Preconditions of Intelligibility

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 Chris