The name of Cornelius Van Til is inseparable from Reformed apolo­getics. Due to the importance of his thinking and of apologetics in gen­eral, I aim to provide in this brief article a few notes on his background and basic thought, as well as a sum­mary of apologetics in commemora­tion of the centenary of his birth.

Cornelius Van Til was born on May 3, 1895, in the Netherlands, as the sixth son of godly parents. He was raised in a "lovingly strict" Calvinistic home. In 1905 the Van Til family immigrated to Highland, Indiana, to farm in a more prosperous area.

As a teenager, young Van Til felt the weighty call of God to His service. Shortly thereafter, he attended Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he immersed himself in phi­losophy. After receiving an A.B. from Calvin, Van Til moved to Princeton, New Jersey, for five additional years of study. He earned a Th.M. at Prince­ton Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. His doc­toral dissertation was entitled "God and the Absolute."

After a brief pastorate at Spring Lake Church in Muskegon, Michigan (1927-28), Van Til taught apologetics for one year at Princeton Seminary (1928-29). The school's Board of Di­rectors then elected him professor of apologetics, but he was not confirmed by the 1929 General Assembly on ac­count of the Assembly's authorization of Princeton's reorganization along more liberal lines.

Van Til returned to Spring Lake, determined to refuse teaching at either Princeton or the newly orga­nized Westminster Seminary, which aimed to carry on the tradition of "Old Princeton" under the able leadership of Dr. J. Gresham Machen. Neverthe­less, he was prevailed upon to join the Westminster faculty by Drs. Machen and Allis, who traveled to Michigan to seek his services. From the founding of Westminster Seminary in 1929 until his retirement in 1972, Dr. Van Til taught Reformed apologetics and related courses from a uniquely biblical perspective and within the confines of traditional Re­formed theology.

Van Til's thinking on Reformed apologetics, philosophy, and theology exerted a steadily growing influence on many graduate students and conserva­tive Reformed evangelicals throughout the world. Today, his views continue to be developed by some of his stu­dents and are still frequently debated by orthodox Reformed theologians and apologists.

Van Til wrote more than twenty books during his teaching career, in addition to thirty unpublished class syllabi, which were widely circulated and are still valued. His passing away in 1987 at the ripe age of ninety-one signaled the end of an era for both Westminster Seminary and Reformed apologetics. (For additional detail on Van Til's life, see the authorized biog­raphy by William White, Jr., Van Til: Defender of the Faith, 1979.)

Theology and Philosophy⤒🔗

Two related fields of study molded the person and work of Cornelius Van Til: theology and philosophy. Theo­logically, he was always unequivocally Reformed in principle and practice. In addition to the Scriptures, John Calvin influenced him the most during his life. The Heidelberg Catechism (via his Dutch Reformed upbringing) and the Westminster Confession and Cate­chisms (due to connections with con­servative Presbyterianism at Princeton and Westminster) shaped his theology. Also, Van Til's theological convictions were significantly influenced by vari­ous Dutch theologians.

Van Til emphasized that God is ab­solutely sovereign over all creation, that all of life is consequently religious (whether godly or ungodly), and that all knowledge must be placed in a Christian perspective. He never swerved from the principal thesis that "the Christianity set forth in the Bible is the one God-revealed religion, and that Calvinism is the clearest and most consistent expression of that religion — both in content and in its life-and-world presentation" (White, p. 35).

Philosophically, Calvinistic princi­ples made a major impact on the school of thought sometimes called the "Am­sterdam Philosophy" This philosophy in turn influenced Van Til, particularly in his early Westminster years. It grew out of the writings and teachings of Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) and D. H. Th. Vollenhoven (1892­1978), brothers-in-law who taught at the Free University of Amsterdam. Dooyeweerd sought to build his philosophical system on the basis of the Christian "ground-motive" of creation, fall, and redemption.

In the last decades of his life, how­ever, Van Til became critical of several aspects of the Amsterdam philoso­phy, despite his indebtedness to it. For example, he criticized Dooyeweerd for being willing to accommodate, or at least dialogue congenially with, non-Christian thinking (see the debate be­tween Dooyeweerd and Van Til in Jerusalem and Athens, edited by Ed­ward R. Geehan).

Apologetics←⤒🔗

Against this background, Van Til developed his "new apologetic; in which he defends "old truth." Though preeminently a preacher of the Word, Van Til became known primarily through his pioneer work in the field of apologetics.

Apologetics is a branch of theology that seeks to establish an effective defense of Christianity against any attack from non-Christians. Van Til himself defined it as "the vindication of the Christian philosophy of life against the various forms of the non-Christian philosophy of life" (Apolo­getics, p. 1).

