All posts by James

Cornelius Van Til: A Review Article (William D. Dennison)

General, Reviews, William D. Dennison

“Cornelius Van Til: A Review Article” by William D. Dennison

John R. Muether’s, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman is a triumph as an ecclesiastical biography! Muether’s well-written and easy to read volume is not for the casual reader of biographies; rather, his achievement comes with a challenge as each page demands reflection and candid engagement. Our OP historian masterfully coordinates the narrative to entice the reader into being an engaging spectator of Van Til’s life journey. If you have a passion for the Reformed faith, then you will share in the concerns, anxieties, disappointments, frustrations, delights, joys, and triumphs of this churchman, apologist, seminary professor, husband, father, grandfather, confident uncle, and respectful sibling. You will be gripped by a penetrating look into difficult decisions: farmer or academician, Christian Reformed or Orthodox Presbyterian, Calvin Theological Seminary or Westminster Theological Seminary (a few occasions), the nature of his respect and critique for fellow Reformed comrades (e.g., Hodge, Warfield, Kuyper, Bavinck, Jellema, Daane, the DeBoers, Masselink, Clark, Carnell, Dooyeweerd, Schaeffer, Gerstner, and Clowney), evangelicals (e.g., Buswell, Henry, Graham, and Lewis), and the modernists (e.g., Barth, Marty, etc.). While using primary and secondary sources effectively, Muether’s exhaustive labors into letters of correspondence and personal interviews pull the reader into the inner dynamics of his subject. …

Van Til & the Use of Evidence (Thom Notaro)

Apologetics, Books, Thom Notaro

Van Til & the Use of Evidence by Thom Notaro

What role do evidences play in Cornelius Van Til’s defense of the faith? How can Christians hold dialogue with nonbelievers, whose presuppositions conflict with biblical truth? Is Christianity capable of proof or verification?

 

The author gathers into this concise and readable volume the often misunderstood or neglected material Dr. Van Til has contributed on the legitimacy and role of evidences within presuppositional apologetics. When put to good use, factual evidences are shown to offer innumerable opportunities to direct sinful minds to the self-attesting Christ of Scripture.

Cornelius Van Til’s Doctrine of God and Its Relevance for Contemporary Hermeneutics (Jason B. Hunt)

Books, Hermeneutics, Jason B. Hunt

Cornelius Van Til’s Doctrine of God and Its Relevance for Contemporary Hermeneutics by Jason B. Hunt

Cornelius Van Til’s Doctrine of God and Its Relevance for Contemporary Hermeneutics seeks to answer the question, “What does Van Til have to do with hermeneutics?” It is argued that some of the most relevant concerns in the field of contemporary hermeneutics are similar to those addressed by Van Til in the area of apologetics. Van Til’s approach involved a self-conscious consistency between method and theology proper in order to reason according to the Christian worldview found in Scripture. Just as one’s apologetic method should be consistent with the theology revealed in the Bible, so also should one’s hermeneutic. This work not only argues that Van Til has an important place in the hermeneutical discussion, but also demonstrates his place in terms of the main contours in his doctrine of God. In doing so, certain influences on evangelical hermeneutics are considered according to consistency with theology proper. Lastly, a Van Tillian hermeneutic is applied to the often-debated issue concerning the New Testament use of the Old Testament.

Foundations of Christian Scholarship (ed. Gary North)

Apologetics, Books, Epistemology, Gary North, Philosophy, Theology

Foundations of Christian Scholarship: Essays in the Van Til Perspective edited by Gary North

Christian commentators have pointed to the contradictions of the modern world, and they have asserted that the answers to these contradictions can be found in the Bible. Yet whenever pastors or Christian instructors confront the congregations or each other with concrete requirements of biblical law, the instant response in that “the churches shouldn’t meddle in things that don’t concern them,” meaning politics, economics, or anything else that might prove controversial. The Bible has the answers for every problem, but these are supposed to remain vague generalities except when in accord with the accepted cultural heritage in question. …

Jerusalem and Athens (ed. E. R. Geehan)

Apologetics, Books, E. R. Geehan, Philosophy

Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions on the Philosophy and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til edited by E. R. Geehan

First published in 1971 and now back in print, Jerusalem and Athens follows Van Til’s brief and accessible introduction to his own thought with twenty-five critical essays that orient readers to important problems and issues discussed in Van Tillian apologetics. Van Til responds.

