7 comments

1. A couple of things to note:

   1. How comfortable RBK was with the confessional language/categories of 2 books. I’m not sure that everyone is today.

   2. How easily he assigned the gospel to the church and natural revelation to (Christian) school. I’m reasonably sure that few Christian schools operate like this.

   3. He distinguishes very clearly between church and school as two, distinct institutions with distinct, if related, missions.

   4. I see tension between these two sentences:

   And only he who has learned to understand the Bible can really know history and nature. Yet the distinction is a valid one.

   One question is, what does he mean by “really know”? If it means “to interpret reality from within a Christian world view,” then, I agree. If it means “to know, in the providence of God, true things despite their unbelief” then we should disagree. I doubt that RBK was saying that because, from what I know of him, he had a strong doctrine of general providence (common grace). He was a Kuyperian. It seems that he wanted to affirm both a strong antithesis and general providence/common grace but lacking a qualification of how unbelievers don’t know truly, he had to assert the second to preserve some real knowledge and unintentionally set up a tension that, perhaps, has yet to be resolved.

2. Another question is to wonder how the confessional language of two books implies anything about a redemptive version of a creational task (academics)? Does the assumption that there is a supernatural book and a natural book imply, say, Christian governance or art or economics? But if to speak of Christian states and businesses and sports is misguided then why Christian schools?

   And if “The Church can hardly be expected to teach the intricacies of mathematics, physics, astronomy, or the history of the Balkans,” then why are there church budgets for Christian education? Do schools really have the kind of biblical warrant–and thus justification for budgets–that something like missions and charity do?

3. Thanks for reading that for me RSC! I saw that on TDIPH yesterday, and just thought “oof, I don’t have time for this!”

   what does he mean by “really know”? If it means “to interpret reality from within a Christian world view,”

   Isn’t that the Van Tillian’s whole playbook? To define ‘know’ as ‘know Christianly’, and harp on until you want to punch them in the throat?

   • Hi Rube,

     I’m a Van Tillian. I agree that we need to be able to discuss civilly what unbelievers “know.” My concern is that some neo-Kuyperians (and CVT did use this rhetoric at times, e.g., in his talk to the CSI folks published in the collection with Berkhof) use language that suggests that non-Christians know nothing or that there is no commonality of any kind between believers and non-believers.

     Obviously that’s hyperbole.

     I think that some Van Tillians and some neo-Kuyperians so stress the antithesis that they forget the actual nature of the antithesis, which is between the Christian and non-Christian interpretation of the meaning of events.

     With respect to sense experience, Christians and non-Chritians experience essentially the same thing. To deny that is to plunge the Christian position into a kind of Gnosticism, i.e., a kind of secret knowledge known mystically that ostensibly elevates the Christian to a higher level of being, a knowledge that cannot be articulated rationally). What I mean is, when CVT denies that 2 + 2 equals 4 for the believer and unbeliever what he intends to say is that the significance the believer and unbeliever impute to the calculation is antithetical and thus they virtually became two different things, epistemically considered. The non-Christian is guilty of borrowing from a Christian capital when he assumes the regularity necessary for 2+2=4. Amen but 2+2=4 for Christians and non-Christians.

     When, however, CVT and some neo-Ks omit those qualifiers, then the position sounds absurd. Unfortunately, some Van Tillians and some neo-Ks seem unaware of CVT’s other writing on common grace or of the existence of the qualifiers and thus they absolutize that way of speaking and thinking.

     The Gnosticism of such an absolute position becomes evident when one asks such a one to explain how 2+2 = 4 is different. They cannot say. I used to discuss this topic with my HT students in the orientation seminar (I no longer teach it). We read a Christianity Today roundtable about “Christian history.” I started out sympathizing with the notion of “Christian” history until a student challenged me to say precisely what is Christian about “Christian” history. There isn’t a good answer. Usually people appeal to something like discerning the hand of providence in history. Okay, now we’re down to natural theology. That’s not distinctly Christian. One need not be a Christian to seek to interpret providence in history. Further, our theology tells us that everything comes from God’s sovereign providence. That’s not really history. That’s theology. So, what then?

     My initial response was to talk about doing history Christianly and that’s fine but dodges the question. When I’ve asked proponents of the notion of “Christian” math, they talk about the interpretation of the meaning of mathematical operations. Fine. That’s theology. That’s not math.

     Christians and non-Christians start with different presuppositions and that could lead to different operations and theories. Again, however, that seems more like theology than math.

     There is a world of difference between the Christian starting point and interpretation of events/math and the non-Christian starting point and interpretation of events/operations but but we need to remember the qualifiers.

   • When, however, CVT and some neo-Ks omit those qualifiers, then the position sounds absurd.

     Like these quotes from CVT’s “Foundations of Christian Education” Zrim dropped on Kloosterman a while back during that whole Noe kerfuffle.

     That’s theology. That’s not math.

     That distinction makes a lot of sense. I also like your point about how hyper-Van Tillianism becomes Gnostic.

     However, I think I can see what “Christian History” is. It’s also called “hagiography”, isn’t it? Secular history can look at the Reformation and discuss how all the various players did this or that, because of these and those motivations, constrained by such and so resources, in yadda yadda relationships, etc. Christian History can (at least attempt to) deal not just in reality, but also in truth (to borrow an Ellulian distinction). Sure, Calvin was in bed with the town council and he played a role in the Servetus affair. But how much of that was right for him to do? Was Constantine right or wrong in establishing Christianity? etc.

4. Sure, Calvin was in bed with the town council and he played a role in the Servetus affair. But how much of that was right for him to do? Was Constantine right or wrong in establishing Christianity? etc.

   But isn’t that just ethics (and not history)?

   • It’s theology.

     History wants to know how things came to be as they did in Geneva and why or how and why Constantine legalized Christianity.

     The right and wrong of it, the meaning of it, is a matter of theology/ethics.

     “In bed with the town council” however wouldn’t be very precise history. His relationship with the two councils was complicated. They were with him when he helped them advance their agenda.

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