“Christianity and Evidentialism: Van Til and Locke on Facts and Evidence” by Nathan D. Shannon

Cornelius Van Til’s rejection of brute factuality and his claim that the purported neutrality of evidentialist rationality is in its essence decidedly anti-Christian set the presuppositional apologetic method apart from all others. In this article, I present a study of Van Til’s philosophies of fact and evidence in comparison with the evidentialism of John Locke, arguably the quintessential modern evidentialist. Section 1 is a brief survey of Locke’s epistemology, focusing on the nature of facts and their role in his theories of knowledge and belief. In section 2 we turn to Van Til. Van Til’s argument from predication leads us to the theological underpinnings of his views of fact and evidence. Then in section 3, having Locke’s and Van Til’s views before us, we turn to Van Til’s critique of evidentialism and, specifically, his claim that evidentialism is ultimately committed to creaturely rational autonomy. In this way Locke’s epistemology serves as a test case for the claims Van Til makes against brute factuality and evidentialist rationality.