Apologetics

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HOLY TRINITY UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY

4th YEAR EXTENSION

Assignment of apologetics

NAME:- ........................... MENGISTU GUDETA

ID NO:-............................. EDT/036/13

Submitted to:- Aba Gebrehana .

Submission date:- 14/09/2016E.C


Contents

1. introduction.......................................................................1

2. Cornelius van Teaching On Theology...........................................2

3. Evaluation........................................................................................7
Introduction
Fideism is a view of religious belief that holds that faith must be held without the use of
reason or even against reason. Faith does not need reason. Faith creates its own
justification. There are two possible variations of fideism. Those are faith as against
reason and faith as above reason.

In another way, fideism is an approach to apologetics that argues that the truths of
faith cannot and should not be justified rationally. Or, to look at it another way, fideists
contend that the truths of Christianity are properly apprehended by faith alone. The
word fideism derives from the Latin fide (pronounced FI-day), meaning “faith,” and so in
a general sense means a position that assigns some kind of priority to faith. Although
fideists often speak of Christian truth as “above” or “beyond” or even “against” reason,
they do not maintain that the truths of Christianity are actually irrational. Rather, by
“reason” they mean human reason or rationality, the use of reason by the human mind.
Essential to the case for fideism is the belief that some truths of Christianity are beyond
our capacity to understand or express in a logically definitive fashion. Although fideists
deny that human reason can prove or justify Christian beliefs, they do not conclude that
we should offer no answer to the apologetic questions and challenges posed by non-
Christians. The irrationalist may rebuff such challenges with non-replies like “Just
believe,” but this is not what we mean by fideism. Rather, fideists answer those
apologetic challenges by explaining why reason is incompetent to provide a satisfactory
answer and then showing that faith does provide a way to deal with the problem.
Cornelius van Teaching On Theology

Cornelius Van Til (May 3, 1895 – April 17, 1987) was a Dutch-American Reformed
theologian, who is credited as being the originator of modern presuppositional
apologetics. He learned Calvinism, presuppositionalism, Christian philosophy, new
hermeneutic His Main interests are Epistemology, Christian apologetics, philosophy of
religion and systematic theology.

He is a graduate of Calvin College, Van Til later received his PhD from Princeton
University. After teaching at Princeton, he went on to help found Westminster
Theological Seminary where he taught until his retirement. Van Til and his work heavily
influenced Reconstructionist theologians like Greg Bahnsen and R.J. Rushdoony.

Van Til drew upon the works of Dutch Calvinist philosophers such as D. H. Th.
Vollenhoven, Herman Dooyeweerd, and Hendrik G. Stoker and theologians such as
Herman Bavinck and Abraham Kuyper to devise a novel Reformed approach to Christian
apologetics, one that opposed the traditional methodology of reasoning on the
supposition that there is a neutral middle-ground, upon which the non-Christian and the
Christian can agree. His contribution to the Neo-Calvinist approach of Dooyeweerd,
Stoker and others, was to insist that the "ground motive" of a Christian philosophy must
be derived from the historical terms of the Christian faith. In particular, he argued that
the Trinity is of indispensable and insuperable value to a Christian philosophy.

In Van Til: The Theologian, John Frame, a sympathetic critic of Van Til, claims that Van
Til's contributions to Christian thought are comparable in magnitude to those of
Immanuel Kant in non-Christian philosophy. He indicates that Van Til identified the
disciplines of systematic theology and apologetics, seeing the former as a positive
statement of the Christian faith and the latter as a defense of that statement – "a
difference in emphasis rather than of subject matter." Frame summarizes Van Til's
legacy as one of new applications of traditional doctrines:

Unoriginal as his doctrinal formulations may be, his use of those formulations – his
application of them – is often quite remarkable. The sovereignty of God becomes an
epistemological, as well as a religious and metaphysical principle. The Trinity becomes
the answer to the philosophical problem of the one and the many. Common grace
becomes the key to a Christian philosophy of history. These new applications of familiar
doctrines inevitably increase [Christians'] understanding of the doctrines themselves, for
[they] come thereby to a new appreciation of what these doctrines demand of [them].[4]

Similarly, Van Til's application of the doctrines of total depravity and the ultimate
authority of God led to his reforming of the discipline of apologetics. Specifically, he
denied neutrality on the basis of the total depravity of man and the invasive effects of
sin on man's reasoning ability and he insisted that the Bible, which he viewed as a
divinely inspired book, be trusted preeminently because he believed the Christian's
ultimate commitment must rest on the ultimate authority of God. As Frame says
elsewhere, "the foundation of Van Til's system and its most persuasive principle" is a
rejection of autonomy since "Christian thinking, like all of the Christian life, is subject to
God's lordship".[5] However, it is this very feature that has caused some Christian
apologists to reject Van Til's approach. For instance, D. R. Trethewie describes Van Til's
system as nothing more than "a priori dogmatic transcendental irrationalism, which he
has attempted to give a Christian name to."

