Neo-Calvinism: early failures and post-Reflections

This post can be similarly titled, "For and Against Van Til." I've decided not to write this in a strictly logical order. Rather, it will be written in Nietzschean style [bracketed paragraph numbering]. As a side note: I have read William Young's WTJ article on Neo-Calvinism. I have no problem with it. He simply points out that Neo-Calvinism tended to denigrate experiential religion. Perhaps they did. That's an emphasis argument, though, and does not bear on whether other distinctives are true or false. (And almost identically tragic results can be found in the Anglo-Scottish Calvinist tradition).

[1]

What would Neo-Calvinism look like without its emphasis on politics? Yeah, I know sphere sovereignty and all that, but let's be honest: among neo-Calvinists what gets talked about the most, the church or politics?

[2]

One area where Neo-Calvinism [let's just call it Reformational Theology from now on) actually got right and later generations, even the Banner of Truth men, dropped the ball was in theological prolegomena. If you read Kuyper and Bavinck, they are fighting hard for ectypal theology. Can Together4theGospel say the same thing? Can Banner of Truth?

[3]

But theology is more than prolegomena, and the Reformational theology didn't do a great job on anthropology. Wanting a rich creation theology, and fearing gnostic dualisms (both admirable goals), they came very close to rejecting the doctrine of the soul. I've summarized their position here.

[4]

The most important aspect of Reformational Theology is that it was a constructive theology. That's very hard to do. It's easy to build a theology of critique, whether Rome or other deviant systems. And that's important, for the battle must be fought in every generation. But a soul (pun intended) cannot live long on a theology of criticism.

Bavinck constructed an entire theology around "New Creation." Yet he never drifted from Reformed Principial theology. This is nothing short of an ultimate triumph. Dooyeweerd's 14 or 15 modalities might sound odd, and I suspect he overdid it, but he simply wanted to outline man-in-the-world and man-in-relation-to-God.

Now for the Criticism of Reformational Theology

[5]

The emphasis on politics, at least practically speaking, failed miserably. Amsterdam is Sodom. The American front is slightly different. In America Reformational theology went in two directions. One school, the Toronto school (and with is periphery in the CRC and other Dutch American communities), systematically embraced sphere-sovereignty but with a temptation to more left-wing, socialistic politics. The more conservative appropriating of Kuyper is best seen in the Reconstructionist school and the Christian Right, neither of which is a success today. Recons are on the extreme margin of society (and may they stay there) while the Christian Right/Moral Majority has more or less lost the war.

The Way Forward: What Should We keep and where should we go?

[6]

To the degree that the Reformation School sees itself primarily as a Dutch(y) outpost, it is a non-starter. The worst thing that anyone can do is contrast "Amsterdam with x." This prevents Reformational Theology from fully incorporating gains from other traditions.  For example, Nicholas Wolterstorff has suggested commonalities between Bavinck and Reformed Epistemology, which has its roots in the Scottish Common Sense tradition (Wolterstorff, Nicholas. “Herman Bavinck—Proto Reformed Epistemologist.” Calvin Theological Journal 45, no. 1 (2010): 133–46.). This is a major advance in epistemology and only possible because Wolterstorff didn't get blinded by a Dutch ghetto mentality.  

[7]

I admit I don't care too much for the "reclaiming politics for Christ" mindset.  Christ makes claims to the political life, to be sure, but I am also reminded of something Don Carson said, "If Kuyper lived in the killing fields of Cambodia, one suspects he would have framed the relationship between Christ and culture differently" (Christ and Culture Revisited, ix). Of course, that doesn't change whether or not Christ owns politics, but it does highlight the tensions--tensions that are already evident in Scripture (see Romans 13 and Revelation 13).  

[8]

I like the organic motif.  Some have suspected a latent Hegelianism within the organic motif, but I think that criticism falls short for a couple of reasons.  For one, it's never argued that "organicism necessitates Hegelianism." It's just asserted.  Secondly, Christ himself had no fear of using it because of future Hegelian overtones (John 15).  Thirdly, let's assume it's a valid criticism.  Even then, it doesn't prove what people fear most in Hegel: Pantheism.  If it does prove pantheism, then we need to see an argument for that claim, which would include primary sources from both Dutch Reformed theology and German idealism. A tall order.

