Dr Greg Bahnsen - Mid-Level Apologetics: Presuppositional Method (Part 11)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

Let's just take as our example tonight logic. Do Christians use laws of logic and non Christians use laws of logic? Well, they do. Well, how can they if they have completely different worldviews? What is our view of the law of non contradiction? There have been a lot of misconceptions about Mantill's convictions on this matter, but it's right here in one of his first syllabi, page 189. To be sure, all men have the law of contradiction in common in the sense that all men as creatures made in the image of God, cannot but function in a universe that embodies the ordinances of God. Vantil says, of course all men have the law of non contradiction in common because that's an ordinance of God, that's God's law and they live in God's world, so they must think in terms of that law. But, but non Christians do not believe in such a universe. They believe that man is autonomous, that he's surrounded by a world of pure contingent factuality, that the everything is random, this is a chance universe, and that he himself must seek to impose order upon pure factual contingency by means of the laws of logic that exist in themselves. Ultimately, the non Christian says this is a chance universe. But my mind doesn't think in terms of chance. My mind thinks in terms of logical laws. So the universe is chance. But I'm going to think about it in terms of logical laws. So that amounts to me imposing my way of thinking on the nature of reality. Accordingly, the Christian having opposite views of reality has opposite views of the nature and function of logic in relation to reality. Next paragraph. For the theist, possibility has its source in God, while for the antitheist, God has his source, possibility. What does this mean? Talking to a non Christian? Non Christian says, well, it's possible that there's no God. It's possible there's no God. So what he is saying is that the realm of possibility in a sense is the backdrop for whether there's a God or not. You have this realm of possibility and then one possibility is there's a God man. Till says, but if God is the source of possibility, then God is the ultimate backdrop. All the possibilities are a result of what he says are possible. The next paragraph. For theism, God is the source of the probable. For antitheism, the probable is the source of God. And now listen to the important Next paragraph. The reason why these differences do not appear on the surface. Why is it when you're talking to unbelievers that these basic things don't come up all the time? Why isn't it right on the surface? The reason why these differences do not appear on the surface is that as a matter of fact, all men are human beings who are created in the image of God. All men do have the laws of logic do have God as the source of possibility and probability. All men are made in the image of God. Even the non regenerate have, by virtue of common grace, some remnant of what should be, though it is not the general consciousness of mankind. Accordingly, it happens that there is incidental agreement. Non Christians and Christians can incidentally agree on things because they can't be consistent with what they say about this chance world. They are made in the image of God, and so to a certain degree they are going to end up agreeing with us or we'll end up agreeing with them on certain things. At the bottom of the page Vantil Sundays, in the second place we may mention as a reason why these fundamental differences are not easily observed the fact that the incidental and abstract agreement between theist and anti theist on moral and intellectual matters usually deals with things that are proximate rather than with things that are ultimate. It's one thing to talk about who won the World Series and what the price of eggs is at the store. Proximate local peripheral issues. And another thing to talk about what is ultimate? How do we know what we know? What is man? What's his place in the universe? Is there a God? Is there life after death? Those ultimate questions. When we get down to that, then the clash is real obvious. But on the other things it's more like, you know, you don't hear it all that much, but that clash is there. The deeper you get, the louder the clash becomes. So unbelievers are made in the image of God. And when they who are made in the image of God as unbelievers talk to others who are made in the image of God, who are believers and talk about local matters whether Johnny has a fever or not, they can come to incidental agreement. The real obvious difference doesn't come out until you get down to the bottom of things. Then page 191, this is about eight lines down I would imagine. The real question is whether we can intelligibly think of the non existence of God and the high Christian is going to say, well, you've got to consider the Possibility that God doesn't exist. Evangelist says the real issue is can we even imagine the non existence of God? Can we intelligibly think of the non existence of God? If God doesn't exist, then thinking becomes random. How do we bring the laws of our thinking into connection with the random chance experiences that we have of the world? Certain things at the bottom of the page, Van Til Sundays, in the second place we may mention as a reason why these fundamental differences are not easily observed the fact that the incidental and abstract agreement between theist and anti theist on moral and intellectual matters usually deals with things that are proximate rather than with things that are ultimate. It's one thing to talk about who won the World Series and what the price of eggs is at the store. Proximate local peripheral issues. And another thing to talk about what is ultimate? How do we know what we know? What is man? What's his place in the universe? Is there a God? Is there life after death? Those ultimate questions. When we get down to that, then the clash is real obvious. But on the other things it's more like you don't hear it all that much, but that clash is there. The deeper you get, the louder the clash becomes. So unbelievers are made in the image of God. And when they who are made in the image of God as unbelievers talk to others who are made in the image of God, who are believers and talk about local matters, whether Johnny has a fever or not, they can come to incidental agreement. The real obvious difference doesn't come out until you get down to the bottom of things. Then page 191, this is about eight lines