A lot of this is just impression, and perhaps a better title for most of it is “how I misunderstood Van Til.” But the hard evidence is this: For years, on the basis of what I read in the works of Cornelius Van Til, I was absolutely certain that Thomas Aquinas was what amounted to a theologica/soteriological Arminian.

And the more general problem was that I came away from Van Til thinking that the primary thrust of intellectual idolatry was a denial of God’s comprehensive control over human life. Only us Reformed Christians were willing to consistently affirm the Godness of God. Which meant to affirm his power, his control, his invincibility, his authority, his alienness to humanity.

That was the impression. Van Til was better than this. He affirmed and defended the incarnation and the perspecuity of God’s word, which would both be rendered untenable if we followed only this other line of thinking. But over and over again Arminian thinking was treated as the essence of fallen thinking.

In retrospect, I realize that I was turning the North American Calvinist minority complex into a cosmological demonology. Obviously. But it wasn’t obvious to me then. And I don’t think I am the only Van Til reader who came away with the assumption that Thomas Aquinas was an Arminian and that all unbelief amounted to an affirmation of synergy.

But there is simply no reason to think that non-christians can’t be comprehensive theological determinists. And the errors of Aquinas do not include a denial of Augustinianism. There are other errors besides Arminianism that we can fall into and there are other idols than human autonomy.

Again, I’m not sure how much of this can really be pinned on Van Til. I’m confident that some of it is his fault, but maybe most of it was my own misreading.

And I think some of this runs in the wider Reformed world in general. How many books have I read by Reformed authors who start by defining God in terms of power and control, only to later add love and compassion? Perhaps my memory exaggerates, but I don’t like thinking we have a tradition that specializes in relativizing John 4.7, 8, 16. Even though we do see a lot of imbalance in the wider Evangelical world that ignores God’s holiness in favor of a more sentimental perspective, I don’t know that it is necessarily healthy to preach against this by always saying that, “God is not really like that. God is great and powerful.” God is great and powerful, but I think we need to make sure no one forgets that God is great enough to empathize with the weakest and powerful enough to be able to identify with them.

The fact that God is infinite doesn’t mean he is alien; it means he gives each one of us as much of his attention as if we were the only creature he ever made.