Presuppositionalism

Is it Necessary? A surge of pious agreement overcame me the first time I heard someone confidently assert that “The Word of God no more needs defense than does a lion in a cage. Just let the lion loose, and it will take care of itself!” There seemed something very right about that sentiment. It [...]

It is one of those embarrassing historical ironies that modern science could not have arisen except in the atmosphere of a Christian world-and-life view. Nevertheless, the scientific community today persists in playing the prodigal by assuming an antagonistic stance against the Christianity of divine revelation. Hypnotized by Darwin’s evolutionary scheme and enchanted with the products [...]

Here then is how the presuppositional (transcendental) method of defending the faith would proceed once the preliminary discussions and clarifications have taken place with the unbeliever-and the two outlooks now come head to head.1 The unbeliever says that he knows that miracles are impossible, that a personal almighty God does not exist, that ethical principles [...]

In popular misconception today, the choice of an apologetical method facing a Bible-believing Christian is between arguing presuppositionally or appealing to evidences from history and nature in support of Christianity. But that is entirely wrong. Presuppositional apologetics endorses and indeed encourages the use of evidences—but not evidences offered in the “traditional” manner as an appeal [...]

Newport Christian High School has something virtually unique among the various private, Christian schools around the country. It is an extraordinary feature of its required curriculum—a prerequisite for high school graduation which few other schools enforce. NCHS is unique in that it offers a philosophy course for its high school seniors. There was a time [...]

Christians in the ancient world knew what it was to have accusations and ridicule directed at them for their religious convictions and practices. The report of Jesus’s resurrection was taken as an idle tale (Luke 24:11), a lie (Matthew 28:13–15), an impossibility (Acts 26:8). For preaching it, believers were arrested by the Jews (Acts 4:2–3) [...]

Presuppositional apologetics as taught by Cornelius Van Til urges the Christian to argue with unbelievers in an “indirect” fashion, doing an internal analysis of the unbeliever’s worldview (his fundamental assumptions about reality, knowledge, and ethics) and comparing it to the worldview revealed in the Bible. Many students of apologetics have come to see the strength [...]

It is indubitable that the resurrection of Jesus Christ has paramount significance for the history of redemption and for Christian theology (cf. Romans 4:25; 1 Peter 1:3). It is also clear that this resurrection must be held by the biblical Christian as one which took place in calendar time and involved Jesus’s empirical body (cf. [...]