Evangelistic Apologetics Part Two.docx

Evangelistic Apologetics Part II:
Warfield's 'Right Reason' and Van Til's 'Point of Contact'








In Partial Fulfillment of BIB4835








Presented April 20, 2017
Undergraduate Theology Conference
Crown College








By John Baumgartner


One of the encompassing dialogues for Evangelicals in recent memory is that of the conservative and postconservative. Which side, if either, is the more consistent with historical Christianity, thereby gaining the privileged status atop the centuries? Certainly, both camps have their strengths and weaknesses, and both have rather excellent exponents as well as embarrassing family members, but at the core, which is nearer to Catholicity? For failing to share the same sort of faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, any religious expression of man, what good it may be notwithstanding, cannot claim to be Christianity. That religious expression which falls short of historic Christian faith does not offer the benefits that Christ offers. Christ, being the very founder of His eponymous religion, determines how it is to be kept into proceeding ages.
But nothing has as of yet been said to categorize either camp. Perhaps neither can claim Catholicity. Or both could have equal claim to Orthodoxy. The answer lies in the essences of conservative and postconservative religious expression. It also rests upon their continuity with that Christianity which Christ gave to His Apostles.
Roger E. Olson, a herald of the postconservatives, makes this same case. In his book Reformed and Always Reforming, he is both making the case for postconservative Christianity and critiquing conservatives. He argues that "authentic Christianity [has] more to do with the personal transforming power of a relationship with God through Jesus Christ than with factual knowledge or affirmation of correct ideas." But this is just the critique he makes towards conservatives, that "they may pay lip service [. . . to] personal transformation, but their main concern is with upholding orthodoxy (correct doctrinal affirmation) as Christianity's . . . essence." The distinction is most clear when he says:
Postconservative evangelicals regard the essence of Christianity an evangelical faith as transformation more than information. Together with conservatives they acknowledge that information is part of the picture and that information can be transforming. But [postconservatives] do not believe that facts constitute the essence of authentic Christianity or true evangelicalism, both of which are primarily expressions of the transforming power of a relationship—the relationship between God in Jesus Christ manifested through the Holy Spirit and the person in community.

And because of this, "doctrine is secondary; it is the second-order language of the church that brings to expression this transforming experience [. . . that is] the essence of Christianity
From these quotes, we may plainly see that Olson regards the conservative position to be inadequate precisely because the position does not recognize the subjectivity essential to Christianity. In affirming even all the correct objective statements of Christianity, one is left with something less than Christianity. More than that, Olson maintains that it is not adequate merely to recognize the subjective aspect while privileging the objective aspect of Christianity. For him, the transformative aspect is the essence and the informative aspect is subordinate.
Olson's critique may surely find its mark in the conservative camp. Certainly, there are clans and even large tribes within conservative Christianity that hold to a sort of naïve Fundamentalism. But those subgroups do not represent the complete historical corpus of conservative theology. Olson's critique of some conservatives would be so much more refined if he were open to what many conservatives have historically believed. Olson would do well to assimilate the (sometimes excruciatingly) careful distinctions found in the Old Princeton Theology. In the following section, we will see how Olson's critique above would be sharpened by B. B. Warfield's thought.
At the outset, Warfield would be desirous to distinguish between the study of religion and the study of theology. This would help to better analyze the essence of Christianity. But is not theology itself simply the study of religion? No, for by defining "theology as 'the science of religion' thus confounds the product of the facts concerning God and His relations with His creatures working through the hearts and lives of men, with those facts themselves." Theology is properly the study "of the facts concerning God and His relations with His creatures." Religion is "the product of [those] facts . . . working in the hearts and lives of men." Religion is not in itself properly a study of any facts. Rather, religion is the primarily subjective response to those facts which theology studies. Therefore, contrary to Olson, doctrine is not the second-order language that expresses the first-first order transforming experience. Doctrine just is the objective facts of God and His relations with His creatures systematized and interpreted.
Also contrary to Olson, religion is not subjective in a manner that prevents objective facts from bearing upon it. Instead, religion is subjective precisely because objective facts do bear upon the subject. Because the facts are objective, the subject can be influenced by them. As Warfield distinguishes it, "'Belief,' 'faith' is the consent of the mind to the reality of the thing in question . . . [It] is a state of mind grounded in evidence and impossible without it." If the content of religion were essentially subjective, religion would affect no one. For a closed system admits no outside force. When a subject deals subjectively, no new matter is added. It is only the evidence outside of the subject that can affect a subjective transformation.
It is at this point that Warfield is charged with making Christianity into something merely rational rather than relational. But he does not do so because he recognizes that "objective adequacy and subjective effect are not exactly correlated." It is Warfield's concept of "Right Reason" which prevents both naïve rationalism and relativistic subjectivism. "Right Reason" recognizes that "the whole man is active in 'knowledge' . . . for it is the man in his complex presentation who is the subject of the knowledge."
Warfield maintains that faith requires both "the evidence on the ground of which faith is yielded" and "the subjective condition by virtue of which the evidence can take effect in the appropriate act of faith." It is these two declarations that pervade the Old Princeton Theology of Man. For this reason, as "objectively sufficient, adequate, overwhelming" as the evidence may be, "the sinful heart—which is enmity towards God—is incapable of . . . 'faith.'" But notice that the inadequacy is solely within the subjective rather than the objective. It is not a deficiency of understanding but a depravity of the heart that prevents faith in the final sense. Certainly, faith must have an object, but the great tragedy is not that people do not know God. The tragedy is that people in fact do know God but are in enmity with Him.
How is it that people do know God? It would seem that most people would be happy with such a God if only He were better at convincing them. But the knowledge of God is so intertwined into the very being of man that no one can plead ignorance. Consider this passage of Warfield:
Like every other creature, man is of course absolutely dependent on God . . . and as self-conscious being man is conscious of his absolute dependence on God . . . Now when man fell, the relation in which he stood to God fundamentally altered. Not as if he ceased to be dependent on God . . . Nor even as if he ceased to be conscious of this his comprehensive dependence on God . . . [The fundamental change in the relation of dependence is that] the sinner is at enmity with God and can look to God only for punishment . . . He expects evil and only evil from God. Knowing himself to be dependent on God he seeks to be as independent of Him as he can. As he thinks of God, misery and fear and hatred take the place of joy and trust and love.