[8.1]

But what does Bavinck mean by the organic metaphor?  A full discussion will be found in his Dogmatics, but we can offer a brief one here.  The metaphor  traces the idea of revelation in its form and content and how it correlates with the rest of life (Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation, 18). Revelation doesn't appear in the abstract. It is always context-ed. God's unfolding drama in history is never a bunch of propositions falling from the sky. Not even Plato can be accused of that crude a view (though many Calvinist critics of Reformational Theology tend hold just that view). It meets Israel at Israel's situation--calling, changing, and challenging that situation.

Conclusion

[9]

We can say two things about it:
1) In terms of a Reformed theology for future generations and a Reformed social ethic, Reformational theology failed miserably. 2) In terms of future philosophical reflection, it was a mighty triumph of the highest order. Without neo-Calvinism we would not have Alvin Plantinga. Without Alvin Plantinga, we would not have seen a renaissance in Christian Philosophy.
3) I know a lot of his cultural philosophy borders on the bizarre, but James K. A. Smith is a highly competent philosopher who has done more than anyone today to make Dooyeweerd relevant.

Therefore, we should mine the Reformational theology for insights on the human person and his knowing within his life situation. We should never content ourselves at having arrived--or even worse, having arrived in our ethnic situation. (It's really hard to nail Eastern Orthodoxy's phyletism when we have slogans like "Ain't Dutch, Ain't Much.")

Works Cited

Bavinck, Herman. Philosophy of Revelation.
Carson, D. A. Christ and Culture Revisited.
Wolterstorff,  Nicholas. “Herman Bavinck—Proto Reformed Epistemologist.” Calvin Theological Journal 45, no. 1 (2010): 133–46.
Young, William. "Historic Calvinism And Neo-Calvinism." Westminster Theological Journal 36:1 (Fall 1973) p. 49. 
Recommended Websites
Paideia Press.
All of Life Redeemed (probably the classic site).

Recommended Works
Bavinck, Herman.  Reformed Dogmatics 4 volumes.  Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. 2008.
Clouser, Roy. The Myth of Religious Neutrality.  Notre Dame Press.
Dooyeweerd, Herman.  New Critique of Theoretical Thought 4 volumes.  Good luck finding it.
Kuyper, Abraham.  Principles of Sacred Theology. Westminster Discount Books.
Spykman, Gordon. Reformational Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992.
Plantinga, Alvin. and Wolterstorff, Nicholas. eds. Faith and Rationality. Notre Dame Press, 1983.
Plantinga, Alvin.  God and Other Minds.  Cornell University Press, 1990.
Wolters, Al.  Creation Regained.  Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005. A beautiful manifesto.
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Until Justice and Peace Embrace. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983.
--------------. Reason within the Bounds of Religion. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988.

Neo-Calvinism on the Soul

By Neo-Calvinism I mean the Reformational theology manifested in the Dutch tradition of Bavinck and Kuyper.  I do not mean the pop-resergence of the New Calvinists like Piper, Driscoll, and Mahaney, whatever merits these gentlemen might have.

The most notorious aspect of Neo-Calvinism is that they tend to eclipse the doctrine of the soul in favor of a biblical wholism.  I am sympathetic to that, but I also think the Biblical witness speaks of man's soul in distinction from his body.  Let's evaluate Neo-Calvinism as represented in Berkouwer's summary of the movement (Man the Image of God).

The main contention of Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd whether there was a natural immortality based on an essence abstracted from its relation to God, from which we can draw further conclusions, such as the soul’s “indestructibility” (Berkouwer, Man the Image of God, 249). So far, this is fine. The Bible doesn't really posit an immaterial soul as the "real stuff" behind God's creation.

Per Van der Leuw, there is no continued existence of the soul as such after death, “but a continuation of the contact point by God even though death” (Onsterfelijkheid of Opstanding, 25 quoted in Berkouwer 252).  I am not entirely sure what this means. If he is saying the soul has no mental awareness after death, then it is false on both biblical and empirical grounds. I think there is something else, though. The problem of what happens when we die does not involve a purely spiritual salvation but can only be answered in the context of death and the Day of Judgment (Althaus). If all Althaus means is the goal of the soul's life isn't the soul itself but finds its ultimate grounding in the Resurrection, then well and good.

