Van Tillians believe that their view of “revelational epistemology” is the only legitimate heir of the Reformed doctrine of sola Scriptura. Several responses could be given. However, I want to restrict myself to one road that is a little less traveled. If one presses the biblicist rendition of the Reformed doctrine of Scripture, it leads to an ironic conclusion. That greatest irony—so we classicalists maintain—is that it would essentially empty the words of Scripture of their objective meaning. This is actually true of any consistent sort of biblicism. 

But how is this the case?

Van Tillianism will not allow for a natural theology beyond what regenerate believers can make of general revelation, and that only as each truth is interpreted by special revelation. What exactly this would look like is something that presuppositionalists never get around to sketching out. A rare exception might be several of the works of Vern Poythress where the concept of “redeeming” philosophy or science is given expression. But then there are the extreme cases, like Jeffrey Johnson, who would have us believe that there are no categories of legitimate natural theology that are not taught in Scripture in a more authoritative form. In short, Nature and Scripture stand in antithesis. “Natural reason” is not to be considered foundational for any part of those truths given to us by the Spirit.

Most thinking Christians sense that something does not add up here. It has the appearance of a pious “taking one’s stand in Scripture,” to use an expression uttered by Bavinck well before Van Til. And yet, there is the unsettling of common sense that suspects that more than our apologetics encounters may be undermined if such language were really taken seriously. The first problem, I suggest, is with that language itself. In fact, we are equivocating over the very central term—Nature.

All Things are Things With Natures 

This will be our first premise. It is really only an application of the law of identity, namely, that A = A. Of course the word “nature” can often mean a synonym for “the physical world,” or in these discussions, “the sinful nature,” so that the nature of man is what he is after Adam first sinned, whereas one would use the word essence to speak of that original constitution of Adam’s being.

Equivocations aside, the word “nature” in this context simply means “the way that a thing is,” whether the properties or predicates of that thing. When we see it this way, absolutely everything has a nature. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be at all. To be is to be some-thing, not no-thing. Nor can it be any-old-thing. 

Hume was being quite unreasonable to sever the necessary connection between causes and effects, leaving only custom as our reason for believing that the sun will rise tomorrow, or that this has anything to do with the rooster’s crow. I may not be able to penetrate into the innermost powers between those occurrences, but I can be sure that the sun is just as unable to cue the rooster to give a better explanation than my own tomorrow morning. And why is that? It is because sunrises and roosters are what they are, and not something else. This is true of physical phenomena, but also of the metaphysical. It is true also about the life of the mind and all of its objects of contemplation, whether visible or invisible. 

Propositions are Things With Natures 

At first glance, we might think that the ontological status of a proposition must be terribly controversial or academic. I would only ask the reader to try and imagine a world in which our statements were in no way accurate representations of the realities that they claim to represent. We do not need to reinvent the wheel here. This is precisely what was at stake in the resolution of analogical language offered by Thomas Aquinas. Our words are neither univocal in relation to objects they represent, nor are they entirely equivocal. That is, they are neither perfect identities nor utterly unrelated. Rather, our words are sufficiently like all those objects with natures. Analogical speech is not only about word and word, but also about sign and thing. 

Now a proposition is simply a combination of such words, including a subject and predicate. Someone could say, “Look, a proposition isn’t a thing—it isn’t an object with mass and so forth.” Of course this assumes the materialist viewpoint: that only physical objects are things or “objects” in any sense of the word. But this is exactly what the Great Tradition in the West has always denied, and it is no proof that they were wrong to assume that they were up front. 

If analyzing this on a deep philosophical level doesn’t appeal to the reader, then let me only ask this: Is a proposition something or nothing? You will not say it is “nothing” in the sense of an illusion, will you? Perhaps it is enough to say that a proposition is a mental construct, an idea in the form of words that may be represented by either sound waves or else the ink on a piece of paper. Very well. But that only raises another difficulty for anyone who would deny that propositions have real existence. 

Every proposition has a truth value. It is either true or false. We may grant that the way our minds come into contact with a new proposition is by those sound waves, or those ink patterns, or perhaps we might make new combinations within our own minds. But then what about those truth values?

If it is true that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” can it also be false that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” at the same time and in the same relationship? Well, no, of course not. This would violate the law of noncontradiction. So the proposition must be true in such a way that it could never be rendered false by any of our finite minds. 

We may expand this in ways applicable to the apologetics debate. For example, we could make our third premise: “All common notions may be converted into propositions,” or we might say, “All knowledge of things in nature is ultimately about God (e.g. Rom. 1:20).” Those familiar with the debate will see easily enough how these would move us to the conclusion that singular natural theological propositions cannot be “true” for the believer but “false” for the unbeliever. 

