These were taken from the Cornelius Van Til public group on Facebook. They are not all mine as you will see from the names, but they are worth sharing. The quotes without names belong to the name below them. I hope you enjoy these as much as I do, and please feel free to add your own!
You know you’ve been reading too much Van Til when…
1) 'Atheist’ and 'little girl sitting on her Granddad's lap and slapping him in the face' become synonyms to you.
2) You're always asking your 'partner' for more points of contact. – Paul Huxley
3) You are always out looking for people with Jaundice Eye.
4) When people hear "Another cup of coffee" people think about Starbucks but you think about being charitable when you are dialoguing about the faith.
5) You know what "Antithesis" means.
6) You know who Gordon Clark is...he's the guy that's against Van Til, right? – Jimmy Li
7) You respond to this as I am about to: "Praise God these describe me!"
8) You think that John Frame is either a Roman Catholic or an Arminian. (Ooh, touchy!) – Chris Bolt
9) You start using complicated words to illustrate a simple point, whether in ratiocination or predication.
10) The word presupposition somehow seems appropriate and somewhat necessary to involve during every conversation, whether with the milkman or your 3 year old niece.
11) When you think of every foolish philosophical manoeuvre in terms of Van Tillian illustrations, and in turn think analogically after the mind of Van Til, in a creature-creature fashion.
12) When the most Godly evangelists are heretics or unbiblical.
13) Transcendental, final reference point, autonomous, analogical, borrowing capital, world view, pre-commitment and impossibility of the contrary, need to be packed into a single sentence during a debate or at the breakfast table. – Fraser Mlyk
14) You start using WWII analogies when you talk about Theology, Apologetic Methodology, and Philosophy. – Stephan Diment
15) Out on the road you see a "Real Men Love Jesus" bumper sticker and you mutter to yourself, "Actually, love for Christ is an ethical matter, not a metaphysical one."
16) You think the very implication that one could possibly read TOO MUCH Van Til simply presupposes a fundamentally anti-Christian-theistic position. – Mike Evans
I believe it was Cornelius Van Til who said that choosing a worldview is quite different from choosing a hat. By this he meant much more than what I will touch on here, but I am nevertheless reminded of this illustration as I write this blog.
Within philosophy are laws of logic. We cannot just toss these laws aside without becoming irrational in our thought. Logical fallacies describe various manifestations of violations of the laws of logic. Here is one such fallacy:
Argumentum ad Consequentiam
"Argument to the consequences"
(Belief in) p leads to bad consequences.
(Where the bad consequences are irrelevant to the falsity of p.)
Therefore, p is false.
After a public debate against an atheist friend of mine, I was approached by a fellow student who is probably ten times more intelligent than I am. He raised issues related to the whole Creation/Evolution/Intelligent Design controversy that I unfortunately misunderstood at the time.
Whether it was the Holy Spirit manifesting Himself in a very loud way I do not know, but my fellow student without any further words from me became very honest as to why he could not believe in my God. I was very appreciative of his honesty, especially since I never had to dig at all to get to what his real objection to Christianity is. I do regret that I misunderstood his questions regarding science, but perhaps one day the Lord will permit me to answer them for him or He will send another laborer to do so.
Either way, the problem in the heart of this particular soul was with those who have never heard of Christ having to die and spend an eternity in hell. The thing to do when answering this objection would be to remain sensitive to the non-Christian and parry both the intellectual and emotional strikes, but I found myself pointing out the fallacy in this kind of reasoning before I said anything else. A longer period of time would have permitted me to explain that we are all sinners, and thus all deserve the wrath of God. It is the grace of God that is not deserved, and it is an act of grace that God extends the Gospel offer to us and even more grace which brings us to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Time did not permit this to be stated though.
My answer was to illustrate the Argumentum ad Consequentiam Fallacy as follows:
Let us suppose that my Mother has terminal cancer (and thank God that she does not).
Believing that my Mother has terminal cancer leads me to conclude that she will suffer and die from this disease.
Therefore, my Mother does not have terminal cancer.
Is the conclusion here true? Of course not, for we supposed at the beginning of the example that the opposite was true. The negative consequences of my Mother having terminal cancer (that she will suffer and die from the disease), have nothing to do with whether or not it is true or false that my Mother has the disease.
This same fallacy is found in the reasoning of the person in this true story. One of the consequences of believing Christianity to be true is having to believe that there are people who have never heard the Gospel and will spend an eternity in Hell. Does this mean that Christianity is not true? Well of course not! So here we have no reason for not believing in Christianity, we simply have what may be an emotional issue to be addressed from Scripture.
