8. Cornelius Van Til: Polarities and Paradoxes

8. Cornelius Van Til: Polarities and Paradoxes

I’ll ha’e nae hauf-way hoose, but aye be whaur
Extremes meet—it’s the only way I ken
To dodge the curst conceit o’ bein’ richt
That damns the vast majority o’ men.
(from "A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle" by Hugh MacDiarmid)

Apart from its central fatal failure to acknowledge the Creator, Zen's main flaw would seem to lie in its (consequent) propensity for flipping paradoxically from concreteness to emptiness. One is in the skiff (or sampan?) enjoying the balmy breeze, the elemental ear-caressing lap of water on resonant wood, when suddenly one is unceremoniously capsized and plunged deep into a bottomless sea where all is illusion/delusion - 

Limpid ocean, clear sky,
and moon-reflecting snow;
this is the realm
without a trace of
the holy and sentient.
At the opening 
of the diamond eye,
flowers of vanity fall.
The whole universe
vanishes into the realm
of extinction. 
 - Han-Shan Te-Ch’ing (1586)

All things are
perfectly
resolved in the 
Unborn.
- Bankei (1622-1693)

Is there thus a constructive Zen and a destructive, subjectivist, Hyper-Zen, much as there is a constructive Calvinism and a destructive, subjectivist, Hyper-Calvinism? Within the Hyper-Zen worldview survival depends on the acceptence of the (paradoxically) illusory nature of the "concrete". One wonders again if this is a Buddhist hijacking of the Zen boat (see below [as it were!]). Compare in that regard these further snippets from "Zen Flesh Zen Bones" -

Hogen, a Chinese Zen teacher, lived alone in a small temple in the country. One day four travelling monks appeared and asked if they might make a fire in his yard to warm themselves. While they were building the fire, Hogen heard them arguing about subjectivity and objectivity. He joined them and said: "There is a big stone. Do you consider it to be inside or outside your mind?" One of the monks replied: "From the Buddhist viewpoint everything is an objectification of mind, so I would say that the stone is inside my mind." "Your head must feel very heavy," observed Hogen, "if you are carrying around a stone like that in your mind."    

***

Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku. Desiring to show his attainment, he said: "The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no realization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received." Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry. "If nothing exists," inquired Dokuon, "where did this anger come from?"

In his book "The Tao of Zen" Ray Grigg is at pains to disengage historical "Zen" from what he sees as the encumbering and compromising theology of the Buddhism which subsumed and engulfed it:

"Put succinctly, Zen is Chinese but Buddhism is not; Zen Buddhism is the anomaly of putting together two incompatibles. Ch'an [Chinese for "Zen"] became a form of Taoism housed within the institution of Mahayana Buddhism. The interplay of these contradictory styles of Chinese and Indian thought has still not been officially resolved because the present form of Ch'an in Japan is still called Zen Buddhism....Indeed, a Zen aphorism offers the rather stunning reminder, 'If you meet the Buddha, kill him!'... But (Zen's) accomodation (of paradox) hides the difference between Zen and Buddhism. There are similarities between them, but the differences are great enough that the two must be regarded as separate systems. Buddhism, in effect, rejects the world, viewing it as a place of suffering, transience, and imperfection; Zen accepts the world exactly as it is, unconditionally receiving whatever experience is offered."(Ray Grigg, "The Tao of Zen" Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc, 1994)

Compare Grigg's "pro-Zen, anti-Buddhist" quote above with the following from Te-shan (780-865) -

“Enlightenment” and “Nirvana”?
They are dead trees
to fasten a donkey to.
The (Buddhist) scriptures?
They are bits of paper
to wipe mud from your face.
The four merits and the ten steps?
They are ghosts in their graves.
What can these things
have to do with you
becoming free?

In the same context, Grigg quotes Alan Watts (from "Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen", 1959) - 

"The old Chinese Zen masters were steeped in Taoism. They saw nature in its total interrelatedness, and saw that every creature and every experience is in accord with the Tao of nature just as it is. This enabled them to accept themselves as they were, moment by moment, without the least need to justify anything... "In the landscape of Spring there is neither better nor worse. The flowering branches grow naturally, some long, some short."

However justified is Grigg's clearly partisan disentangling of Zen from Buddhism, there is in his statement - "Buddhism rejects the world... Zen accepts the world"- an intriguing echo of the ancient Greek "form versus matter" dichotomy which has dominated Western thought for millenia. It is patent from Dooyeweerd's and Van Til's thought that when any human system makes an absolute of that which is relative (and only the true God is NOT relative), the counter-absolute sooner or later manifests itself.

