Cornelius Van Til (1895- 1987)

Cornelius, born Kornelis, was a Dutch- American Christian Philosopher and Reformed theologian who has been credited as being the originator of Modern presuppositional apologetics.

Cornelius was born in Grootsgast, Netherlands. At the age of 10 his family moved to Highland, Indiana. USA.

He graduated from Calvin college in 1922. He received a ThM from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1927. He received a PhD from Princeton University in 1927.

For 2 years he taught at Princeton before moving, with the conservative group , to the new Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS) in1929 . He spent 43 years at WTS as professor of apologetics and systematic theology. On retiring in 1972 he continued to teach occasionally until 1979.

He was also a minister in the Christian Reformed Church in North America and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church from the 1930s until his death in 1987.

Cornelius is probably best known for the development of a fresh approach to the task of defending the Christian faith. His apologetics focused on the role of presuppositions, the point of contact between believers and unbelievers, and the antithesis between Christian and non-Christian view points ( He did not like the ‘label’ o f ’ presuppositional’ but accepted it as a matter of convention.)

He also argued that the Trinity is of indispensable and insuperable value to a Christian philosophy.

He was also embroiled in a bitter dispute with Gordon Clark over God’s incomprehensibility known as the Clark-Van Til Controversy.

Cornelius’ ‘ground motive’ of a Christian philosophy was that it must be derived from the historical terms of the Christian faith.

Sources used
Theopedia
wikipedia