Christianity is true regardless of whether or not one wants to accept a proposition like that of hell and what the doctrine entails. I fear that many of my non-Christian friends have placed an emotional disturbance above rationality and are guilty of committing this fallacy. Even if they do not blatantly commit the fallacy, it often resides at the center of the other supposed intellectual problems they actually seek out to display as warranting their rejection of Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. The doctrine of hell and other potentially offensive doctrine like it are often seen as enough reason to hate Christianity from the start rather than digging deeper to see whether or not the worldview actually is true and whether or not these more shocking teachings might not contain truth and comfort when they are properly understood within the Christian worldview. As I have explained here, mere discomfort over the consequences of a proposition is not enough reason to hate those things which would require our belief of such a proposition or even to hate the proposition itself. Or, if I am wrong there, hatred is not enough reason to reject something as false. Reason has nothing to do with it.
In The Fixation of Belief Peirce describes four methods for the “fixation of belief”. According to Peirce, the goal of inquiry is to settle one’s opinion. Thus Peirce asks, “why should we not attain the desired end, by taking as answer to a question any we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything that might disturb it?”[1] This is what Peirce refers to as the “Method of Tenacity”. Now I must wonder whether or not this reminds you of anyone you know?
Apparently Jehovah’s Witnesses suggest that you should not read the Bible without the Watchtower or else you might become a Trinitarian.[2] If you have had a Mormon at your door before, perhaps he or she told you to just pray (based on a horrible twisting of James 1.5) and you will see that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. And then there are the many atheists who will not open their eyes up to anything, including their unnecessary arrogance.
When an ostrich buries its head in the sand as danger approaches, it very likely
takes the happiest course. It hides the danger, and then calmly says there
is no danger; and, if it feels perfectly sure there is none, why should it
raise its head to see? A man may go through life, systematically keeping out
of view all that might cause a change in his opinions…[3]
Peirce takes no moral offense at this, as he is concerned only with the fixation of belief. As far as the fixation of belief is concerned, there is no worry about this irrational method of tenaciously holding on to a belief and violently opposing anything which may lead to further question concerning it. So then, the problem according to Peirce is not that this method is immoral.
The problem as Peirce sees it is that this method ultimately fails to satisfy
the person utilizing it. It fails as a means to fixating belief, the reason
being that encounters with others who may be doing the same thing or even
utilizing a different method will inevitably and often disagree. He writes to
this effect.
But this method of fixing belief, which may be called the method of
tenacity, will be unable to hold its ground in practice. The social impulse
is against it. The man who adopts it will find that other men think
differently from him, and it will be apt to occur to him, in some saner
moment, that their opinions are quite as good as his own, and this will
shake his confidence in his belief. This conception, that another man's thought or
sentiment may be equivalent to one's own, is a distinctly new step, and a highly
important one. It arises from an impulse too strong in man to be suppressed,
without danger of destroying the human species. Unless we make ourselves
hermits, we shall necessarily influence each other's opinions; so that the
problem becomes how to fix belief, not in the individual merely, but in the
community.[4]
With this said Peirce moves on to consider other methods. We leave him here, divorcing his observations from his wider pragmatic programme. While Peirce identifies one problem with this method which is consistent with his overall goal in writing, he leaves two problems unaddressed that the Christian should call attention to. The first is that one person’s “opinion” (which can refer to just about anything) is just as good as another’s. We must reject this in most every case, depending upon what is meant by “opinion”. While some things are only subjective opinions, there is such a thing as Truth, the very concept of which Peirce objects to in his works. Second, Peirce is not too interested in the prospect that this method is vile; that it is morally repugnant. Such is never his argument against this method. However, we should be repulsed by the suggestion that someone fix his or her belief in this manner. Did you not find moral complaint with the JW and the Mormon examples above? Why then do we allow the following to occur?
I was saved (to use the Christian phrase) when I was seven years old, after
being raised in the Christian faith all of my life. I wasn't baptized until I
was eleven, shortly after my sister was. However, for the past few years (I've
forgotten since when), I've been questioning my faith, and why I believe what I
do. It's been a burden to me, but I never told anyone about it, not even my
family.
I cannot help but wonder about whether the Method of Tenacity may play a significant role in the lives of Christians and create hidden doubts like those in the example above. Christianity is not meant for this skeptical, unbelieving, anxiety filled box of paranoia. Christianity is true and thrives in an open environment full of intellectual discussion, hence the need for its enemies to silence it. By all means keep the main thing in focus and avoid endless questions about useless subjects…but don’t be an ostrich either.
God has given me the wonderful privilege of teaching the College and Career class at my church. We average between 7 and 10 people on Sunday mornings, and 2-3 on Wednesday nights. Sunday mornings we study books of the Bible, and Wednesday nights are more topical. After finishing MacArthur's "Fundamentals of the Faith" series where the previous teacher had left off (he is and his wife and son are currently in South Korea where he teaches systematic theology) we dove in to Galatians, followed by Proverbs which is where we are now. I plan to go through Ephesians next on Sunday mornings.
On Wednesday nights, we did a study on the Five Solas, followed by a study on World Religions from a Christian perspective, which of course had a large apologetic element to it. Tonight, Lord willing, we begin the Study Series on Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper. I look forward to what God is going to do through this.
