Presuppositional Apologetics?

Oh yeah, I've heard of that: it's where you just assume Christianity is true because it has to be, right? Or where you say the Bible is the word of God because it says it's the word of God, and since it's the word of God, it must be right? That's just question begging and circular reasoning.

I see that kind of misconception a lot. So here is a short primer (in the form of an introductory reading list) on what Presuppositional Apologetics (PA) really is.

NOTE: These are all fairly short papers, I'm not loading you down with 50 folio-sized tomes in 10pt! ;)

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1. John Frame's entry on Presuppositional Apologetics from the IVP Dictionary of Apologetics.


2. Cornelius Van Til's My Credo, which roughly sketches Van Til's apologetic program.


3. Cornelius Van Til's Why I Believe in God, which roughly sketches Van Til's argument.
   
   
4. Cornelius Van Til's A Defense of Reformed (biblical) Apologetics, same.


5. Frame's Presuppositional Apologetics: An Introduction (Part I), fleshing things out some more, circularity.


6. Frame's Presuppositional Apologetics: An Introduction (Part II), fleshing things out some more.


7. Greg Bahnsen's Van Til and Self-Deception, unbelievers both know and don't know God?


8. Greg Bahnsen's A Critique of the Evidentialist Apologetical Method of John Warwick Montgomery, deals generally with common objections like possibility of common ground, circulatiry and uniqueness proof and critiques classical apologetics.


9. Mike Butler's The Transcendental Argument for God's Existence, looks very specifically at the formal structure of transcendental arguments (TAs) (and examines them in recent secular philosophy, from Kant to Strawson, to Grayling, &c), then looks at the TAG, and answers the objections that Bahnsen left vague, unsatisfactorily answered, or just unanswered.

More free online resources can be found at:

• http://www.vantil.info - Many writings from presuppositionalist authors, several full books from Van Til.


• http://www.monergism.com - Lots of papers from Frame and others and some written debates.


• http://www.reformed.org/ - Several papers and some written debates.


• http://www.cmfnow.com - Lots of papers from Bahnsen on all kinds of philosophical and apologetical issues.

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The very nature of an ultimate presupposition is that it is held with certainty. An ultimate presupposition is an ultimate criterion of truth, and therefore it is a criterion by which all other alleged certainties are tested. There is no higher criterion by which the certainty of such a presupposition can be called into question. Thus by its very nature, such a presupposition is the most certain thing that we know.

John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1987), 5.A.(8), p. 135.

The complaint will he heard that, if we are arguing over whether God exists and has final authority, we may not take that authority for granted while we are arguing about it. But the complaint is reversible, is it not? The Christian can reply: "If we are arguing about whether God exists and has final authority, we may not take for granted that He is not the final authority; the attempt to authorize (substantiate) His authority by some other standard would amount to the ruling that whatever authority He has it cannot be final." A Person's presuppositions are (as such) presupposed even when someone is discussing or arguing about them. For example, philosophers who argue for the truth or validity of the laws of logic do not put aside logic while arguing for it.

Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1998), p. 92, n. 8.

Paul and Bodily Resurrection

Rook Hawkins and others deny that Paul believed in bodily resurrection. This is based on several different lines of argumentation, all of which I believe are muddled. They seem to take a phrase from one source, or a gloss from another, and illegitimately form a potpourri of first-century thought, so that Paul is a Marcionite in one place, an Ebionite in another, a Rabbinical Jew in another, an Essene in another, and so on.

Like taking words and phrases from all of these various groups and super-imposing them on Paul is going to give us a better view of Paul's thought than using an internal critique of Paul's own writings and noticing how he uses familiar words and phrases in new and unique ways, looking at how his contemporaries and early interpreters understood him.

Imagine the misinterpretations that would result from randomly picking words and phrases from various disparate religious traditions today, and applying them books written by Richard Dawkins! Can you imagine replacing his intended meaning of "irrationality" with the one used in Jainism (i.e., the attraction of negative karmic particles to the eternal, immaterial soul). I somehow doubt that would go over very well, or be perceived as being in any way rational. Yet with Paul, replacing his idea of salvation with some type of proto-gnostic, mystery cult idea of escaping the meat-prison body through an existential Christ experience, is supposed to be good scholarship? There is some kind of double-standard going on to think it's OK to deconstruct and reconstruct Paul like that but not contemporary writers. But I digress.

