Van Til's Agnostic Analogy: The Answer to a Complaint: Full Transcript: Clark/Van Til Controversy

The following excerpt shows that the position of Van Til and his followers undermines the doctrine of Scripture as THE Word of God.  For Van Til Scripture is not direct and special revelation from God but merely an analogy of God's revelation:

The view of the Complaint is that “God because of his very nature must remain incomprehensible to man” (P. 2, 3: O. 8); it is “not the doctrine that God can be known only if he makes himself known and in so far as he makes himself known” (ibid.). Moreover all knowledge which man can attain differs from the knowledge of God “in a qualitative sense and not merely in degree” (P. 4, 2; O. 15). Thus God's knowledge and man's knowledge do not “coincide at any single point” (P. 5, 3; O. 21). A proposition does not “have the same meaning for man as for God” (P. 5, 2; O. 20). Man's knowledge is “analogical to the knowledge God possesses, but it can never be identified with the knowledge” which God “possesses of the same proposition” (P. 5, 3; O. 21). “The divine knowledge as divine transcends human knowledge as human, even when that human knowledge is a knowledge communicated by God” (P. 3, 1; O. 9). “Because of his very nature as infinite and absolute the knowledge which God posseses of himself and of all things must remain a mystery which the finite mind of man cannot penetrate” (ibid.). This latter statement does not mean merely that man cannot penetrate this mystery unaided by revelation; it means that even revelation by God could not make man understand the mystery, for the preceding sentences assert that it is the nature of God that renders him incomprehensible, not the lack of a revelation about it. As the analysis proceeds, these quotations with the argument from which they are taken will be seen to imply two chief points. First, there is some truth that God cannot put into propositional form; this portion of truth cannot be expressed conceptually. Second, the portion of truth that God can express in propositional form never has the same meaning for man as it has for God. Every proposition that man knows has a qualitatively different meaning for God. Man can grasp only an analogy of the truth, which, because it is an analogy, is not the truth itself.

The clear implication of Van Til's position is a neo-orthodox view of Scripture since "at no single point" is God's written Word going to coincide with God's actual words or thoughts since these are a mystery and incomprehensible to man.  The logical conclusion of Van Til's position is an agnostic view of Scripture, not the traditional view that the Bible IS the Word of God.

Reasonable Christian: The Answer to a Complaint: Full Transcript: Clark/Van Til Controversy