down I would imagine. The real question is whether we can intelligibly think of the non existence of God. The non Christian is going to say, well, you've got to consider the possibility that God doesn't exist. Evangelists says the real issue is can we even imagine the non existence of God? Can we intelligibly think of the non existence of God? If God doesn't exist, then thinking becomes random. How do we bring the laws of our thinking into connection with the random chance experiences that we have of the world? Then on page 193 he takes up the idea that Abraham Kuyper's thought leads to the uselessness of apologetics. Because Kuyper recognized the principal difference between the regenerate consciousness and the non regenerate consciousness. Van Till wants to say, to a certain degree Kiefer has been misinterpreted but this is certainly not Van Till's conclusion that because there's a principal difference between the regenerate and the unregenerate that therefore they cannot argue with each other. Page 196 about the middle. In other words, we hold that the Christian theistic system is, as a matter of fact, the truth. Accordingly, to be truly human one must recognize this truth. It is the task of the Christian apologist to hold before man the truth and God's requirement that men should accept the truth, even though he knows that it requires the grace of God for man to see it. There is in this matter nothing else to consider but the command of God. Since it is upon God's command that the work must be undertaken, it is God's command that gives one the assurance that the work will accomplish its purpose. Looking at matters by themselves, it would be worse than useless to undertake reasoning with unbelievers. But it is the deep conviction of the total depravity of man that makes one throw his whole reliance upon God in all respects and not the least. In this question of reasoning with unbelievers. At the bottom of the page are arguments taken by themselves effect nothing. While the Holy Spirit may very well convict without the use of our argument as he may convict without the use of our preaching. Yet because God is himself a completely rational God and has created us in his image, there's every reason to believe that he will make argumentation effective. Later on. In this page, Van Til says the unbeliever, the non regenerate, has a formal power of receptivity. It is this that enables him to consider the Christian theistic position and see that it stands squarely over against his own and demands of him the surrender of his own position. The unbeliever, to a certain extent can understand what we're saying, can see the significance of the argument and the demand that it places upon him. There is clearly an ethical difference between the Christian and the non Christian. And because of the ethical difference, the non Christian will suppress what he knows to be true in terms of theory of knowledge. He'll try to come up with a different theory of knowledge, which we will be able to undermine by means of our reasoning. However, the non Christian is not going to want to accept that we've undermined it. He's going to keep resisting and resisting and rationalizing and rationalizing until the Holy Spirit changes his heart. Then, on page 198 in the middle, it is not then as though the clear recognition of the fundamental ethical difference between the regenerate and the non regenerate consciousness implies that there is a twofold truth. Man to listen, say there's. It's not as though we say there's truth for the believer and truth for the unbeliever, there's twofold truth. Or that we must use one type of argument for one type of consciousness and another type of argument for the other type of consciousness. It's not relativism. It's not like Christians use one kind of argument, but non Christians use another kind of argument. It is exactly the deep conviction that there is metaphysically only one type of consciousness and that the non regenerate and the regenerate consciousness are but ethical modifications of this one fundamental metaphysical consciousness that leads us to reason with unbelievers. Let me put it this way. There's only one way to think. Christians and non Christians don't have different noses, but they use their noses differently. And there's only one way to reason. There's only one kind of human consciousness way to think about the world and find the truth. But there's an ethical difference between the unbeliever and the believer. They're not going to use that consciousness the same way. They're not going to reason the same way. But because we believe there's only one proper way of reasoning, we reason with them, we argue with them. It is exactly because of our deep conviction that God is one and truth is therefore one, that we hold that there is only one type of argument for all men. All that the recognition of the deep ethical difference does is to call attention to this very fact that it is God who must make this one truth effective in the hearts of men. You see how his Calvinism ties in beautifully with this. As a presuppositionalist, he says there's only one presupposition, one worldview that's going to make sense out of human life and experience. Now you refuse to accept this. I know that. But because God is one, truth is one, and therefore argumentation is one. And we use that one line of argument to show that if men do not hold to this worldview, they can't understand anything properly. And we trust that God will make that effective. It's an ethical difference ultimately between the believer and the unbeliever. And because it's ethical, God in his grace can overcome it. God can change the hearts of the rebellious. Okay, now that's what you did not read for tonight, which is background for chapter 15, the opening sentence. Mantil says, we've just shown that it's necessary to reason with those who believe differently than we do. Don't ever let anybody tell you, Satan. Let anybody say to you that vanthill doesn't believe in reasoning with the unbeliever or that argumentation is useless. Don't let them say that he just believes in reasoning in a circle and it's all arbitrary. It's like choosing hats. I've been hammering at that all night long. He does not believe that. How does Van Till escape the quagmires of rationalism and empiricism? He takes a transcendental approach to the ultimate presuppositional issue. Can one prove his ultimate presuppositions? Gordon Clark says no. Other people that have been known as presuppositionalists would say no. Van Till is unique in that. He