And yet this is exactly what the Van Tillian critique of the use of natural theology in apologetics drives us toward. It is seldom explicitly stated. However, if one so presses the inability of the unbeliever to mean the same thing by concepts such as “cause” or “good” and “design” then it is not merely the positive demonstrations of Christianity that are slain on the altar, but it is not clear how negative demolition of the skeptic’s presuppositions will fair any better. For this presuppositional approach will use words just as much; and if the unbeliever cannot make head or tail precisely out of those most common of notions, how exactly is the incoherence of his own foundation going to be intelligible? Our present purpose, however, is not apologetics at all. The ax of such a merciless biblicism cuts even further down. Let us go back to the Bible itself.

All Biblical Propositions Correspond to Extra-Biblical Objects with Natures 

We should return to the example we used of a proposition before. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” We know this as Genesis 1:1. But was this true before Moses wrote it? It was “in the beginning” after all—not merely in the beginning of the Bible, but in the beginning of space and time. Of course we will all answer Yes. Someone might reply, “Well, just a moment. Yes, the reality of it was the case before Moses had it revealed to him, but as a proposition, that is a different matter.” Indeed. Philosophers will distinguish between propositions and states of affairs. We agree wholeheartedly that the reality or “state” of that initial act of creation is not the same as the proposition which represents it. However, this will hardly spoil the lesson. If someone uttered the same words as Moses before the Bible was written—indeed, if someone had said words that were properly synonymous to them, even if differently worded—would it have been true before Genesis 1:1 was first written? Yes, again.

Now let us expand our application. Instead of thinking of the truth of a proposition “before” a biblical proposition, now let us think of one “beyond” a biblical proposition. Here the time of the utterance or thought would not be the point. Simply that the proposition is stated about shared objects with a biblical proposition. Let me offer an example to make my meaning plain. John 4:11 tells us that Jacob’s well is very deep. Modern archeology confirms this. A garden variety skeptic in Israel or someone traveling there can look and say, “That’s a deep well.” The referents “deep” and “well” will be the same for extra-biblical speakers as it was for the Samaritan woman who uttered the words recorded. The sense of both words will be sufficient to attach themselves to the same referents as well. 

Someone who sees where all of this is headed may object and say, “All such examples are completely irrelevant, as they regard mundane issues! Our whole point is that the unbeliever’s presuppositions—that is, his most fundamental commitments—will not allow him to see the same truth about more ultimate things.” 

However, this is not the way that the Apostle Paul saw things. He even quoted two pagan poets concerning the nature of God in Acts 17:28. 

“For 

‘In him we live and move and have our being’;

as even some of your own poets have said,

‘For we are indeed his offspring.’”

Now this raises the same question, but it presents a great difficulty for Van Tillianism, not merely for apologetic encounters but for the very objective nature of truth. The question is this: Were those Greeks correct about our existence being upheld by God’s being and about being the product, or “offspring,” of God? If they were right, then it is irrelevant to our question what else they got wrong about God. If they were wrong, then why did Paul quote them approvingly under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? 

My guess is that the Van Tillian will not seize the latter horn of the dilemma, but will go for the first. In other words, they will likely reply, “It is not that they were wrong as far as it goes, but such natural theology is worthless precisely because of all else that they get wrong. Those beliefs were not of the true God, and Paul is not affirming that it is.” 

Indeed he is not, but you quite missed the point. Our only aim here is to show that the two propositions uttered here by these pagans outside of Scripture were also uttered by Paul inside of Scripture. The first set of instances of the proposition were not rendered “false” and the second set “true” by virtue of being external or internal to Scripture. 

“Ah, but Marino, this is also a bad example because in this case the propositions really are identical [*The chances that Paul paraphrased is never considered, but let us leave that aside*]; but you classicalists want to show that this is true about things not said in Scripture, don’t you?” 

Well, yes, you have found me out.

But surely the Van Tillian would not want to object to this in all cases. Take for example the divine attributes like omniscience, eternality, and immutability in the teeth of passages which seem to show that God changes his mind or his will in response to what man does. I take it that the Presuppositionalist will want to answer the Open Theist or the Molinist in exactly the way that we would, citing the category of anthropomorphism, among other things. 

So far, so good. But what is an anthropomorphism? It is a narrative depiction of God as if in the form (morphe) of a man (anthropos). This of course assumes that the divine essence does not actually “regret” or “turn” or “forget” or “not do the thing he would have done,” in such a way as he really “would have” done it. But where in the Bible does it deny any of this? The Van Tillian will rightly point to various passages that clearly speak to God’s omniscience, eternality, and immutability. But then there are these passages. So what is the tiebreaker? We do not deny that these passages upholding the attributes of omniscience, eternality, and immutability are clear. We are simply pointing to the other guys in the discussion with their set of verses, which they take to be even clearer. 