The form/matter split can be clearly detected in Western thinking down to our own day. It appears, for example, in humanism as a polarization between "nature" and "freedom", or between "science" and "personality". Via his synthesis of Aristotelean thought and biblical doctrine, Thomas Aquinas ensured that the "form/matter" divide prevailed also in much Christian thought, under the guise of "nature" versus "grace". This latter dichotomy is evident in the mindset of those many Christians for whom the gospel is really of relevance only in the realm of the "soul", the "spiritual", the "afterlife" etc. In contrast, cultural, political, technological, etc, issues of our everyday physical world are regarded by these same Christians as autonomous or even antipathetic as far as the gospel is concerned. 

Calvin's opus provided a biblical detox, or recalibration, of Christianity. In practice, however, many who deem themselves to be Calvinists still lug with them the encumbering baggage of Aquinas (and hence of Ancient Greece). So if Buddhism "rejects the world", the same can alas be said of certain strands of "Calvinism"."Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" is much concerned throughout with this Greek-bequeathed mental split. As mentioned briefly above, Pirsig is convinced that his insight into "Quality" provides the answer. In terms of Eastern philosophy, he identifies "Quality" with the "Tao".  He spends more time, however, articulating his case in terms of Western philosophy, summarizing the history of the form/matter dichotomy, and his own breakthrough concerning it, mainly on pages 371 to 381 (Edition: Vintage 1999). Essentially, he is persuaded that the Homeric worldview (as displayed in the "Iliad") was dominant prior to the split, and was pervaded by the motif of "Quality". The Sophists, whom Plato and Aristotle fiercely opposed, had in fact been champions of "Quality". The key word in Greek was "aretê", typically and rather mundanely translated into English as "virtue". The breakthrough for Pirsig was when he learned that it was better rendered as "excellence". He (or at least his alter ego "Phaedrus") suddenly realizes that "Quality" transcends all dichotomies between and within Eastern and Western worldviews. He is reading H.D.F. Kitto's "The Greeks", and considering a passage of the "Iliad":

     Phaedrus is fascinated too by the description of the motive of "duty to self" which is an almost exact translation of the Sanskrit word dharma, sometimes described as the "one" of the Hindus. Can the dharma of the Hindus and the "virtue" of the Greeks be identical?
     Then Phaedrus feels a tugging to read the passage again, and he does so and then ... what's this?! ... "That which we translate 'virtue' but is in Greek 'excellence'."
     Lightning hits!
     Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine "virtue". But "aretê". Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality...
("Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"  pp376, 377)

Dooyeweerd includes his own survey of the Greek origins of the "form/matter"divide in his excellent book In the Twilight of Western Thought. Dooyeweerd uncovers the origins of this paradox in the irreconcilable religious ground-motifs of early Greece. Public worship majored on rational form and civic duty (symbolized in Apollo), but domestic allegience was atavistically attached more to the earlier nameless gods of being and becoming, of formless matter and anangke (symbolized in the orgiastic Dionysus). 

Cornelius Van Til also characterizes the issue philosophically as a polarization between the "One" and the "Many". Between the "Universal" and the "Particular". Laws seem ultimately incompatible with particulars, and particulars seem ultimately incompatible with laws. Neo-Classicism, for instance, optimistically asserted rationalistic universal laws. When this optimism  soured (eg as the classical ideals of the French Revolution collapsed into the Reign of Terror, and the rationalistic Industrial Revolution spawned slum-misery and slavery), Romanticism in its disillusioned reaction emphasised irrationality and transience. The emotions of any given moment. The lawless particular.

As Van Til points out, humanism switches at the drop of a hat between its notion of a cosmos which is exhaustively law-based, thus rationally "lit-up" and all-knowable, (indeed "all-known" to the extent that God can be confidently asserted as non-existent) and its notion of an irrationalist cosmos which is born of mystery and blind accident and is ultimately un-knowable (and so the idea of an absolute, predestining God is untenable). The former is identified by Van Til as humanism's "principle of continuity", and the latter as its "principle of discontinuity". Humanism cannot reconcile the two. Van Til further explains that the Christian's "principle of continuity" is the infinitely exhaustive knowledge that God has of Himself and of His creation. Likewise, the Christian's "principle of discontinuity" is the inescapably finite nature of our own knowledge - which can never be, even in eternity, exhaustive. The Christian's knowledge can nontheless be true and dependable as far as it goes. Marine mountain tops - truth revealed - may jut above sea-level as islands to provide solid anchorage and footing, while the fundamental connexion between the mountains - truth unrevealed - remains unseen and unmapped. The two Christian "principles" are patently compatible.

