Thanks Tom. Yes, good reading.

JEdwards is definitely a student of Frame (his language bears the flavour of Frame's gentle propriety), while I am more purely a Van Tillian of the Bahsenite persuasion I would say ;-). I learned quite early from the Van Tillians I hung with the be very careful with Frame's approach.

I've only corresponded with John Frame once, over a critique Bahnsen made of Frame's approach to presuppositionalism, but Dr. Frame didn't want to discuss it. He is a very gentle bear compared to Bahnsen IMO, I just think one needs to be guarded with Frame's approach to presuppositionalism, I enjoy a lot of his stuff from RTS downloads at iTunes U, for example.

Funny, but a few of the students I have trained in presuppositionalism have gone on to pummel and thrash atheists, but enjoy the thrill of leaving them stuttering so much they simply walk away at that point. I could have borne a little of Frames genteel-ness and in my teaching stress a bit more, as Van Til did, that evangelism is integral to what we do when we pummel the opposers. Gotta remember that last step, kids ;-) It's funny because it's a trait of Van Til's, and Bahnsen learned it, to have a certain "in your face" approach. An elder in a church I attended was a student of Van Til's, who recollected that one day as he and Van Til were finishing up a discussion, the Dutch Dr. Van Til finished it with, "...and you'll shave that beard off, too, won't you!". You probably would not have heard that from Bahnsen, but I think it's certain you would never hear that from Frame.

Anyway, I just find the perceptibility of inherited traits of the teachers in their students interesting.

I, for example, was trying very hard to be throttled and collected in my approach to Dr. Duncan....bottle the acid and all that. But some of us get perturbed as we see Christians, who ought to know better, carry the baby all the way and then throw it out with the bathwater.

Schaeffer is, as JEdwards notes, definitely "presuppositionalism lite", which is an interesting phrasing because it is quite how a Frame-trained presupper would say it I think....to me Schaeffer just plain misses the most powerful point of the presuppositional approach to epistemology altogether, treating it like another option among the various approaches to knowledge that one could take (from his still-excellent book "How Should We Then Live?"). But it is not that. I grant it's very, very tricky for a Christian to pick up, because we constantly assume it and so it's just so familiar.

Aside from that, stellar fellow also.

Thanks again,

Tulipman