Differentiated commonality: Van Til's reconstruction of the doctrine of common grace.

摘要

This dissertation examines Van Til's reconstruction of the doctrine of common grace. The thesis is that Van Til reconstructs the doctrine of common grace in terms of a differentiated commonality and by so doing postulates the most balanced Reformed view. In other words a differentiated commonality supplies, for Van Til, the basic design upon which he reformulates the doctrine of common grace and provides the most balanced Reformed position. Van Til's reconstruction of the doctrine of common grace finds its immediate historical context in the debate on the subject of common grace that ensued in the early years of the twentieth century. The debate involved, on the one hand, the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), who upheld the Amsterdam pro-common grace view, particularly in the tradition of the nineteenth-century Dutch Neo-Calvinist theologians Herman Bavinck and Abraham Kuyper. Herman Hoeksema represented the other side of the debate, which took an anti-common grace stance.;Following a careful and critical analysis of his theological predecessors, Van Til identified the lack of a proper theological articulation of the nature of the commonality obtaining in common grace. The traditional, Kuyperian school of thought presented a commonality without proper qualification, inevitably resulting in a blurred distinction between the elect and the reprobate and also between believers and unbelievers.;In an effort to address this lack, Van Til reconstructed the doctrine of common grace qualifying the commonality thereof in terms of differentiation. In other words, in his reconstruction, Van Til endeavored to demonstrate that there exists a commonality between the elect and the reprobate, and also between believers and unbelievers, but it is a commonality with a difference.