Dr Greg Bahnsen - Mid-Level Apologetics: Presuppositional Method Part 2 (Part 12)

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.

Alright, now that we've got a new tape in, we've said transcendental reasoning asks what presuppositions are necessary for the intelligibility of any fact. Another way of putting this is Van Zel says on page 204 that we must ask the non Christian to reason univocally. Or if you will ask the unbeliever to reason in terms of his outlook, I'll put to reason in terms of his philosophy or worldview. And Vantil says that we may see the consequences, that we might see the consequences. And then on page 205, another way he puts it is we must reduce our opponent's position to absurdity. And then the little expression that we used at the very beginning of tonight's class can summarize our way of putting the argument anti theism ends up presupposing theism. And that's because when you use the transcendental method, you find out you can't make sense of anything logic, science, morality without the Christian worldview. So antitheism, in order to be expressed and argued, nevertheless presupposes theism. The unbeliever cannot escape our presuppositions. And so when he argues against our presuppositions, we want to show him this. He's been standing on our position all along. So we reduce our opponents to absurdity. We ask him to reason for us, say, okay, follow your philosophy out and let's see what happens. Is it possible to know anything on your view of reality, in man's place in the universe and so forth? In the very middle of page 205, we must therefore give our opponents better treatment than they give us. We must point out to them that univocal reasoning, autonomous reasoning itself, leads to self contradiction not only from a theistic point of view, but from a non theistic point of view as well. So no longer is it just we're in different towers yelling at each other and we can't get through each other. Vanto says, look on your own basis, your position reduces to absurdity from within your own worldview. This thing self destructs because your worldview says everything is matter in motion and it's a chance universe. And yet you try to use laws of logic, which are not material, which are not in motion, which are unchanging and abstract, to talk about it. So your own worldview is self destructive. Van Till says we must point out to them that univocal reasoning itself leads to self contradiction, not only from a theistic point of view, but from a non theistic point of view as well. It is this that we ought to mean when we say that we must meet our enemy from ground. It is this that we ought to mean when we say that we reason from the impossibility of the contrary. So I've run out of room on the board here, but I'll do my best to squeeze it in. Transcendental reasoning is showing that we reason, we argue from the impossibility of the contrary. Now this is a very good stepping stone or introduction to the difference between presuppositionalism and the evidentialist or traditional approach to apologetics. Does the evidentialist say what's wrong with the non Christian is that his position is impossible? No, he says what's wrong with it is it doesn't have as many facts in support of it as ours does. Mantill says, I'll tell you why your worldview is wrong, because it's impossible. You couldn't reason about anything if you didn't presuppose my worldview, the God that I'm now representing and what you're doing. I realize that many people say that the Transcendental Method, this language of the Transcendental Method is difficult to understand. But by writing these expressions on the board, I hope that you not only understand it, but you can make it clear to others as well. All Van Till is getting at is that we're arguing about ultimate presuppositions and which ones are needed to make sense of any fact. We're asking the unbeliever, use your philosophy and let's see what consequences come of it. And in so doing we want to reduce him to absurdity. We argued that the contrary to Christianity is impossible because you can't even argue the anti theist position without assuming illegitimately things that the theist teaches. Page 206, Banzel says at the top left, first full paragraph. When we reason thus, we are not reasoning on the basis of some abstract law of self contradiction. We have seen that the very question between theist and anti theist is as to the foundation of the law of contradiction. And then about 3/4 of the way down the page, in order to bring this argument as closely to the non regenerate consciousness as we may, we must seek to show that the non theist is self contradictory upon his own assumptions as well as upon the assumption of the truth of theism. Now when this method of reasoning from the impossibility of the contrary is carried out, there's really nothing more to do. Mantle says that ends it right there. Because when you've left the unbeliever in the position of absurdity that he can't make sense out of his laws and his random facts and human dignity and so forth, when you've destroyed him internally, shown that he's contradictory on his own terms as well as on our terms, he says there's really nothing left to do. And why is it? Because every time the unbeliever now tries to use something against the believer, what are you going to say? They say, well, but you can't make sense of anything that you're talking about. Every time he wants to rise up to battle again, Van Til says, you haven't got anything to stand on. It's like the unbeliever wants these huge, you know, 12 inch cannons, you know, to be planted so he can shoot the Christian position out of the air, but he can't find any place to set the cannon down. He has no foundation so he can't shoot at anything. That's why the argument ends right there. In the end, it's not a matter of will you go out and see if you can find more facts? We'll go marshal some more facts. And evangelist says, you'll never be able to find a fact that's going to help you because you'll never be able to study the facts intelligently, intelligibly, apart from the Christian philosophy of Life on page 207. Then I get this question about three quarters of the way down. Notice this one sentence. The kingdom of God must be built upon the destruction of the enemy. The