To the point, a simple counter-argument topples the entire house of cards on this issue of Paul and bodily resurrection:

1 Corinthians 15:30, 32 Why am I in danger every hour? . . . What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” (ESV)

Paul makes the point that he has no reason to risk his life if, when he physically dies, he will not be raised. In that case, he says, he might as well join the scoffers (he quotes Isaiah 22:13, LXX) and get as much pleasure as he can from life before his time is up. Some people get caught up on whether he means "beasts" as literal animals in some sense, or as human opponents to his preaching, but that is entirely beside the point; the point is simply that he daily finds himself in mortal peril and he contrasts this physical peril of death with "being awoken" (ἐγείρονται, egeirontai). And this makes sense, given that physical death is euphemistically called "sleep" by Paul (as it is through-out the Hebrew scriptures). Notice how truly absurd it is for the revisionist to argue that Paul meant some sort of lack of enlightenment by "sleep" given that in verse 18 he speaks of people who have "fallen asleep in Christ"! But wait; resurrection, "arising," "awakening" is supposed to be this spiritual experience of initiation into the mysteries of Christ, so how can anyone have "fallen asleep in Christ"?

"But wait," they will say, "Paul explicitly contrasts the earthly and the heavenly, the body of dust and the body of spirit. He tells us in no uncertain terms that 'flesh and blood' cannot enter Heaven. Obviously then, this resurrection business is not talking about 'flesh and blood' bodies." I agree. It is not simply a revival of natural human bodies; it is a radical "change" (v. 51), as dramatic as the difference between an ear of corn and a kernel of corn (v. 37). So while there is some difference between the "natural body" and the "spiritual body" (v. 44), they are both "body" in some sense. Paul could have said "sown as a natural body, raised without the body", or "sown as a natural body, raised as a spirit", but he doesn't. Instead, he makes it quite clear that he is referring to a bodily resurrection.

Theodicy

I recently watched a debate between John Loftus and David Wood on the problem of evil. Interesting discussion (I especially liked Woods' "argument from Venus de Milo", heh), however it was generally more of the usual when you get right to the meat of things. I posted the following comment:

Interesting discussion. My thoughts are as follow.

In part three, around minute 14, Mr. Loftus says that he simply wants Mr. Wood to explain, on Wood's own worldview, why there is such much grotesque suffering in the world. He doesn't need to account for something so complex as the idea of "evil" (yet), he merely wants to know why an objective feature of reality is the way it is, given Wood's Christian worldview.

Even though I disagree with the epistemological and metaphysical assumptions behind that challenge, even granted them for the sake of discussion, there are problems.

First, the simplest answer that meets Loftus' criterion of providing an account for the existence of "so much" suffering, and is consistent with the biblical account of God, is that suffering (of whatever kind or degree) exists because God has a telic purpose for it which is consistent with His own moral character. Without a more complex notion like "evil" (or "bad", or whatever name you wish to attach to negative value judgments), the challenge goes "thus far, but no farther."

So that brings us to the second point. Mr. Loftus *is* using "suffering" as a value-laden term. He is evaluating it by levels. So what? Yeah--but not quantitative levels--*qualitative* levels. It's not that a cat tearing apart a bird causes "so much more" suffering than something else (that is, in terms of something like the number of neural pain "signals" processed or something--in fact, a quick death like that may "hurt" less than say, dieing of thirst; a very old person and newborn both die peacefully in their sleep, but the infant's death is "tragic" while the elderly person simply "lived a nice, full life"). No it's not quantity that distinguishes here. It's something about the quality of the situation that causes him to valuate it on a different level from just "unpleasant" or "unfortunate" and value it as "bad"--i.e., that which should not be (notice the ethical imperative hidden in there).

If Loftus simply sticks to his first tact and denies that his use of "suffering" is value-laden, he has an answer as to why there is suffering (of any sort or amount), and Christianity has won the debate already, right here. Nothing is inherently problematic with saying that volitional being does something (or ceases from doing something) for a reason. In fact, that's a major feature that distinguishes volitional and non-volitional beings.

