The Burning Bush - Far Eastern Bible College

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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
THE BATTLE OVER PRESUPPOSITIONS ON THE TEXTUAL ISSUEhouse on sand. It assumes that we cannot be certain as to God’s Words,but we can have faith in our own supposed objectivity in determiningthose. Hence, someone who believes in perfect preservation by God ofHis Words and those who reject this look at the same extant textual dataand come to radically different conclusions. However, what drives textualcritics to their conclusions is not the evidence, but their presuppositions.They are trying to reinterpret the biblical text relating to preservation (orsimply ignoring it) in the hope that it can be brought into conformity withpresent non-biblical, historical models. Essentially, they are attempting tocompartmentalise their faith and their scholarship into separate worlds.By carefully questioning the presuppositional framework being used inthe background, the spiritually sensitive scholar will avoid being ledastray by the numerous details and technical jargon of the CT advocates.Theodore Letis puts it well in a reply to D A Carson,Both schools interpret the data of NT textual criticism and moderntranslations differently, and both groups fill in the gaps in the data withassumptions which favor their given position. I hope some are beginning tosee that this is not an argument between scholarship (the established schoolrepresented by Carson) and non-scholarship (the challenging school whichhas traditionally been treated as non-scholarly and completely uncritical).To the contrary, the best representatives of both schools display genuinescholarship. Why is it, then, that these two schools co-exist on this allimportantissue of the very wording of the NT text? .... Some will fault mefor not answering every objection of Carson’s, but it was only our intentionto raise the old issue of presuppositions and to underscore the fact that thisdebate is not one between experts with data and non-experts with dogma,but rather one between experts with the same data, but different dogma—the dogma of neutrality versus the dogma of providence. 12In the uncertainty of postmodern textual criticism with its fluidtextual tradition, the only genuine alternative is a biblicalpresuppositional approach. The universe is only correctly viewed throughthe lens of Scripture and the illumination of the Holy Spirit. All we mustdo is study to find out how God describes His Words and how He willpreserve them and then find the texts that match that description. As Godis the Creator and Sustainer of the universe and His Words within it, thenit is not a naturalistic purposeless machine and “in him we live, andmove, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). God executes His sovereignWill through the works of creation (Rev 4:11) and providence (Dan 4:35).As stated in the Confession (5:1): “God, the great Creator of all things,29
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The Burning Bush - Far Eastern Bible College

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