says, our presuppositions are proven transcendentally. They are proven as the necessary precondition for all reasoning and all human experience. And so let's look at this on page 201, about a third of the page, he says, we can call the method of implication into the truth of God a transcendental method. That is, we must seek to determine what presuppositions are necessary to any object of knowledge in order that it may be intelligible to us. We are asking what presuppositions would be necessary to make any object of knowledge intelligible to us. When the unbeliever wants to use logic, we have to ask him, well, what worldview makes logic meaningful? When the unbeliever wants to use science, we say, but what worldview makes science meaningful? Scientists rely on the uniformity of nature. What worldview can guarantee the uniformity of nature? Logicians assume that there are things which are abstract and absolute and universal. What worldview will allow that? There are things that happen in the world which are uniform? The uniformity of nature and at the same time believes in uniform, universal, absolute laws of thought. What worldview can make sense out of human freedom? And yet the uniformity of logic and nature. How can you bring all these things into connection with each other? And the idea that there's a moral law that human beings must live up to and that there's a dignity for human beings, they're not just, you know, like dogs and cats, that they have some kind of special quality that sets them apart from the animal world. How do all of these things come together? Well, the Christian has an answer in terms of our worldview. God created man. God's mind controls our thinking. There are the laws of logic God's decree controls nature. There's the uniformity of nature. We're made in the image of God. There's the uniqueness and the dignity of man, and so forth. We must seek to determine what presuppositions are necessary for any object of knowledge to be intelligible to us. When the unbeliever sets something before us as a fact, we say, well, what is presupposed by saying that? What would have to be true about the world and about man for you to be able even to say that or know that? Then at the end of the paragraph that begins in the middle of the page, at the end of that paragraph, Van Til says, belief in God is the most human attitude conceivable. It is abnormal not to believe in God. We must therefore hold that only the Christian theist has real objectivity while others are introducing false prejudices or subjectivity. We want to point out it's normal to believe in God. When you don't, you're introducing a false prejudice. Turn the tables on the unbeliever who says we are the prejudiced ones as they know you're the one who's prejudiced. Yes, Ron. Christian reasoning then is the ultimate standard Christian reasoning. Reasoning that is based on God's revelation. And if people do not use that, then you have to challenge them. How can they make sense of what they are saying? Okay, so it's not a matter like you've got your facts to put on this side of the balance and I've got my facts to put on this side of the balance. Let's see who's got the most facts to support his position. We rather go much further than that and we challenge the unbelievers. Say, how can you know any fact at all given what you say about the world, Given your view that this is a chance universe, that the laws of logic are just in the human mind, how could you know anything for sure? It's not like you have certain facts and I have more. It's like you couldn't know anything at all. The very tools of reasoning that you use presuppose the Christian God. That's the transcendental method. And then in the middle of that last paragraph on page 201, Van Til says, we hold that our reasoning cannot fairly be called circular reasoning. The next time you run into that charge, would you please open the book and show that to the person who says it, say yes. But Van Till says it's not fair to call this circular reasoning because we are not reasoning about and seeking to explain facts by assuming the existence and meaning of certain other facts on the same level of being with the facts we are investigating and then explaining these facts in turn by the facts with which we began. Because we're not reasoning in this vicious circle, just on the same level, we're talking about what is necessary to understand any fact at all. We're presupposing God, not merely another fact of the universe. In the middle of page 202, banter says anti theism has arbitrarily taken for granted that God is not a fact. We hold that the so called facts are wholly unintelligible unless the supreme fact of God be brought into relation with them. Okay, so the unbeliever says God is not a fact. You can't start with that at the outset. We say if you don't start with that presupposition, you can't make sense of any other fact at all. Now we keep making these claims. You've heard them many evenings here in this class. Obviously it's going to come down to your ability to press home that claim. When you talk to somebody, you can say that and he can go, well, what do you mean I can't make sense of anything? I can make sense of all? Start giving examples of things you make sense of. That's where you need to learn to press him and say, now what are you assuming though, when you say this or that about whatever you're talking, the grass is growing, you know, when that person starts talking about these facts that he or she knows, say, well, but if you believe that this is a chance world, or if you believe that everything's governed by laws, or if you believe that man has freedom or does not have freedom or whatever, if you believe such and such, it's not really possible for you to make the comment that you've just made because given that worldview, it would become meaningless to say the grass is growing or whatever you're talking about. You've got to flesh out this argument by forcing the unbeliever back, back, back to be consistent with his or her ultimate presuppositions. Van till, on pages 202 and 203 to the top of 204, likens his method of reasoning to analogical reasoning. I've always thought that this was perhaps a strategic mistake on Van Til's part, because his opponents, looking for an easy thing to pounce on, to criticize him, have easily misunderstood what he meant by analogical reasoning. There's really nothing wrong with what he's talking about, but by labeling it that his opponents have said, oh, oh, well then if you're a presuppositionalist, all you know about