John Robbins: man or myth?

Vincent Cheung has posted an op-ed by John Robbins about Cornelius Van Til. Before commenting on his opinion piece, we need to introduce a rather large caveat. You see, Mr. Robbins has a pretty unusual theory of knowledge. In his “An Introduction to Gordon Clark,” he says the following:

<< There are three sorts of cognitive states: knowledge, opinion, and ignorance. Ignorance is simply the lack of ideas. Complete ignorance is the state of mind that empiricists say we are born with: We are all born with blank minds, tabula rasa, to use John Locke’s phrase. (Incidentally, a tabula rasa mind – a blank mind – is an impossibility. A consciousness conscious of nothing is a contradiction in terms. Empiricism rests on a contradiction.) At the other extreme from ignorance is knowledge. Knowledge is not simply possessing thoughts or ideas, as some think. Knowledge is possessing true ideas and knowing them to be true. Knowledge is, by definition, knowledge of the truth. We do not say that a person "knows" that 2 plus 2 is 5. We may say he thinks it, but he does not know it. It would be better to say that he opines it.

Now, most of what we colloquially call knowledge is actually opinion: We "know" that we are in Pennsylvania; we "know" that Clinton – either Bill or Hillary – is President of the United States, and so forth. Opinions can be true or false; we just don’t know which. History, except for revealed history, is opinion. Science is opinion. Archaeology is opinion. John Calvin said, "I call that knowledge, not what is innate in man, nor what is by diligence acquired, but what is revealed to us in the Law and the Prophets." Knowledge is true opinion with an account of its truth.

It may very well be that William Clinton is President of the United States, but I do not know how to prove it, nor, I suspect, do you. In truth, I do not know that he is President, I opine it. >>

So, as we read his op-ed about CVT, we need to keep this caveat front-and-center, and put a mental asterisk by every indicative claim that is not deducible from Scripture.

We can begin with the attribution and copyright:

<<
By John W. Robbins
© The Trinity Foundation
>>

The op-ed is attributed to a certain John W. Robbins. Of course, if we are to take him at his word, then we can’t take him at his word, because this claim is not an object of knowledge. It is merely a piece of opinion.

Likewise, the copyright is sheer opinion. Indeed, it’s rather odd that the Trinity Foundation would bother to copyright its materials when Robbins’* theory of knowledge demotes the legal rules of evidence to one man’s dubious opinion over another’s. If his epistemology is sound, then how are intellectual property rights actionable?

After all, if Robbins’ opinion that someone has plagiarized his work falls short of knowledge, if his opinion isn’t demonstrably true, then what would count as the preponderance of evidence?

Indeed, this raises grave ethical questions. Isn’t Mr. Cheung in violation of the 9th commandment when he attributes this op-ed to Mr. Robbins? Cheung is passing along information which, by his own lights, he doesn’t know to be true, and cannot know to be true.

With these preliminaries out of the way, let us comment on a few of the claims made by Robbins* in his opinion piece:

<< Professor Van Til is the object of fierce loyalty and reverence by many of his students…They have been enthralled by the myth that surrounds the tall and handsome professor of theology…Hero worship is a prominent characteristic of many of Van Til’s followers, and the ordinary Christian is both baffled and embarrassed by the sounds and the spectacle of bowing and scraping that occur in certain circles. >>

Keep in mind that, by his own admission, Robbins* doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Robbins* is only opining about the existence of a tall* and handsome* professor* by the name of Cornelius Van Til* and his students* or followers*.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of hero worship, what about the “total lack of critical discussion” of Gordon Clark’s* distinctive ideas by Robbins* and Cheung* and other Clarkians?

I’d agree, though, that hero worship can be a problem, but it’s a short-lived problem. It dies out once the students and immediate disciples of the Master die out. After he is gone, and those who knew him are gone, the charismatic spell is broken.

<< Van Til’s prose is frequently unintelligible. >>

Notice that Robbins* is opining once again. Speaking for myself, I don’t find Van Til’s prose to be unintelligible.

One reason some readers find CVT hard to understand is that his vocabulary is a hangover from the days of British idealism—a philosophical school which has come and gone.

Yet that’s true of any thinker from the past. If you hope to understand Thomism, you need to bone up on Aristotelian and Scholastic nomenclature. If you hope to understand Rahner, you have to bone up on Kant and Hegel and Heidegger.

<< In an interview in Christianity Today in 1977, Van Til made the following statements, all in the same paragraph. Compare his third sentence with his sixth, and you will get some idea why understanding him is very difficult: “My concern is that the demand for non-contradiction when carried to its logical conclusion reduces God’s truth to man’s truth. It is unscriptural to think of man as autonomous. The common ground we have with the unbeliever is our knowledge of God, and I refer repeatedly to Romans 1:19. All people unavoidably know God by hating God. After that they need to have true knowledge restored to them in the second Adam. I deny common ground with the natural man, dead in trespasses and sins, who follows the god of this world”(Christianity Today, December 30, 1977, 22). In the third sentence he says, “The common ground we have with the unbeliever is our knowledge of God….” In the sixth sentence he says, “I deny common ground with the natural man….” Which is it? Or is the unbeliever not a natural man, and the natural man not an unbeliever? Do we have common ground with the natural man, the unbeliever, or don’t we? Or am I asking a foolish question based on mere human logic? >>

Yes, Robbins* is asking a foolish question. To begin with, a magazine interview is hardly the sort of forum in which you’d expect a complex thinker to throw in a lot of codicils and fine-spun distinctions.

In addition, CVT was hardly at the top of his game by the time he gave that interview. He suffered from dementia in his declining years.

At the same time, if you’ve done much reading in CVT, it is easy to reconcile these statements. On the one hand, CVT maintained that, owing to common grace, there was a measure of common ground between the believer and unbeliever.

On the other hand, he also held that there was very little common ground between believer and unbeliever when the unbeliever was an epistemically self-conscious unbeliever. And Van Til’s writing was generally directed against secular philosophers and liberal Bible scholars.

<< In the first sentence, what does “reduces God’s truth to man’s truth” mean? It certainly sounds bad, but does it mean anything? >>

What it means, as I understand CVT, is that fallen man is evasive. If you’re guilty, the truth is your enemy. So you redefine the truth to excuse your sin.

After citing some of “Van Til’s endorsements of the theistic proofs that have appeared in his published writings,” Robbins* goes on to say the following:

<< On the other hand, Van Til also makes statements such as this: “Of course Reformed believers do not seek to prove the existence of their God. To seek to prove or to disprove the existence of this God would be to seek to deny him. To seek to prove or disprove this God presupposes that man can identify himself and discover facts in relation to laws in the universe without reference to God. A God whose existence is ‘proved’ is not the God of Scripture.” He simultaneously maintains that “Reformed believers do not seek to prove the existence of their God” and that “the Reformed apologist maintains that there is an absolutely valid argument for the existence of God.”

The dogmatic assertion that the existence of God both can and cannot be proved places Van Til in his own school of apologetics. >>

All this proves is that Robbins* is a very inept reader. The key qualifying phrase is: “without reference to God.”