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Paul at
By: Cornelius Van Til
When Paul and Barnabas came to Lystra and performed the miracle of the healing of the man unable to walk from birth, the inhabitants wanted to worship them as gods. They called Barnabas Jupiter and Paul Hermes because he was the chief speaker. Then Paul and Barnabas "rent their clothes and ran in among the people saying, Sirs why do ye these things? We also are men of like passion with you and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven and earth and the sea and all the things that are therein: Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless he left not himself without witness in that he did good and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness. And with these sayings scarce restrained they the people, that they had not done sacrifice unto them. And there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium who per-suaded the people, and having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead" (Acts 14:14-19).
Quite a contrast this, between being sacrificed to as a god, and then being
stoned as it were to death. Which would you rather be? Paul chose rather to
be stoned to death if need be. He was willing at least to take whatever
might follow rather than be sacrificed to as a god.
Paul knows only two classes of people, those who worship and serve the
Creator and those who worship and serve the creature more than the Creator.
He had once upon a time worshiped and served the creature; then on the way
to
In a sense, this story of Paul's preaching at Lystra may be taken as typical of his entire method and-attitude when preaching the gospel to those who worshiped the creature. Creature worshipers he found everywhere he went, in the synagogues, in the market place, in the temples; among the religious and among the irreligious; among the educated and among the non-educated; among the Epicureans and Stoics as well as among the men of the street; among the naturalists and the supernaturalists alike.
Paul appealed to the heart of the natural man, whatever mask he might
wear, and required of him that he repent from the vanity of creature
worship to the fruitfulness of the worship of the "living God."
That living God had appeared to him on the way to
Having meditated on all this in the long period of his preparation for
his apostolic work, the Apostle Paul was fully determined never to have his
message subtly inter- woven with that of those who worshiped and served the
creature. He would rather be stoned to death than flat- tered.
He would rend his clothes and call upon men not to confuse his message with
that of the priests of Jupiter, with the highest being of Plato, or the
"thought thinking ]Itself" of Aristotle.
But where did Paul say anything about the god of Plato or the god of
Aristotle? Was he not from all we know more favorable to the
"monotheism" of the Greeks than he was to the polytheism of the
popular religions? At any rate was he not favorably disposed to the "monotheism"
of the Stoics whom he met in
Paul saw the many vanities in
Whatever his reason may have been for singling out the altar to the unknown God rather than the altars to sup- posedly known gods as evidence that they were religious, it surely was not that he attached himself to the system of thought that any of them professed to hold.
In particular it would be no more possible, from Paul's point of view, to attach himself to their doctrine of the unknown god than to their doctrine of their known gods. And this for the reason that their doctrine of the unknown god was involved in their doctrines of their known gods. ALL IS ONE
Basic to all the thinking of the Greeks was the assumption that all being is at bottom one, that all change comes by way of some form of emanation from that one being and is therefore ultimate as the One, and that somehow all the ultimate multiplicity that exists as due to ultimate change again ultimately returns to the One. They were therefore all of them monists; they spoke of the reality as a whole without making the distinction between the Creator and the creature. All is water, all is air, all is change or nothing changes. Whatever is true of the world was for them also true of the god or gods above the world. But they were at the same time also ultimate pluralists. To the extent that they allowed for change at all, this change was ultimate. If there was freedom anywhere, this freedom was the same sort of freedom for gods and for men; if there was accident, gods and men were alike subject to it.
There was therefore in their way of thinking no place for the supernatural in Paul's sense of the term at all. Theirs was an exclusively immanentistic way of thinking; following Adam and Eve they sought to do without God; they had no place for God, the Creator, in their system of thought. They were sure that such a God as Paul preached did not and could not exist. They were therefore sure that Paul could not "declare" this God to them. No one could know such a God as Paul believed in.
