The History and Nature of Apologetics
Lecturer
Cornelius Van Til (May 3, 1895 – April 17, 1987) was a Dutch-American reformed philosopher and theologian, who is credited as being the originator of modern presuppositional apologetics.
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.
At the age of ten, he moved with his family to Highland, Indiana. He was the first of his family to receive a higher education. In 1914 he attended Calvin Preparatory School, graduated from Calvin College, and attended one year at Calvin Theological Seminary, where he studied under Louis Berkhof, but he transferred to Princeton Theological Seminary and later graduated with his PhD from Princeton University.
He began teaching at Princeton Seminary, but shortly went with the conservative group that founded Westminster Theological Seminary, where he taught for forty-three years. He taught apologetics and systematic theology there until his retirement in 1972 and continued to teach occasionally until 1979. He was also a minister in the Christian Reformed Church in North America and 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.[2]
COURSE SECTIONS
- Course Introduction
- Foundational Considerations
- New Evangelicalism
- Common Grace
- Patterns of Thinking & The Gospel
To Start the Course, Click Here:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/course/the-history-and-nature-of-apologetics/#course-introduction