So what of Buddhism and Zen? The "principle of continuity" here would appear to lie in the absolute (metaphysical) dissolution of all differentiation. The "principle of discontinuity" in the absolute (anti-metaphysical) concreteness of each particular. Paradox is rather more apparent than compatibility. Yet Ray Grigg, for example, would persuade us that both "plates", as it were, can be kept (or indeed cannot be stopped from?) spinning. In stereoscopic, binary oneness. In gyroscopic, dynamic stillness. Grigg informs us (bear in mind that he wishes to emancipate Zen from Buddhism) -

Paradox is much more Taoist than Buddhist. The Buddhist inclination is to move toward a resolution of duality - "not two, but one" - and thus become a religious system. The shortcomings of this Indian notion of oneness is that it denigrates separateness, distinction and differences. Paradoxically, a larger oneness must exclude oneness to allow separateness. This paradox is what distinguishes the Taoist-like qualities of Chinese Ch'an from Mahayana Buddhism, and connects Zen to Taoism. The intellectual play that pervades Zen and elevates awareness while leaving it free from systems, is really a Taoist quality...

Of course, there are no opposites,  just as there is no fixed state of balance. They are an intellectual convention, a convenience of mind, a habit of thinking that partitions wholeness into thought's duality. Perhaps opposites are simply projections of an internal bilateral symmetry, a brain fashioning everything into the left and right halves of its divided self. Fortunately, there is just one head; and two opposite hands can come together to symbolize a balanced wholeness... 

Buddhism attempts to resolve duality with a metaphysical absolute, whereas Taoism and Zen suspend any resolution in the creative tension between the alternative extremes - both of which, incidentally, are absolutes. This is why the Way can never be conceptually located, why any effort to understand it is self-contradictory and self-defeating. The Way, once caught, would become an absolute that would stop the dynamic flow of insight, that would break the creative tension which exists as balanced stillness in Taoism and Zen. Neither balance nor stillness is absolute; both are constantly shifting states of presence in the equilibrium of the moment. So Buddhism, by venerating the Buddha and making holy the sutras, becomes a religion; whereas Zen, in contrast, advises that the Buddha be killed...

The objective in both Taoism and Zen is to put the opposites together while leaving them apart. The opposites are resolved and not resolved. The result is that "we do not know what to say." Insight is pressed beyond words....The purpose is to shift thought into a nonlinear mode and thereby arrive at an awareness that hangs alert in a suspended and unresolved balance. Some sense of this condition and its purpose is offered in the Zen observation: "The Truth is that everything is One, and this of course is not a numerical one". 
(Ray Grigg, The Tao of Zen, Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc, 1994, pp 275, 255, 199, 225)

[That last sentence is curiously reminiscent of a comment by Dooyeweerd in his last interview: 

“As an example, I then gave the numerical aspect, the aspect of quantity. When theologians discuss the three-in-one, they can then not say, "one plus one plus one equals three," without adding to this, "equals one." If they understand this as an additive sum in numerical language, they then are simply speaking nonsense – this can of course not be. It is also not a number in its original quantitative meaning, but it is a numerical analogy. It is an analogical moment in the structure of faith.” (The Last Interview of Dooyeweerd (1975) From Acht Civilisten in Burger, translated by J. Glenn Friesen, PDF download, p 28]

Thus, in Zen terms, the solution lies not in any 'rationalist' reconciliation at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. From the Zen perspective, paradox must be recognized as endemic to existence. Both sides are simultaneously true and false. We do not choose between them. We rather detach from both sides and transcend the paradox by accepting the paradox. Or is that to deny the paradox?  Words cannot deal with these matters -

"Paradox, paradoxically, leads to something not paradoxical. Words on the subject of Taoism and Zen are necessary folly; herein lies their justification." (Ibid, p186)

"Do not pursue the outer conditions 
nor dwell in the inner void.
Rest yourself in oneness with things
and all barriers will disappear"