In short, where are the verses that tell us plainly how to adjudicate between the two competing sets of verses? You may say, “But they are not competing at all!” I agree. But then where are the verses saying that? Are you starting to see the problem now? 

All of these concepts (whether in biblical texts or in these reflections about them) are precisely concepts. They are objects of the mind with natures that are what they are (A = A) independent of the ink patterns. Yes, even when those ink patterns are the inscripturated form of the inerrant Word of God. To treat words as ends in themselves is precisely a dead end—lots of dead ends. One for every word, in fact. The reason is that propositions and their constituent parts are being conceived in an atomistic fashion. When they are made self-referential, they are a hall of mirrors with no visitors or any other objects inside. 

That we know that God is not a burning bush or even a fire implies that we know both the nature of God (e.g. immutable) and the nature of the sign (e.g. mutable). The account I am alluding to is obviously in the inspired book of Exodus; but the objects of what we know here are all real natures that we may form true propositions about. And we can do so about the same objects spoken about in Scripture, and in words not identical to the ones in Scripture, and even to communicate truths that are antecedent to those Scriptural truths or else consequent to them. They would be no less true for being in such logical relationships. 

By an antecedent truth to a truth “in Scripture,” I simply mean a truth that must be true in order for the inscripturated truth to be true. This is necessarily the case about absolutely every biblical proposition in countless ways. Take even the shortest verse in the Bible—“Jesus wept” (Jn. 11:35). That Jesus wept requires that 1. Jesus has a human nature, 2. Emotions are proper to human nature, and 3. It belongs to human emotion to weep. The first proposition can at least be supported by a variety of proof texts. The second and third (a) represent objects of nature, (b) may be affirmed by the unregenerate, and (c) are nowhere explicitly stated in Scripture. Yet their truths are both (d) true before Jesus exemplified that reality, and (e) understood to be true antecedent to making the connection upon reading the biblical text.

By a consequent truth to a truth “in Scripture,” I now mean a truth which is logically derived from an inscripturated truth. Here is what the Puritans meant by “good and necessary consequence” (Westminster Confession of Faith, I.6). Even here natural theology is at work in the operations of logic. One may not consciously be aware of avoiding fallacies, or the law of noncontradiction, or have a mental Venn diagram firing off in the mind, or have ever learned the rules of inference. Nevertheless, there is no doctrine of the faith constructed without such realities. When we reason that 1. Christ is God and 2. Christ is Man, therefore Christ is the God-Man, we cannot get there without the syllogism lurking in the background, not to speak of all that will be required once the objections to orthodox Christology start rolling in.

The Knowledge of Such Natures is Natural Theology

In case the reader got lost in all of those details, let us come full circle to close. There are only two ultimate classes of things: God and everything else, or in other words, Creator and creatures. Both God and the things he has made have a nature; that is, they all have an objective way that they are. They are what they are and not something else (A = A).

And both the Psalmist and the Apostle plainly tell us (in Ps. 19:1-3 and Rom. 1:20) that in the case of all such created natures, these were all made by God to speak about him. This is not some mere poetic generalization. Created things have objective natures such that they are analogies of God’s nature. We do not get to make of them some independent existence apart from their ultimate theological import.

So if the reader got lost at any step and thought something like, “Ok, but how does this relate specifically to natural theology?” the answer now ought to be clear. Natural theology is not just about arguments for the existence of God. If theology is the study of God per se, then natural theology is the study of God in nature, or, as Paul said, “in the things that he has made.” More than that, each of these things was true independent of Scripture having said so. That Scripture does say so, when it does say so, is what illuminates that truth to us in the case of articles of faith, and what connects the theological dots to us in the case of mixed articles. But that each of the truths is true is never a battle between Scripture and nature. Each truth corresponds to each of the objects in view.

More than that, our own reasons for understanding each of those truths so illuminated is constantly interrelating truths of “the two books,” that is Nature and Scripture. Just think of the ABCs, or think of that map of Israel in the back of your Bible, and countless other examples.

And to repeat one last time: Each of these things is an objective thing with a nature. The truth of each remains what it is, whether uttered by a pagan who distorts that truth for the sake of his idolatry, or by a believer who is synthesizing that truth to the whole of God’s truth.

Human performance with each proposition is a madhouse, as Paul goes on to teach in Romans 1. We do not disagree with Van Til and his followers on that point. But as with the Jews’ handling with the oracles of God, so with the Gentiles’ handling of the things that have been made: “Let God be true though every one were a liar” (Rom. 3:4). The proposition stands. Each and every one of them is its own object with a nature.