Apologetics to the Glory of God

Category: Cornelius Van Til

  • On Proper Analysis – Scott Terry and VanTillianFire

    The author, Aaron Dale, at the blog “Van Tillian Fire,” has written a critique of my much-critiqued “Dear Sye” post.  For reasons unbeknownst to me, he neglected to read the post of the following day, “The Shattered Stained Glass Window”, as well as the post “A Necessary Distinction.”   Why is this important, you ask?  It is important because these were written several months ago – and written specifically to provide specifics about issues I left unstated, or merely referred to in general terms in the initial post.  Why did I leave them unstated? I left them …

  • Van Tilian Turf Wars (Part 2)

    Presuppositionalists are sticklers for sound apologetic methodology. But how is sound apologetic methodology discerned? Presuppositional proclivities preclude the vast majority of classical or evidentialist approaches to apologetics. That much is clear. But how does one determine who is right and who is wrong when presuppositionalists argue about methodology amongst themselves? Perhaps we all agree that presuppositional apologetic methodology is the way to go, but who is to say what presuppositional apologetic method is? Is there some standard of presuppositional orthodoxy?

    Fundamentalist presuppositionalists tend to respond to these questions by citing the Bible as their ultimate authority for apologetics. The …

  • The Teaching of Christianity as a Challenge to Unbelief

    We have already indicated that the best apologetic defense will invariably be made by him who knows the system of truth of Scripture best. The fight between Christianity and non-Christianity is, in modern times, no piece-meal affair.  It is the life-and-death struggle between two mutually opposed life-and-world views.  The non-Christian attack often comes to us on matters of historical, or other, detail.  It comes to us in the form of objections to certain teachings of Scripture, say, with respect to creation, etc. It may seem to be simply a matter of asking what the facts have been. Back of this …

  • Peripatetic 32 – The Unity of Theology – Laying your Cards on the Table

    So, when we are told to lay out the Christian worldview, and invite our opponent to internally critique it, what is it we present? Here is an example, on the fly.…

  • Peripatetic 30 – Simplicity, Systematic Theology, and Sanctification

    Recorded in mid-March; covers the relationship between Divine Simplicity and Systematic Theology, and goes through Ephesians 6 to emphasize the unity of the Christian life and the apologetic task. Additionally, as major examples, addresses practically all of the same subjects recently addressed on the blog, and gives a theological background for my recent comments about a variety of issues, as well as expanding on the previous episode.…

  • A Necessary Distinction

    In the midst of the turmoil which controversy creates, it is always refreshing to encounter an irenic, yet firm response in the midst of a variety of hasty and conjectural surmises.  That irenicism was, of course, the response of Mike Robinson, who many will know from his books and posts on a variety of subjects related to apologetics. When his response was brought to my attention, I was excited to see that he had commented on the situation.  Unfortunately, his post was in response only to the initial statement, which was intentionally designed to bring attention to the general …

  • The Shattered Stained Glass Window

    A lot of people seemed upset when I posted an encouragement and admonishment to Sye Ten Bruggencate yesterday.  The fallout seems to consist of either those praising me for doing so, or vilifying me for same.  I’m no stranger to controversy, obviously, so I have been watching the general trend of commentary.  The fallout from my detractors, on the main, seems to have missed the central meat of the post.  Sure, I mentioned several things only in general, but most of our regular readers know what I was referring to.  I’ve said the same things I am saying now over …

  • Ancient Empiricism: Aristotle (Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis, p329-333)

    0875520987Ancient Empiricism: Aristotle (139)

    (A)In a non-Christian scheme of thought abstract universal and particulars stand over against one another in an unreconcilable fashion. Such was the case in Plato’s philosophy. Aristotle sought to remedy the situation by teaching that the universale are present in the particulars. But he failed to get genuine contact between them, inasmuch as for him the lowest universal (infima species), was, after all, a supposed abstraction from particulars. Hence the particulars that were presupposed were bare particulars, having no manner of contact with universality. And if they should, per impossible, have contact with universality, they would …

  • Van Til on the Modern Man’s View of Scripture.

    vantil-studyIn response to A.E Taylor’s ‘Does God exist?’ Van Til writes:

    “Taylor simply assumes that every human mind, that of an apostle no less than that of any other man, contributes in an original sense to what it receives. The result is that even if he could believe in a self-contained God – which on his premises he cannot – Taylor cannot believe that any man could receive any revelation from such a God without to some extent, in the very act of reception, confusing it with his own experiences that operate independently of this God.
    The whole attitude of …

  • Van Til to His Critics

    “If my critics had fairly stated and then criticized my efforts at constructing an apologetic that is in accord instead of out of accord with the Reformed faith, it would possibly mean progress. As it is they have, except Orlebeke, taken for granted that the traditional view is true. All their detailed criticisms are based on the assumption that apologetics requires an area of interpretation that the unbeliever and the believer have in common. When I point out that this view leads inevitably to a compromise of the Reformed Faith, they take no notice of it. If the natural man …