Michael Otazu (Read Part 1.)
The Christian’s daily life is saturated with opportunities for apologetics. Whether those who inquire about the hope that is within us are combatants with a desire for petty argumentation or curious seekers looking for answers to honest questions, we must be ready to make our defense. The following are some practical encouragements in light of the primacy of presuppositional apologetics.
“Natural theologians believe that the book of nature reveals to human reason aspects of the divine creator that point to the one true God, while freely confessing that only the book of scripture reveals to human faith the gospel by which alone we can be saved.” - Ref21
“I’m sympathetic to the presuppositionalist reflex… That being said, in placing the epistemological accent so strongly on the Bible over against God’s ‘general revelation’ in the created order, Reformed-style presuppositionalism suffers from a degree of hermeneutical naivete.
“These two claims do not match what I understand of Van Til’s apologetic. (I was schooled in this approach and adopted it for myself some years ago, so I am somewhat of an ‘insider.’)” - Matt Postiff
In 2013 K. Scott Oliphint of Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia published a book which he has called Covenantal Apologetics. I reviewed the book here and recommend it. But I expressed reservations about the writer’s agenda of rebranding Van Til’s apologetic teaching in line with the book’s title. Coming as it does from one of the foremost representatives of Van Til’s presuppositional approach, the thesis deserves attention. As I said in my review, by “Covenantal” Oliphint means the “covenants” of covenant theology.
Many people have maybe heard of what is called presuppositional apologetics but have little idea what it actually is. This situation is made worse because some defenders of the Faith are labeled presuppositional but, in fact, aren’t. So how should I describe it?
The first thing I would say is that although I personally have few problems with it, “presuppositionalism” is not perhaps the best name for the approach. A more preferable title would be something like “theological apologetics.”
Nevertheless, we are stuck with the name so we better understand what we mean by it. In this approach a “presupposition” is not just a prior assumption which one brings to a problem. It is not, e.g., supposing that the Bible is God’s Word and seeing where that gets you. This only makes your presupposition a “hypothetical,” not a necessary stance. But a “presupposition” here means an “ultimate heart commitment” to some interpretation and explanation of reality.
(The series so far.)
Some years ago I published a paper, entitled “Presuppositional Dispensationalism,”1 in which I attempted to summarize the biblical epistemological model with the illustration of four pillars.