God are analogies. You don't ever know God or you don't know the truth itself. You only know analogies. Yeah, that's what they said for years and years. But I think you can tell that what Dan Till is talking about is not a knowledge of analogies. He's talking about knowing analogically. And what's an analogy? An analogy says there's a point of identity and there are points of difference. And so Van Till says, when I think God's thoughts after him, I'm thinking analogically. My thoughts are not God's thoughts and yet I'm thinking them after him. So there's a point of identity and yet there's points of difference. And so that's like analogical. The opposite of that. He calls univocal reasoning. As though God and man are across a level playing field or a table. They're equals, they're on a par with each other. And God's got to approach the facts just like man approaches the facts. And God's got to obey the laws of reason like man obeys the laws of reasoning. He says that's the unbelievers idea, univocal reasoning. But we reason analogically, we think God's thoughts after him. That's all he's getting at here. And yet his opponents have made a real big point of it. As though Van Till thinks you don't really know God, you only know an analogy about God. So probably a strategic mistake to use that vocabulary. Easily misunderstood. The top of page 204, you see how I think without warrant. The critique is Bentham says man's knowledge of the facts is then a reinterpretation of God's interpretation. It is this that is meant by saying that man's knowledge is analogical of God's knowledge. I mean, could you be any clearer? He says, all I'm getting at is that man reinterprets God's thoughts. He is not the original. He's not the one who first thinks them. He thinks them after God. He imitates God's thinking. That's what I mean by reasoning analogically. Okay, two paragraphs down. Bentos is the point of contact that we may presuppose. How can we be sure we'll be in touch with the thinking and reasoning of the unbeliever? The point of contact that we may presuppose is that man, as a matter of fact, never exists in such independence as he thinks he does. He remains accessible to God always. Why is it that he's accessible to God? He can't escape God because he's made in God's image. He'd have to cease being a man to get away from God. So he's always accessible, even though he doesn't think he is. And then this is real important. The bottom of this page up to the top of the next. Vantil says we can start with any fact at all and challenge our friends the enemy to give us an intelligible interpretation of it. There's the transcendental method, there's presuppositional apologetics. He says, let's just start anywhere. What do you want to talk about? Want to talk about the opera? Want to talk about grass growing? Or cows or roses or baseball, or science or history? You can start with any fact at all. And our challenge is, okay, name that tune and it's kind of like make sense out of that, given your view of reality. How could you know? How could we know? Now we know that we know this. But how could it be possible to know such a thing, to make sense out of such a thing, for it to be meaningful, given your philosophy of life? Since the non theist is so heartily convinced that univocal reasoning. What's univocal reasoning? God and man are on a par. God and man approach knowledge the same way, follow the same laws, and so forth. Since the non theist is so heartily convinced that univocal reasoning is the only possible kind of reasoning, we must ask him to reason univocally for us in order that we may see the consequences. The transcendental method says, try to make sense out of what you've just said, reason in terms of your worldview, and let's see what the consequences are. We ask him to show us first what he can do. We may, to be sure, offer to him at once a positive statement of opposition. But this he will at once reject is quite out of the question. So we may ask him to give us something better. Van Til says, I can make sense out of the grass growing here. I believe in a God who created the world, who sustains the world, who providentially provides the nutrients, who makes nature, what we call the created order, operate in a uniform way. I can understand the grass is growing because God made my mind to think in terms of the creation that he has made and so forth. So, I mean, it makes perfectly good sense to me to say the grass is growing. But how about you? Since of course it's out of the question that we can begin with such a God who created the world and controls all things, makes man his own image and so forth. Since that's out of the question, let's see what you can do. Give us something better. And I know that a lot of this philosophy can sound so abstract, but you see, a child can understand this. The Transcendental method is simply. Well, that makes sense to me. Let's see if you can make it make sense. Give me something better. If you don't like the way I approach this, okay. The reason he gives for rejecting our position is in the last analysis, that it involves self contradiction. Ultimately the unbeliever says your philosophy is illogical, it involves self contradiction. We see again as an illustration of this charge, the rejection of the theistic conception that God is absolute and that he has nevertheless created this world for his glory. This, the non theist says, is self contradictory. And it no doubt is from the non theistic point of view. This is an example you don't hear real often, so let me just point that out. Other examples could be put in here. The non Christian will say, oh well, if you've got a sovereign God, then man cannot be free and responsible. He's absolute, so there can't be anything added to his glory through history. The way Van Till puts it is if God is absolute, he has all glory. So then how can anything add to the glory of God in history? You say everything happens for the glory of God, but God already had all glory from all eternity, so there's a contradiction. Things like that. Okay, but the final question is in which framework or on which view of reality? The Christian or the non Christian? The law of contradiction can have application to any fact. Whose worldview makes it possible to use logic in the first place? The non Christian rejects the Christian view out of hand as being contradictory. Then when he's asked to furnish a foundation for the law of contradiction, he can offer nothing but the idea of contingency, randomness. And as has already been hinted at