Apologetika Presuposisi Triperspektivalisme Cornelius Van Til Terhadap Agnostisisme

In the midst of the spread of agnostic thingking, it posess a serious threat to religious communities, including the Christian faith. This article aims to provide an understanding for Christian practitioners so that they can be responsible for their faith towards agnostic thinking, who became human in the preson of Jesus gives us the understanding that God shows His presence in human life. This article was compiled using the literature study method by looking at the phenomena that occur, so that from each of these discussions it will provide a conclusion that God who is understood transcendetally can also be experinced immanently.

Knowledge and the Fall in American Neo-Calvinism: Toward a Van Til–Plantinga Synthesis

Cornelius Van Til and Alvin Plantinga represent two strands of American Protestant philosophical thought influenced by Dutch neo-Calvinism. This paper compares and synthetizes their models of knowledge in non-Christians given the noetic effects of sin and non-Christian worldview commitments. The paper argues that Van Til’s distinction between the partial realization of the antithesis in practice and its absolute nature in principle correlates with Plantinga’s insistence on prima facie–warranted common-sense beliefs and their ultimate defeasibility given certain metaphysical commitments. Van Til endorsed more radical claims than Plantinga on epistemic defeat in non-Christian worldviews, the status of the sensus divinitatis, and conceptual accuracy in knowledge of the world. Finally, an approach to the use of evidence in apologetics is developed based on the proposed synthesis. This approach seeks to make more room for evidence than is generally recognized in Van Tilianism, while remaining consistent with the founder’s principles.

The covenantal trinitarian alternative to the scholastic dilemma

This article sets out what it calls the ‘scholastic dilemma’ about whether God’s relation to the world is necessary or contingent – the former is based on a view of God primarily as intellect and the latter on a view of God primarily as will. In his dictum, Deus legibus solutus est sed non exlex, John Calvin rejects both these positions. The trinitarian basis for this dictum was spelt out more fully by later Calvinistic thinkers, including Abraham Kuyper and Cornelius van Til. Implicitly for Calvin and explicitly for Kuyper and Van Til, the love of the Persons of the Trinity for one another is the basis for God’s covenantal trustworthiness in his dealings with the world. Recognising this trinitarian basis allows us to conceive of God as at once faithful in his dealing with the world, and yet not dependent on the world for his existence. This has profound and far-reaching implications for our understanding of society, including the universal and institutional church and a recognition of the priority of relationships, both theoretically and practically.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE VAN TILLIAN METHOD IN APOLOGETICS WITH AN EXAMPLE OF ARGUMENT TO MUSLIMS

Presuppositional apologetics has become a main alternative (or competitor?) for the classical apologetics which maintains evidences. Although its emergence occurred within the Reformed tradition, particularly through the effort of Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark, its significance goes beyond the Reformed tradition. Even the contemporary evangelical apologist, Ravi Zacharias, also utilizes presuppositional apologetics which he combines with evidentialistic method. This fact is hardly denied when we read his book "Jesus among Other Gods." Thus, the main concern of this article is regarding the significance of the presuppositional apologetics particularly in its Van Tillian form. After presenting an exposition on this method, we will see its application toward Muslims' concept of God and the idea of uniformity.

SIGNIFIKANSI APOLOGETIKA TRINITARIAN CORNELIUS VAN TIL DALAM MENGHADAPI GERAKAN ZAMAN BARU

The Challenge of the New Age Movement toward Christian Faith is becoming more difficult in early XXI Century, especially in Indonesia which based on Eastern Culture. Eastern culture, with its mystical nuance, is a very fertile field for New Age Movement. With the rapid growth of Charismatic movement, the challenge toward true Gospel is getting worse. On the other hand, Cornelius Van Til built his apologetics for defending Christian Faith from its dilutions. Apologetics is not a tool or an armor to kill others, nor to humiliate other religions or philosophies, but it is meant to bring people to know the True God and be saved. This paper tries to show the significance of Van Til?s approach on apologetics which is Trinitarian in essence toward the influence of New Age Movement in Christian society. The purpose is to let people, especially Christians, know the True Trinitarian God, instead of Eastern mystical or Pantheistic God of the New Age.?

Renewing our Mind: Reformed Epistemology and the Task of Apologetics

The presuppositional approach of Cornelius Van Til draws on the epistemological ideas found in Herman Bavinck and Abraham Kuyper to bring Reformed epistemology and its application to apologetics into line with its Calvinist foundations. This transcendental approach accents the ultimacy of God for all knowledge over against the Kantian transcendental critique which, with its accent on autonomy, forms the basis for all approaches to knowledge that do not start with the necessity of the revelation of God in creation and Scripture. The Christian cannot by his method deny what God’s Word has made clear to him, that he is dependent on God for all truth, meaning, and coherence.

From Antithesis to Synthesis

Recent scholarship further substantiates the observation that Cornelius Van Til depends on Herman Bavinck for his own constructive efforts. This observation creates a stimulus for comparative studies on the two theologians. In this essay I offer one such comparison by tracing an antithesis-synthesis strategy present in both Bavinck and Van Til. Though they share a motivation from the doctrine of common grace, the two theologians apply the strategy in distinct (though related) ways: Bavinck applies it for theological construction in a manner symbiotic with his organic ontology, while Van Til develops it into a self-consciously transcendental mode of reasoning and apologetics. This observation gives us insights as to why both theologians have been received (and misinterpreted) in similar ways, and that Van Til, though deeply dependent and influenced by Bavinck, developed Bavinck’s synthetic tendencies in ways that Bavinck did not do.