The Burning Bush - Far Eastern Bible College

The Burning Bush 16/1 (January 2010)Before we draw it from Scripture, we must assure ourselves that there is aknowledge of God in the Scriptures. And, before we do that, we must assureourselves that there is a knowledge of God in the world. And, before we dothat, we must assure ourselves that a knowledge of God is possible for man.And, before we do that, we must assure ourselves that there is a God toknow. 8Cornelius Van Til rightly saw this inconsistency in the old Princetonschool of Warfield,Deciding, therefore, to follow the Reformers in theology, it was natural thatI attempt also to do so in apologetics. I turned to such Reformed apologistsas Warfield, Greene, and others. What did I find? I found the theologians ofthe “self-attesting Christ,” defending their faith with a method which deniedprecisely that point. 9Reymond also observes,Here Warfield calls for a very complete natural theology to be erected byhuman reason. It would be very interesting to learn from him how heintended to prove, without presupposing the truthfulness of all that theScriptures affirm about such matters, that the one living and true God exists,that man is natively able to know him, that there is a knowledge of God inthe world, and that this God has made himself uniquely knownpropositionally at the point of the Hebrew/Christian Scriptures, and toprove all of this before he draws any of it from the Scriptures. Frankly, ifmen could assure themselves of all this on their own, and assure themselvesof all this before they draw any of it from Scripture, it may be legitimatelyasked, would they need Scripture revelation at all? And would not their“religion” be grounded in their labors, a monument to their ownintelligence? 10Ironically, Warfield once warned,Science, philosophy, scholarship, represent not stable but constantlychanging entities. And nothing is more certain than that the theology whichis in close harmony with the science, philosophy, and scholarship of todaywill be much out of harmony with the science, philosophy, and scholarshipof tomorrow. 11It is tragic that he never followed his own advice.Those who adopt this Warfieldian worldview consistently mustbelieve that their faith is built upon nothing but the word of man. Thisworldview also assumes that man is alone in the universe and is capableof making independent, autonomous judgments about the world aroundhim, with no reference to God. Such a view is to build an epistemological28