Cornelius Van Til
RTS
Spring Term, 2004
John M. Frame
My "official" office hour is Wednesday, 8-11, but I'm in my office most mornings during that time, and I'm happy to have you drop in when my door is open a crack. If you need an appointment some other time, see my assistant, Jan Brubaker.
Do feel free to email questions to me at [email protected]. I am probably better at answering questions by email than in person.
Assignments
1. Regular class attendance, readiness to participate in discussion, good understanding of course ideas.
2. Bring to each class session one question about the previous week's lecture and/or assigned reading. I would suggest that you write out the questions, but you don't have to. I will not collect them. I may either open the floor for you to ask them, or I will call on you individually.
3. Completion of reading assignments listed below. I will not be formally testing you on the reading and lectures. There will be no exams in this course. I will, however, judge your work in this area by the quality of your participation in discussion and by your overall knowledge of Van Til as evidenced in your term paper (#4, below).
4. Term paper, approximately 5000 words, on any aspect of Van Til's work. The paper should include research beyond the assigned readings of the course. That research should be referenced by a bibliography, and by footnotes or endnotes where appropriate. You may write on one of the topics to be discussed in class (see schedule of lectures and readings) or anything else that interests you. Here are some other suggestions:
a. an exegetical paper on biblical data relevant to some idea of Van Til's.
b. a historical analysis of backgrounds to Van Til's thought.
c. interaction with one or more of Van Til's critics.
d. discussion of some writer(s) influenced by Van Til (Rushdoony, Knudsen,
Poythress, Bahnsen, Frame, North).
e. application of Van Til's ideas to some area he did not himself deal with:
economics, politics, evolution.
f. Van Tillian critique of some theology, philosophy, or other movement that
became prominent after Van Til's time, or that he did not discuss in depth, such as New Age spiritualities, feminism, postmodernism, process thought, Pannenberg, Moltmann, Plantinga, etc.
In these papers, please do not merely tell me what Van Til says, or what someone else says. Analyze, criticize, compare, contrast, apply, explain, evaluate. Give reasons for your theses and evaluations. Your papers will be judged on the criteria of clarity, cogency, and profundity.
Papers are due on Fri., May 14, at 11 AM. Send them to me electronically, [email protected], or in hard copy to my faculty mailbox.
Grading
Most of your course grade will be based on the grade for your term paper. But I may give your grade a "nudge" upward for good class participation, or downward if you are often late, absent, or unprepared without excuse.
A: Good grasp of basic issues, plus something really extraordinary, worthy of publication in either a technical or popular publication. That special excellence may be of various kinds: formulation, illustration, comprehensiveness, subtlety/nuance, creativity, argument, insight, correlations with other issues, historical perspective, philosophical sophistication, research beyond the requirements of the assignment. One of these will be enough!
A-: An A paper, except that it requires some minor improvement before an editor should finally accept it for publication.
B+: Good grasp of basic issues but without the special excellences noted above. A few minor glitches.
B: The average grade for graduate study. Good grasp of basic issues, but can be significantly improved.
B-: Shows an understanding of the issues, but marred by significant errors, unclarities (conceptual or linguistic), unpersuasive arguments, and/or shallow thinking.
C+: Raises suspicions that to some extent the student is merely manipulating terms and concepts without adequately understanding them, even though to a large extent these terms and concepts are used appropriately. Does show serious study and preparation.
C: Uses ideas with some accuracy, but without mastery or insight; thus the paper is often confused.
C-: The student has a relatively poor, but barely competent, understanding of the subject.
D: I don't give D's on papers or exams.
F: Failure to complete the assignment satisfactorily. Such performance would disqualify a candidate for ministry if it were part of a presbytery exam.
Most of my students get B's. I try to keep A's and C's to a relatively small
number. F's are extremely rare, but I have given a few.
A - awkward
Amb - ambiguous
Arg - more argument needed
C - compress
Circle (drawn around some text)
- usually refers to misspelling or other
obvious mistake
D - define
E - expand, elaborate, explain
F - too figurative for context
G - grammatical error
Ill - illegible
Illus - illustrate, give example
Int - interesting
L1 - lateness penalty for one
day (similarly L2, etc.)
M - misleading in context
O - overstated, overgeneralized
R - redundant
Ref- reference unclear (of relative pronoun, etc.)
Rel- irrelevant
Rep - repetitious
Resp - not responsive to the question at issue
S - summary needed
Scr - needs more scripture support
Simp - oversimplified
SM - straw man (a view nobody holds)
SS - problem in sentence structure
St - style inappropriate
T - transition needed
U - unclear
V - vague
W - questionable word-choice
Wk - weak writing (too many
passives, King James
English, etc.)
WO - word order
WV - whose view? yours?
another author?
Lecture Topics and Reading Assignments
Please complete each assignment by the class session indicated. Note that some weekly assignments are much larger than others. Plan ahead! I won't guarantee that the lectures and readings will always be coordinated, but the assignments give you the order in which topics will be considered in class.
Your texts will be
Bahnsen, Greg, Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Pjillipsburg: P&R,
1998). Most of the assignments in this book are writings of Van Til. In the
list of assignments, I will abbreviate "B."
