The latest Books & Culture is a treasure trove. At least one gem is a short piece by Richard Mouw on, "Remember the Antithesis!". Here he argues that Kuyperians typically struggle with holding common grace and the antithesis in a healthy tension: some come down more on the side of common grace while others have majored in the antithesis.
Van Til, writes Mouw, was clearly on the latter. I am quite firmly in the former. How important, then, for publicly engaged folk such as myself to be reading Van Til and thinking strongly through what the antithesis means for public life. Mouw recalls an exchange between William Harry Jellema and Van Til, when Jellema was close to death. Van Til thanked Jellema for all he had learned from him, but Jellema responded: "Yes, but Kees, it was you who at times kept us from going too far." Jellema is not the only one with that kind of indebtedness to Van Til.
Who in this generation will carry that torch? Who will keep those of us - myself included - who are tempted to follow commonness in a murky direction, honest and rooted?
Monday, March 23, 2009
To You from Failing Hands, We Throw the Torch
Posted by Adunare at 7:16 AM
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1 comments:
you are right. The B&C issue is excellent. I think that the struggle with the balance between common grace and antithesis is well worth keeping before us. I find myself more and more in the world of common grace, but then I read the latest Harpers on what happened in Cambodia and am reminded that common grace may not be as common as I'd like to think and the antithesis that reminds us of the sharp call of living in God's ways needs to infiltrate a world in which we too often ignore the evil or somehow pretend it doesn't exist.
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