Kuyper is claimed that Fideism describes the view of fellow Dutchman Abraham Kuyper,
whom Van Til claimed as a major inspiration. Van Til is seen as taking the side of
Kuyper against his alma mater, Princeton Seminary, and particularly against Princeton
professor B. B. Warfield. But Van Til described his approach to apologetics as a
synthesis of these two approaches: "I have tried to use elements both of Kuyper's and
of Warfield's thinking." Greg Bahnsen, a student of Van Til and one of his most
prominent defenders and expositors, wrote that "A person who can explain the ways in
which Van Til agreed and disagreed with both Warfield and Kuyper, is a person who
understands presuppositional apologetics."

With Kuyper, Van Til believed that the Christian and the non-Christian have different
ultimate standards, presuppositions that color the interpretation of every fact in every
area of life. But with Warfield, he believed that a rational proof for Christianity is
possible: "Positively Hodge and Warfield were quite right in stressing the fact that
Christianity meets every legitimate demand of reason. Surely Christianity is not
irrational. To be sure, it must be accepted on faith, but surely it must not be taken on
blind faith. Christianity is capable of rational defense."[9] And like Warfield, Van Til
believed that the Holy Spirit will use arguments against unbelief as a means to convert
non-believers.
Van Til sought a third way from Kuyper and Warfield. His answer to the question "How
do you argue with someone who has different presuppositions?" is the transcendental
argument, an argument that seeks to prove that certain presuppositions are necessary
for the possibility of rationality. The Christian and non-Christian have different
presuppositions, but, according to Van Til, only the Christian's presuppositions allow for
the possibility of human rationality or intelligible experience. By rejecting an absolutely
rational God that determines whatsoever comes to pass and presupposing that some
non-rational force ultimately determines the nature of the universe, the non-Christian
cannot account for rationality. Van Til claims that non-Christian presuppositions reduce
to absurdity and are self-defeating. Thus, non-Christians can reason, but they are being
inconsistent with their presuppositions when they do so. The unbeliever's ability to
reason is based on the fact that, despite what he believes, he is God's creature living in
God's world.

Hence, Van Til arrives at his famous assertion that there is no neutral common ground
between Christians and non-Christians because their presuppositions, their ultimate
principles of interpretation, are different; but because non-Christians act and think
inconsistently with regard to their presuppositions, common ground can be found. The
task of the Christian apologist is to point out the difference in ultimate principles, and
then show why the non-Christian's reduce to absurdity.

Transcendental argument

Van Til (left) pictured with Robert Knight Rudolph in 1981. The substance of Van Til's
transcendental argument is that the doctrine of the ontological Trinity, which is
concerned with the reciprocal relationships of the persons of the Godhead to each other
without reference to God's relationship with creation, is the aspect of God's character
that is necessary for the possibility of rationality. R. J. Rushdoony writes, "The whole
body of Van Til's writings is given to the development of this concept of the ontological
Trinity and its philosophical implications." The ontological Trinity is important to Van Til
because he can relate it to the philosophical concept of the "concrete universal" and the
problem of the one and the many.

For Van Til, the ontological Trinity means that God's unity and diversity are equally basic.
This is in contrast with non-Christian philosophy in which unity and diversity are seen as
ultimately separate from each other:
The whole problem of knowledge has constantly been that of bringing the one and the
many together. When man looks about him and within him, he sees that there is a great
variety of facts. The question that comes up at once is whether there is any unity in this
variety, whether there is one principle in accordance with which all these many things
appear and occur. All non-Christian thought, if it has utilized the idea of a supra-
mundane existence at all, has used this supra-mundane existence as furnishing only the
unity or the a priori aspect of knowledge, while it has maintained that the a posteriori
aspect of knowledge is something that is furnished by the universe.

Pure unity with no particularity is a blank, and pure particularity with no unity is chaos.
Frame says that a blank and chaos are "meaningless in themselves and impossible to
relate to one another. As such, unbelieving worldviews always reduce to unintelligible
nonsense. This is, essentially, Van Til's critique of secular philosophy (and its influence
on Christian philosophy)."

Van Til was also a strident opponent of the theology of Karl Barth, and his opposition
led to the rejection of Barth's theology by many in the Calvinist community. Despite
Barth's assertions that he sought to base his theology solely on the 'Word of God', Van
Til believed that Barth's thought was syncretic in nature and fundamentally flawed
because, according to Van Til, it assumed a Kantian epistemology, which Van Til argued
was necessarily irrational and anti-Biblical.

Van Til lays out his case against Barthianism and Neo-orthodoxy in The New
Modernism: An Appraisal of the Theology of Barth and Brunner (1946), Christianity and
Barthianism (1962), and Karl Barth and Evangelicalism (1964).

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