(Seng Ts’an, 526-606)Besides the tensions between "the one and the many", "the particular and the universal", Calvinism also countenances other apparent dichotomies such as insistence on both God's sovereignty and human responsibility, or reconciling the existence of evil in a universe created by a holy and almighty God. Actually, it would seem that apparent antinomies are basic to all epistemologies. So Zen is to that extent correct to point up the fact that existence is characterized by paradox. But the Calvinist is confident that all such enigmas are resolved in the mystery of the Triune Godhead, which by its very nature demonstrates the equal ultimacy of the "One" and the "Many". Cornelius Van Til has much to say on the matter of "paradox", and it is to the Trinity he refers us for resolution -    

"Our (Calvinist) position is naturally charged with being self-contradictory. It might seem at first glance as though we were willing, with the dialectical theologians, to accept the really contradictory. Yet such is not the case. In fact we hold that our position is the only position that saves one from the necessity of ultimately accepting the really contradictory. We argue that unless we may hold to the presupposition of the self-contained ontological trinity, human rationality itself is a mirage. But to hold to this position requires us to say that while we shun as poison the idea of the really contradictory we embrace with passion the idea of the apparently contradictory. It is through the latter alone that we can reject the former. If it is the self-contained ontological trinity that we need for the rationality of our interpretation of life, it is this same ontological trinity that requires us to hold to the apparently contradictory...

We can and must maintain that the Christian position is the only position that does not destroy reason itself. But this is not to say that the relation between human responsibility and the counsel of God is not apparently contradictory. That all things in history are determined by God must always seem, at first sight, to contradict the genuineness of my choice." (Common Grace and the Gospel by Cornelius van Til, pp 9, 10)

In a short article critiquing postmodernism in the light of Van Til, Jacob Gabriel Hale says:

Though much of postmodernism postdates the bulk of Van Til’s intellectual enterprise, much of Van Til’s thought is directly applicable to some concerns that postmodernism has raised. Much like Derrida, Van Til was quick to point out the inherent contradiction of modern thought. According to Van Til, any attempt to ground knowledge in abstract, impersonal principles such as reason, sense data, logic, a logos, a “one”, or any other unifying metaphysical principle, would inevitably collapse or “deconstruct” under the weight of its own contradictions. The clearest example of this critique is not only found in Van Til’s analysis of western philosophers from Plato through the modern period, but in the traditional problem of the one and many. According to Van Til, the history of western thought can be summarized as an attempt to give a holistic explanation of “things” in relation to the particulars of reality and their universal characteristics. This is certainly true of Plato and Aristotle, but Van Til maintains that this theme runs through the whole of western philosophy. From nominalism, to Cartesian dualism, from Spinoza’s panentheism, to Kant’s transcendental idealism, from Nietzsche’s will-to-power, to Husserl’s presence, every attempt to assert a philosophy of “things” is an attempt to explain both the universality and particularity of our world and how it relates to the content of our consciousness. In other words, it is an attempt to ground absolute knowledge of the world in finite impersonal “things”. For Van Til, these attempts are inherently flawed because they attempt to reason autonomously, not only independent of bias, which is itself impossible, but also independent of God. For this reason, philosophies that attempt to uncover a logos, a being, an organizing metaphysical principle that in turn grounds knowledge and provides an absolute foundation for knowledge is doomed from the outset. Through his analysis of western thought, Van Til shows how philosophy after philosophy deconstructs itself into irrationalism. ("Derrida, Van Til and the Metaphysics of Postmodernism: An Essay" by Jacob Gabriel Hale)

We note again that though Van Til champions human rationality, he remains an implacable opponent of rationalism. Van Til recognized and rejected rationalism as an impossible totalitarian project born of humanist hubris which presupposes the possession of exhaustive universal knowledge. For Van Til such is not and never shall be the preserve of creatures, who must therefore pursue rationality with all vigour yet in the humble awareness that mysterious chasms will be a perennial feature of one's journey. 

The crucial point here is that Van Til founds his inner equilibrium not on a (purportedly) seamlessly-woven rationalistic web of abstract knowledge (theology included) but on the "ontological Trinity". Not, that is, on theoretical abstraction, but on actuality, indeed on the Living God Who created and sustains actuality and Who floods it with all meaning.

There are highly significant contrasts between the thought of Van Til and Dooyeweerd, central among which concerning the role of Scriptural text (see Section 14 below). There is also a signal irony in the fact that two men who spent their distinguished careers in a relentless quest to uncover and extirpate all Thomistic dualism from Reformed thinking should end by pointing the finger at each other in just this regard. For those interested, a key altercation can be found in the book of essays "Jerusalem & Athens: Critical Discussions on the Philosophy and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til", edited by E. R. Geehan, Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company, 1993). 

