Between Two Worlds

Another excerpt from Frame's lectures, in which he draws upon his hero--Cornelius Van Til. Before reproducing the quote, I should mention that it is quite sad that Van Til's name causes such a negative reaction among so many in the apologetic-philosophical community. There are many reasons for this (CVT's writings aren't easy to follow, they contain obscure references, he is unapologetically Calvinistic, he often saw the worst in his theological opponents, a segment of his followers tend to think CTV had the final word of apologetics, etc.) But if given a sympathetic hearing, what he saw and what he has to say is often biblically profound. For example, his understanding of the irrationalist-rationalist dialectic running throughout the history of human thought is enormously helpful. Anyway, here's Frame:

Van Til knew a great deal about the history of human thought, but he made very little of historical turning points. This is one very noticeable difference between him and the thinkers we have so far considered. Schaeffer, Guinness, Wells, Myers, and the chroniclers of postmodernism, all make a case against present-day culture, based on historical developments. For Schaeffer, the turning point was the “line of despair;” for Guinness, the counter-culture of the 1960s; with Wells, modernism; for Myers, the industrial revolution; for many others, postmodernism. So for these thinkers it is some relatively recent historical development that is responsible for most of the ills of present-day culture.

Van Til knew only one turning point: the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. History since that time, in his view, has been replay after replay. Eve was rationalist and irrationalist, modernist and postmodernist, oppressive establishment and counter-cultural rebel, an idolater of value and a destroyer of it, all at the same time. Picture the scene. Eve knows what God has said, but she has also heard a Word from Satan that claims God is a liar. How shall she make up her mind? It should have been obvious, of course. God is the creator; he has perfect knowledge and understanding; he has the right to speak with absolute authority. Eve should have trusted God, too, because he loved her.

But something had happened in her consciousness. Somehow, she no longer accepted God’s Word as the final Word. As Van Til explains, Eve was shut up to two remaining alternatives: either there is no final authority, or she was the final authority. As a Rationalist, she believed that she had the authority to decide what was true or false, right or wrong. But if she were the final authority, then there was no God, nobody who could speak a Word more authoritative than hers. And if there was no God, there was no meaning, no rationality, no structure, no ground any other Word, including Eve’s, to be authoritative. So Eve was both a rationalist and an irrationalist. She thought she was the supreme authority, but she also believed there was no supreme authority. These two beliefs were inconsistent, of course. But both are necessary to the unbelieving mindset.

So Van Til analyzed the history of philosophy to show that all non-Christian thinkers, from ancient Greece to the present, were both rationalists and irrationalists at the same time. Van Til did not agree with Schaeffer that the ancient Greeks had an adequate view of truth. The Greeks believed with Eve that truth could be known through the autonomous human intellect; and that was no better than subjectivism or irrationalism. Nor did he take the position of Wells, and others that the ills of culture come from modernism, or the industrial revolution, or the sixties’ counter-culture, or postmodernism. Eve was both a traditionalist and a modernist, a modernist and a postmodernist. History is not a movement from rationalism to irrationalism, but a dialogue, a dance, among these. When rationalism gets out of hand, irrationalism jumps in, and vice versa.

So the problem is not history; the problem is sin. Culture is bad today, but Sodom and Gomorrah were probably not any better, nor were Tyre, Sidon, Ninevah, Babylon, Rome, Capernaum, Chorazin, or Bethsaida.

Popular culture is bad, but high culture is too. Beethoven was a devotee of the secularism of the French Revolution, Wagner of German mythology, and their music makes a powerful case for these false world-views. The problems of high culture go back a long way. It is not that high culture has been infected by popular culture; if anything, the reverse is true. And folk culture has always had alongside its humble virtues a lot of bawdy tales, class warfare, ignorant populism, and disrespect for the holy.

It is always wrong to try to single out one element of culture as pure, even relatively pure, and blame all society’s ills on some other element. That is almost always self-serving: we like what we like, and we want to blame the evils of life on the culture we dislike. But perhaps we need to have a more biblical view of sin. Sin is not limited to some segment of society or some segment of culture. It pervades everything. And whatever good there is comes from God’s common and special grace.