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Van Til on Sola Scriptura

October 4, 2011 by Brian

Certainly, Van Til believed in sola Scriptura in the traditional Protestant sense: that only Scripture serves as the supreme authority for human thought and life. . . . Nevertheless, Van Til did not hold a mechanical view of sola Scriptura, as if we could develop our knowledge from Scripture alone, without any use of our own reason or senses. He understood that in any instance of knowledge, there is simultaneous knowledge of God, the world, and the self. We cannot know one thing without relating it to other things and to ourselves. We cannot know God rightly unless we know him as Creator of the world and as our own Creator-Redeemer. We cannot know Scripture without relating it to ourselves and to the world of our experience. General and special revelation always work together, though certainly the latter must provide the ultimate criteria for understanding the former.

John M. Frame, Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought (P&R, 1995), 121.

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Filed Under: Bibliology, Christian Living, Dogmatics