The Scope and Limits of Van Til’s Transcendental Argument (Michael H. Warren)

Apologetics, Articles, Michael H. Warren

“The Scope and Limits of Van Til’s Transcendental Argument: A Response to John Frame” by Michael H. Warren

The questions that I address in this essay have been asked by a number of people, but the main source is John Frame, who was a student under Cornelius Van Til before succeeding him as professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary. Frame is sympathetic to Van Til’s approach to apologetics, but he has published a number of criticisms of Van Til which have been found persuasive by many other Christians interested in apologetics – Christians both anti-Van Til and sympathetic to Van Til’s approach to apologetics. Frame says that he rejects Van Til’s claim of a single transcendental argument to prove the Biblical God. Instead, he calls for a “presuppositionalism of the heart” that involves using a number of different arguments, including the traditional ones that Van Til rejects, all with the transcendental goal of honoring the sovereignty of God. In this essay I address one of his main arguments for his position: Proving every element of Christian theism with one argument is unrealistic, so multiple arguments should be allowed. …

Christian Civilization is the Only Civilization – In a Sense, Of Course (Michael H. Warren)

Apologetics, Articles, Michael H. Warren, Philosophy, Theology

“Christian Civilization is the Only Civilization – In a Sense, Of Course” by Michael H. Warren

Intellectuals throughout history have given their views as to what the source, goal and nature of civilization is.  The ancient philosopher Plato described a well-ordered civilization as a three-tiered hierarchy of philosopher-kings, the soldier class, and the merchant class.  The philosophers are the kings because they are allegedly the most knowledgeable about the ideas of justice and the good.  Hegel offered a comprehensive philosophy of life in which he said that the state is God, and the ideal of civilization is for all people to become unified under the State.  Freud expressed the predominate view of 20th Century intellectuals when he said that civilization is defined by the degree that a culture rejects the psychological projection of a loving, divine Father as the explanation for the mysteries of the world and embraces rational, scientific, materialistic explanations of the world.  In this essay I do not examine all of the competing explanations for civilization in detail.  However, despite all their differences, all non-Christian views of civilization have a common point of view that allows for a single refutation that applies to them all and allows for a single proof (see the introductory quote from Van Til above) that Christian Civilization is the only rationally possible civilization. …

Van Til and Transcendental Argument Revisited (Don Collett)

Apologetics, Articles, Don Collett

“Van Til and Transcendental Argument Revisited” by Don Collett

The phrase ‘cognitive dissonance’ first fell upon my ears in the fall of 1994 while enrolled in Professor John Frame’s course on “The Christian Mind,” the first in a series of three courses in Christian apologetics required for Master of Divinity students at Westminster Seminary in California. According to conventional philosophical wisdom, when philosophers run headlong into this sort of dissonance in the course of constructing arguments, they typically seek to overcome it, either by making a distinction or by defining a new term. Following in the footsteps of his apologetics mentor, Cornelius Van Til, Professor Frame added yet a third option, namely, humbly acquiescing in the possibility that such dissonance may in fact constitute a philosophical testimony to the truth of the ‘Creator-creature distinction’ and the Christian concept of mystery it entails. Not all forms of cognitive dissonance were to be regarded, therefore, as something analogous to a ‘charley-horse between the ears’ capable of being massaged away by the powers of reason and the tools of philosophical logic. …

The Trinity and the Vindication of Christian Paradox (Brant Bosserman)

Apologetics, Books, Brant Bosserman, Epistemology, Philosophy, Theology

The Trinity and the Vindication of Christian Paradox by Brant Bosserman

The Trinity and the Vindication of Christian Paradox grapples with the question of how one may hold together the ideals of systematic theology, apologetic proof, and theological paradox by building on the insights of Cornelius Van Til. Van Til developed an apologetic where one presupposes that the triune God exists, and then proves this Christian presupposition by demonstrating that philosophies that deny it are self-defeating in the specific sense that they rely on principles that only the Trinity, as the ultimate harmony of unity and diversity, can furnish. A question raised by Van Til’s trademark procedure is how he can evade the charge that the apparent contradictions of the Christian faith render it equally self-defeating as non-Christian alternatives. This text argues that for Van Til, Christian paradoxes can be differentiated from genuine contradictions by the way that their apparently opposing elements discernibly require one another, even as they present our minds with an irresolvable conflict. And yet, Van Til failed to sufficiently vindicate the central Christian paradox–the doctrine of the Trinity–along the lines required by his system. Hence, the present text offers a unique proof that God can only exist as the pinnacle of unity-in-diversity, and as the ground of a coherent Christian system, if He exists as three, and only three, divine Persons.