The main locus of contention appears to be the opening pages of Dooyeweerd's "A New Critique of Theoretical Thought". Van Til was on board with the original Dutch version ("De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee"), but took serious issue with the reworked argument with which Dooyeweerd opens the English translation. It needs to be borne in mind that the over-riding theme of Van Til's own opus could be summarized in a sentence from the quote above, i.e,"the Christian position is the only position that does not destroy reason itself". Thus, for Van Til there is no "neutral" rationality that both the Christian and the non-Christian can use as common ground for dialogue (all of us are already predisposed one way or another before we even begin to think - so also Dooyeweerd argues). As some have misconstrued Van Til's approach here, let it be made perfectly clear that he did still believe, and supremely so, in the fruitfulness of rational dialogue with all comers. Nonetheless, he was entirely convinced that rationality must be first borrowed from God (there is no other source) before it can be turned against Him. As Van Til says elsewhere: 

"Antitheism presupposes theism. One must stand upon the solid ground of theism to be an effective antitheist" (Cornelius Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology, den Dulk Christian Foundation, 1969).

To re-iterate then, Van Til's case was that rationality cannot be neutral because it necessarily and exhaustively testifies (as does all of creation) to the Creator, the triune God of Scripture. The non-Christian can and does employ rationality, sure, but only by simultaneously suppressing the awareness that it intrinsically and comprehensively confirms the God whom he/she denies. The non-Christian cannot ultimately "account for" the rationality he/she employs. This means that the most conclusive proof for Christianity is not the typical cumulative check-list of "evidences". Though such are certainly there to be presented, and Van Til supported this procedure as far as it goes, he pointed out that they can only ever demonstrate that "a" God is "possible", or, at best, "probable". For Van Til, the Living God is not "possibly" there or "probably" there. He is there. Therefore Christians who argue for a "possible", or "probable", God, are not arguing for the God of Scripture but for a theological abstraction. Moreover, evidentialism assumes an "objectivity", i.e. a rational neutrality, on the part of the one assessing the evidences. No such objectivity exists. We are all biased in our hearts before engaging our rationality. What one person finds convincing will leave someone else unmoved. A buzz saw can be as sharp as you like, but if it its setting is not true it will invariably cut athwart, however cleanly. 

Thus for Van Til, while the case for Christianity is supported by evidences, it is only proven by what might be termed "the impossibility of the contrary" - i.e., no other system of thought can be ultimately coherent, because it must sooner or later expose itself as being at variance with reality. At variance indeed with the very logic by which it endeavours to espouse its case.

What disturbed Van Til was that though the "New Critique" clearly endorses and expounds in great depth the view that we have a holistic heart commitment which both prevents (old sense also) and precipitates our logic, he felt that Dooyeweerd was now at the outset of his English translation being inexplicably inconsistent by apparently invoking neutral "states of affairs" as a common ground of all philosophy. Dooyeweerd forcefully rejected this accusation of neutralism, countering that in the first place he had not changed his position since the Dutch version (he had merely "sharpened" it), and that in the second place if Van Til was incapable of recognizing the validity of the Critique's opening argument it was because of the marked rationalist(!) tendency in Van Til's own thinking. Dooyeweerd could hardly have levelled a more cutting charge against this man. Here is a flavour of the exchange in "Jerusalem & Athens" -

Dooyeweerd to Van Til:

     The task of a transcendental critique, which makes this theoretical attitude as such a critical problem, is quite different from that of a theological apologetics. It does not aim at a "defense of the Christian faith" but at laying bare the central influence of the different religious, basic motives upon the philosophical trends of thought. For that purpose it was necessary to show the inner point of contact between theoretical thought and its supra-theoretical presuppositions which relate to the central religious sphere of human existence. This is why this transcendental critique is obliged to begin with an inquiry into the inner nature and structure of the theoretical attitude of thought and experience as such and not with a confession of faith. In this first phase of the critical investigation such a confession would be out of place. Not because the first question raised by our transcendental critique might be answered apart from the central religious starting point of those who take part in the philosophical dialogue, but because the necessity of such a starting-point has not yet come up for discussion. For, so long as the dogma concerning the autonomy of theoretical thought has not been subjected to a transcendental critique, adherents of this dogma who enter into a dialogue with the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea might rightly confine themselves to the simple statement that theoretical philosophy has nothing to do with questions of faith and religion. In other words, the dialogue would be cut off before it could start.