in the class earlier, you will see that this is the argument I used in the particular debate that I had with Gordon Stein. I said, you've got to use the laws of logic. Debate doesn't make sense without the laws of logic. So what's the foundation for the laws of logic? In terms of what worldview do the laws of logic make sense? What we shall have to do then is to try to reduce our opponent's position to absurdity, nothing less will do. So let's see if we can write down some translations of this transcendental method, some real easy ways of remembering what it means to argue transcendentally. Van Till has said, to argue transcendentally is to seek to determine what presuppositions are necessary for anything to be intelligible. So transcendental reasoning or argument is asking, what presuppositions? Another way we could put this is what worldview, what presuppositions are necessary for the intelligibility of anything to make sense out of what we're saying? It must not be subjective, just make arbitrary choices on the basis of personal preference. However, our philosophy says objectivity is identified with the way God sees things. Right in the middle of the page, he says, there can be no more fundamental question in epistemology than the question whether or not facts can be known without reference to God. But all is said and done. It comes down to this. We're asking the unbeliever, can you make sense out of anything without bringing God into the picture? Can you make sense of the facts if you do not have a Christian theistic worldview? And then down a couple of lines, Vancel says, suppose then the existence. We're asking him, just, you know, reason this through with us. For argument's sake. Suppose then that God exists. I want you to really catch on to this because this is very powerful. When you talk to the unbeliever, you're going to have to do this. You can say, would you just try for a few moments to understand what I'm telling you about my point of view? I'm not asking you to say it's true as yet. But just imagine, imagine there is this God that I'm talking about. Then it would be a fact that every fact would be known truly only with reference to Him. You can say that to the unbeliever. There's no offense in that. You say, look, if the God that I'm talking about exists, you'd have to admit on that hypothesis, no fact would be truly understood outside of reference to him, who is the Creator, the Controller, the one who gives meaning to everything. If then one did not place a fact into relation with God, he would be in error about the fact under investigation. If I'm right about this God, who is the Creator of all things, who governs all things, meaning and direction to all things, who unites all things, who is the Source of all laws and so forth, if I'm right about that, if I'm right about that. Then no fact can really be understood in complete isolation from this God who gives meaning to all things. Now then, if this God exists, then we can't even argue about him without presupposing him. We can't argue about anything, can't know anything without presupposing him. If this God exists. See, the unbeliever should be able intellectually to catch on here. He should be able to see that what he wants to do in the argument, the way he wants to reason, already excludes the Christian God. It already takes for granted that such a God as I just described, who creates all things, controls all things, gives the meaning to all things, that such a God doesn't exist because his method says be neutral, don't assume anything about God. And what I'm saying is, well, but if Christianity is true, it's impossible to be neutral. It's impossible to know anything without knowing God. So when you say please at the outset, let's not get into what our conclusions will be. Let's just start from scratch. Basically you're asking me to reason like a non Christian to assume that you're right. That's what you did with Stein. Say what? That's what you did with Stein. Correct. I believe that. I hope that is true. I was trying to. We're going to have a lesson, not the next one, but on May 11, where the main part of our class is going over that debate. So I won't steal my thunder from that point yet. Go ahead. What you're saying about Ben Till, he would say that the objective is God's thoughts. Subjective would be false thoughts. Well, subjective ends up being false thoughts, but the emphasis is subjective thoughts are those based on the subject. I'm the subject of knowledge and so I'm just thinking my own thoughts and they don't correspond to God's. And in that case they are false, but they're subjective rather than objective. Let's go on with this. Or suppose that one would just begin his investigations as a scientist without even asking whether or not it's necessary to make reference to such a God in his investigations. Such a one would be in constant and in fundamental ignorance all the while. And this ignorance would be culpable ignorance since it is God who gives him life and all good things. So you're explaining to the unbeliever this. You're saying if we were to start like you want to start, if we were to reason like you want to reason, then you would have to be in ignorance and you would be Morally guilty for that ignorance. Given the Christian outlook, it ought to be obvious then, that one should settle for himself this most fundamental of all epistemological questions, whether or not God exists. It all comes down to your basic presupposition. I've got an outlook on life that says you can't reason without God. You've got an outlook on life that says you must begin reasoning without God. So what are we going to do? How are we going to reason from that point? How are we ever going to get through to each other? How are we going to argue with the unbeliever? Seems like we're back to irreconcilable ultimate positions so that in the end we can't argue with each other. This is what Van Till is trying to undo, drawing that conclusion. He doesn't want you to draw that conclusion. He thinks that is a mistake. On page five, Vantil says, for the Christian, his fundamental and determining fact is the fact of God's existence. That is his final conclusion. But that must also be his starting point. That's his conclusion, but that's also his starting point. And now people are squawking, whoa, no, we can't do that. That's circular reasoning. You're starting at one point and just concluding that one point. So what's the point of arguing until a little below the middle of the page, right before the next paragraph, says, according