This is precisely the point that was made earlier, Van Till had to presuppose the bible as God's revelation to man in order to use it as his starting point. To the heathen in the first century, it would be a matter of question begging. To the skeptic of today, it is question begging.
To be certain, all systems of epistomology are presuppositional, it is necessary to find universal presuppositions. Gerstner, Lindsley and Sproul found three:
1) The Law of Non-contradiction.
2) The Law of Causuality.
3) The basic reliability of human senses.
Without these three basic presuppositions, man can have no basis for knowlege at all, let alone knowlege of God. i do agree that a presuppositional apologetic is useful...why reinvent the wheel? There are matters within the Roman Catholic Magisterium that are articles of faith in Protestantism, simply because they are derived from what both factions agree upon as the Apostolic Tradition. There are other Articles that are not, since there is no agreement that the derivation was within the Apostolic Tradition. The main point of this thread is not whether there is an Apostolic Tradition, it is rather what does that Tradition entail. Catholics and Protestants do not disagree on all points.
Agreed. It's patently obvious to everyone except a Roman Catholic that because scriptures prove the Apostolic Tradition that any tradition outside of scripture is necessarily false.
As to our side discussion I can only hazard to guess that Kuyper and Berkhof would not agree with Van Til's strict presuppositionalism. However, I would still agree with Kuyper's 'sacred theology' that understanding the Transcendent God necessarily entails a "fear of the Lord". Thus, I would contend, that the external conditions you posited are secondary to the first principle of Faith posited by Berkhof.
BTW, this is how to post a link. <a href="?">??</a> (?=the address of the page, ??=title of link)