Van Til once wrote that the unbeliever can understand certain truths/evidences “in their proper form.” He does not expand upon this (to my knowledge). I know Van Tillians have delved into this (muddy) water and discussed how this can be when, as far as my study goes thus far with Van Til, he denies Natural Theology in the unbeliever. So my question is what sort of evidences in their proper form would Van Til accept?
NOTE: I am not trying to rage against Van Til here. Merely looking for clarification on this point of evidences.
For one amen to what has already been posted. My only contribution could be that Van Til stressed that "evidence" is always interpreted through the person. So, as he loved to point out, the resurrection can be established by evidence but the unbeliever can interpret that as a strange coincidence (he loved to point to Pragmatism in particular, see William James "The Pluralistic Universe" on this) but nothing more.
Same "facts" but different interpretation of them. In fact his two philosophical foes early on were Idealism and Pragmatism (see his PhD thesis on that, available on line and I gave a synopsis of it somewhere on here for what it's worth).
He also liked to say that "an uninterpreted fact is a brute fact" here's a footnote by Oliphant in the fourth edition of "The Defense of The Faith":
Page 18: footnote 78:
"The notion of brute fact has often been misunderstood in Van Til's thought. It is sometimes thought that Van Til's rejection of brute facts by virtue of our interpretation of them. This, however, has more to do with Postmodern Relativism, and nothing to do with Van Til's view of facts. For Van Til a brute fact would be a mute fact (it doesn't tell us anything in isolation from the context in which we're dealing with it, it's a so what fact). That is it would not say "anything"; it would have no meaning until or unless we gave meaning to it.
Thus, for Van Til, there are no brute facts, not because every fact carries our interpretation with it, because every fact is a created fact (that is Christian facts are not neutral facts just free-floating out there for anyone to use, everyone of them proves our point, it's not like creation is open to being interpreted as atheistic and we have to take the same facts they use and show it's actually Christian facts). As created, every fact carries with it God's own interpretation (instead of our own interpretation of it, although the archetypal/ectypal distinction is essential here). God speaks the facts themselves into existence, and he through all that he has created."
That's that we can't truly interpret creation as anything but creation but how do we practically deal with facts? By attacking their philosophy of fact and setting our's over against it, to use his language.
The best Vantillian I know of who does this is Michael Krueger and canon studies. I'll post his website, he's a Vantillian and he's using it in the arena of evidences. Pay attention to how he does it.
But in short we deal with interpretation along with presentation of facts. If I'm engaged with someone over facts about the reliability of the bible I may not need to enter into philosophy of fact territory but I must mindful of it. A single statement like "yeah but who could believe that actually happened" is now an opportunity to step back and deal with their philosophy of fact.