But Paul knew that on the contrary, all men at bottom know God, the
Creator. All men know that they are crea- tures of God, that they are law breakers. At bottom
they know that their own systems, according to which God can- not exist,
are rationalizations by means of which they seek to suppress the fact of
their responsibility as creatures of God. Their own systems therefore could
not satisfy them. Yet they would not, and as sinners could not, do without
these systems. These systems were like masks which they had put on their
faces not merely for "stunt night," but which they had put on so
as never to be able to remove them. So they tried over and again to polish
up and restyle these masks; there were face-liftings of various sorts. And
the particular style of masks in vogue at the time of Paul when he came to
THE SUPERNATURAL
There were according to these Greeks two ideas of "the
supernatural," one of which they would gladly recognize, which it was
custom and style at the time to recognize, and another which they would not
and could not recognize. They were glad to recognize the fact that the
universe is mysterious, that "science" does not cover the whole
of reality. They were even willing to recognize that it is so mysterious
that no one knows what it is. They had come to the conclusion that man as
finite cannot know the uni- verse (including man)
which is infinite. The infinite, they had concluded, was "wholly
other" than anything they had so far known. The infinite was without
quality. If it was not without quality it was no longer infinite. The idea
of the infinite as apeiron, as wholly
without quality, was the necessary concomitant of their idea of the
universe as known by man in terms of man.
AUTHORITY
There were therefore also two kinds of authority, one of which they
would gladly recognize and one of which they could not and would not, on
their basis, have anything to do with at all. They would gladly recognize
the authority of experts, in whatever field, the authority of those who had
had special experiences and had made special researches in one region or
another; they would be glad to hear Paul too on the subject of religion as
they might have been glad to hear Einstein on relativity. If he wanted to
speak to them about some experience that he had had with the "noumenal realm," or if he wanted to tell them of
some Einfuhlung that he enjoyed for Das Heilige,
they were perfectly willing to hear of it; they were tired anyway and had
no hopes of anything really new coming forth. But they would not listen to
Paul if he came to them with ab- solute authority
and if he claimed to tell them about that which they knew was inherently
unknowable. Who did he think he was? Was he not a human being like them-
selves? Was he not subject to the same limitation as they?
THE RESURRECTION
They were a bit suspicious, shall we say, because
of what they had heard Paul say about Jesus and the resur-
rection in the market place. But he is no common revi- valist; so let us hear
him out. Let us take him away from the rabble and ask him to make clear to
us what he means by Jesus and the resurrection. Maybe there are such things
as resurrections. Aristotle has told us about mon-
strosities has he not? Reality seems to have a
measure of the accidental in it. And if anywhere, history is the realm
where the accidental appears. So maybe he has something strange to tell US.
We have an auditorium in which there is some vacant space. But Paul speaks
to them about Jesus and the resur- rection in a way not expected by them. He was
determined to know nothing among them save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He wanted to speak to them of the living
God, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe and of mankind. He wanted them
to be converted from the service of man to the service of God; he wanted
them to become covenant- keepers instead of covenant-breakers. So he did
the equiv- alent of what he did in the presence
of the men of Lystra. Again he tore his garments, this time figuratively.
Again he said in effect, "Sirs why do ye these things? Why are you
seeking to weave the resurrection of Jesus Christ into the pattern of your immanentistic way of thinking? I am come to preach unto
you that ye should turn from these vanities to the living God. You yourself
admit that reality is mysterious. You have many altars to gods you think
you know and then you have an altar to a god you say you do not know. Will
you show me how you make this sort of view intelligible to yourself? What
is the relation between the gods you say you know and the god or gods you
say you do not know? Is it not the same reality, the same universe of which
in one breath you say that it is wholly unknown and also that it is wholly
known? If there is that in the universe which, on your system, is wholly
unknown, and if this which is wholly unknown has an influence for good or
for evil on that which you say you know, do you then really know anything
at all? Why not destroy all the altars to the gods you say cannot be known?
On your basis it is impossible to know anything unless you know everything,
and since by admission you do not know everything you should admit that the
whole of your religious activity is an irrational procedure. And what is
true of your religion is true of your science. You do not know what water,
earth, air and fire are. You appeal to some common principle above them all
from which as a common source they spring. But then this common source has,
as Anaximander said, no positive quality at all.
It must be without quality to be truly beyond and thus truly common, and
when truly beyond and therefore without quality, it cannot serve as the
explanation of anything that has quality in the world that you claim to
know.
Your worship is therefore one of ignorance, of ignorance far deeper than you are willing and able on your assumptions to own. On your basis there is no knowledge at all; there is nothing but ignorance.
