Category Archives: Articles

Cornelius Van Til and Presuppositional Apologetics at P&R (John J. Hughes)

Articles, General, John J. Hughes

“Cornelius Van Til and Presuppositional Apologetics at P&R” by John J. Hughes

As a young Christian and philosophy major at Vanderbilt University in the 1960s, I longed to lay my hands on biblically faithful, academically solid apologetics books, but all I knew at the time were C. S. Lewis’s books, for which I was and am grateful. During my senior year, at a weekly Campus Crusade for Christ meeting, two recent graduates of Westminster Theological Seminary passed out free copies of Francis Schaeffer’s Escape from Reason, in which they had stamped the name, address, and phone number of their new church. I devoured Schaeffer’s little book, and then called these men. If there was one book like this, maybe they knew of others!

 

The men told me about Cornelius Van Til and said that if I were to write to him and include $5 for postage, he would send me some of his books. I followed their advice, and Dr. Van Til sent me a whole library in four or five of the largest padded mailing envelopes I had ever seen! I dove in headfirst, and by the time I surfaced, I was dead set on going to WTS, which I did.

Presuppositional Counseling: An Introduction to Van Til’s Influence Upon Jay Adams (Jared Poulton)

Articles, Jared Poulton, Theology

“Presuppositional Counseling: An Introduction to Van Til’s Influence Upon Jay Adams” by Jared Poulton

Throughout its history, the biblical counseling movement has experienced various periods of “rebranding.” Jay Adams first called his counseling approach “nouthetic counseling,” derived from the Greek word “noutheteo,” meaning to “admonish, correct, or instruct.” In 2013, a leading biblical counseling association “rebranded” from the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors (NANC) to the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC), identifying a significant transition within the movement of people identifying primarily as “biblical counselors.” Even more recently, another “rebranding” period has begun within the movement, as people continue to clarify their approach to counseling with labels such as “historic biblical counseling” and “redemptive counseling.” Each period of “rebranding” reveals a desire arising from the movement to clarify (1) the identity of the movement’s counselors and (2) the type of counseling they offer.

 

Within the movement’s history, there is another potential “label” that has not received significant attention: presuppositional counseling. The label “presuppositional counseling” reveals a significant feature of this counseling system that finds its origin in Adams—a desire to analyze counseling ideas and methods according to their presuppositions. In Competent to Counsel, Adams defined the “method” that supports the conclusions of his book as “presuppositional,” footnoting his key source for presuppositional thinking, the Dutch Apologist and his Westminster faculty member, Cornelius Van Til.

Why Machen Hired Van Til (Hart & Muether)

Articles, D. G. Hart, General, John R. Muether

“Why Machen Hired Van Til” by D. G. Hart and John R. Muether

When J. Gresham Machen left Princeton in 1929 to start Westminster he insisted that Cornelius Van Til be the professor of apologetics at the new seminary. To students who would later study with Van Til Machen’s resolve was obvious; the Dutch Calvinist’s presuppositional apologetics was the backbone of a truly Reformed education. But to Machen’s former students and colleagues and Princeton his choice of Van Til was odd. Van Til’s apologetical method broke with Old Princeton’s evidentialism and appeared to undermine Machen’s claim that Westminster was perpetuating Princeton.

 

Orthodox Presbyterians have tried to fit together the pieces of the Machen-Van Til apologetics puzzle if only because of the importance of both men in shaping the identity of their denomination. For instance, the late Greg L. Bahnsen argued that Van Til’s presuppositionalism was fundamentally compatible with Machen’s reliance upon rational proofs and that the apparent tensions between Machen and Van Til stemmed from a misreading of both. In contrast, Charles G. Dennison has tried to show that Machen in his later years was learning from the new faculty at Westminster and so would have come around to Van Til’s position in due course.[2] Whatever the merits of these explanations, Machen’s choice of Van Til could not have been better given the context of the ecclesiastical and theological struggles of the 1920s and 1930s. That decision also continues to be instructive for Orthodox Presbyterians today who desire to preserve the unique and faithful witness of the church.