to the Christian position, nothing at all can be known truly of any fact unless it be known through and by way of man's knowledge of God. God is necessary for understanding anything. And this is the basic apologetical challenge. This is how we resolve what seems to be the irreconcilable conflict of presuppositions. Without our presupposition, you can't make sense of anything. Even the argument that we're now going through. Sometimes unbelievers. Anthony Flew is a good example of this in his book God and Philosophy. Unbelievers will say that when you're a philosopher, you cannot employ a concept that you are examining. It's kind of like here it is, the Rules from Mount Olympus. One may not use a concept if he is examining the concept at first, that seems like, well, that's fair. You shouldn't be begging the question, using your conclusion in your investigation, in your method already. So he lays this down. One may not employ a concept, one may not employ something. At the same time, examine it well. But do philosophers follow that rule? Anthony Flew followed that rule. When philosophers argue about logic, that is, they are Examining logic. Do they not employ logic at the same time? Seems to be the case that at some point you do employ what you are examining. Or how about scientists who are looking into the usefulness and the veracity or veridical character of the human eye? Do scientists who examine the human eye use the human eye while they examine the human eye? Yeah, they do. And here's this man who writes in a well known publication, lays down the law. You cannot employ and examine something at the same time. Yet we know on ultimate questions, logic, the reliability of our sense organs and so forth, we in fact use the very things we're employing now. Why should the Christian automatically be precluded from doing the same thing? What we're saying is we employ our concept of God, our conclusion, if you will, at the very same time that we are examining our concept of God in the same way that when you argue about logic you assume the laws of logic. When you argue about eyeballs, you assume the reliability of eyeballs. In the same way when we argue about God we presuppose God. Because on such ultimate questions it is unavoidable. And here's Van Til's punchline then it's unavoidable. It's unavoidable to believe in God if one is going to make sense out of logic, sense perception, human morality, dignity, or anything of the sort. Van Till talks now in this introductory chapter about implication, deduction and induction. And for the sake of time, which will escape me tonight if I don't get moving along, I'm simply going to point out by way of summary that Van Till says we employ induction and deduction. When someone says you've got a deductive system or argues Christianity is an inductive system, we should say, well, actually it's both, because we don't approach it like the unbeliever does. Just from the standpoint of reasoning from general laws to particulars or reasoning from particular facts to general laws. He says we don't do one or the other in the process of our thinking. We implicate ourselves into the truth of God. That's been kind of an awkward expression. A lot of people don't really catch on to what he is saying. Let me try to give you a picture analogy of what he means by implicating ourselves. Imagine that you have a very complicated spider web with many, many strands, many, many rows, tears and so forth. Now imagine that the things that we know are like individual strands of that spider web. You know that it rained today, that's one little strand out there somewhere in this massive web, you know what your name is. You know who won the World Series in 1948. You know all these individual facts. And you also know some fundamental things. You know that we shouldn't contradict ourselves when we reason. You know that nature is uniform and so forth. So you take all the things you know and light them up in the spider web, make them a different color, neon somehow. Now, if the spider web represents everything that God knows, is what you know going to fill up the spider web? No. Okay, Take that for granted. We're not omniscient. We don't know everything. We don't know every connection between every fact. But as we learn more and more and more, what we're doing is we're filling in more of the strands of the spiderweb. We're not creating new strands. We're simply implicating ourselves deeper into what God already knows. We're never going to have all the connections. We're never going to know all the principles and all the facts. But to the degree that we learn more about the world, we are, as it were, taking in more of God's system. The spider web represents what God knows, all of its connections and so forth. So implicating yourself more and more into the system of God's thought is like filling in the spider web the long principles that connect things or the individual strands that are facts or what have you. Like, think of it like that. We use induction and deduction. The most important thing in terms of our method of defense, though, is that we take a transcendental approach. And that brings us to page 10, which is the subject of tonight's lesson and the reason why we've been doing this. So now let's get on to the real stuff. Transcendental. Van Till. The method of implication may also be called a transcendental method. We have already indicated that the Christian method uses neither the inductive nor the deductive method as understood by the opponents of Christianity, but that it has elements of both induction and deduction in it. If these terms are understood in a Christian sense. Now, when these two elements are combined, we have what is meant by a truly transcendental argument. And I'm going to stop reading because the next line is going to be absolutely crucial. Let me explain something about the history of philosophy and this term transcendental. This is a thumbnail sketch of the history of epistemology. It's not meant to be real sophisticated, but let me put it in simple terms. We have a school in epistemology. Known as rationalism. Rationalism says that the things which we know must be justified by relating them to a foundation of self evident truths or concepts. Self evident concepts become the foundation for all that we know. In contrast to that, you have a school of thought known as empiricism, which says that all that we know is justified by bringing it into relationship or putting it on the foundation of sensations or observations, if you will, of the world. So the