October 30 Today in OPC History

On October 30, 1965, Cornelius Van Til spoke on “Pro Rege” at a Reformation Rally in Philadelphia. Van Til declared, “Calvinism appears to have come to its end. A few half-sized apples fall, worm-eaten to the ground. As for Princeton Seminary, hurricane Barth has flattened its noble structure to the ground. The seemingly inexhaustible well-spring of Calvinism has been poisoned and those that go forth from its walls do, indeed, cry, ‘Calvin! Calvin!’ but repudiate the sovereign grace of God for which Calvin exhausted his life.”

Van Til then rhetorically asked, “Shall we give up?” His answer: “The word of our king is as a fire burning in our bones. We shall, rather, take a new and fresh look at Christ our king.” That is what Martin Luther did. “Luther,” said Van Til, “heard the voice of Christ, his king, speaking to him directly and exclusively through the written Word.” Luther disagreed with the Roman Catholic idea that authority was found in the living voice of the Living Church speaking by the Spirit.

What was happening in Presbyterianism, according to Van Til, was that the proposed Confession of 1967 was bringing the Roman Catholic position into the PCUSA with the displacement of Scripture with the voice of the church. Van Til said, “The very idea of the Protestant principle of listening obediently to the voice of Christ speaking once for all to all men in Scripture, has been adulterated to mean the moment-to-moment moralizings of men who have forsaken God.” Van Til concluded, “If some of our Reformed fathers stessed the fact that as Reformed believers we must be genuinely theological, let us stress the fact today that one cannot be truly theological unless one is genuinely Christological and that one cannot be genuinely Christological unless one be genuinely biblical. It is in the light of the revelation of God in Christ as it lies before us in Scripture that any fact in any field and all facts in all fields have their meaning.”

Picture: Cornelius Van Til