     The confrontation between the biblical and the non-biblical ground motives of theoretical thought belongs to the third and last phase of the transcendental critique. Only in this phase the transcendental problem crops up concerning the possibility of a concentric direction of theoretical thinking to the human ego, as its central reference point, and concerning the inner nature of the latter. (pp 76,77) 

*  *  *  *  *

     Asking myself what may have induced you to ascribe to the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea such a dialectical dualism, I find myself confronted with, what I fear to be, a typical rationalistic scholastic tendency in your theological thought. This tendency reveals itself first in your objections against my distinction between theoretical conceptual knowledge, and the central religious self-knowledge and knowledge of God. On this point you appear to agree with the neo-scholastic thinkers, Robbins and Mrs. Conradie, and in some degree also with van Peursen. I fear your rationalism may go even further than that of the neo-scholastic thinkers mentioned, for the latter have never claimed that philosophical ideas are to be derived from the supra-natural truths of divine revelation, and that is exactly what you seem to defend. (p 81)

     God's self-revelation in Holy Scripture as Creator and Redeemer concerns the central religious relation of man to his absolute Origin. Its true meaning is to be understood by man only if his heart has been opened up to it through the moving power of the Holy Ghost, which is the dunamis of the biblical Word-revelation. What is said here about the dunamis of the biblical Word-revelation and the central role of the heart in the understanding of its meaning is in complete accordance with the biblical testimony (cf. Isa. 6:10-13; Acts 16:14) and with the opinion of Calvin (cf. the citations from the Institutes in New Critique, I/516/7). But you place it "over against the simple thought-content of Scripture" and are of the opinion that it adds still further to the ambiguity of my transcendental critique. You think so, however, not on biblical ground, but in consequence of a rationalistic view of the Word-revelation and of the religious relation of man to God, which, you feel, is of a rational-ethical character. This rationalism implies a relapse into a metaphysical theory of the intrinsical divine being and its attributes, which Calvin called "vacuo et meteorica speculatio". (p 86)

Van Til in response to Dooyeweerd:

     My contention over against this is, Dr. Dooyeweerd, that this confrontation must be brought in at the first step, and that if it is not brought in at the first step it cannot be brought in properly at the third step. But to say this amounts to saying that there is only one step or rather that there are no steps at all. 
     I am of the opinion that your procedure corroborates my view on this point. I have pointed out that you did bring the Christian view of the created order at the level of the first step and the Christian view of man at the level of the second step, as you now bring in the Christian view of God in the third step. How could you escape doing so? You are convinced as a Christian that the Christian framework of truth as revealed by the triune God in Scripture is the transcendental presupposition of the possibility of intelligent predication in any field. If there is not to be a basic dualism between your religious convictions on this point and your process of rationalization you should proceed differently than you do in your Critique. To avoid dualism you should not start from the structure of theoretical thought as such. There is no such thing. There is no autonomy of theoretical thought as such. There is a would-be-autonomous man, who thinks about his entire environment in terms of his thought as legislative and as determinative of the structure of the temporal world. With all due respect for your very great learning and penetration I cannot help but say that to me it is ambiguous to speak of theoretical thought as needing to be placed in relation to the temporal cosmic order or to naive experience as a primary datum. There is no naive experience as a primary datum any more than there is anything like theoretical thought as such. Every item that man meets in his temporal horizon is already interpreted by God. It is the interpretation of the triune Creator-Redeemer God that every man meets in his every experience of anything. This is the "state of affairs" as it actually exists. The universe in which man lives is God's estate. The ownership of God is indelibly printed on every "thing" man meets. He cannot think of theoretic thought as such. I know not what else Calvin means by saying that at every turn man, the creature, faces his Creator. Man cannot have any "naive experience" in which he is not either a covenant-breaker or a covenant-keeper.
     Of course, I know, Dr. Dooyeweerd, that by theoretical thought, by the temporal world-order, and by naive experience you mean what these mean in the Christian framework. But in your transcendental method you insist not only that they may but that they must be used without reference to the Christian framework. (pp108,109)

Not to weary you, but if you will allow me a further excerpt from Van Til's riposte, I must say my jaw dropped at the following bare-nuckle assault on Dooyeweerd's "supratemporal ego" teaching as nominalistic and reminiscent of Barthianism -

