Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJonathan Edwards Collection: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology: Chapt 03 cont
TOPIC: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: Chapt 03 cont
Other Subjects in this Topic:
(5) Cementing the Hole: The Amsterdam School.
The most drastic attack on natural theology ever made had come from the Amsterdam or Dooyeweerdian school. The sufficiency of natural theology has been questioned by the Buswells, its completeness curtailed by the Ogdens, its inherent inconsistency with the theology of revelation claimed by the Barths and its linguistic impossibility by the linguistic positivists, but not until the Dooyeweerdian school has any future natural theology been made forever impossible. This is done by offering another criteria of truth - literally another way of thinking altogether. On the surface of it, this is either sublime and transcendent truth never before perceived or it is sublime nonsense impossible of being rationally conceived. If this is not the key to heaven and earth, it is obscurantism pure, though by no means simple.
Although Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) felt that his variety of Calvinism was a part of his heritage from Calvin through his Dutch forefathers in the faith, we are inclined to think that he represents an innovation, at least in apologetics, different from Calvin, a Dutch Orthodoxy which has led to Herman Dooyeweerd. Let us, therefore, glance for a moment at the thought of this founder of the Free University of Amsterdam who may be also the father of Dooyeweerdianism. In his Encyclopedia, his magnum opus, Kuyper insists that the effort to prove the existence of God must always fail, for faith is fundamental. *45* He tried the traditional Calvinist, Charles Hodge, and found his approach wanting, because he had maintained reasons for faith. *46* Revelation cannot be verified except by the Revealer himself through the palingenesia, or new birth, which God effects in the elect soul. *47* We cannot, therefore, know unless God gives us direct certainty. *48*
Dooyeweerd considers himself in what he considers the tradition of Augustine that we must believe in order to understand. That this is a misunderstanding of Augustine was indicated earlier by a typical citation which shows that Augustine felt we needed good “anterior” reason for believing; that we should accept only things “worthy” of belief. In the same way, Dooyeweerd wrongly appeals to Calvin, but rightly cites Kuyper as father. From this common point of departure Dooyeweerd goes far beyond his mentor applying this fideistic approach to the whole realm of philosophy (which does not concern us here though the interested should read his monumental work entitled: New Critique of Theoretical Thought *49* ). The relevant point is that Dooyeweerd, too, denies the relevance of verification for God and refuses even to be bound by the laws of logic when dealing with the presumed revelation of God. He claims the necessity of assuming God in order to know God and so far from being abashed by the circular reasoning, glories in it. *50* R.H. Nash admits the “absolute fideism” *51* in Dooyeweerd.
Cornelius Van Til follows a similar pattern of thought in this country with perhaps even greater apologetic thoroughness, as can be seen everywhere in his syllabi on apologetics, evidences, philosophy of religion, and contemporary theology. A comprehensive and systematic thinker, he has applied his presuppositionalism to virtually every area of human knowledge, sacred and secular.
It is especially the rejection of the necessity of logical thought that we consider the sealing up of the hole so that natural theology can never grow again. Of course, if our criticism is sound, not only natural theology will never grow there again but nothing intellectual will grow there. As Plato and Aristotle observed near the beginning of the human intellectual quest, if we do not assume the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle we simply cannot communicate. Not only would we be unable to prove God’s existence or anything else, but we would not be able to think or speak because we would be unable to predicate anything. Van Til himself has argued that without presupposing the “God of the Bible” we would be unable rationally to predicate anything, but if we did not assume the law of non-contradiction we would not be able to know the meaning of the expression, the “God of the Bible,” or any one of the four words composing the expression. This approach is more devastating than logical positivism which may reduce philosophy to talk about talk for this would make it impossible to talk about talk or even to talk. *52*
As we look at the era following Edwards, up to our own time we find that liberal Christianity early gave up apologetics altogether; that Neo-Orthodoxy never had any use for apologetics; that Calvinistic Presuppositionalism is essentially fideistic; even the traditional stalwarts, Protestant and Roman, have tended to move slowly away from compelling “proof” to appealing suggestions and experimental approaches, and alas, today even Jonathan Edwards himself is being made over into something of a fideist - all “sense of the heart” and little of the head.
Tensions in Contemporary Theology, edited by Stanley N. Gundry and Alan F. Johnson, is an interesting current statement of the situation. *53* I’ll skip here its analysis of non-conservative options and note only Harold O. J. Brown’s fine statement of “The Conservative Option.” *54* Dr. Brown makes a series of sharp evaluations of the “Remaking of the modern mind” while at the same time he critiques various expressions of contemporary conservatism.
Brown concludes his essay with “Rebuilding from the foundations.” I need only two paragraphs to show that at the foundation of the “Rebuilding of the foundations” is a fideistic acceptance of the Bible:
Is it possible to speak truly and reliably of the infinite God? Indeed, if and only if we speak His words after Him. In fact, we may claim that the only ultimate guarantee that any words or symbols have both meaning and objective truth is that meaning and truth have been ascribed to them by God, the ultimate Author. Thus we can say that the reliable Word of God is a necessity not only for a trustworthy knowledge about and of Him, but even for trustworthy communication on a merely human level. That God has made mankind in His own image and has spoken to mankind is the basis for human speech itself. The authority and reliability of the Word of God, whether we realize it or not, is the substratum of meaningful communication that makes it possible for lesser, fallible human communications to have a measure of clarity and reliability. The proclamations which speak God’s words after Him are really the foundation not only for trustworthy communication about God and His purposes but for trustworthy communication per se.
The doctrine of revelation, then, is not only one that is directly relevant to our theology, to our doctrine and knowledge of God; it is also the ultimate foundation, even if we remain unconscious of it, of our self-awareness and of the world as real and of our ability to speak truly and meaningfully. It is not by chance that the great religious traditions that developed with no knowledge of the Word of God, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, came to teach that the world is an illusion and the self unreal. It is no accident that modern, experimental natural science grew up in a world whose thinking had been trained by God’s Word. And it is not accident that as knowledge of and confidence in God’s Word declines within Christendom, once nominally Christian peoples come to think of the world and themselves as unreal, absurd, unknowable, or illusory. *55*
Dr. Brown, one of our finest conservative minds, comes to this foundation: “Is it possible to speak truly and reliably of the infinite God? Indeed, if and only if we speak His words after Him.” That is, if we simply accept, believe, that the Bible is the Word of God we have the foundation. No arguments for so believing are given; no proof required. *56* Arbitrarily, by presupposition, consider Scripture to be the Word of God and one has an “open sesame” to all knowledge. Jonathan Edwards believed that latter statement too. But he offered compelling rational evidence for so believing.
At the same time, Edwards was thoroughly convinced, as we shall see in the following pages, that compelling as are the arguments for God and the inspiration of the Word of God, it would all seem unreal to its most diligent scholars apart from their supernatural illumination. The emphasis on that last point is so great that some today are tempted to think of Edwards, too, as a fideist. He certainly is no rationalist. He was a man who saw solid reasons for faith, as did his great predecessor, Aurelius Augustine (“There is never faith unless a reason for it”); but Edwards also saw clearly that though man is never converted without reasons, he is never converted by them.