Van Til

Cornelius Van Til
Born	(1895-05-03)May 3, 1895 Grootegast, the Netherlands
Died	April 17, 1987(1987-04-17) (aged 91)
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Calvinism, Presuppositionalism, Christian Philosophy
Main interests	Epistemology, Christian apologetics, Philosophy of Religion, Systematic Theology
Notable ideas	Transcendental Argument
Influences Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, John Calvin, D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, Herman Dooyeweerd, Hendrik G. Stoker, Herman Bavinck, Abraham Kuyper, B. B. Warfield
Influenced Greg Bahnsen, John Frame, Richard L. Pratt, Jr., R. J. Rushdoony, Francis Schaeffer, Alvin Plantinga, D.A. Carson

Cornelius Van Til (May 3, 1895 – April 17, 1987) was a Christian philosopher and Reformed theologian, who is credited as being the originator of modern presuppositional apologetics.

Van Til (born Kornelis van Til in Grootegast, Netherlands) was the sixth son of Ite van Til, a dairy farmer, and his wife Klasina van der Veen. 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 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.