Manata's Review on Muether's New CVT Bio

Semper Fidelis · #1 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 06:25 AM

Triablogue: Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman (American Reformed Biographies)

An excellent review of the work. Highly recommend what Paul wrote.

Quote:

Muether structures his biography more around themes than in following a strict timeline (though there is definitely a chronological flow). In these thematic chapters are the fascinating events that either characterized Van Til’s life, or that he characterized. The meta-theme (of this book) Muether wants to stress is that the vast majority of CVT’s life: his decisions, his controversies, his apologetic, his philosophy, etc., cannot be interpreted apart from an understanding of “Van Til the churchman.” One must not view CVT apart from his devotion to the Reformed Church and the Reformed faith as expressed in the Westminster Confession, and the three-forms of unity. If this grid is excluded from your analysis, you will go wrong from the start. Slightly less important, but almost equally vital for proper interpretation, is to put CVT in the line of Calvin, Bavinck, Warfield, Kuyper, and Vos. Van Til sought to stand in the historic line of Reformation theology, rather than seeking to be an innovator of new-fangled ideas. He sought to pull the best from all of them, noting where they were weak or inconsistent with the Reformed theology, and present a rigorous, robust, consistent expression of the Reformed faith that could be applied to the challenges of unbelief in his age. He was not content merely to re-state older versions of Calvinism. In this, he found agreement between what he was doing and what Old Princeton and the Dutch School had been trying to do.

Daniel Ritchie · #2 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 06:30 AM

This sound good.