Defending the Faith — Cornelius Van Til — there is no neutral common ground between the believer and the skeptic

Cornelius Van Til’s Defending the Faith establishes that a truly Reformed apologetic must be entirely consistent with the doctrines it seeks to protect, specifically by rejecting any neutral common ground between the believer and the skeptic. The text outlines a structural antithesis between the Christian, who views all reality through the lens of a sovereign Creator, and the unbeliever, who mistakenly assumes the autonomy of human reason to suppress the inescapable truth of God. By utilizing the metaphorical "X-ray machine" of Scripture’s absolute authority, Van Til argues that all facts and logic only become intelligible when one presupposes the triune God of the Bible. Ultimately, the work serves as a call for unconditional surrender to the self-attesting Word of God, teaching that any attempt to defend the faith using secular methods inevitably results in an internal incoherence that undermines the gospel itself.