Green Baggins

I first met Cornelius Van Til back in 1978. I had, figuratively speaking, fallen off the back of a turnip truck in Chestnut Hill, Pa. and found myself on the campus of Westminster Theological Seminary, still clutching my Scofield reference Bible. Little did I know what lay in store for me. The seminary was at the height of the now infamous ‘Shepherd controversy’ which at the time I was totally unfamiliar with, but would soon find myself taking sides in this controversy which has lingered to this very day. I had come to Westminster at the recommendation of the late S. Lewis Johnson Jr., who had left Dallas Seminary and no longer felt comfortable sending students there, because Calvinism was not warmly embraced nor emphasized at DTS. I had become a five point Calvinist under the teaching ministry of Dr. Johnson at Believer’s Chapel in Dallas, Texas. So, here I was at the bastion of Reformed Theology, vaguely familiar with the name Van Til. Actually I had not read a single thing by him. I knew of Van Til’s name only because of him having been a major influence on Francis Schaeffer, whose works I had devoured as a philosophy major in college. As an incoming student I made my way one hot and humid August night to Van Til Hall for student orientation. The place was packed with people and the hum of voices sounded like a hive of bees. I was standing in front of a bulletin board looking at the class schedules when suddenly I heard this booming voice behind me say “Hello!” I turned around and saw this tall white-haired old man in a three piece blue pinned stripe suit. “I am Van Til,” he said even louder. My initial impression wasn’t all that favorable. He was munching on a white powdered donut and the powder was down his chin and speckled on his lapel and tie. I couldn’t help but notice his facial stubble and thought to myself, “I hope when I am that old somebody will make sure I shave properly before letting me out of the house!”

But that first impression would change as I got to know and love this verbi divini minister– V.D.M – a Servant of the Word God, a title that Van Til used to describe himself. Over the next few years, I made a number of walking trips with him around the spacious grounds of the seminary campus, had him over for meals in our home, and even took him to hear Gordon Clark lecture at Faith Theological Seminary in the early 1980’s. I also spent many an enjoyable evening in his home. On Thursday nights Van Til would open his home to students. We would drink hot chocolate and listen to him lecture extemporaneously on a wide variety of subjects: Aquinas, Calvin, Kant, Barth, Machen and Old Princeton, Gordon Clark, Evangelicalism and Roman Catholicism. He might not remember your name from time to time, but he was a master teacher with a commanding knowledge of all these subjects.

All of these memories came rushing back to me in the pages of John Muether’s newly released Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman (P & R, 2008). This is the third installment in the American Reformed Biographies issued under the careful editorship of D. G. Hart and Sean Michael Lucas (Lucas did the one on Robert Lewis Dabney and Hart did one on John Williamson Nevin).

Muether is uniquely equipped to write this work. He served on the faculty of Westminster while Van Til was still living, and in addition to his theological education holds a masters degree in Library Science. I will forever be grateful to John for the course I had with him on Theological Bibliography and Research, where he taught us how to use and evaluate primary and secondary sources.

The subtitle of Muether’s book is most significant, Reformed Apologist and Churchman. In fact Van Til the Churchman, in many ways defines the man and his work apart from which, as Muether argues, Van Til can neither be properly understood or appreciated. Muether put it this way, “Without the ecclesial context of Van Til’s passion, his content becomes confused and even anemic. If Van Til considered it schizophrenic to establish Reformed theology on a non-Reformed apologetic, the situation today, twenty years after his passing, may be reversed. Van Tilian apologetics are often employed by apologists who are less than fully committed to what he would have regarded as a full-orbed Calvinism. In this way today’s church is expressing another form of incoherence: a Reformed apologetic is servicing a theology that is more generically Protestant. This de-contextualization eclipses the Reformed distinctiveness at the heart of Van Til’s system. (18)”

Every aspect of Van Til’s labors in the field of apologetics, and polemics are framed in this Sitz im Leben. Over the next two installments of this review, I will examine the individual chapters and weave into this review some personal reflections on Van Til as well as some cautionary observations that both Muether and I see with Van Til’s legacy and influence with his critics as well as his self proclaimed followers.

Gary Johnson

James E. McGoldrick. Luther’s Scottish Connection. Cranbury: Associated Universities Press, 1989. Reprint, Birmingham: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2007. Paperback. 141 pages including a bibliography and an index.

