Does anyone know who is giving this lecture?

__________________
B.J. Edenfield
Member of Independent Presbyterian Church (PCA)
Savannah, Ga.
"Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave"- Stonewall Jackson

I do not recognize the voice, but perhaps it is John Robbins with the Trinity Foundation. I would be curious to learn more about this. I found this to be disturbing. The statement, "the trinity is one absolute person" is heresy. He makes some other statements that are contradictory. I find Van Til to be confusing anyway.

__________________
Stephen Welch
PCA Teaching Elder
Nova Scotia :cheers:

You can get that exact lecture from the "Trinity Foundation?" website. He is talking about the Clark VanTil controversy.

Trinity Foundation: Explaining God, man, Bible, salvation, philosophy, theology. It is under MP3 Down load lectures. I tried to look it up and link it but my **** blocker blocks it out.

__________________
Erick Bohndorf, Covenant Baptist Church, KS
http://qayaqtraveler.blogspot.com/
The question for us today is, will we be like the majority of Israel and continue to look in fear at the giants in the land and urge our fellow Christians to be "realistic," or will we be like Joshua and Caleb and faithfully follow our king, trusting to fulfill every one of his promises completely?

I'm pretty sure that's from Robbins...and I'm pretty sure it's fallacious.

If Van Til really said the Trinity was one Divine Person as opposed to one Divine Essence, it would undermine his Trinitarian solution to the one and the many.

__________________
Craig French
Married and father of a beautiful daughter.
Member of Christ The Word, PCA
Toledo, OH

MY BLOG

Why? Because it's from Robbins it's automatically fallacious? He may be a hothead, but I think Van Til's cult status is amazing, and that his followers are as adamant about defending his views, no matter what, as the Clarkians seem to be. Nevertheless, here's a defense of Van Til's position at the Triablogue. Note that Van Til clearly talks about the Trinity as one divine person with three subsistences. The Clarkians call it heresy and the Van Tillians find a way to explain it. Who's right? You decide!

__________________
Davidius
Husband of Emilia
Member: First Reformed Presbyterian Church of Durham (RPCNA) - Durham, NC
Currently in the process of transferring membership to an as-yet-undecided church in Chapel Hill
Student: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, German Literature and Classics

Although I adopt Van Tillan Apologetics and Epistemology, yet I do not think Dr. Van Til helped himself with his style of writing. Thankfully, reading Greg Bahnsen makes understanding presuppositional apologetics and epistemology much easier to understand.

__________________
Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

Amen Daniel. I own Bahnsen's work on Van Til and it has made a world of difference.

__________________
Benjamin P. Glaser
Pittsburgh, PA
Fairmount ARP Church
Student of Theology
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary
My Blog

"Nothing is sweet to me without the enjoyment of Christ in it." -- Thomas Brooks

*yawn*

This is old stuff and has been dealt with repeatedly

Neolegalism and RC Sproul Jr?

(My post is a summation of Doug Jones' rebuttal to Robbins).

__________________
J. B. Atken
John Knox PCA
Layman, M.A. student at Louisiana College

I'll look into it...but yes, Robbins likes burning straw men left and right. I take his critiques with a grain of salt...make that less than a grain.

I'm not a gigantic Van Til fan, btw...I can't hardly understand him most of the time.

I agree Davidius. Having a problem with this lecture because it was given by Robbins doesn't make the arguments of the lecture wrong. It is "argumentum ad hominem" (argument to the man) if I'm not mistaken. The fact is that Van Til did say that the Trinity was one Person and yet three Persons at the same time. (In defiance of the law of non-contradition) Also, Van Til did believe that God created logic and was therefore not subject to it. Clark believed that logic, instead of being a creation of God, was actually an attribute of God. What is logic but truth?

Numbers 23:19 (Young's Literal Translation)

19God [is] not a man -- and lieth, And a son of man -- and repenteth! Hath He said -- and doth He not do [it]? And spoken -- and doth He not confirm it?

It truly is amazing that a man like Van Til (as well as many others) can reach what my brother Davidius called "cult status" and we dare not question him no matter how fallacious his arguments are.

__________________
Kevin - PCA - Mississippi

"What, for some, is sin, others do to the glory of God. And the good Dr. Pentecost's remarks notwithstanding, I intend to go home tonight and smoke a cigar to the glory of God. It is a kind of incense drifting to Heaven." - Charles Spurgeon

"Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!" - 2 Corinthians 9:15

To bad Van Til didn't say they were One Person/Three Persons in the same sense, otherwise you would have a point. Reading Jones' rebuttal/rebuke of Robbins makes this clear.

And does anyone find it odd that if CVT truly held to this heresy (the favorite Reformed word of all time), that the OPC willingly, knowingly, ordained and supported such a known heretic? Maybe the OPC is heretical, too. Oops, that's been covered there as well...

As to the cult status, I am more of a Dooyeweerdian than a Van Tillian. So the cult charge doesn't apply to me (well, it does actually but not on this point).

This is an excellent point, and I would say the same thing about Clark. Van Til and some other seminary professors weren't happy with the Church's approval of Clark's orthodoxy and tried to have his ordination revoked. Some folks then and now don't seem to consistently ask the same "do you find it odd" question with regard to him.

Nice parenthetical aside, by the way.

I would certainly classify myself as a presuppositionalist and agree with VanTil's basic views, but his style of writing and way of explaining things is confusing. He was Dutch and did not communicate well in English, so it did not help him.

I think a useful distinction to make when using terminology is that one may be a Presuppositionalist and embrace Van Tillian epistemology - as I do - and so, in that sense, be Van Tillian; but not endorse everything the man said. As a postmillennialist, I am definitely not "Van Tillian" on eschatology.

I must confess that I find the almost cult-like following of both Dr. Van Til and Gordon Clark to be somewhat disturbing. Both men had their good and bad points. Indeed, I once heard Brian Schwertley say that Gordon Clark's book on the Virgin Birth (I think it was that one) - which was published posthumously - actually taught Nestorianism.

Would it bother you that Clark told his students to read Van Til's stuff on philosophy for edification?

And Muether's bio demonstrates that CVT didn't play that big a role in Clark's trial.

Has anyone actually bothered to read the expositions on this point? Like what Doug Jones said and Frame's relevant chapters on this? No, that would be too easy.

I'm not sure how clear Jones actually made it as far as I could tell. But keeping with the the Westminster Confession of Faith, we never see where God is one Person in any sense. I see where you (and Jones) are coming from but I can't say that we can really call the Trinity "One Person." Having said that, I want to make myself clear. I wouldn't call Van Til or Clark a heretic. I do believe that Van Til was inconsistent but I wouldn't call him a heretic. Also, (on a more personal note) I have changed my avatar from a picture of Clark to a photo I took from Gene Cook's web site. I decided to do this because I realized that my avatar made me look like a Clarkian looking for a fight. I do believe that Clark was more consistent than Van Til and I have never enjoyed reading the little I have read by Van Til (especially his disciples Yuck! Frame, Bahnsen etc ).

Westminster Confession on the Trinity: "God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself; and is alone in and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them; he is the alone foundation of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom, are all things; and hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them, whatsoever himself pleaseth."

Whoops! God is referred to with a singular personal pronoun and later as three singular personal pronouns!?! One "he" and three "he's"??!? Heresy!!

__________________
C. Gorsuch
Glencullen Baptist
Portland, Oregon

Oops! I didn't think that one through! I stand corrected.

Yes, you have to be careful around here with identifying with Gordan Clark, because you might be guilty of being unconfessional