For some time I have noticed that preaching in the Christian Reformed Church has not only changed, but that it is also no longer a definable entity. When you said “sermon” in my youth everyone knew quite well what you were talking about, but the consensus among us on this point, as on many others, seems to be lost! The implications of all this are many, of course. In fact, this just might be our most important problem (in a day when important problems are not in short supply).

For those of us who believe in the indispensability of the preaching of God’s Word (Lord’s Day 25:65, Heidelberg Catechism,) and that in terms of our soul’s very salvation, an address by Dr. Edmund P. Clowney, president–emeritus of Westminster Theological Seminary, is a rare treat!

It is that for a number of reasons.

Just one of these is the vital importance of the subject. Anything said nowadays about preaching from a Reformed perspective is apt to be helpful. A man even more experienced than I as a preacher said recently that the task is ten times harder than when he began. I’m inclined to believe that he might not be guilty of undue exaggeration.

Another reason is exposed by quoting the full title of Clowney’s paper: “Preaching the Word of the Lord: Cornelius Van Til, V.D.M.” (“V.D.M.” won’t let you put doctor’s bars on your pulpit gown, but it is a very prestigious title meaning “Minister of the Word of God.”)

Those acquainted with the history of this periodical will remember that Dr. Van Til, long-time professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster, was willing to be identified with its founders in the earlier days of our existence. He often wrote for us and he was the principal speaker at one of our first “annual meetings” (attended by about fifteen people). It was a great speech, sending us into another year of service convinced that ours was the victory through Christ, the Lord.

I have had the privilege as well to hear Dr. Van Til preach. It is my conviction that Van Til’s work as Christian theologian, teacher, apologist and philosopher was surpassed only by his work as a pulpiteer. I was present when he delivered the sermon at his only pastoral charge (the Christian Reformed Church of Spring Lake , MI) on the occasion of its 75th anniversary. It was the kind of biblical, Re formed preaching that one can ‘ t forget. And it was delivered with passion and enthusiasm , with a whole-hearted, driving urgency . . . . No wonder that those of us who were touched by his kind of Gospel–preaching, so love “Uncle Case” (He preferred the Dutch version, Oom Kees)!

Dr. Clowney’s address was the Van Til Lecture for 1983–84, delivered at the Seminary in Philadelphia. It was published in the Westminster Theological Journal , the fall 1984 issue. Its purpose is “to show the close relation between Dr. Van Til’s biblical apologetics and preaching.” (Apologetics is a branch of scientific theology which deals with the history and possibility of efforts to establish an effective defense of the Christian Faith against all manner of attack from those outside of that Faith.)

What was “Van Til’s apologetics?” Clowney attempts the following brief summary:

At the heart of Van Til’s apologetics is the conviction that the Christian can not begin with an abstract framework of philosophy or logic assumed or established apart from the presence of the living God. It would be the height of folly to attempt this with, of all books, the Bible. We cannot first establish the authority of the Bible by a philosophical or theological propaedeutic that is impersonally theoretical, and then be introduced by that propaedeutic to the God of whom the Bible speaks. To the contrary, the living God made us, gave us life, and formed us in his image. We cannot think anymore than breathe apart from his provision. The Bible is the Word of God written, the inspired record of God’s speaking to men and women in their sin and need. When God speaks, his creatures cannot evaluate his Word by criteria apart from God; they cannot erect or discern criteria to which he must measure up. If they attempt to do so, they actually bring God before the bar of their own reason, their own traditions, their own pride. When God speaks, it is the voice of satan that asks, “Hath God said?” The voice of man made in God’s image must be, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.”

For this stance Van Til paid a high price. In 1971 a book was published “in his honor. “We place that in italics because even in this volume (Jerusalem and Athens-Critical Discussions on the Theology and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co.) the editor, E.R. Geehan, finds it necessary to say on the very first page, “Prof. Van Til’s writings, with their depth and logical rigor as well as prophetic urgency, have not won him many allies His warnings against the church’s parasitic existence on the wisdom of the world divide his readers into equally adamant friends and foes.”

An illustration of this is to be found within the book itself. G.C. Berkouwer , the Dutch Reformed theologian of the last half-century, vigorously disclaims more than traditional affinity with Van Til, using such language as “far reaching differences” and going so far as to suggest that Van Til might be guilty of “an unreformed sanctioning of tradition.” The vehemence of Berkouwer and other Van Til critics indicates that somehow this friendly, kindly person must have been saying things that made some glad and others mad.

Dr. Clowney faces this question, Was Cornelius Van Til’s apologetics and theology the basis and origin of his preaching, or did not preaching “shape” his apologetic system? Here is his answer:

. . . was Van Til ‘s preaching more reflective of the Dutch sermons he had heard in his youth than of the apologetic system that has made his name a household word–at least in Reformed households? It is my conviction that the reverse is true. Not on Iy is Van Til’s apologetics consistent with his preaching; it is preaching that has shaped his apologetics: preaching, not the philosophy of personalistic idealism that he studied at Princeton University; preaching, not the “common sense” philosophy of James McCosh that influenced old Princeton; preaching, not even the Calvinistic philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd. It would be foolish to maintain that none of these philosophies influenced Van Til’s thought and teaching. Of course they did, some more by the reaction they triggered than by any positive influence. But none of these, nor all of them together, provide the ground of Van Til’s apologetic. The Reformed view of preaching does that.

I agree, Van Til was a Reformed preacher. He opened the Scriptures to and for his hearers so that they had to be con vinced of the glories of sovereign grace. You can be su re that I like this concluding paragraph in Clowney’s address:

Amazing, however, for all the sweep of his vision of preaching , for all of the crusading fervor in which he storms the citadels of humanistic pride, Van Til never loses his focus on the gospel. The Christ who is Lord of all is the Christ who was crucified. I like to remember a picture in a Westminster Bulletin that showed Cornelius Van Til preaching the gospel in the open air on Wall Street, New York. At an age when most surviving Ph .D.’s would be drowsing over a novel, he was still ready to be a street preacher, a fool for Christ’s sake, Cornelius Van Til, V.D.M.