“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. …