CULPABLE IGNORANCE But worse than that, your ignorance is not only much deeper than you own; it is of a wholly different character than you think it is. It is ethical, not metaphysical in character. You are making excuse for your ignorance on the ground that you are finite and that the world is infinite. And you make an altar to a god whom you speak of as un- known. Well, God the true God, is not unknown to man at all. He is not unknown to you. It is but sham modesty when you speak of reverently bowing before the mysterious universe. To be sure, finite man cannot know all the wondrous works of God. But man can and does know that God, his Creator, exists. Man can and does know that God is the living God who is not only the original Creator but also the controller and bountiful benefactor of mankind. He is not far from any of us, His creatures. Has He not made us aware of ourselves only as we are aware of Him as our God and as our Judge? Your own conscience an- swers "Yes" to what I say. You must admit that it is only because you are seeking to hide the true state of affairs about yourself that you have erected this altar to the unknown god. You are trying to make yourself believe that you have done justice to the demands of God if only you faintly recognize that there is something that is higher than yourself, that God is bigger and better than yourself. But when you thus recognize God as bigger and better you are still bringing Him down to the level of the creature. You are still worshiping and serving the creature more than the Creator. The God you are worshiping is Himself involved in the cosmos and therefore dependent upon its laws. He is in need of your worship; He is not sovereign over all but dependent upon all. What ignorance, what guilty ignorance, what unbelievable ignorance for those who call themselves philosophers and pretend to know what the people do not know.
REPENTANCE AND HOPE
But there is hope; there is hope through repentance. I am here to tell you
of the way of escape; I am not a philosopher. I am not telling about
monstrosities and wondrous things when I speak of the resurrection. I speak
of the Creator God who in Jesus of Nazareth came down to earth to die for
the sins of men, and was raised for their justification. Through Him there
is pardon for your sins, for men of all classes, for common men, for
philosophers and wise men, too. But to receive this pardon you must accept
this message on the authority of God Himself. I am come to tell you that of
which by your system you could never know. I am come to tell you that your
systems are not merely inadequate in the sense that they do not cover all
the questions that men must ask, but that they are sinful because they
leave out God. The wrath of God is upon you philosophers, upon you
scientists, you men who are monotheists as well as upon you who are
pluralists, upon you who recognize the supernatural as well as upon you who
do not recognize the supernatural, upon you who make the altar to the
unknown gods and upon you who make the altars to the known gods. You heard
me preach Jesus and the resurrection in the marketplace. I am now, at your
request, giving you the setting for such preaching. And the setting is
all-important. It is that which gives meaning to the fact of the
resurrection. Without this setting the resurrection would be a monstrosity
that you could weave into the pattern of your immanentistic
views. Please do not so interpret the resurrection. I am teaching you of a
philosophy of history in which there are no mon- strosities. The Jesus who died and rose again from the
dead died to remove the sins of men that believe and trust in Him.
Naturally those who do not so believe and trust in Him will finally be
punished. For He is God, He is the Creator and Controller of the laws of
the universe. He is the ever living God. He will appear again in a special
way to judge as He has once come in the past to redeem. He came into the
world that they that should believe in Him should be saved and that they
who should not believe in Him should be damned; He will therefore come
again as He promised His apostles when He left for heaven; He will come
again, the second time as the Judge of men, to judge men by the truth which
He himself is.
Will you not then repent and bow to him now? Kiss the Son lest He be angry with you in the judgment day.
By this time the men that heard him knew that Paul did not mean the same thing that their poets had meant when they too said that men live and move and have their being in God and that they are the off spring of God. The Stoics meant by such expressions to assert that men were essentially of a piece with God: men are by virtue of their intellects participant in deity, they said. The intellect of man as participant in deity cannot sin. Man's intellect may make mistakes because it is finite, but it cannot be wrong in its purposes.
THE FRAME OF REFERENCE
So Paul tells them that if their poets have said what is right as far as
the words are concerned they should have placed a
different meaning in these words than they did. If they said what was true
and right, they said what is right because their systems are not right.
They could say what is right not in accord with, but only in spite of their
systems. It is because the framework of the universe is what Paul spoke of
when he proclaimed to them the God whom in their consciences they knew, but
whom according to their professed systems they did not know, the Creator
and Controller of the universe, that they could say what is true about
parts of that world or about the whole world. They could say this
adventitiously only. That is, it would be in accord with what they deep
down in their hearts knew to be true in spite of their systems. It was that
truth which they sought to cover up by means of their professed systems,
which enabled them to discover truth as philoso- phers and scientists. Would Paul for a moment attach
himself to what Stoics meant when they spoke of man as the offspring of
God? No more than he would attach him- self to what they meant who had
built the altar to the unknown God. If he attached himself to the one he
could also attach himself to the other. But he could not and did not attach
himself to either. Both were involved in one another, and if Paul had
attached himself to either he could no longer have preached Jesus and the
resurrection.