ultimate foundation for knowledge will be self evident concepts. For the rationalist it will be observations or sensations of the world for the empiricist. Now the problem is, in the history of Western philosophy, the rationalists were not able to come to any agreement you get like Descartes and Spinoza and Leibniz, three leading example of rationalists who are basing their philosophy on self evident concepts. Yet they come to radically different conclusions. And so this begins to look very arbitrary. And that won't do. I mean to call it rationalism and end up arbitrarily disagreeing with each other. And then empiricism says, well, let's get away from the speculation of self evident concepts. Let's get down to the here and now. What can we touch, what can we feel, what can we see? And so sensation or observation becomes the basis of what we know. But the problem is we never observe general laws, do we? We never observe continuity in the things that we experience. And so empiricism led to skepticism. So put yourself at the position in the history of philosophy where you have one school of thought that offers you certainty but turns out to be arbitrary. Another school of thought says we can get away from this speculation, but ends up in skepticism. Not a very good place to be. Along comes Immanuel Kant, and Kant wants to save science. Okay? The empiricist cannot justify the uniformity of nature because you never experience the uniformity of nature as a law. You only experience individual experiences. So you can never know that the future will be like the past. So how is Kant going to save science? Kant comes and offers a transcendental critique. This is why we use this terminology. And by transcendental he means he's going to offer an analysis that shows us what the preconditions of intelligibility will be for any human experience or reasoning, what the preconditions of intelligibility will be. Is this rationalism? No, because it's not just dealing with self evident concepts, but nor is it empiricism, because it has nothing to do with my sensing, touching, tasting, smelling what these preconceptions would be. Now, Kant said the human mind works in a certain way that it organizes the material that comes to it from the world outside in a certain way. There's nothing you can do about that. The mind organizes your sensations in a way that makes you interpret them what we call in a causal fashion. So causation is not out in the world. Causation is the way the mind must think about the world. Now, that doesn't really get away from the problem. It seems to me that makes it subjective rather than objective. But we're not here to talk about Kant tonight. I just want you to understand the terminology of transcendental. A transcendental approach tries to get beyond rationalism and empiricism to talk about what we know with certainty because it is the precondition of any knowledge, any reasoning, any experience we have. Now, Van Till picks up on this. In a way the early Gordon Clark is like rationalism. This is a rough analogy. The followers of Clark will probably not like me saying that, but there is some similarity. Certainly by way of contrast and emphasis. Clark would be like a rationalist. The early Clark, he says Christianity has proved to be true in terms of its coherence. It meets certain rational demands. John Warwick Montgomery, on the other hand, would be an apologist. That would be more like an empiricist. He thinks we go out there and our observations about the world are what prove Christianity to be true. Again, I'm not trying to draw a lot of subtle distinctions and qualifications, just an overall contrast. Looking at it that way, Van Till would be more like Kant. Van Till was not a Kantian, but he's more like Kant in that his system, his method is to look for the transcendental. That is what is the precondition of intelligibility for all reasoning and all human experience. See? Now let's go back to the book. A truly transcendental argument takes any fact of experience which it wishes to investigate and tries to determine what the presuppositions of such a fact must be in order to make it what it is. Manteau says the transcendental argument takes any fact of experience and asks what presuppositions are necessary to make this what it is. This is the transcendental method. A few lines down he says any method that does not maintain that not a single fact can be known unless it be that God gives that fact meaning is an anti Christian method. If God is recognized as the only and the final explanation of any and every fact, neither the inductive nor the deductive method can any longer be used to the exclusion of the other. That this is the case can best be realized if we keep in mind that the God we contemplate is an absolute God. Now, the only argument for an absolute God that holds water is a transcendental argument. And then down a few more sentences. With respect to the opponents of Christianity, unless there were an absolute God, their own questions and doubts about God would have no meaning at all. There lies the issue. No human being can utter a single syllable, whether in negation or affirmation. No human being can affirm anything or negate anything unless it were for God's existence. Thus the transcendental argument seeks to discover what sort of foundations the house of human knowledge must have in order to be what it is. Then in the next paragraph, you might want to note a truly transcendent God, a God that's beyond human experience. That a God whose qualities originate beyond our human experience or this cosmos. A truly transcendent God and a transcendental method go hand in hand. Now, will people call this too much of a dependence upon the Bible? He says, yep, we'll be called biblicistic. We'll be said to be obsessed with the idea that the God who reveals himself in the Bible must be the starting point for everything. That's okay. That is our starting point, because God is an absolute God. And then on the next page, page 12, he addresses this thorny question. Are we reasoning in circles in the middle of the page? This brings up the point of circular reasoning. And what I'd like to do for the sake of time is we'll take our recess right now. When we come back, we'll pick up right there. All right, Are we wired here? We can get going. Great. We don't want to lose our students by tape, do we? Okay, we're on page 12, and we come to the critical question. Is Van Til just reasoning in circles, then? Just starting with his conclusion and arguing for his conclusion from his