The idea that Martin Luther had anything to do with John Knox or Presbyterianism will at first appear odd. After all, Knox was influenced by John Calvin and his Geneva, and then he planted the seed of the Presbyterian Church in his dear Scotland cultivating it into the Kirk that would become identified with his homeland. Before the seed could be planted, the soil had to be prepared, and James E. McGoldrick contends that the ground was tilled by the ministry of those who were influenced by Martin Luther. The author’s purpose is “to identify the most prominent Scottish Lutherans and to relate the roles they played in the first phase of Scotland’s Protestant history” and give church history aficionados a single source for the story of early Lutheran influences in the land of tartans, kilts, dirks and haggis (5).

The book is attractively packaged with a slick cover bearing a reproduction of Lucas Cranach’s color image of the German monk painted in 1527. The body of the book is brief occupying ninety-one pages, with an additional thirty-four page appendix containing Patrick’s Places, while the annotated bibliography and index fill the remaining leaves. Following the prefaces to the first and second editions and the author’s acknowledgements, there are five chapters titled as follows: “Scotland in the Middle Ages,” “Scotland in the Renaissance,” “The Rise of Scottish Protestantism,” “Scotland’s Earliest Protestants,” and “Conclusion.” The book is handy, brief and provides the basic information one might like to obtain for an introduction to the early work of Protestantism in Scotland.

Dr. McGoldrick’s earlier book, Luther’s English Connection, 1979, followed the influences of Luther in England with particular emphasis on the contributions of Robert Barnes and William Tyndale. With respect to Barnes and Tyndale, Dr. McGoldrick concluded that they conveyed Luther’s thought to England while incorporating some variations of their own. For example, one variation the author mentioned is that both Barnes and Tyndale held to the “didactic use of the divine law in the Christian life” (199). The import of this for Luther’s Scottish Connection is that the author also finds Tyndale to be a significant influence in the early years of Protestant thought in Scotland. Tyndale’s English New Testament, says Dr. McGoldrick, was read by literate, educated Scots and by the middle of the sixteenth century there “were no major obstacles in written communication between Scots and Englishmen” (20). Thus the wee man Tyndale, who was one of the early beacons of reforming illumination, was able to influence Scotland with Lutheran ideas as well as thoughts of his own. Maybe Dr. McGoldrick should consider taking the English and Scottish connection books and fuse them into a single more substantial volume that would follow the influence of Tyndale in both lands and provide a more unified picture of the extent of his influence.

Luther’s Scottish Connection dedicates a considerable portion of its text to the brave and tragic reformer, Patrick Hamilton, who died at the young age of twenty-eight and became the first martyr of the Scottish Reformation. Hamilton had spent time on the continent where he was influenced by Erasmus and John Major, but most important for the purposes of Dr. McGoldrick’s book was the influence of Martin Luther. Through the encouragement of Francis Lambert, Hamilton wrote his Dyvers Frutful Gatheriges of Scrypture, which John Frith translated into English as Patrick’s Places. Dr. McGoldrick’s book provides a copy of Patrick’s Places, which is helpful because a reading of Hamilton’s text shows the influence of Luther’s thought. Dr. McGoldrick believes that Luther’s The Freedom of the Christian, 1520, is particularly present in Patrick’s Places, along with Philip Melanchthon’s Loci Communes, 1521, and Tyndale’s The Parable of Wicked Mammon, 1527 (49).

Patrick left the continent and returned to Scotland where he married and then after brief time was tried and found guilty of heresy by Archbishop James Beaton of Glasgow. Patrick Hamilton was burned at the stake February 29, 1528.

James McGoldrick’s book accomplishes its purpose in providing the reader with a succinct and handy telling of the influence of Luther in Scotland and the background leading up to the entry of John Knox. When George Wishart entered the Scottish Reformation picture, around 1544, Dr. McGoldrick contends that Scottish Protestant thought began its turn from the teaching of the Wittenberg monk to that of Calvin and Zwingli (87). McGoldrick believes it could well be that Wishart’s translation of the First Helvetic Confession of Faith into the Scottish dialect in 1536 aided the supplanting of Lutheranism and the propagation of Swiss reforming ideas (87). Those interested in learning about the Scottish Reformation, before John Knox and his Presbyterian polity came to dominate the scene, will find Luther’s Scottish Connection a helpful, brief and easy introduction to this forgotten aspect of the Scottish Reformation.

Two helpful reference books for the study of Scottish history are the Collins Encyclopedia of Scotland, edited by John and Julia Keay, 1994, which provides general information about Scotland and its history, while church historians will appreciate the indispensable Dictionary of Scottish Church History & Theology, edited by Nigel M de S. Cameron, David F. Wright, David C. Lachman, and Donald E. Meek, 1993. David Daniell’s book, William Tyndale: A Biography, Yale, 1994, is very helpful for learning about the life and work of this highly influential personality.