     I fear, Dr. Dooyeweerd, that the view of man as a supratemporal sphere of occurence undercuts the entire Christian view as to the struggle between the civitas dei and the civitas terrena. There is no occurence of any sort in this contentless self, except dunamis be poured into it from a featureless God. This dunamis then filters down into the temporal world.
     It is on some such purely nominalist view that Karl Barth founded his idea of the sovereignty of God's election. Grace is sovereign; there need not be and there cannot be, on this view, any transition from wrath to grace accomplished through the death and resurrection of Christ as the electing God. Election would not be sovereign over "history" if any such thing as the death and resurrection were needed for man's salvation.
     But then, correlative to Barth's nominalist view of the sovereignty of God's grace is his realist view of the universality of this grace. The recipients of God's grace need not in any sense have any cognition of what happened through the death or resurrection of Christ in history.
     In short, the realm of ordinary temporal occurence is not the sphere of the drama of creation, fall, and redemption. The real occurence takes place in the sphere of the supra-temporal. The temporal is only a pointer toward this supra-temporal sphere of  occurence.
      Now I am not in the least bringing in this matter of modern dimensionalism and of Barth's sovereign-universal grace, Dr. Dooyeweerd, if I did not seriously fear that your sharpened transcendental method with its supra-temporal self as the central sphere of occurence really opens the door for an entrance into historic Reformed thinking for a form of the nominalist-realist dialecticism which is surrounding Christian believers at every turn. (pp 121, 122)

(Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions on the Philosophy and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, Edited by E.R. Geehan, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1974)

The "Jerusalem and Athens" volume was published in 1974. The tenor of Van Til's words here is in marked contrast to that of ten or so years earlier in his major study of Barth ("Christianity and Barthianism"), in which he gladly endorses (and indeed leans on) Dooyeweerd, quoting freely from Dooyeweerd's "New Critique". (In anticipation of forthcoming discussion in our own essay regarding Dooyeweerd's approach to Biblical text, it is worth noting en passant both Dooyeweerd's citation of the Bible here and Van Til's employment of the terms "inscripturated" and "propositional”. Also, for clarification, I have coloured direct quotes from Dooyeweerd purple):

    "Let us listen first to Dooyeweerd as he seeks to have converse with the Barthians. In 1951 Dooyeweerd wrote an article on "The Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea and the 'Barthians'"("De Wysbegeerte der Wetsidee en de 'Barthianenen'" in Philosophia Reformata). The title of this article itself needs explanation. Dooyeweerd argues that God is the law-giver and man the law-receiver. Non-Christian philosophy does not recognize this fact. It is therefore to be spoken of as immanentistic philosophy. The failure to recognize the fact that God is man's law-giver springs from failure to recognize the significance of the fall of man -

 "By the fall of man, human thought (νοῡς), according to St. Paul's word, has become νοῡς τῆς σαρκὸς, the 'carnal mind' (Colos. 2:18), for it does not exist apart from its apostate religious root. And thought includes its logical function. (A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, p 100).

   A Christian philosophy, therefore, is known by the fact that through grace it owns the proper borderline between God and man. This grace is in and through Jesus Christ -

"To the ultimate transcendental question: What is the Ἀρχῇ (Arche) of the totality and the modal diversity of meaning of our cosmos with respect to the cosmonomic side and its correlate, the subject-side? It answers: the sovereign holy will of God the Creator, who has revealed Himself in Christ." (A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, p 101).

   Here then is a Christ-centered philosophy. It is also a philosophy that takes its religious presuppositions from the inscripturated Word. In being a Christological philosophy, it is anything but realist or nominalist... 
(Christianity and Barthianism, p 174)

[The following passages are from Van Til's approving summary of Dooyeweerd's description of Barth's theology in the periodical Philosophia Reformata]: 

What is gained, asks Dooyeweerd, when Barthian theology rejects Greek metaphysics and then allows Sartre to have his full say? [Philosophia Reformata p155]

... Instead of returning to the biblical view of creation, Barth declares his solidarity with Sartre's existential philosophy. In this philosophy, independent human thought is set over against the "wholly other" of the Word of God [Philosophia Reformata p157].

   All this proves that Barthian theology is still deeply imbedded in the scholastic ground-motive... But again it is the late scholastic view of nominalism, not Thomism, that Barthian theology resembles. If we are to overcome scholasticism, we shall need to return to the idea of the priority of propositional Word-revelation. We shall need to hold that, even before the entrance of sin into the world, man was directed toward Word-revelation  [Philosophia Reformata p158]...

