Westminster's Confession: The Abandonment of Van Til's Legacy

408 Pages·1991·4.26 MB·English

by  Gary North

WESTMINSTER’S CONFESSION
The Abandonment of Van Til’s Legacy
OTHER BOOKS BY GARY NORTH
Marx’s Religion of Revolution, 1968 [1989]
An Introduction to Christian Economics, 1973
Puritan Economic Experiments, 1974 ~1988~
Unconditional Surrender, 1981 [1988]
Successftd Investing in an Age of Envy, 1981
The Dominion Covenant, Genesis, 1982 [1987]
Backward Christiun Soldiers?, 1984
75 Bible Questims lbur Instructors Pray XnJ Wont Ask, 1984
Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion Versus Power Religion, 1985
The Sinai Strategy: Econom”cs and the Ten Commandments, 1986
Conspiracy A Biblical View, 1986
Unholy Spirits: Occultism and New Age Humanism, 1986
Honest Money, 1986
Fighting Chance, 1986 [with Arthur Robinson]
Dominion and Common Grace, 1987
Inherit the Earth, 1987
Liberating Planet Earth, 1987
Healer of tb Nations, 1987
Is the World Running Down, 1988
Trespassing for Dear Life, 1989
When Justice Is Aborted, 1989
The Hoax of Higher Criticism, 1989
Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus, 1990
Millenniulism and Social Theory, 1990
Christian Reconstruction: What It Is, What It Isn?, 1991 [with Gary
I)eIvfar]
Books edited by Gary North
Foundations of Christian Scholarship, 1976
Tactics of Christian Resistance, 1983
The Theology of Christian Resistance, 1983
Theonomy An Informed Response, 1991
Editor, Journal of Christian Reconstruction (1974-1981)
WESTMINSTER’S CONFESSION
The Abandonment of Vim Til’s Legacy
Gary North
Institute for Christian Economics
Tyler, Texas
Copyright, Gary North, 1991
Van Tll cover photo courtesy of
Westminster Theological Seminary.
Torn picture reproduction courtesy
of Robert Langham Photography.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
North, Gary.
Westminster’s confession : the abandonment of Van
Til’s legacy / Gary North.
P“ cm”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-930464-54-0 (alk. paper) :$14.95
1. Theonomy. 2. Calvinism. 3. Dominion
theology. 4. Law (Theology). 5. Reformed
Church - Doctrines. 6. Westminster Theological
Seminary (Philadelphia, Pa. and Escondido, Ca.).
7. Van Tll, Cornelius, 1895-1988. 8. Sociology,
Christian - United States. 9. Religious pluralism
– Christianity - Controversial literature.
I. Title.
BT82.25.T443N69 1991
230’.046- dc20 91-’7200
CIP
Institute for Christian Economics
P. O. BOX 8000
Tyler, Texas 75’711
This book is dedicated to the most accomplished
instructor I had at Westminster Seminary,
Norman Shepherd
who combined Machen’s eschatological optimism,
Vim Til’s presuppositional apologetic, and Murray’s
precise theological language. He was a loyal de-
fender of Westminster’s original confession.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..ix
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. xix
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 1: The Question of Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . ...20
Chapter 2: Calvin’s Divided Judicial Legacy . . . . . . . ...48
Chapter 3: A Positive Biblical Confession Is Mandatory ..7’3
Chapter 4: A Negative Confession Is Insufficient . . . . ...99
Chapter 5: The Question of Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...119
Chapter 6: The Question of God’s Predictable Historical
Sanctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...148
Chapter 7: The Question of Millennialism . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Chapter 8: Sic et Non: The Dilemma of Judicial
Agnosticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...189
Chapter 9: Abusing the Past..... . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...234
Chapter 10: An Editor’s Task: Just Say No! . . . . . . . . . . 259
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...295
Appendix A H. L. Mencken’s Obituary of Machen . ...312
Appendix B: Honest Reporting as Heresy . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Appendix C: The Paralysis of the Parachurch Ministries 342
Appendix D: Calvin’s Millennial Confession . . . . . . . . . . 349
Appendix E: Julius Shepherd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Books for Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Scripture Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
It was Dr. Van Til who shocked the new students into doc-
trinal awareness. No fact is unrelated to the God of the Bible,
he declared. All truth, to be known aright, must be seen in the
light of the revelation of the Creator and Redeemer. By God’s
grace we, his redeemed creatures, think God’s thoughts after
him. Christianity is not probably true; it is truth. All merely
human philosophy and science is challenged and found want-
ing. God upholds all things, including unbelievers. The believ-
er and the unbeliever have everything in common metaphysi-
cally, but epistemologically they have nothing in common. In
our proclamation of God and his grace, we present the triune
God as the sole ground for all our salvation from sin, for all of
life, and for all our thinking.l
If it is indeed not our King’s intention for the civil authority
to enforce the first great commandment, then among the five
alternatives Bahnsen offers as possible standards for civil law,
natural revelation as indeed “a sin-obscured edition of the
same law of God” “suppressed in unrighteousness by the sin-
ner” is that to which we must appeal. . . .
William S. Barker2
1. The OrthmbX Presbyterian Church, 1936-1886, edited by Charles G. Dennison
(Philadelphia Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1986), p. 324.