kingdom of God must be built upon the destruction of the enemy. Philosophically. I'm talking philosophically, not in terms of the way we talk to people. We have to learn to be gentle, kind, buy the next cup of coffee. As Van Til says, carry on the conversation politely. But what is our goal in the conversation? To utterly destroy the opposing philosophy. To take the unbeliever and show that he has nowhere to stand. We're going to disarm him. Okay. The apologist says, hey, we can beat you at your. The evidential apologist says, we can beat you at your own game. We can come up with more facts than you have. Van Till says, I can beat you because you don't have any tools left to use. Question. Well, same apparent truth about what you said. The creationists make this mistake. They seem to be saying the evolutionists just suppress the true facts. We've got all the fact here that will prove our case. We can only bring our facts to light for the public. Everybody who believes in creation, right? It's hard because we have friends who are creationists and they do a great service I think, because all the facts do support creationism and we do need to show that. We go out there and you look at the world and the world supports our interpretation, not theirs. However, when you think that all you have to do is give more facts to the unbeliever, you've forgotten that the reason he made the mistake in the first place is he started with a philosophy that distorts the facts. Now if you've got a philosophy that distorts the facts and you give more facts to this person, what's he going to do with those facts? He's going to distort them. Okay, that can do you any good. If you've got a car that's not running properly, I mean it's not converting the fuel into energy. And driving your car down the road you think, well I'll just go to the gas station, put more gas in it, right? No, you gotta fix what's wrong internally in the car so that we'll start converting the fuel into energy in the same way. If the unbelievers problem is not lack of facts, but he doesn't have the right outlook on the world and he has a heart that's, you know, wrong with God in the end you've got to challenge that outlook on the world and pray for a change of heart. All the facts in the world are not going to change him. But that doesn't mean we don't go looking for the facts. I mean it's good to give these to believers and to our children to show them you don't have to be afraid of exploring the world that will support creationism, not evolution. But in the end you can't expect an evolutionist to be changed simply because there's more facts isn't going to work that way. On page 208, Van Till says a third of the way down the miracle of regeneration has to occur somewhere. And all that we are arguing is, is that we must ask where it is that the Holy Spirit will most likely perform this miracle. And then there can be no doubt but that the likelihood is in favor of that place where the non theist has to some extent seen the emptiness and vanity of his own position. Granted, the Holy Spirit's got to change hearts. Holy Spirit works through the testimony of God's people. What testimony is most likely to be used which is most faithful and can be used by the Holy Spirit? He says it's most likely to be where the non theist has been forced to see the vanity of his position reduced to absurdity. And then one more thing and then we'll be done for the night. On the bottom of page 208, if he continues to regard Christianity as one hypothesis among many, it is a foregone conclusion that he will not accept this hypothesis rather than another. See? As long as the unbeliever thinks, well, I've got these facts that I know in and of themselves, my mind is perfectly sufficient to know certain facts. And now here's a hypothesis, here's a hypothesis, here's a hypothesis. One of them is Christianity. Here are all these hypotheses and I must decide based on the facts which one to believe. Evangelism. As long as he thinks that's what he's doing, he's going to accept any hypothesis other than Christianity. And if he did accept Christianity as the most likely hypothesis, he would not be accepting Christianity but a substitute for it. That's a dynamite sentence because evidentialists say look at the facts and would we have to agree Christianity is the most likely explanation for them. Van Till says if a person says that he has not understood the Christian point of view to reason about anything as a hypothesis for the explanation of any fact or facts means that there may be other hypotheses that should eventually prove to be true. And if it is conceivable that an interpretation other than God should finally be given for the facts of the universe, then it is also true that these facts are now considered as being apart from God. So then our conclusion must be that if we present Christian theism as a hypothesis, it must always be done by us as a part of our analogical reasoning process, even if it be at that point where we are reasoning for argument's sake. For argument's sake, consider Christianity as a hypothesis. But you can never come to the conclusion. This is one hypothesis among many. In the end, Van Till says it's the only outlook that makes sense of considering hypotheses using science at all. I hope that tonight's read through Van Til has made it clear what the transcendental challenge is and how it avoids circular reasoning, the idea that it's just subjective preferences that we're going through, so forth. I did not take the time to go through the defense of the faith. I think this is much easier reading than is the Survey of Christian Epistemology. And you will not be asked whether you did this, but a recommendation from your teacher. Tried and true recommendation. Now that you've heard tonight's discussion and we've kind of worked through the Survey of Epistemology book. Now go and look at these chapters again, even if you're just reading them through quickly, and see if it doesn't make a whole lot more sense what Van Till's talking about. In our next lesson, we're going to look at the opposite at the traditional method and the evidentialist approach, and I'm going to try to show you why they are philosophically and theologically unsound.

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