Frame, John, Cornelius Van Til: an Analysis of His Thought (Phillipsburg: P&R,
1995). In the list of assignments, I will abbreviate "F."
--, Lecture Outline
Supplementary Documents. I will abbreviate "SD."
James Anderson, "If Knowledge, Then God"
Frame, "A Van Til Glossary"
--, "Divine Aseity and Apologetics"
--, "Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster"
--, "Greeks Bearing Gifts"
--, "Presuppositional Apologetics"
--, "Reply to Don Collett"
--, "Transcendental Arguments"
--, "Unregenerate Knowledge of God"
--, "Van Til, Cornelius"
--, "Van Til Reconsidered"
Feb. 3: Major Van Tillian Themes
B: 1-26, 88-143, 698-733.
F: 323-336.
Richard Pratt, "Common Misunderstandings of Van Til's Apologetics," Part One, at https://thirdmill.org/files/english/theology/14915~11_30_99_12-10-56_AM~TH.Pratt.VanTil.1.pdf and Part 2 at https://thirdmill.org/files/english/theology/66789~12_13_99_6-30-44_PM~TH.Pratt.VanTil.2.pdf HTML versions are also available, if you don't have Adobe Acrobat Reader.
SD:
Frame, "A Van Til Glossary"
--, "Presuppositional Apologetics"
--, "Van Til Reconsidered"
Feb. 10: Van Til's Life and Character
Apologetics and Theology
B: 27-87.
F: 1-47.
SD:
Frame, "Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster."
--, "Van Til, Cornelius"
--, "Van Til, the Theologian," at http://www.reformed.org/apologetics/frame_vtt.html
Feb. 17: The Doctrine of God
F: 51-88.
SD: "Divine Aseity and Apologetics"
Feb. 24: Analogical Knowledge
B: 144-158, 220-260.
F: 89-95.
Mar. 3: The Clark Controversy
F: 97-113.
Mar. 9: Revelation
B: 158-219.
F: 115-130.
Mar. 16: SPRING VACATION: No class.
Mar. 23: Epistemology
F: 131-184.
Mar. 30: The Ethics of Knowledge
B: 261-311, 405-460.
F: 187-230.
SD: "Unregenerate Knowledge of God."
Apr. 6: Rationalism and Irrationalism
B: 389-402.
F: 231-238.
Apr. 13: The Traditional Method
B: 530-697.
F: 241-297, 401-422.
Apr. 20: Reasoning By Presupposition
B: 461-529.
F: 299-322.
Apr. 27: Van Til and the History of Philosophy
B: 311-404.
F: 339-369.
SD: "Greeks Bearing Gifts"
May 4: History of Philosophy, Cont.
Van Til and Herman Dooyeweerd
Van Til the Preacher
F: 371-386, 423-443.
May 11: Retrospect and Prospect; Review
B:18-20.
F: 389-400.
Supplementary
Bibliography
The best bibliography of Van Til's writings is Eric D. Bristley, A Guide to the Writings of Cornelius Van Til, 1895-1987 (Chicago: Olive Tree Communications, 1995). I recommend it highly. It provides a comprehensive list of Van Til's writings, often with summaries or excerpts, and the more important writings about Van Til by other authors. Because it was published in 1995, it does not include the two major texts in this course.
An even better way to get access to most of Van Til's work is to purchase the CD-ROM, The Works of Cornelius Van Til. The CD contains Bristley's bibliography mentioned above, plus 41 books and pamphlets, 22 manuscripts, 111 articles in English, 25 articles in Dutch, 75 reviews, 32 sermons and addresses, and the festscrift, Jerusalem and Athens. The disk contains 52 hours of audio material! It is searchable and linked to the Logos Library System. This is a superb accomplishment, available now at a reasonable price. No serious student of Van Til's thought should be without it.
If you are just starting to dip into the Van Til literature, I would suggest doing it in the order noted on 26-27 of my book, Cornelius Van Til. You should start with the basic introductory material in Bahnsen's Van Til's Apologetic, 1-26 and 726-33.
To see how a Van Tillian apologetic interacts with some of the other schools of thought of our time, see Steve Cowan, ed, Five Views of Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000). In this book I represent the presuppositional position, and I interact with representatives of other approaches, William Lane Craig (classical), Gary Habermas (evidential), Paul Feinberg (cumulative case), and Kelly James Clark (Plantingan "Reformed epistemology").
1. http://thirdmill.org
Rich Pratt's web site, with a world vision for Christian education. Posts articles on many different subjects. Discussion forum.
Lots of information about Van Til, articles about him from people like Bahnsen, Frame, Pratt, Hays, Welty, and others, along with Van Til himself. Includes Eric Bristley's comprehensive bibliography of Van Til's writings.
David Hall founded this site, the "Center for the Advancement of Paleo-Orthodoxy." These folks are conservative Presbyterians. Part of their site is "the Van Til Institute for Apologetics."
The Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics, founded by Jon Barlow. Oriented toward Presuppositionalism. Links to the email debate between atheist philosopher Michael Martin and John Frame, on Martin's "Transcendental Argument for the Non-Existence of God."
5. http://www.vantil.info/lists.html
"The Van Til Lists." Gives opportunity for discussion of all matters pertaining to CVT.