Some well-intentioned believers think that they are under no obliga­tion to propound and defend their faith before a hostile world. However, this notion is not supported by Scrip­ture. Jesus defended His claim to be the Messiah (Matt. 22), and Paul re­peatedly defended his claims to be an apostle (Gal. 1, 2;1 Cor. 9; Acts 22-26). The classic Petrine admonition cer­tainly implies that the Christian faith is capable of reasonable defense: "Be ready always to give an answer [i.e., a defense] to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear" (1 Pet. 3:15).

The scriptural mandate is clear: the Christian faith must be defended. However, the method of apologetics that ought to be carried out has often been and still remains a matter of intense debate. Three different meth­ods have had wide followings.

Presuppositionalism←⤒🔗

First, there is the presuppositional school. Its motto is "I believe in order that I may understand." It presup­poses that the supernatural revela­tion of God's Word provides the only basis for the entire theological enter­prise. Robert Reymond succinctly states: "Group characteristics here are convictions that (1) faith in God pre­cedes understanding everything else (cf. Hebrews 11:3), (2) elucidation of the system [of truth] follows faith, (3) religious experience must be grounded in the objective Word of God and the objective work of Christ, (4) human depravity has rendered autonomous reason incapable of satisfactorily an­choring its truth claims to anything objectively certain, and (5) a special regenerating act of the Holy Spirit is indispensable for Christian faith and enlightenment" (The Justification of Knowledge, p. 8). This school is rep­resented by the consistently Re­formed tradition, including Van Til.

Van Til developed presupposition­alism along Reformed lines beyond anyone before him. He "constructed a presuppositional apologetic based on two fundamental assertions: (1) the Creator-creature distinction that de­mands human beings presuppose the self-attesting triune God in all their thinking; (2) the reality that unbe­lievers will resist this obligation in every aspect of life and thought.... Van Til opposed autonomy, the attempt to think and live by some criterion of truth other than God's Word" (Dictionary of Christi­anity in America, ed. by Daniel G. Reid, pp. 1211-12).

Evidentialism←⤒🔗

Second, there is the evidentialist school, which may be represented by the motto "I understand and I believe." Evidentialism stresses some form of natural theology as the point at which apologetics commences. As Reymond summarizes, "Group characteristics here are the following: (1) a genuine belief in the ability and trustworthiness of human reason in its search for reli­gious knowledge, (2) the effort to ground faith upon empirical and/or his­torically verifiable facts, and (3) the con­viction that religious propositions must be subjected to the same kind of verifi­cation — namely, demonstration — that scientific assertions must undergo. The Thomistic Roman Catholic tradition, the (inconsistent) Reformed evidential­ist traditions, and the Arminian tradi­tion are representative of this group" (Justification of Knowledge, p. 9).

Van Til has done much pioneer work in exposing the fallacies of this method­ology. He has shown that this approach fails to take into account the radical ef­fects of the Fall, for it advocates that reason was only weakened but not crip­pled by the Fall. Van Til attacked two major proponents of evidentialism fre­quently: Thomas Aquinas, Roman Ca­tholicism's primary medieval theologian, and Bishop Butler, an eighteenth-century Anglican. Aquinas sought for a common ground between religion and philosophy by insisting that God's existence, re­vealed in the Scriptures, could also be demonstrated by reason. His aim was to synthesize natural and supernatural thought, Christianity and the philoso­phy of Aristotle. Van Til argued that the Thomistic approach of going part way  with the natural man and then leading him to supernatural truth, under­mines the entire biblical structure of one system of truth. Similarly, Van Til exposed the fallacy of Bishop Butler's work, Analogy of Religion (1736), which argued for the truth of Christi­anity on the grounds of probability.

Experientialism←⤒🔗

Third, there is an apologetic called experientialism. Its motto is "I believe because it is absurd." Experientialism stresses inward religious experience as the foundation of all theology. It ac­cents the paradoxical character of Christian teaching to the point of as­serting that Christian truth is not ca­pable of rational analysis. Typical of this school is the Barthian tradition, which underscores the "otherness," the transcendence, and hiddenness of God at the expense of His concrete, scriptural revelation of truth. Van Til has also done extensive work in ex­posing the fallacy of Barth, Barthians, and others who espouse subjective experience as independent of, or su­perior to, the objective character and authority of Scripture for establishing truth. Experience is, of course, abso­lutely necessary, but it is never the foundation of truth or of theology.

Van Til has played a major role in uncovering nonpresuppositional meth­ods or attitudes in both non-Reformed and otherwise Reformed thinkers. He has done able work in presenting a thoroughly consistent and biblical Re­formed apologetic, and in purging non-Reformed apologetics from Reformed theology. He has also provided a Re­formed foundation for Christian on­tology, epistemology, and ethics. We recommend his Defense of the Faith and Introduction to Systematic Theology for those who are serious about un­derstanding Scripture and advancing in the knowledge of Reformed truth and Reformed apologetics.