Common Grace
Overview
According to the Preface, this book “seeks primarily to present the salient features of the Reformed conception of common grace on the basis of these materials. In doing so it has at the same time an apologetical aim. It seeks to suggest, as far as it is possible to do so in short compass, that the Reformed Faith, in setting forth most faithfully the Scriptural doctrines of free grace, at the same time provides the only solid foundation for the general ordinances of creation. Nature and grace alike come to their own in the Reformed Faith and nowhere else.”
Do not miss out on the updated release of The Works of Cornelius Van Til.
Product Details
- Title: Common Grace
- Author: Cornelius Van Til
- Publisher: Presbyterian and Reformed
- Publication Date: 1947
About Dr. Cornelius Van Til
Dr. Cornelius Van Til, served as a professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, for 43 years. He retired in 1972, but remained as an emeritus professor until his death in 1987. Van Til, an immigrant from The Netherlands, was one of the most respected apologetic theologians of his time.
Van Til earned degrees from Calvin College, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Princeton University on his way to becoming an Orthodox Presbyterian Minister. He served throughout the ministry and scholarly fields, including teaching as an instructor of apologetics at Princeton Theological Seminary and being heavily involved with the foundation of the Philadelphia-Montgomery Christian Academy.
His most noted writings include The New Modernism, The Defense of the Faith, and Christianity and Barthianism. Much of his work with apologetics focuses on the presuppositions of humans, the difference between believers and non-believers, and the opposition between Christian and non-Christian worldviews.
More information about Van Til as a teacher and Reformed theologian is available in an article Eric Sigward wrote for New Horizons entitled "Van Til Made Me Reformed." Read the article as HTML or PDF (copyright 2004 by New Horizons; used by permission)
Top Highlights
“To be constructed rightly, theistic proof ought to presuppose the ontological trinity and contend that, unless we may make this presupposition, all human predication is meaningless. The words ‘cause,’ ‘purpose,’ and ‘being,’ used as universals in the phenomenal world, could not be so used with meaning unless we may presuppose the self-contained God.” (source)
“In a general way we may affirm that, for Kuyper, common grace is primarily a restraining power of God, working either with or without man as an instrument, by which the original creation powers of the universe are given an opportunity for a certain development to the glory of God.” (source)
“According to any consistently Christian position, God, and God only, has ultimate definitory power. God’s description or plan of the fact makes the fact what it is. What the modern scientist ascribes to the mind of man Christianity ascribes to God.” (source)
“The Christian and the non-Christian notions of mystery are as the poles apart. The Christian notion rests on the presupposition of the existence of the self-contained ontological trinity of God, who dwells in light that no man can approach unto. The non-Christian notion rests on the assumption of the existence of would-be autonomous man who has not yet exhaustively interpreted the realms of ultimate chance. The Greeks held to the latter notion. The very notion of God, as Aristotle held to it, is obtained by abstraction till a final empty concept is reached. In Aristotle’s case it is the emptiest of empty negations that is decorated with the name of God.” (source)
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Cris Dickason
3/24/2018
David O. Beale
10/22/2014
