Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

APPENDIX C
be destroyed. The two exist together. But the language
of promise indicates that Isaiah knew full well that in
his day (and in our day), churls are called liberal and
vice versa. Men refuse to apply their knowledge of
God’s standards to the world in which they live. But it
shall not always be thus.
At this point, we face two crucial questions. The
answers separate many Christian commentators. First,
should we expect this knowledge to come instantaneously?
Second, when this prophesied world of
epistemological self-consciousness finally dawns, which
group will be the earthly victors, churls or liberals?
The amillennialist must answer that this parallel
development of knowledge is gradual. The postmillenialist
agrees. The premillennialist must dissent.
The premil position is that the day of self-awareness
comes only after the Rapture and the establishment
subsequently of the earthly kingdom, with Christ ruling
on earth in person. The amil position sees no era of preconsummation,
pre-final judgment righteousness.
Therefore, he must conclude that the growth in selfawareness
does separate the saved from the lost
culturally, but since there is no coming era of godly
victory culturally, the amillennialist has to say that this
ethical and epistemological separation leads to the
defeat of Christians on the battlefields of culture. Evil
will triumph before the final judgment, and since this
process is continuous, the decline into darkness must be
part of the process of differentiation over time. This
increase in self-knowledge therefore leads to the victory
of Satan’s forces over the church.
The postmillennialist categorically rejects such a view
of knowledge. As the ability of Christians to make
accurate, God-honoring judgments in history increases
over time, more authority is transferred to them. As
pagans lose their ability to make such judgments, as a
direct result of their denial of and war against biblical
law, authority will be removed from them, just as it was
removed from Israel in 70 A.D. True knowledge in the
postmillennial framework leads to blessing in history,
not a curse. It leads to the victory of God’s people, not
their defeat. But the amillennialist has to deny this.
The increase of true self-knowledge is a curse for
Christians in the amillennial system. Van Til makes
this fundamental in his book on common grace– his
only systematically erroneous and debilitating book.
Van Til’s A millennial Version of Common Grace
We now return to the question of common grace. The
slow, downward drift of culture parallels the growth in
self-awareness, says the amillennialist. This has to
mean that common grace is to be withdrawn as time
progresses. The restraining hand of God will be
progressively removed. Since the amillennialist
believes that things get worse before the final
judgment, he has to see common grace as earlier grace
(assuming he admits the existence of common grace at
all). This has been stated most forcefully by Van Til,
who holds a doctrine of common grace and who is an
amillennialist:
All common grace is earlier grace. Its commonness lies in
its earliness. It pertains not merely to the lower dimensions of
life. It pertains to all dimensions of life, but to all these
dimensions ever decreasingly as the time of history goes on.
At the very first stage of history there is much common grace.
There is a common good nature under the common favor of
God. But this creation-grace requires response. It cannot
remain what it is. It is conditional. Differentiation must set in
and does set in. It comes first in the form of a common
rejection of God. Yet common grace continues; it is on a
“lower” level now; it is long-suffering that men may be led to
repentance . . . . Common grace will diminish still more in
the further course of history. With every conditional act the
remaining significance of the conditional is reduced. God
allows men to follow the path of their self-chosen rejection of
Him more rapidly than ever toward the final consummation.
God increases His attitude of wrath upon the reprobate as
time goes on, until at the end of time, at the great
consummation of history, their condition has caught up with
their state. 6
Van Til affirms the reality of history, yet it is the history
of continuous decline. The unregenerate become
increasingly powerful as common grace declines. But
why? Why should the epistemological self-awareness
described in Isaiah 32 necessarily lead to defeat for the
Christians? By holding to a doctrine of common grace
which involves the idea of the common favor of God
toward all creatures (except Satan, says Van Til), he
then argues that this favor is withdrawn, leaving the
unregenerate a free hand to attack God’s elect. If
common grace is linked with God’s favor, and God’s
favor steadily declines, then that other aspect of
common grace, namely, God’s restraint, must also be
withdrawn. Furthermore, the third feature of common
grace, civic righteousness, must also disappear. Van Til’s
words are quite powerful:
But when all the reprobate are epistemologically selfconscious,
the crack of doom has come. The fully selfconscious
reprobate will do all he can in every dimension to
destroy the people of God. So while we seek with all our
power to hasten the process of differentiation in every
dimension we are yet thankful, on the other hand, for “the
day of grace,” the day of undeveloped differentiation. Such
tolerance as we receive on the part of the world is due to this
fact that we live in the earlier, rather than in the later, stage
of history. And such influence on the public situation as we
can effect, whether in society or in state, presupposes this
undifferentiated stage of development. 7
Consider the implications of what Van Til is saying.
History is an earthly threat to Christian man. Why? His
amil argument is that common grace is earlier grace. It
declines over time. Why? Because God’s attitude of
favor declines over time with respect to the
unregenerate. With the decline of God’s favor, the
other benefits of common grace are lost. Evil men
become more thoroughly evil.
6. Van Til, Common Grace, pp. 82-83. 7. Ibid., p. 85.
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