that supposedly non-intellectual thing that is called faith.” “It is perfectly true, of course, that faith in a person is more than acceptance of a creed, but … it always involves acceptance of a creed. Confidence in a person is more than intellectual assent to . . . propositions about the person, but it . . . becomes impossible the moment they are denied.” “One cannot trust a God whom one holds with the mind to be either nonexistent or untrustworthy” (What Is Faith? pp. 47, 48).
A Philosophy Against the Bible
Why does this book insist on giving such a distorted portrayal of this whole Presbyterian tradition? It is evident at many points that the author, in company with the many others here and in the Netherlands to whom he appeals for support, shares the critical, liberal views of the Bible and the creeds which that long line of orthodox Presbyterian scholars were opposing. He, at many points, sees and shows how those Presbyterians were unduly influenced by a philosophy which today has fallen out of favor, but he seems to be completely oblivious to the fact that his own criticisms embody and show even more clearly his uncritical assumption of the modern existential and Barthian philosophy and theology to which Berkouwer and his followers have in principle surrendered. He charges that the Presbyterians assumed that “truth is basically static” and therefore were unable to acknowledge “the historical dimension or the dynamic aspect of truth.” They therefore believed it to be “propositional, not historical . . . permanent, not dynamic? It becomes evident that the writer accuses the Presbyterians of exclusively holding to one of these because he by his philosophy is committed to over—or exclusively emphasizing the other.
An “AACS” View of the Bible
The hostility to anything “propositional,” “static,” credally binding, “objective” shown throughout this book has a familiar ring. It is the same emphasis we have often encountered in the earlier writings of other men of the Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship (AACS). The consistent minimizing of the role of the Bible and the constantly critical references to any notion of its infallibility or inerrancy reveal the same distorted notions about the Word of God which I have often observed in other AACS writers. Vander Stelt tells us plainly that “Scripture is not to be equated with this Word” but is only “the trustworthy lingual witness . . . of that divine personal Word through whom everything was made” (p. 316). It might seem that this is to say Christ is the real “Word.” But his whole construction is more philosophical than that. “Both the incarnate Word and the written Word are uniquely redemptive manifestations within created reality, of the creation word of God” (320). Harry Downs some time ago in his Power Word and Text–Word in Recent Reformed Thought showed rather effectively how this separating “Power-Word” from “Text-Word” minimizes the authority of the Bible. We have been told that the AACS has changed over the years, but this book shows the same characteristic attitude toward the Bible that is found in earlier writings of its adherents. We see that coming out in this book especially in the hostile criticism of the Presbyterians who have maintained the Bible’s inerrancy and opposed the attacks upon it, and in the uncritical endorsement of Berkouwer who today justifies these attacks.
Need for Militancy and Discipline
The author of this book is harsh in his criticism of the “unnecessarily offensive” form of Van Til’s apologetics. “Covenant-breakers . . . because they suppress truth in unrighteousness, need to have truth communicated to them through deliberate confrontation.” “There is ‘no appeasement’ but always the need for ‘head on collision’ and engagement in ‘offensive warfare’” (p. 230, note 239). And this too is attributed to Van Til’s philosophy. The writer does not like such “‘black and white” distinctions. But what he and many ether of today’s theologians and would-be Christian philosophers fail to consider is that in dealing with these matters we are not playing harmless little games wi~h philosophical theories for relation and entertainment, but, as Van Til reminds us, dealing with the Word of God on which men‘s eternal salvation cit‘· pends. In these matters the difference between the true and the false is not the product of a mistaken commonsense philosophy but the plain teaching of God‘s Word which sharply distinguishes the truth from the lie. “No lie is of the truth” (I John 2:21) Also the notion of a “system of truth” is not, as repeatedly alleged, a product of rationalistic philosophy, but the teaching of the Bible which orders us to “Hold the pattern of sound (lit. “healthful”) words . . . in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus” (II Tim. 1:13).
It commands us to “guard” this trust, and to oppose and discipline those who reject it. It summons us to “fight the good fight of faith” (I Tim. 6:12) and to oppose the devil’s destructive lies with the Lord‘s gospel of salvation. Berkouwer and other theologians whom the author suggests we follow, now seem to ignore all this. Instead of fighting against and disciplining error as they formerly did, they now invite us to join it in singing the doxology. But God’s prophets warn us that He doesn’t want disobedient doxologies (Isaiah 1:10ff.).
The checkered history of the Christian church often shows how necessary was the warning of the Bible, “Take heed lest there shall be anyone that maketh spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Col. 2:8). This book shows how the old Presbyterian leaders needed that warning and did not always succeed in living by it. It also reveals how urgently the author and those whose views he follows need it, although they, moving with the spirit of our age, usually seem oblivious to that.
The editor of Christianity Today observed some years ago that a thinker may have seriously erroneous views, but if he holds a high view of God’s Word that Word will eventually correct him; if he does not have such a high regard for God’s Word, there is nothing to correct him. Study of the old Presbyterians shows that, holding such a high regard for the Bible, they had their errors limited and corrected; the author and those views he follows, discarding that kind of regard for the Bible, have nothing to correct them. The usual appeal to the Holy Spirit at the end of the study (pp. 330ff.) will not help them if they refuse to be guided by His inspired Word. Lacking or unwilling to accept that Word as a test of truth one has no way to distinguish the Holy Spirit from His great imitator, the devil (I John 4:1–6; II Cor. 11:13–15). Compromise with the devil will never lead to “ethical trust, confessional solidarity and religious shalom,” although he may tempt us as he did our first parents with the promise of “the joy of new insight.”
Every office holder in the Christian Reformed Churches was asked when he took office, “Do you believe the Old and New Testament to be the only Word of God?” and has answered, “I do.” May a church which confesses that conviction tolerate and may its members support teaching that insists, “Scripture itself is not to be equated with this Word” (p. 316)?
*Philip Holtrop promoted the same point of view in the February, 1977 Reformed Journal in all article entitled, “A Strange Language: Toward a Biblical Conception of Truth and a New Mood for Doing Reformed Theology.” I responded to that in the May 1977 OUTLOOK under the title, “A New Sales Pitch for Modern Theology.”