conclusion, is that what it amounts to, circular reasoning? Bantil says this brings up the point of circular reasoning. The charge is constantly made that if matters stand thus with Christianity, it has written its own death warrant as far as intelligent men are concerned. Sixty years ago, he was anticipating what his critics would say. Who wishes to make such a simple blunder in elementary logic as to say that we believe something to be true because it's in the Bible? Our answer to this is briefly that we prefer to reason in a circle to not reasoning at all. Now, that may be A little misleading because he's going to say we're not really reasoning in a circle like our critics are saying. But if it comes down to using this expression reasoning in a circle, I prefer doing that, if that's what you're going to call it, to losing any ability to reason at all. That's a pretty good answer when you think about it. But he does go further, and it's important to hear this. We hold it to be true that circular reasoning is the only reasoning that is possible to finite man. The method of implication as outlined above is circular reasoning, or we may call it spiral reasoning. We must go round and round a thing to see more of its dimensions and to know more about it in general. Unless we are larger than that which we are investigating, unless we are larger than God, we cannot reason about him any other way than by a transcendental or circular argument. When Van Schill says it's spiral reasoning, he's offering a different metaphor to this metaphor of circular reasoning to try to make a point. It's not like we're starting on one level with a certain conclusion and then reasoning around right back to that same point. It's more like we start with a fundamental truth about God which makes it possible to reason about anything. And then as we go back around, we're always coming back in line with what we presupposed about God. But we're getting deeper and deeper and deeper into the system of truth. We're implicating ourselves through the spider web. But all along we've started with that fundamental assumption about God. He says the refusal to admit the necessity of circular reasoning is itself an evident token of opposition to Christianity. Not because circular reasoning as a logical fallacy has been used, but circular reasoning in the sense that nothing can be understood unless you presuppose the Christian view of God. He says reasoning in a vicious circle is the only alternative to reasoning in a circle. As discussed above, a vicious circle means I know that Tom Jones is guilty of murder, because Tom Jones is guilty of murder. That's a vicious circle where you're not adding anything in your premises. I mean, you're not adding anything in the conclusion except what is in the premises. And you have to know the conclusion and the premises simultaneously. It's a vicious circle. Whereas when we presuppose the existence of God in the Christian worldview, yes, we're always dependent upon that. But we're learning more and more about this God and more about this God's world, and more, more and more about ourselves as Creatures of God as we continue reasoning. It's reasoning in a spiral fashion, if you want that metaphor, rather than in a vicious circle. And so this is his opening introduction to transcendental. The transcendental method of defending the Christian faith. The transcendental method of defending the Christian faith comes down to arguing that antitheism, pardon me, antitheism presupposes theism. Or as you've heard me put it before, the only proof of the Christian God is that without him you cannot prove anything. Because your most fundamental assumptions about logic, about science, human experience, about ethics, your most fundamental assumptions already presuppose the worldview revealed in the Bible. The worldview having to do with this God. Okay, let's turn to the back of the book now, to chapter 15, although we're only going to be in chapter 15 for one sentence, and then we're going to back up to chapter 14, which you did not read. That's okay, you weren't assigned it. Page 200 says, Having before us all the factors that enter into the knowledge situation, and having on the basis of them concluded in the preceding chapter that it is necessary to reason with those who believe differently than we do, we must turn to a consideration of the question of how we should reason with them. So he says, I've just established that we should reason with people who disagree with us. Do you hear that? Van Til says you should reason with people. Every time you hear people accuse him of being a fetish who doesn't believe in apologetics or argumentation with unbelievers, remember that his conclusion from chapter 14 is that we must reason with people. So let's back up to chapter 14 and pick up on that, and then we'll go on to how we should reason with them, the Transcendental method. And I'm going to begin on page 185 at the very bottom of the page, that short paragraph that says what we must deal with then is the clash between the two great opposing systems of epistemology. Ultimately, you have two theories of knowledge, the Christian and the many varieties of non Christian. We now ask not how the two should reason together, but whether they should seek to reason together. Is reasoning necessary? Is reasoning appropriate with the unbeliever? I mean, we have these different theories of knowledge, so why reason with each other? Van Till is going to say we should reason with them. And then in the next chapter, how we should. Another way of putting the question can be seen in terms of our reformed convictions about the necessity of regeneration for anybody to become a Christian on the top of page 186, he says the question narrows itself down to this whether we shall, in view of our convictions with respect to the necessity of regeneration, nevertheless continue to reason with unbelievers. We Calvinists say that people aren't going to become Christians unless the Holy Spirit changes their hearts, so why argue? If the Holy Spirit doesn't change their heart, the argument is worthless. And if the Holy Spirit does change their heart, you don't need the argument anyway. Of course, Van Till will point out that God works through the witness of his people, which includes apologetical argument. And we do know that the Holy Spirit must change the outlook of the person for them to be convinced. But that doesn't make argument irrelevant. Is argument even possible? Look at page 189.

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