2. Barker, “Theonomy, Pluralism, and the Bible,” in Wfllam S. Barker and
Robert W. Godfkey (eds.), Thmnomy: A Re&m.ed C- (Grand Rapids, Michigan:
Zondervan Academie, 1990), p. 240.
FOREWORD
One desire ha been the riding jmsian of m~ life. One high motive
has acted like a s@r upm my min$ an soul. And sorer tkun that I
should seek escape from the sacred necessity that is laid upon W, let the
breath of life fail m. It is this: Thut in spite of all worldly opposition,
God? holy ordinances skull be established again in thz home, in the
school and in the State for the good of the people; to carve as it were
into the conscience of the nation the ordinances of tke Lord, to which th
Bible and Creation bear wihwss, until the nation pay homuge again to
God.
Abrahum Kuyper (1897)1
Calvinism is in crisis. It is shrinking, both numerically and in
terms of its cultural impact, and has been since 1660, when
King Charles II returned to the English throne. How did this
happen? Calvinism was once a dominant force socially in Nor-
thern Europe, not because there were many Calvinists, but
because they were influential out of proportion to their num-
bers in charitable works, scholarship, science, and business. Yet
Calvinism today is unknown to most people. Why? There are
many reasons, but the most significant one that Calvinists could
and should have prevented was this: the intellectual and spirit-
1. Cited by John Herdnk de Vnes, “Biographical Note,” Abraham Kuyper,
bcture.s on Calvinism (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1931), p. iii.
-.
x WESTMINSTER’S CONFESSION
ual leaders within Calvinism have, for over three centuries,
voluntarily surrendered the culturally relevant aspects of Cal-
vinism by accepting the dominant humanist worldview that has
assailed the Church. Eventually, Calvinists even abandoned the
idea of Christendom – one ofJohn Calvin’s fundamental assump-
tions: the precious legacy of Augustine, the post-Nicene Church
fathers, and the early monastic orders.z Meanwhile, the hu-
manists robbed them blind.
From 1660 to 1789, the humanists took the fundamental
doctrines of Calvinism and secularized them. They stripped
these ideas of all biblical theological content and produced a
new man-centered worldview, which became dominant in the
West. First, they took the doctrine of the sovereignty of God
and made it the sovereignty of nature and nature’s finest prod-
uct, autonomous man. The twin idols of nature and history
again became the idols of man, as they have been throughout
pagan history.s Second, the Calvinist doctrine of the priesthood
of all believers became the foundation of modern democratic
theory, beginning with the Levellers in the Cromwell period.
Calvinism’s concept of the right of the laity to vote in church
elections became the model for politics. Third, the Calvinist
view of God’s law and man’s God-given ability to recognize it
and apply it to this world became the foundation of modern
science and technology. Fourth, Calvinism’s doctrine of God’s
sanctions in history - blessings and cursings – became, in the
writings of the anti-Calvinist Scottish common sense rational-
ists,4 the concept of the impersonal market forces of supply
and demand. Fifth, Puritanism’s unique concept of the triumph
2. Roland Bainton, ChristenAm, 2 vols. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966),
1, ch. 5.
3. Herbert sehlossberg, Idds fm Destrsdiiw Chri#ian Faith and Its Gmfrontatim
with Atian Socidy (Washington, D. C.: Regnery Gateway, [1983] 1990), p. 11.
4. The right wing of the Enlightenment.
Foreword xi
of the kingdom of God in history became the foundation of the
Enlightenment idea of mankind’s inevitable progress.
Importing Alien Goods
What is even more remarkable is that once secularized,
these doctrines were then re-imported by Calvinist intellectual
leaders, and were baptized by them, but without re-establishing
their original biblical and covenantal foundations. These alien
categories - based on the doctrine of autonomous nature and
autonomous man – were then reported by Calvinist leaders to
be in full accord with the fundamentals of Calvinism. There is
no better example of this baptism of alien intellectual categories
than late-Puritan theologian Cotton Mather’s praise of New-
ton’s unitarian and Deistic concept of scientific law. Mather
titled his book, The Ch&iUn Philosopher (1721).
So, the initial strength of the West’s humanist worldview
after 1660 was based on stolen goods. Calvinism re-imported
these goods and thereby lost control over its own intellectual
destiny. Steadily, Calvinist intellectuals drank from unitarian-
ism’s temporarily overflowing well (natural law theory) in order
to refresh themselves. But that well steadily became polluted as
the covenant-breaking presuppositions of autonomous man
began to erode the foundations of humanist civilization. The
unitarian humanists steadily ran out of stolen Calvinist wealth
to deposit in their moral and epistemological bank accounts,
Shifting metaphors, the Calvinists found themselves trapped on
board an alien ship. They had adopted the categories of hu-
manism as universal, natural, and religiously neutral categories.
This humanist ship began to sink. But they could not abandon
humanism’s sinking ship without leaving everything but the
Bible behind. Shifting metaphors again, they now lived as
members of a ghetto, supported by the “public utilities” of
humanist civilization. They had narrowed their definition of
Calvinism to a handful of exclusively theological principles that