Michael Horton reads Berkouwer as denying the existence of an immaterial soul. I'm not so sure Berkouwer is doing that.

Is immortality of the soul correlative with the substantial dualism of mind-body?  This dichotomy raises substantial (pun?) problems and questions (255):

• When the “soul” is separated from the body, what activities is it still able to carry out?
• If the body is the organ of the soul (as in Aquinas), and the soul needs the body to carry out its functions, how can the soul know or do anything after death?
• Dooyeweerd notes that the psychic functions are indissolubly connected with the total temporal-cosmic relationship of all modal functions and cannot be abstracted from this relationship.
• Thus, we have a “living soul” which does not live.
• Rather, with Dooyeweerd we should speak of a duality which is supra-temporal in the religious center of man (heart) and the whole temporal-functional complex.
• Dooyeweerd does say that the soul continues as a form of existence with an individuality structure (Berkouwer 257n. 33).  

Does Dooyeweerd’s school give us a “psychology without a soul?” No, for Dooyeweerd says we cannot view man’s essence “in itself” and then tack it onto a relation with God.

The Van Til Files

Most of my notes on Van Til, both pro and con. I am not saying whether I think Van Til is right or wrong.  

My non-existent neo-Plantingian Interview

Sep24

This interview never happened.  It is between me and myself.  On a more serious note, I have noticed that my philosophical readings do not fit into any specific category.  That is good, I suppose, since “joining a school” is not the best start.

Question: You read Van Til, doesn’t that make you a Van Tillian?
Answer:  Not really.  I don’t find all of his apologetics convincing, but I do appreciate his reading of Greek and medieval theology.  I think he has a lot of promise in that area.  More importantly, Van Til, better than anyone else at his time, showed the importance of God as a Covenantal, Personal God.
Q.  But didn’t you used to promote Thomas Reid’s Scottish philosophy?  All the Van Tillians I know reject it.
A. There are two different “Van Tillian” answers to that question, and his reconstructionist disciples only knew one of them.  In Survey of Christian Epistemology (p. 132-134) he notes that if the Scottish school takes man’s cognitive faculties as a proximate starting point and not an ultimate one, then there is no real problem.  Further, we see Thomas Reid and Alvin Plantinga saying exactly that.   Elsewhere, however, Van Til was not as careful in his reading of Reid, and the reconstructionists read him as condemning Common Sense Realism.
Q.  So, is there a contradiction between the two schools?
A.  If the above distinction is made, I am not convinced there is.
Q. You keep mentioning Alvin Plantinga.  Are you a Reformed Epistemology guy?
A. I’ve read quite a bit of Wolterstorff and Kelly James Clark.  I like what they have to say.  I am not an expert on Plantinga so I have to demur at that point.  I do think there is a dovetailing between Thomas Reid and Plantinga, and if that convergence holds there is an exciting opportunity to unite Reformed guys along different epistemological and even geographical lines.
Q. What do you mean?
A. The guys in Westminster (either school) claim Van Til.  There is a debate on how well they understand him, but that’s beside the point. I think I have demonstrated above that there is no real contradiction between the two at least on the starting point.  This means that guys who hold to some variant of Common Sense epistemology and/or Van Tillian presuppositionalism do not have to be at loggerheads.

Q.  There is still one other Dutch giant you haven’t mentioned.

A.  You mean Herman Dooyeweerd, right?
Q. Correct.
A.  If you trace the development of the Reformed Epistemology school, you can find something like Dooyeweerd at the very beginning.  When Wolterstorff and Plantinga edited Faith and Rationality, they were at that time strongly influenced by Dooyeweerd. I am not saying that’s where they are today.   However, I do believe that Dooyeweerd’s contention that all men have a pre-theoretical “faith commitment” from the heart is in line with what Kelly James Clark and Van Til say about pretended neutrality.

