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May 10 Today in OPC History

Van Til Elected Moderator

 

At the Sixth General Assembly of the OPC, meeting at Westminster Seminary on May 10, 1939, commissioners elected Cornelius Van Til as moderator on the first ballot. The Westminster Seminary professor was off the floor at the time of the vote, and when he learned of his election, he requested that he be relieved of his office, explaining to the assembly (in the words of the Presbyterian Guardian) that “urgent matters made it impossible for him to serve.” Perhaps Van Til needed to focus his energies on an evening presentation he was scheduled to give on “Modern Psychology of Religion in Relation to Christianity.” The assembly reluctantly granted Van Til’s unusual request, and after four more ballots it elected Everett DeVelde as moderator.

Van Til was no stranger to the General Assembly—he attended 24 assemblies in the course of his ministry in the OPC. But in the spirit of the sixth assembly, no subsequent General Assembly nominated him to serve as moderator. As Charles Dennison later observed: “Van Til was nothing if he was not a faithful churchman—always present but somewhat retiring in the courts of the church.”

Picture: Cornelius Van Til (right) at the Thirteen (1946) General Assembly

 

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