So, it is not for lack of knowledge that sinners do not come to God in faith. Sinners know this God and by their nature despise Him. And they know Him because of their comprehensive dependence, a state that sin cannot alter. But the "actual knowledge of God which is framed in the human soul is affected by the subjective condition of the soul." The objective revelation of God is as clear as light is light. But the blind man cannot see light. In much the same way, the man in sin is dead to the revelation of God. However, the blind man merely has physical disability. The sinner has moral disability and deficiency. The sinner requires "the operation of the Spirit . . . to restore, a spiritual sense in the soul by which God is recognized in His Word."
This doctrine of the testimony of the Holy Spirit is germane but tangential. Sufficient for this paper is the declaration of Warfield that "this testimony is just God Himself in His intimate working in the human heart, opening it to the light of the truth, that by this illumination it may see things as they really are." The testimony does not add new information. The Holy Spirit only opens the eyes to see things as they really are. Along with the testimony is also the transfer from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God's Son. So the sense of divinity is no longer deadened by sin nor darkened by enmity. The person can now look to God, His world, and His revelation of Himself in His world as favorable, true, lovely.
Now returning to the Warfieldian improvement of Olson's critique, we may discern the problem more clearly. By privileging the subjective aspect against the objective aspect, Olson has lost the most important subjective aspect there is. His system has no formal place for what even he regards to be most important. He has no basis for the dichotomy of humanity as those who love God and those who hate Him. If what matters first is primarily not correct information but love for God—which it is—then one must embrace the doctrine of the objectively God-oriented creation. Otherwise, what case can be made to the creature? That he ought to love God? If the essence of Christianity is subjective, the creature is the final judge of authenticity.
Cornelius Van Til called this issue the point of contact. He says, "When man became a sinner he made himself instead of God the ultimate or final reference point. And it is precisely this presupposition, as it controls without exception all forms of non-Christian philosophy, that must be brought into question." Man's ultimacy is the common consciousness and presupposition underlying all of his life. With this as the fundamental principle, he may have a coherent and logical worldview that prevents even the thought of the True God. But again as with Warfield, so Van Til argues, "The reason for his failure to recognize God lies exclusively in him. It is due to his willful transgression of the very law of his being." So then the point of contact is found within the man, hidden by his own denial, but still essential to his being. "Deep down in his mind every man knows that he is the creature of God and responsible to God." There is an objective reality that every man has access to which is the knowledge of God. The point of contact is this knowledge.
The objective knowledge of God is the point of contact and the essence of what becomes true faith. It is hindered by the creature's enmity with God until the subjective change brought by the testimony of the Holy Spirit. Then, and only then, can the true and right subjective apprehension of the objective reality occur. Christianity cannot be proven merely by evidences because the problem is more than objective. But neither is Christianity proven in absence of evidences because the subjective change is in response to evidence. The problem is acute, and the answer must be piercing.
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Roger E. Olson, Reformed and Always Reforming (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 76.
Ibid., 72.
Ibid., 78.
Ibid., 78.
Benjamin B. Warfield, "The Idea of Systematic Theology," in Studies in Theology, vol. 9, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2003; 1932), 57.
Ibid.
Benjamin B. Warfield, "On Faith in its Psychological Aspects," in Studies in Theology, vol. 9, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2003; 1932), 318.
Ibid.
Ibid., 331.
Ibid., 335.
Ibid., 336.
Ibid., 337.
Ibid., 338-39.
Benjamin B. Warfield, "Calvin's Doctrine of the Knowledge of God," in Calvin and Calvinism, vol. 5, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2003; 1932), 32.
Ibid., 33.
Ibid., 112.
Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics, William Edgar, ed. 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003; 1976) 98.
Ibid., 107.
Ibid., 106.
Ibid., 117.
Ibid., 119.