I will never understand Van Til's popularity. He is unkind to his readers with his very unique, idiosyncratic style (not unlike Karl Barth, I might add!). And also like Barth, for all of the complexity of his thought, when it comes down to it he is a fideist, pure and simple. That is no way to do apologetics, Reformed or not. The so-called *Reformed Apologetics* he pioneered strikes me as a weak retreat to commitment. Basically untenable, and that is why all the Reformed theologians before him (OK, maybe before Kuyper) were ALL Reformed Evidentialists (Calvin, Beza, Ames, Owen, Erskine, Hodge, Warfield, Shedd, Dabney, Turretin, etc.) If you really insist on going for this horrible presuppositional stuff, at least buy John Frame instead. He is far more readable and modest than Van Til.

Van Til here sets out how Reformed apologists are to go about doing apologetics. In his view, Roman Catholicism (particularly Thomas Aquinas) and Evangelical Protestantism (specifically Joseph Butler) have gone astray from the "truly" Biblical apologetic method. Here, CVT offers a brief synopsis of the differences between a Reformed apologetic as opposed to those counterparts. In doing so, he lays out what he thinks to be the the fundamental reason why they have gone astray and why a Reformed apologetic will differ: that fundamental reason being the arch foe of Christianity, human autonomy.

Despite my being a biased Van Tillian, I did not really like this book. I don't believe that it is a particularly bad book either. It is just on my not loved and not hated list. Here's why. Van Til likes to use a lot of clever illustrations to indicate the nature certain themes (for instance, the analogy of the saw and how the natural man interprets reality using reason). The problem is, he does not ever lay out in great detail how this works. It might have been better if Van Til lived more recently and wrote as an analytic philosopher. In any case, take for intance this issue. For Van Til, the possibility of predication and intelligibility rests upon the ontological Trinity. He asserts this, but does he go into any detail as to *why* this is the case? Not in this book. So, this I found to be disappointing. He may be right, but I could see evidentialists scratching their heads asking exactly why that is the case, if it is the case at all. One would need to do reading elsewhere (i.e. the Van Til Archives) in order to see how this claim can be defended. On the other hand, this is only a syllabus and not a bigger work where he deals with some of the questions that popped into my mind elsewhere (i.e. CVT -Defense of the Faith, or see Bahnsen - Van Til's Apologetic, etc.).

Another point. This is about *how* to do apologetics. It is a brief *apologia for revelational presuppositionalism* and not an apologetic for the truth of Christianity. That being said, if you come from a non-Christian perspective, you will wonder about what Van Til is saying when other apologetic works, such as Norman Geisler's, are attempting to argue for Christianity. Again, this book is about the *method* and not an attempt to put the method in practice (see other works such as a Survey of Christian Epistemology where this is done).

So... it is an okay book. A must have for all Van Tillians? Yes. Sufficient for understanding presuppositionalism or vindicating the Christian worldview? Certainly not.

My words would be too few and poor to reflect how important this book is/was on the Reformed apologetical method let alone me.