Jesus and the resurrection presupposed the doctrine of creation. Jesus and the resurrection implied the doctrine of judgment to come. It was the Son of God who had made the world and who was to come as judge of men at the end of the history of the world, who died and rose again from the dead in His human nature. It would not be this Jesus nor this resurrection that Paul would be preaching if he preached Him as consistent with the system of origin or destiny as held to by any of the forms of Hellen- istic philosophy of the day. How could the resurrection be preached as evidence of the coming of the judgment and therefore as evidence of the coming condemnation of those that did not believe and trust in Him, if the universe is all of one piece and gods and men are both subject to its laws? How could Paul communicate to the Greeks about the resurrection of Christ if he did not place this resurrection before them in the theistic frame of reference given in the Bible in order thus to distinguish it from the ,'monstrosities" of Greek philosophy?
So then we conclude that even at Athens Paul did virtually the same
thing that he had done in Lystra; he challenged the wisdom of the world. He
did what later he did in his letter to the Corinthinians
when he said: "Where is the wise? where is
the scribe? where is the dis-
puter of this world? hath
not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that the world by
wisdom knew not God, it pleased God through the foolishness of preach- ing to save them that believe" (I Cor.
Is the
Then we must surely do what Paul did, tear our gar- ments when men would weave our message into the sys- tems of thought which men have themselves devised. We must set the message of the cross into the framework into which Paul set it. If we do not do so, then we are not really and fully preaching Jesus and the resurrection. The facts of Jesus and the resurrection are what they are only in the framework of the doctrines of creation, providence and the consummation of history in the final judgment. No man has found this framework unless he has been converted from the other framework through the very fact of the death and resurrection of Jesus as applied to him by the Holy Spirit and His regenerating power. It takes the fact of the resurrection to see its proper framework and it takes the framework to see the fact of the resurrection; the two are accepted on the authority of Scripture alone and by the regenerating work of the Spirit. Half-way measures therefore will not suffice; the only method that will suffee is that of challenge of the wisdom of the world by the wisdom of God.
Let us look at some of those who claim to believe or bring the Christian message to men today but who still want to attach this message of Jesus and the resurrection to the framework of philosophical speculation that does not fit with it.
CHRISTIANITY AND REASON (1)
The recent little book entitled Christianity and Reason is similar to that
other little book of a few years ago called The Christian Answer. The aim
of both books is to make Christianity acceptable to its cultured despisers.
One of those cultured despisers, thinks Dr. Theodore M. Greene, was
Professor Walter Stace who wrote an article in
the Atlantic Monthly of September 1948 under the title Man Against
Darkness. According to Stace the universe has
been shown to have no meaning. Science has shown that man need no longer
build any altars to the unknown god. He knows that there are no gods, at
least no gods that are good and will reward the good. Against this thesis
Greene would prove that "science, in its strict sense, can neither
prove nor disprove God or goodness or beauty. It simply has nothing to say
on these subjects" (p. 9). If Stace's
assumption, that all experience is of a sensory nature, were true, then his
conclusion would be right. "But what is to prevent us from being
really empirical and believing that man's moral and religious experiences,
which are no less coercive, vivid, sharable. and
rationally interpretable than (1) Ed. D. Myers, Oxford University
Press, 1951 are his sensory experiences, provide further contacts with
reality and further clues to its nature?" (p. 11). Greene is
contending that it is quite possible to reach a "moral and religious
dimension of reality" by a truly scientific method. He thinks it is
possible to hold intelligently that "man can in some measure know
God" (p. 12). He would also justify the idea of authority in religion
as wholly proper for the subject. But in all this he is very careful to
keep his feet on the ground as he thinks. He agrees wholly with Stace that science says nothing about God. He insists
very care- fully that whatever any minister of religion might ever want to
say about God and religion must be in accord with what has already been
said about the universe by science even if this science has said nothing
about God. "Not only, therefore, is the position I would defend not
anti- scientific, it is committed to reliance upon scientific evi- dence and to the full
incorporation of accepted scientifically supported interpretations of
nature" (p. 9). It is thus that the would-be defender of religion
makes sure that there shall never be any preaching of Jesus and the
resurrection after the manner of Paul as far as he can help it. Even if the
fact of the resurrection should be preached, it would have to be reduced,
according to Greene, to a repeatable instance of a law that the scientist
can deal with on his exclusively immanentistic
principles. Here a lay preacher of religion, though he says that "Man
in the twilight need not falter" yet leaves him without any call to
repentance, without any confrontation with Jesus and the resurrection. The
worshiper of the creature is left without a challenge.