Survey of Christian Epistemology (Full)

 

Apr27

Typical van Til book.  Numerous interesting insights on Greek philosophy.  Sort of spirals out of control on Idealism as he (likely) tried to fit his dissertation into three chapters.

Medieval Epistemology
CvT is friendlier to Augustine in this volume than he was in A Christian Theory of Knowledge.   Here he emphasizes the differences between Augustine and Plato and focuses the discussion on the problem of knowledge that Plato raised in the previous chapter: what is the principle of Unity (One) and Diversity (Many)?

For CvT this solution lies in the doctrine of the Trinity.
Without a doctrine of creation, the sense world is seen as an “ultimate” (48).  And if we start with an ultimate plurality, how will we get to unity?  Plato never found unity in the Ideal world, for the Idea of the Good never acquired supremacy over the other ideas, and there remained the problem of the Idea of mud, hair, and filth.

The scholastics accepted the Greek idea of the soul, which parallels the chain of being.   At the lowest level is the vegetative part, then the appetitive, then the cognitive (this also parallels comments made by John of Damascus).

Universals and Paganism
The problem of universals is simply a restatement of the problem of the One and the Many.

Donum Superadditum
Something (image of God) received with man’s being.  The origin of this thought lies in the pagan idea of a material universe with an evil inherent in it existing independently of God (62).  It’s hard to see on this gloss how God could have created man “good” apart from endowing him with a little something extra.

Modern Epistemology: Lutheranism
Luther thought of the image of God in purely moral categories, neglecting such as the will and intellect. Van Til analyzes the Lutheran view of the sacrament as it relates to the person of Christ, and as such to epistemology:  the human can become divine.  It is an intermingling of temporal and eternal (70).  As such, Lutheranism also finds itself facing the same difficulties that Platonism faced.

Original Sin and Representation (78)

Van Til has an illuminating discussion on original sin.  He addresses the common challenge to it:  it is illogical because we can’t be tried for someone else’s actions.   But he points out that this only works if we reject the category of representation.

He says that the principle of representation holds because the members of the Trinity are mutually representational.  That is an interesting suggestion, but I am not sure what he really means by that.  He goes on to say that God creates in representational categories (78-79).  Again, very intriguing but not really that clear.

Modern Epistemology: Arminianism
For Watson finitude involves evil (82).  “No creature can be entirely perfect because he is finite” (Watson, Theological Institutesvol 1, p. 33).  This mutes the distinction between general and special revelation. But as Van Til points out, this is paganism.  It posits a world independent of God.  If God created the world there is no reason why it can’t be perfectly good (Van Til, 82).  Van Til asks the question, “Why [on the Arminian gloss]could not God create a perfect though finite being?”   The only real answer for the Arminian is that there must be laws and conditions above God to which he must answer (90).

Van Til then employs the standard (and in my opinion, devastating) objection to Arminianism:  was it in God’s plan that man should fall into evil?  If he says yes, then he is a Calvinist.  If he says no, then he posits a Platonic man outside the plan and power of God (83).  Like Plato, this posits a world independent (to some degree, anyway) of God.

Van Til then goes on to discuss the Arminian contention that for an ethical act to be truly free, it must occur in an impersonal vacuum (Miley, Systematic Theology, I: 409, quoted in Van Til, 87).  The problem with this is given what we confess about God, and that all facts are in a God-vacuum, then on Miley’s gloss it’s hard to see how any action could occur. Van Til points out this is an anti-theistical position.  He writes, “[this] act could not occur except in the Void” (88).

Modern Epistemology: Calvinism

Van Til links Calvin’s project under the “Covenant” (96).  He notes that we see his “representation” in the Trinity as well.   The persons of the Trinity are exhaustive of one another.  This allows man to find the principles of unity and diversity within the Trinity (and hence, within eternal categories).

If the Trinity is representational, then man, too, thinks in representational categories (97)

Epistemology and non-being participation

 

Apr21

Some of this will be my own reflections on CvT’s A Christian Theory of Knowledge and the rest will be towards a construction of anti-scale of being philosophy.  I am not reviewing the whole book because it’s unnecessary.   Why do a review of any CvT work after Bahnsen’s magnum opus?  Further, the last 150 pages of CTK could have been left off and the book would have been better.

