One of the most prevalent misunderstandings of Cornelius Van Til's apologetic methodology has been with his concept of evidences, and their application to apologetics. It has been charged that Van Til's presuppositional approach has no use for evidences whatsoever, and that the methodology is actually fideistic in nature.
However, that assertion is simply untrue. Far from being a fideistic retreat, Van Til's apologetic methodology is in fact fine with using evidences, but only so much as they are used correctly. One could go even further and say that it's only in the presuppositional schema can such a concept of "evidence" even have any meaning.
At the core of Van Til's approach to evidences is the fact that no fact exists in a vacuum, or as Van Til would call it, a "brute" fact (a fact that does not have an explanation or a meaning) does not exist. Each and every fact must be interpreted according to the worldview of the interpreter. A Christian has an absolute anchor of knowledge and relation to gauge facts of experience, since each and every fact exists due to the relation of that fact to God. God is exhaustively rational, and all of reality is given a teleological aspect by Him. The non-Christian does not, due to the fact that every non-Christian epistemology will, upon internal critique of the worldview, be shown to be self-refuting and fall victim to the rational/irrational dialectic. As such, while a non-Christian may be able to "borrow capital" from the Christian worldview to draw predication from facts, their worldview, if applied in a consistent manner, would collapse into incoherence.
Van Til writes:
What Van Til has drawn sharply here is the observation that to speak of evidence as brute fact without drawing upon the meaning of the evidence is, ironically, not an evidence at all. The evidentalist apologist can present a minimal-facts argument for the resurrection of Christ, but without an understanding of what the resurrection actually accomplishes in God's plan (the outworking of His teleological purposes), the non-Christian may simply shrug their shoulders and say "ehh, it's a strange world, strange things happen. Maybe Jesus did come back from the dead, but why should I give it any thought to why? Anything that happens in the material world, must have a material cause. Thus, the resurrection of a man must have a naturalistic explanation. Perhaps he was simply unconscious and revived inside the tomb. Perhaps his followers stole the body and created this fantastical story to maintain his movement."
This is why it is imperative for the apologist to "push the antithesis" with the non-Christian, challenge him on not just the facts, but his philosophy of facts.
However, that assertion is simply untrue. Far from being a fideistic retreat, Van Til's apologetic methodology is in fact fine with using evidences, but only so much as they are used correctly. One could go even further and say that it's only in the presuppositional schema can such a concept of "evidence" even have any meaning.
At the core of Van Til's approach to evidences is the fact that no fact exists in a vacuum, or as Van Til would call it, a "brute" fact (a fact that does not have an explanation or a meaning) does not exist. Each and every fact must be interpreted according to the worldview of the interpreter. A Christian has an absolute anchor of knowledge and relation to gauge facts of experience, since each and every fact exists due to the relation of that fact to God. God is exhaustively rational, and all of reality is given a teleological aspect by Him. The non-Christian does not, due to the fact that every non-Christian epistemology will, upon internal critique of the worldview, be shown to be self-refuting and fall victim to the rational/irrational dialectic. As such, while a non-Christian may be able to "borrow capital" from the Christian worldview to draw predication from facts, their worldview, if applied in a consistent manner, would collapse into incoherence.
Van Til writes:
"...the natural man's entire attitude with respect to the facts that are presented to him will naturally be controlled by his notions of possibility and probability...It is in vain to speak about the fact without speaking about the meaning of the fact...To talk about presenting to him (the non-Christian) the fact of the resurrection without presenting its true meaning is to talk about an abstraction." (Christian Apologetics [2nd ed.], p. 190)
What Van Til has drawn sharply here is the observation that to speak of evidence as brute fact without drawing upon the meaning of the evidence is, ironically, not an evidence at all. The evidentalist apologist can present a minimal-facts argument for the resurrection of Christ, but without an understanding of what the resurrection actually accomplishes in God's plan (the outworking of His teleological purposes), the non-Christian may simply shrug their shoulders and say "ehh, it's a strange world, strange things happen. Maybe Jesus did come back from the dead, but why should I give it any thought to why? Anything that happens in the material world, must have a material cause. Thus, the resurrection of a man must have a naturalistic explanation. Perhaps he was simply unconscious and revived inside the tomb. Perhaps his followers stole the body and created this fantastical story to maintain his movement."
This is why it is imperative for the apologist to "push the antithesis" with the non-Christian, challenge him on not just the facts, but his philosophy of facts.
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