John Wild speaks in the same book on The Present Relevance o Catholic
Theology as maintained by theologians of the Anglican communion. He speaks
of a "keen sense of transcendent reality" (p. 34). He would speak
of the Deus absconditus, but again this Deus absconditus must be sure that be does not affirm
anything that is out of accord with the realism that has been developed by
the natural man in accord with the method of Aristotle. Jesus and the
resurrection, surely we ought by all means to have it, but by all means
only as a monstrosity, not as something that requires conversion on the
part of those who are confronted with it. George F. Thomas, Professor of
Religious Thought at
In each case the writers of this volume, as were the writers of The Christian Answer, are careful to maintain that what they assert about Jesus and the resurrection must be seen in the non-theistic framework that destroys its very significance and challenge to conversion. No one, in hearing what these men say, will feel compelled to ask himself whether he is ready to meet his judge.
DIALECTICAL THEOLOGY
But what then of the dialectical theologians? Do they not present the fact
of Jesus and the resurrection as a challenge to conversion? Did not Barth vigorously reject Brunner's idea when he
suggested that the Christian must make his religion understandable to the
consciousness of the time? Did he not write his pamphlet Nein and assert
that it is the first commandment by which we as Christians are to live?
Strange as it may seem, it is precisely Barth who ex- hibits best of all how one cannot present Jesus and the resurrection at all unless one does it in the framework in which Paul presented it. For what has happened? Barth seems to proclaim Jesus and the resurrection as a fact and on the absolute authority of that Christ Himself. And he tells men that there is no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. But he adds that all men are in Christ Jesus and that all men do walk after the Spirit. How else could they be men? No man can be conscious of himself without being conscious of forgiveness of his sins in Christ. Self- consciousness and Christ-consciousness are involved in one another. The No of God, the condemnation by God of the unrighteous, cannot in any case be the last word of God. His Yes is the final word. The negation of God, that is the sinofmanagainstGod,isan"impossiblepossibility." Man sins against God, of course he sins against God, all men sin against God, but in sinning against God they are in God; how else could they be present to God? How else can a child disobey the parent that gives it orders unless it be in the house of the parent? How else can the little child slap its father in the face unless it sit on the knee of the father?
It is the resurrection of Jesus Christ which, according to Barth, guarantees this fact that all men, to be men, must be in Him. Thus for him the resurrection is witness of the fact that there is no judgment coming in the sense that Paul used the word judgment. He uses the facts of Jesus and the resurrection as evidence that men need no conversion in the sense that Paul spoke of conversion; men are already converted when they are aware of them- selves as men. And all this because Barth is once more trying to fit the fact of Jesus and the resurrection into the framework that is accepted by an immanentist philosophy. Those who worship and serve the creature are thus not asked to serve and worship the Creator; they are rather told that what they are worshiping is the proper object of worship.
EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY
How then shall the Reformed minister set off his preaching of Christ and
the resurrection from that of the old and the new modernism of which
mention has just been made? Can he join the "evangelical" in this
matter? Is not the deity and the resurrection of Christ
one doctrine on which all evangelicals and all Reformed Christians agree?
To answer this question let us first assert that all true Christians
believe in the resurrection in their hearts. But it is not true that all
true Christian preachers preach the resurrection of Christ in the same way.
In particular there is a great difference between the "evangelical" and the Reformed way of preaching the resurrection. The "evangelical" will silently grant that the non-Christian scientist and philosopher have interpreted the "phenomenal realm" correctly with their exclusively immanentistic principles. He does this by saying in effect that those who believe the resurrection of Christ see more than the scientist and the philosopher can discover. The resurrection is iust said to open "great vistas of truth" not falling within the field of science.
Secondly the "evangelical" will preach the resurrection not as an indisputable fact but as something that Christians believe in and bet their lives on for reasons that are not objective.
In both of these points the "evangelical," as is his wont, makes concession to natural man's sense of autonomy. In both of these cases the "evangelical" seeks "common ground" with the unbeliever in order to win him. In both of these cases the evangelical compromises the gospel and to an extent frustrates his own efforts. There can be no full preaching or speaking of the resurrection unless the entire framework of non-Christian thought be challenged. Reformed Christians are bound to be tempted toward cooperation with evangelicals in the presentation of doc- trines that all Protestants are said to have in common. Yet their own system of theology ought to lead them to follow Paul at whatever cost.
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