Comparative Apologetic Anatomy (Steve Hays)

Apologetics, Articles, Steve Hays

“Comparative Apologetic Anatomy” by Steve Hays

The ongoing debate over meta-apologetics seems often to have degenerated into a sterile form of genre criticism. ‘Traditional’ apologetics becomes an invidious catch-all category for almost all pre-Van Tilian apologetics and contemporary variations thereof. The San Diego Circle of progressive Van Tilians (led by Frame) has objected that ‘traditional’ apologetics is not all of a kind and not all bad. The Irvine Circle of classic Van Tilians (led by the late Bahnsen) has replied that the differences between traditional varieties are unimportant insofar as they all suffer from the same fatal flaw – being guilty of autonomous reasoning. The San Diego Circle counters that that sweeping indictment is precisely the point at issue since it doesn’t appear that the presuppositional and traditional methods fall so neatly along either side of the autonomous dividing line.

 

The purpose of this ‘Comparative Anatomy of Apologetics,’ is not to level out the differences but to lay out the differences so that we can go behind the simplistic genre criticism and at least identify some of the vital organs and organ-systems which make up a body of apologetics, and so that we can further distinguish one apologetic organism from another. That way the student will be better prepared to render an informed diagnosis as to which organs are viable candidates for transplant – based on degrees of affinity – and which would be rejected due to the incompatibilities involved in trans-species organ sharing. It must also be kept in mind that this is only an introduction to comparative apologetic anatomy, and not a substitute for advanced study. Any classification system will over-simplify the data, classing together certain items based on the application of a particular unifying principle, while applying a different principle would considerably rearrange the distribution patterns.

Is Evidence Really Necessary? (James Grier)

Apologetics, Articles, James Grier

“Is Evidence Really Necessary?” by James Grier

Is it necessary to prove the existence of God in a seemingly atheistic rationalistic society? Must we all preaching and witness first establish the reasonableness and credibility of the faith, and of the Bible in particular? ‘No,’ reply those who subscribe to the so-called ‘presuppositionalism’ proposed by Cornelius Van Til. Here Dr James Grier, formerly Dean of Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary, unravels a debate so central to vital evangelism.

A Primer on Presuppositionalism (Joel Garver)

Apologetics, Articles, Joel Garver, Philosophy

“A Primer on Presuppositionalism” by Joel Garver

“Presuppositionalism” is the name most often given to the variety of Christian apologetics that grows out of the writings of Cornelius van Til. In the following essay we shall consider van Til’s general philosophical outlook and how that gives rise to his basic apologetic stance. Admittedly, his ideas were not as rigorously worked out as well as one might have liked, but I’ll try to fill in the details as I think he would have liked them to be filled in and with some hints from what I take to be some of his better interpreters (e.g., John Frame, Vern Poythress, etc.). Additionally, I shall consider some of the objections to presuppositionalism and attempt to provide a reply.

Cornelius Van Til: The Godfather of Biblical Counseling (Jared Poulton)

Articles, Jared Poulton, Theology

“Cornelius Van Til: The Godfather of Biblical Counseling” by Jared Poulton

There are many ways to analyze a Christian movement. One can look at its main leaders, its core ideas, its contributions, or its broader impact upon the church. Every movement also has a history, including the biblical counseling movement. There have only been a few books which have addressed the history of biblical counseling, and the historical roots of biblical counseling remain a rich area of potential research.

 

When biblical counselors have searched for the historical roots of biblical counseling, they often investigate the past for examples that look like biblical counseling: a Christian (usually a pastor) with a Bible offering counsel about a particular aspect of life to another person. Thus, it makes sense that many people have drawn connections between biblical counseling and groups such as the Puritans or the Reformers, people committed to the ministry of the Word. Nevertheless, similarities are not sufficient in themselves to establish historical connections.

 

While biblical counselors have much to learn from church history about the practices of counseling and soul care, the biblical counseling movement itself has a clear historical connection. It is the unconventional yet indisputable reality that the closest theological discipline to the biblical counseling movement is not pastoral ministry, nor psychology, nor counseling, but apologetics, due to the biblical counseling movement’s unlikely godfather, Cornelius Van Til.

The Problem of Natural Revelation in the Thought of Cornelius Van Til (Andrew Fulford)

Andrew Fulford, Articles, Epistemology, Theology

“The Problem of Natural Revelation in the Thought of Cornelius Van Til” by Andrew Fulford

In recent days we have seen some spirited discussion on the place of natural law and natural theology in the life of the church. One figure who stands out as an important member of the discussion about such matters, at least in Presbyterian circles, is Cornelius Van Til, especially in his essay “Nature And Scripture.” In the course of that essay, Van Til discusses two kinds of “natural theology”: that of the Westminster Confession (which he takes to be identical with scripture’s), and the kind supposedly finding its origin in Greek philosophy. In the following, I will discuss his comments on the first kind, and more particularly, his scriptural argument for his position.