But Mr. Loftus seems willing to go further than this--he appears to want to have standards of "fairness" or "truth" (e.g., "What did [innocent, helpless animals] do wrong [to deserve to suffer]?"--note the contradiction of terms used to rhetorically imply a negative value judgment and negative valuation of injustice)--and indeed, to raise any objection against a volitional being acting for a reason, he must introduce a system of moral standards and judgments, that will allow for the value-laden use of suffering--allow for the valuation of that reason for which the volitional being acts. These moral obligations might be along the lines of "a rational being *should* only act on reasons which are logically true and justified" or "a caring being *should* only act on reasons which tend to minimize all form and degree of suffering", "a just being *should* only act on reasons that result in consequences for all beings which are proportional to their actions" (and that is just to say that it is "evil" ("bad", &c) to fail to meet such obligations).

Only with such prescriptive standards in hand could Loftus attempt a move from the fact of suffering to some argument for doubting the existence or attributes of the Christian God. But at that point, the Christian is certainly within his rights to ask Mr. Loftus to account for the possibility of such a system of standards and judgments, given his own worldview. If it merely arises by convention or chance, then I'm not obligated to hold it. If holds that value judgments are not inherently different from imaginings or hallucinations, then I'm not obligated to hold it. In cases such as those, it has no logical necessity: it just happens to be the way it is, or happens to be how Americans look at things, or happens to be the epiphenomenal twinklings of molecules bumping together, &c, which makes it non-sense (it logically says I'm obligated (prescriptive) to behave in certain ways, and metalogically says people just happen to behave that way (descriptive).

However, if Mr. Loftus' ethical system really is normative and not merely descriptive, how is that possible on his worldview? According to his view, why is it absolutely wrong to whip a slave woman (or for that matter, to own a slave woman in the first place)? Mr. Loftus may, theoretically, be able to come up with a prescriptive ethical system on his worldview (I don't believe it's possible, but again, just for discussion). That's fine. But until he does, Christians are justified in saying that his challenge has been met: God ordains suffering in the world because of his over-arching telic purpose for the world which is consistent with His own holy moral character. The ball is in Mr. Loftus' court now.

Without even getting into the issue of defining the Christian concepts of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence (which, by the way, are almost always misdefined because of misunderstanding the omni- prefix as applying to absolutely everything rather than the accurate meaning of everything possible)--and without considering some of the usual theodicies offered (necessary evil, free will, so forth--most of which I think are unbiblical anyhow)--the problem is solved.

If a person wishes to challenge the Christian worldview on the basis of the existence of suffering, they need to be prepared to take that argument forward from just the fact of suffering to the value judgment of evil (and BTW, what is suffering, exactly? The perception of physical pain? Emotional pain? Neural discharges? Some combination?). And in turn, be ready to supply a moral framework in which such a concept of evil is intelligible as an abstract, universal principal of judgment.

Certainly, one could argue that the existence of the Christian God and the fact of suffering are incompatible, according to the Christian system of morality. And many people do try to go that route. A Christian could equally well ask for justification here for the abstract, universal principals of logic necessary to make such an argument, and no headway is made over the other approach. But even granting the possibility of such an account for the sake of discussion, the argument is self-defeating. If we're going to accept the Christian system of morality for the sake of argument, then on Christianity, God is perfectly consistent and unchanging in His own nature. Moral value judgments are derived from God's nature. Ergo, no moral value judgments can ever cast doubt on the nature of God. Once again, the simple theodicy suffices that God has a telic purpose for the existence of evil which is compatible with His nature.

Genesis 50:18-21 His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, Behold, we are your servants. (19) But Joseph said to them, Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? (20) As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. (21) So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones. Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. (ESV)

Seeing Faith?

What is "seeing faith"? Well, it's the opposite of "blind faith"! ;) Christians shouldn't be fideists (1 Peter 3:15-16)--faith is not a leap in the dark, it's the most reasonable thing in the world--assent and trust in the Creator of the world and of our very minds. We should also not be rationalists when it comes to our faith. We don't believe because it is reasonable to believe (though it is), but because of a work of God in us. Christians should be presuppositionalists! So, yeah. This is a theology / apologetics blog, if you hadn't guessed. Don't expect anything too profound though. Mainly just some thoughts from time time time and some ramblings.