The chapter on practical concerns deals primarily with VT’s influence, and whether it has been positive or negative. Some of his caveats need to be noted here. About the mutualism of Frame and Oliphint, he says, “I did not find anything in Van Til that would directly link him to such doctrines.” And again, “I am not blaming Van Til for anything any of his students taught. I am merely attempting to understand how one element of his thought might have unintentionally created an environment in which the prevalence of such strange theological moves make sense” (215). That being said, Mathison thinks it is possible that Van Til’s condemnation of the scholastics might have contributed to their development (215).
It is in this qualified context that Mathison asks questions about the Shepherd controversy, John Murray’s covenantal theology, and the mutualism of Frame and Oliphint. I am not sure I can agree with Mathison, however, that the attempts at recasting traditional Reformed doctrine are continual at WTS (215).
First up is Van Til’s “defense” of Norman Shepherd. I say it in quotation marks because Mathison is missing some significant context in that situation. First of all, Van Til was 81 years old when the controversy started heating up in 1976, and he was 86 years old when Shepherd left the seminary. Van Til framed the entire debate in terms of modern evangelicalism. He has been quoted as saying “Shepherd is right because Bill Bright is wrong.” Mathison quotes Muether’s biography, but fails to note the exculpatory comment “However, Van Til’s participation in the debate was minimal, and it is unclear to what extent his protest involved a close familiarity with the doctrinal issues. Robert Strimple, for example, recalled ‘that Van Til attended none of the faculty discussions about the controversy'” (222 of Muether’s biography on Van Til). Quite aside from the possibility that being elderly in such a context might make restraint a better way to go, it is quite doubtful whether Van Til can be said to have defended Shepherd’s aberrant views on justification and covenant theology. Frame likewise (though, I believe, errantly claiming that Van Til supported Shepherd’s justification doctrine) gives an exculpatory comment that is relevant to the point Mathison is trying to make when he (an avowed Shepherd supporter to this day, as one can see in his Systematic Theology on justification) said “About the Shepherd firing, I have little to say at this point except that it had little if anything to do with Shepherd’s adherence to Van Til’s principles…Beyond the fact that Van Til supported Shepherd, there was no significant connection between the controversy and Van Til’s legacy.” One could wish that these contextual factors had played any part whatsoever in Mathison’s treatment of the subject.
There have been three major theological controversies at WTS (which would hardly constitute “continual” given its 95 plus year history!): the Shepherd controversy, the Enns controversy, and the Oliphint controversy. Murray said he was recasting covenant theology. However, as several folk have noted, his treatment of the Adamic administration leaves in place the works principle. It is more a linguistic quibble that he had with the phrase “covenant of works” than a serious recasting of the structure of the covenant of works.
There is no attempt on Mathison’s part to connect the Enns controversy with Van Til, except that he mentions that the Enns controversy happened (216). One wonders why he mentions this controversy. Everything Van Til stood for on the doctrine of Scripture is against what Enns proposed. There can’t be even a tangential connection on this one. It should not even have been mentioned. Probably the reason it was is that the only way Mathison can use the term “continual” is if he included the Enns controversy.
Even on the mutualism controversy, it is difficult to see how Van Til would have contributed, even unintentionally. Van Til is completely orthodox on the attributes of God, and Mathison himself says nothing negative about Van Til’s doctrine of the attributes.
Mathison says “Based on what we find in Van Til’s books and class syllabi, it is clear that those who were his students had the idea drilled into their heads year after year that the traditional apologetics and the natural theology of the sixteenth and seventeenth century Reformed theologians led those theologians to compromise every major doctrine of Reformed theology” (216, emphasis added). I was quite shocked to read this, as it is quite grossly unfair. Van Til actively promoted confessionally Reformed theology. Mathison himself says that Van Til and he overlap on the vast majority of doctrines. Mathison seems to have forgotten that he is accusing Van Til here of rejecting the Westminster divines themselves, something Van Til never did, and if he wanted to correct any of them, it was only on apologetical methodology, not every major doctrine of Reformed theology.
Mathison also tries to connect the dots on the Federal Vision controversy to students of students of Van Til (217). He doesn’t seem to acknowledge here that many of the most vociferous enemies of the FV are also Van Tillians (myself, Richard Phillips, Guy Waters, and many in the RCUS). I might add that many defenses of the Federal Visionists appealed over and over again to the scholastic theologians (Wolfgang Musculus and Cornelius Burgess were especially frequent in my encounters, for their views on paedo-communion and baptism, respectively), especially in an effort to broaden the Reformed tradition beyond the confessions such that their errant views fit inside. Van Til would not have tolerated this broadening of the definition of Reformed theology. While Mathison does not go the route of John Robbins in blaming the entire FV controversy on Van Til, he does still seem to indicate that it falls within the stream of Van Til. I would demur. It falls within the stream of Klaas Schilder, a misreading of John Murray, Norman Shepherd, Peter Leithart, and James Jordan.
Green Baggins 