   Dooyeweerd concludes his discussion with the Barthians by asking them to submit their thinking to the test of the revelation of God in Scripture. They will need to show that the radical view of creation, sin, and redemption, is not biblical [Philosophia Reformata p161]. (Christianity and Barthianism, pp 177-179)

***

We turn now to the modern form of dialectical thought. In doing so we shall again depend to a considerable extent upon the analysis given of it by Dooyeweerd...
(Christianity and Barthianism p 241)

(Cornelius Van Til, "Christianity and Barthianism", P & R Publishing, 1962)

Again, a mere five years prior to the (1974) publication of "Jerusalem and Athens", we have Van Til's appreciative endorsement of Dooyeweerd in "A Christian Theory of Knowledge" (first published in 1969). And perhaps significantly, the positive references remain in my 1977 edition (four years after "Jerusalem and Athens"):

"Professors D. H. Th. Vollenhoven and Herman Dooyeweerd of the Free University of Amsterdam have worked out a Christian system of philosophy. They stress the fact that man should by virtue of his creation by God stand self-consciously under the law of God. Then they point out that since the fall man seeks his reference point in the created universe rather than in the Creator of the universe. They speak of non-Christian systems of philosophy being immanentistic in character, which refuse to recognize the dependence of human thought upon divine thought. They indicate that on the basis of immanentistic philosophies there has been a false problematics. Immanentistic systems have absolutized one or another aspect of the created universe and have therewith been forced to do injustice to other equally important or more important aspects of the created universe. So for instance the Pythagoreans contended that all things are numbers. By thus taking the idea of the numerability of created things, which is the lowest and therefore the least informative aspect of reality as the whole of it, as the final principle of interpretation, they have done grave injustice to other and higher aspects of reality...
... It is too be regretted that no full use of this well-worked out system of Christian philosophy can be made in this work. It would carry us too far afield. But it will be greatly helpful to us, especially in the analysis of the history of non-Christian philosophy."
(Cornelius Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1977, pp 50,51)

In light of the spectacular high-level head-butting witnessed in "Jerusalem and Athens", one cannot help but wonder if, despite the "Low Countries" provenance of both these singular gentlemen, there may not have been a fair degree of mountain goat in both of them.

[UPDATE NOTE 2021: It is important to me regarding this altercation to restrospectively add that I eventually concluded that it was Dooyeweerd who was indeed correct, and Van Til remiss. Two reasons briefly stated:

 1) Van Til seriously misunderstood that Dooyeweerd’s term “dunamis” referred not to contentless mysticism but to the Holy Spirit. Cf Dooyeweerd’s remark regarding “the moving power of the Holy Ghost, which is the dunamis of the biblical Word-revelation.” (J&A). 

2) I realised the decisive import of Dooyeweerd’s charge against Van Til that “Supra-rational should by no means be confused with irrational...Rationalism as absolutization of conceptual thought evokes necessarily irrationalism as its alternative. The objectivism implied in traditional scholastic rationalism evokes as its alternative subjectivism, etc. It is consequently quite understandable that from your standpoint you consider my distinction between conceptual knowledge and central religious knowledge a result of an irrationalist mystical view of the latter. (J&A)]

Notwithstanding all of this, Cornelius Van Til's emphasis on the "ontological trinity" taken at face value does seem very much in line with fellow Dutchman Herman Dooyeweerd's key insight that reality totally resists reduction to logicism, that the ontical utterly transcends the theoretical, and that for us as creatures a living relationship with our Creator is paramount. There comes to mind the euphoric breakthrough cry of Blaise Pascal, written on a (posthumously discovered) piece of paper sewn into his jacket:

« DIEU d'Abraham, DIEU d'Isaac, DIEU de Jacob »
non des philosophes et des savants...
Joie, joie, joie, pleurs de joie...

("God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob"
 not of the philosophers and scholars...
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy...')

Meanwhile, in a footnote to the 2003 edition of Van Til's "Christian Apologetics", William Edgar states that 

"The full story of Van Til's relationship to the Amsterdam philosophy, and especially to Herman Dooyeweerd, has not yet been told".(Cornelius Van Til, "Christian Apologetics", Second Edition, Edited by William Edgar, P & R Publishing, 2003, Footnote p 57)

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