The Defense of the Faith

by Cornelius Van Til, K. Scott Oliphint (editor)

This new annotated edition of The Defense of the Faith restores the full text of the original work in a form that is more easily understood. Cornelius Van Til, who taught for more than forty-five years at Westminster Seminary, sometimes used philosophical vocabulary in The Defense, and many of his conversation partners and critics were not widely known. When later editions greatly abridged this work for these reasons, valuable discussions were laid aside.

Now they are restored, and with added clarification. Newly edited and retypeset, this unabridged edition features a foreword and explanatory notes by K. Scott Oliphint, which help us grasp a method of apologetics consistent with the nature of Christianity itself and continually relevant to our time.

Endorsements"The original version is back, with Scott Oliphint’s excellent foreword and explanatory footnotes. Now Van Til is much more understandable, and his opponents too. How stimulating it must have been to be part of that dialogue in the early days of Reformed apologetics! We need that stimulus now if we are to deal with unbelief in a God-honoring way."

—John M. Frame

"This new edition provides an enormous service to the reader. The somewhat challenging text is abundantly illuminated by Scott Oliphint, no doubt the leading expert on Van Til in our times."

—William Edgar

"Though Van Til often engages ideas, terms, and conversation partners unknown to contemporary, this work also has a delightful effect in exposing the pretensions of human autonomy and the grandeur of God’s sovereign grace. In his careful, thorough, and sympathetic notes, Professor Oliphint has done us all a tremendous service."

—Michael S. Horton

437 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 24, 2024

About the author

Cornelius Van Til, was a Christian philosopher, Reformed theologian, and presuppositional apologist.

Biographical sketch

Born on May 3, 1895, in Grootegast, The Netherlands he was the sixth son of Ite and Klazina Van Til, who emigrated to the United States when "Kees," as he was known to friends, was 10. He grew up helping on the family farm in Highland, Indiana.

Van Til graduated from Calvin College in 1922, receiving a ThM from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1925 and his PhD from Princeton University in 1927. He began teaching at Princeton, but shortly went with the conservative group who founded Westminster Theological Seminary, where he taught for forty-three years of his life as a professor of apologetics.

He was also a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church from the 1930s until his death in 1987, and in that denomination, he was embroiled in a bitter dispute with Gordon Clark over God's incomprehensibility known as the Clark-Van Til Controversy in which, according to John Frame, neither man was at his best and neither quite understood the other's position.

Van Til's thought

Van Til is perhaps best known for the development of a fresh approach to the task of defending the Christian faith. Although trained in traditional methods he drew on the insights of fellow Calvinistic philosophers Vollenhoven and Herman Dooyeweerd to formulate what he viewed as a more consistently Christian methodology. His apologetic focused on the role of presuppositions, the point of contact between believers and unbelievers, and the antithesis between Christian and non-Christian worldviews.

Source: Theopedia