While CvT’s critique of Romanism was good, he didn’t integrate his earlier (and fine) critique of Plotinus, Augustine, and being/non-being into his larger critique of Romanism, which likely could have buried Romanism.  Instead, he got sidetracked on showing how Karl Barth is secretly in line with the nouvelle theologie of post-Vatican II theology.  That simply doesn’t wash.   For all of Barth’s problems, he rejected the analogia entis and the substance metaphysics upon which Rome is built.

CvT gives a fairly good summary and critique of the early church fathers.  There is some difficulty in this, since no one, even anchoretic traditions, are entirely clear on who constitutes (and when!) the ECFs.  Even admitting Tertullian is a heretic, I don’t think you will find many exceptions in the ancient world to the epistemology CvT is summarizing.   

The later Palamite epistemology is simply a refinement (and perhaps bungling) of some neo-Platonic themes, so to the degree that CvT accurately summarizes and critiques the being theologies of Augustine, Plotinus, and Eurigena, the criticism applies to Palamas (and Palamas and Augustine are closer than one might suspect).  CvT writes that the early church could not find a Christian view of freedom to coalesce with a Christian view of necessity, with the result the fathers opted for a nonbiblical view of free will.

Non-Christian Continuity and Discontinuity
A non-Christian view of continuity sees an identification of God and man, as seen below:

The higher on the scale, the more real and “true” the thing is.  Van Til notes that Tertullian sees sin as “the opposite of good.”  This sounds correct until we realize that means sin is “lower” on the scale of good.   Sin has “slenderness of being.”
On the principle of continuity it is hard to see how Tertullian (and Justin)’s view of God is different from the Stoics’.  But when he argues against Marcion, he says the Christian God is “Other” than man (107).

Later Platonisms
Moving to the fathers (Origen and Clement) we see the scale of being hardened in place.   CvT quotes Plotinus to the effect, “thought is motion” and this is inferior to ecstasy.   (Rowan Williams has a helpful summary on this point).

Here our chart is modified. God is now seen as hyper-ousia, above ousia.  How does one then get from the highest point on the scale of being to “above being?”   Mysticism, ecstasy.   Van Til can then make the critique that many of these fathers employed both rationalism (scale of being, continuity principle) and irrationalism (ecstasy, mysticism).  In fact, rationalism and irrationalism on this gloss are dialectically correlative.

If man is on the scale of being and participates in good, then consistently we must say he also participates in non-being.

Is Finitude Evil?
This is the key point: on metaphysical accounts (and yes, I used the word “metaphysical”) man is defective because he is finite (he participates lower on the scale of being, even to participating in non-being.   Biblical religion, by contrast, sees man’s problem as ethical:  he is in rebellion to God.   CvT then gives a helpful discussion on “total depravity.”  We are not saying that man’s noetic capacity is ruined.   It is in rebellion.

A Metaphysical Fall from Oneness
Augustine is very clear (City of God section on the Platonists) that One = Truth = Being.   The further away from the One we get, the more irrational we get.   The problem is that historical facts are in the realm of the many (further, since history is contingent).  This is similar to Plato’s problem of learning by experience.  Van Til writes,

When Plato took his line and divided it sharply between eternal being of which there was genuine knowledge or science, and non-being of which there was no knowledge, he was faced with the question of how learning by experience is possible (129).

Back to Augustine:  Eternal Truth and History are dialectical opposites.  If Christ is the Eternal Word (and true) then how could he be historical? If historical, then not eternal, and thus not true, and thus unknown.  This is where one’s onto-epistemology leads.  As Van Til says, “The first option leads to truth without content.”
Van Til has a nice phrase to summarize all of this:  slenderness of being.  (And that is where these traditions find man’s free will).
Other notes:
Rejecting the Augstino-Platonic view of Time:  sheer timeless (moving image of eternity) would swallow up all distinctions.
Problems:
I almost understand what CvT means when he says pure rationality and pure irrationality demand one another (144).  I wish he would have clarified it.
I understand his criticisms of Barth and some of them are valid.  I don’t think he fully showed how Barth’s actualist ontology is at odds with Rome’s analogia entis.