Apologetics to the Glory of God

Category: Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Black

  • Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Black X

    When Mr. Black objects against Mr. White that unconditional surrender to the authority of Scripture is irrational, then Mr. Grey nods approval and says that, of course, the “rational man” has a perfect right to test the credibility of Scripture by logic. When the Bible speaks of God’s sovereign election of some men to salvation this must mean something that fits in with his “rational nature.” When Mr. Black objects to Mr. White that unconditional surrender to Scripture is rationalistic, then Mr. Grey again nods approval and says that, of course, genuine human personality has a perfect right to test

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  • Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Black IX

    It’s been a while! We will, however, pick up from where we left off in this exchange, and examine Mr. Black’s reply to Mr. Grey.

    “Well,” says Mr. Black, “this is great news indeed. I knew that the modernists were willing with us to start from human experience as the final reference point in all research. I knew that they were willing with us to start from Chance as the source of facts, in order then to manufacture such facts of nature and of history as the law of non-contradiction, based on Chance, will allow. I also knew that the

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  • Mr. White, Mr. Grey and Mr. Black VIII

    It’s been quite a while since there’s been a post in this series, hasn’t it? I apologize for the delay! This post will continue the discussion we left off in the last post, and pick up on the same page.

    Of course, what Mr. Black is doing appears very reasonable to himself. “Surely,” he says, if questioned at all on the subject, “a rational man must have a systematic coherence in his experience. Therefore he cannot accept as true anything that is not in accord with the law of noncontradiction. So long as you leave your God in the realm

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  • Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Black VII

    “But how can anyone know anything about the ‘Beyond’?” asks Mr. Black.
    “Well, of course,” replies Mr. Grey, “if you want absolute certainty, such as one gets in geometry, Christianity does not offer it. We offer you only ‘rational probability.’ ‘Christianity,’ as I said in effect a moment ago when I spoke of the death of Christ, ‘is founded on historical facts, which, by their very nature, cannot be demonstrated with geometric certainty. All judgments of historical particulars are at the mercy of the complexity of the time-space universe. . . . If the scientist cannot rise above rational probability

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  • Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Black VI

    In our last post, we examined the Romanist/Arminian concept of possible salvation, opposed to the Reformed doctrine of particular, perfect atonement. I’ve taken heat previously for my insistence that neither a Romanist or Arminian (or to a lesser extent, a dispensationalist) can consistently argue presuppositionally. The reason this is so, is due to their theological stance. In the case of the Romanist and Arminian, Van Til spends a large amount of his book demonstrating why their apologetic stems from their theological stance. In the same way, our apologetic stems from our theology – as it should.

    Once more

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  • Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Black V

    These posts contain lengthy quotations from Defense of the Faith, by Cornelius Van Til – this post will deal with pages 319-323. In the previous post, Van Til dealt with the unbeliever’s state before God, his self-deception, suppression of the truth, and the proper apologetic methodology to use with the unbeliever. Beginning here, he begins to answer the charge that a covenantal apologetic is “circular reasoning”, or has no “point of contact” with the unbeliever.

    The one main question to which we are addressing ourselves in this series of articles is whether Christians holding to the Reformed Faith should

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  • Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Black IV

    In our last post, we examined the Romanist, “evangelical,” and putatively “Reformed” apologetic methods, as advanced by Jacques Maritain, Dr. Carnell and Charles Pinnock, and Dr. Sproul, and applied them to our discussion. In this section, we address Mr. Black, and begin to examine in greater detail the difference in approach that Mr. White and Mr. Grey have in their apologetic. This section comes from pgs 317-319 of Defense of the Faith.

    So also with Mr. Black. He daily changes the truth of God into a lie. He daily worships and serves the creature more than the Creator. He

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  • Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Black III

    In our previous post, we saw the beginnings of the typical evidential/classical method, as posed by Dr. Carnell. We will continue our journey through Van Til’s dialogue, on pages 316-317 of Defense of the Faith.

    Of course, Mr. Black will be greatly impressed with such an argument as Mr. Grey has presented to him for the truth of Christianity. In fact, if Christianity is thus shown to be in accord with the moral nature of man, as Mr. Black himself sees that moral nature, then Mr. Black does not need to be converted at all to accept Christianity. He

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  • Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Black II

    In the previous post, we saw Cornelius Van Til examining the apologetic method of the Reformed, vs the Evangelical varieties. By Evangelical, he means the Arminian or Roman Catholic schools of theology and/or apologetic. As our friend Dr. White is wont to say, “theology determines apologetic”. We’ll continue this series in this post, the second of the series, and pick up where we left off.

    An excerpt from Defense of The Faith, by Cornelius Van Til – Chap. 12, Sec. 3, pg. 313-315, 4th Ed.

    The Believer Meets the Unbeliever – Part II

    Let us first look briefly at

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  • Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Black

    An excerpt from Defense of The Faith, by Cornelius Van Til – Chap. 12, Sec. 3, pg. 312-313, 4th Ed.

    The Believer Meets the Unbeliever

    To see clearly what is meant, think of a dentist. You go to him with a “bad tooth”. Does he take care of your tooth in two operations? To be sure, you may have to come back to have him finish the job. But it is one job he is doing. He takes all the decayed matter out before he fills the cavity. Well, Mr. Black is the man with the toothache, and you,

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