In America, we love numbers. In one of my classes at school we read an account of someone baptizing 4,000 Indians in one day. Now whether or not this is a true account I do not know, it seems a stretch to me. It is wonderful to see God moving in massive ways like that, but we all (should) know too well by now the kind of thinking this produces. A love for numbers can lead toward a love for pragmatism, and eventually you lose the teaching of sound doctrine because the teaching of sound doctrine often diminishes the size of a local body of believers. Why would someone want to hear about their unbelieving friends and family going to hell for their sins, about a gruesome death on the cross for sins, and about sanctification and holiness when they can go to a church which does this on Resurrection Sunday:
I praise God that I have been in churches all of my life that, while certainly not paradigmatic, are nevertheless preaching and teaching the Word of God. I am extremely thankful for the position God placed me in at my community college, where an apathetic student body became the target audience of this recently converted sinner set on fire by God's redeeming grace. For over half a year I lead a ministry on campus which attracted:
1. Me
and
2. The faculty advisor
It can be extremely discouraging, especially to someone with almost no experience in teaching and ministry, to prepare a lesson and have dreams of an entire community repenting of its sins and coming to know Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord to come into a classroom and find that nobody else cares. While there was a visitor or two every now and then, this continued for quite some time.
The rest of the story can be told another time. Suffice it to say that this was God working in my life and preparing me for the future. (Yes, I do know that this is not even close to comparable to what I may experience in the future.)
Usually there are only two people in my Wednesday night class at church. I love it. I would not want to be anywhere else at that time. I look forward to it every week. I have two great students who are committed. Both are freshmen in college. Praise God for the opportunity to spend my time with these two. Praise God also for visible signs of fruit. What follows are some comments I read on one of my student's blogs. All glory goes to God, I just wanted to share this with you and hope that it encourages you in whatever area you are currently worshipping our Lord through service!
Well, as I haven't done a note in a while, I think it's about time I wrote another one. Plus, I actually have something to write about.
First off, this has been a very long and trying past few weeks, especially since Spring Break. A lot has happened to me, from school work, to finally declaring a major (English with an emphasis in Creative Writing, for those of you that didn't already know), to practicing (lots, due to the three different instruments I play), to reading, to cleaning out my great-grandmother's house (you collect a lot of stuff in ninety-some-odd years!), to trying to find free time, and finally, to getting questions answered and having light bulbs clicking on.
I am a very emotional person, and these past few weeks have been very trying for me. I'm shaking just thinking about it. But the thing that shoved me down the hill was going to my great-grandmother's house for the first time since before her death. I was helping my great-aunt and my grandparent to clean some of the stuff out and pick out things that I wanted that hadn't been claimed yet. I kept remembering things whilst I was there, and it was all I could do not to break down in from of my aunt and grandma.
Due in part to the above, I started thinking a lot about various things. It's kind of hard for me to explain it, and I've yet to stop shaking. Let me attempt to put into words the thoughts in my head.
I am a Christian, currently attending a Southern Baptist Church, which I have been going to for a few years now. I was saved (to use the Christian phrase) when I was seven years old, after being raised in the Christian faith all of my life. I wasn't baptized until I was eleven, shortly after my sister was. However, for the past few years (I've forgotten since when), I've been questioning my faith, and why I believe what I do. It's been a burden to me, but I never told anyone about it, not even my family.
The past few Wednesday nights at church, my Sunday School class has been doing a study of other religions, comparing them to Christianity, and explaining why Christianity is the only true faith, and why the other religions (and their worldviews) are self-contradictory.
Last week, I was thinking about everything I had learned and had ever been taught. I was also reading my Bible at the time (somewhere in Proverbs, I think). All of a sudden, I felt as if a light bulb had clicked on; like I had reached the bottom of the hill and landed safely. I realized that everything I had ever been taught about God and Jesus and Christianity was true--God is the creator of our world, and He loves us so much that He sent His only Son to die on the cross (one of the most painful and demeaning ways to die) just for us, to forgive us for every sinful thing we've ever done and will ever do. All we have to do is believe that, and put our faith and trust in Him, and we will be saved, and have eternal life.
I feel like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders, and I can only be grateful to God and my Christian friends who have helped me to make this discovery simply by being my friend. I can never say thank you enough.
Oh my, this is rather long. But I do feel a sense of relief by writing this, even if no one will read it. I feel like a child who has made a discovery for the first time, as foolish as that may sound.
I do hope that everyone will at least have a nice day, despite all of life's challenges, and I will be praying for all of you.
A Christian of the Presuppositionalist Reformed Baptist variety.
B.A. Philosophy (High Honors), B.A. Religion
- Lynchburg College (Magna Cum Laude)
2007 Raymond Morgan Award in Philosophy, 2008 Virgil Hinds Award in Religion, 2008 VFIC Ethics Bowl Team, 2008 Access Achievement Award, Phi Kappa Phi
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