Dr Greg Bahnsen - Seminary Apologetics: Answering Frame (Part 27)

This message was delivered by Dr. Greg L. Bonson, Scholar in Resident at the Southern California center for Christian Studies in Irvine, California. We're looking at our last subdivision of the outline having to do with presuppositional theory. And at the end of our discussion, I've wanted us to look at two theoretical problems with presuppositional apologetics, problems that people raise with the theory itself. I mean, granted, we're all going to go out and defend the faith and say things which we're going to say one way or another, maybe regarding our theory. But when we as presuppositionalists lay out this theory, its adequacy has been challenged as, first of all proving too much, because it seems to prove that unbelievers don't know anything. And the way in which we rescue the theory from that is by saying the theory includes that unbelievers know God, that unbelievers are in fact secret believers. That's a nice little slogan to get in your notes. Unbelievers are secret believers. But it also creates its own difficulty in that it looks like a contradiction. How can the person who doesn't believe this actually believe this? And that's why I offered to you my proposal for a resolution of the apparent paradox of self deception. But there's a different theoretical problem that has been raised with respect to presuppositional theory that we should address in this course too, and that's that it doesn't prove too much but does not prove enough. And I'm going to give you two versions of the does not prove enough criticism. Two versions. The first one, if I can boil down and maybe oversimplify, the first version argues that the transcendental argument requires supplementation and is not therefore as distinctive as presuppositionalists think. So the first version of the does not prove enough is that it requires supplementation. It can't stand alone. And if it requires supplementation, supplementation, then Van Til's notion and the presuppositionalist notion that this is distinctive from the traditional approach to apologetics is really over flattering. It really doesn't deserve to think of itself as that distinctive. And I'm disappointed that this criticism has been raised by my former professor, John Frame. In a recent book he's written Apologetics to the Glory of God. I'm disappointed because I'm always disappointed to disagree with my friend John Frame. He's really a wonderful person. He was a great professor and I learned a lot from him. And I'm disappointed because I hate to see anybody who's on the faculty of Westminster Seminary end up criticizing Cornelius Van Til. That, too, is sad. But I'm disappointed above all because I think Mr. Frame is mistaken. That doesn't mean I don't have respect for him. If we really had time, and I'm running out of it quickly, I know I was going to go into something of an overall assessment of this book in this class, just so you'd know its strengths and also a bit of its weakness. So don't think that I'm trying to just say this book should be true, thrown out by no means. And I would say that the strongest point of the book, in addition to the clarity of style that Mr. Frame has, the strongest point of the book is that it is a solid affirmation of the rejection of neutrality in all of our thinking, including a rejection to neutrality and apologetical thinking. Mr. Frame does not buy the criticism of the anti presuppositionalist, that you've got to approach the argument of the unbeliever on a neutral foundation. And the book just does a wonderful job of really beating down that notion. But sadly, it also makes the mistake. I think I'm criticizing the transcendental approach of Dr. Van Till. It isn't as though Mr. Frame has no appreciation for it. And in fact he does speak positively and in a footnote says nice things about your own teacher and a debate I had using the Transcendental Method and so forth. So he's willing to say, there's something to this, there's something valuable to it, but it's not as valuable as its adherents think. It's not what Van Till made it out to be. So I'm going to begin on page 71 of this book, Apologetics to the Glory of God. And just very briefly, hurriedly, what Mr. Frame says in terms of questions he has about the method, I'll give you a little hint ahead of time, my clarification of the presuppositional method that you've been exposed to yesterday, and especially this morning, if you keep that in mind as we're reading, you're going to say, oh, Mr. Framis made that mistake too, I think. I think you'll notice that that has taken place. All right. He has a series of considerations, six, I guess, all together. And then he turns to the Transcendental Argument itself and has a criticism of it. One he says, I question whether the Transcendental argument can function without the help of subsidiary arguments of a more traditional kind. Although I agree with Van Til's. Premise that without God there is no meaning. I must grant that not everyone would immediately agree with that premise. How then is that premise to be proved? Is it that the meaning latent character of creation requires a sort of designer? But that's the traditional teleological argument. So the bell's going off. No, no, that's not the traditional argument. But it's like the traditional argument, is it that the meaning structure of reality requires an efficient cause? That's the traditional cosmological argument. No, but it's like the traditional cosmological argument, is it that meaning entails values, which in turn entail a valuer? That's the traditional values argument. No, but it is like that. Now, in my dialogical responses to him, what I'm reminding you of is that Van Till never rejected the traditional argument. There is something to the argument from value, the argument from design, the argument from cause. But the difference is the traditional arguments have been formulated to honor human atonement. Van Till does not reason from causes in the natural world to, oh, by the way, one more cause which we call God. Van Til argues, if you don't have God, the concept of cause is not intelligible. You can't fit the concept of cause into the practice of your life and philosophy unless God is also, particularly the Christian God is part of your worldview. And so I think when Mr. Frange says that the transcendental argument needs subsidiary arguments of a more traditional kind, he hasn't honored the distinction between traditional and transcendental arguments. From our Tate ministry, you can get two lectures that I gave at Westminster Seminary in response to this book. My first lecture was going through, I think, 10, 10 profound philosophical differences between the traditional approach and the presuppositional approach. So I have to differ with him on this first point. But. But I would say that the transcendental argument does require subsidiary arguments. If you mean by subsidiary argument illustrations of the general strategy, what's an illustration of the general strategy? Well, I argue with Gordon Stein that we couldn't have a debate without the laws of logic, but that the laws of logic don't fit into a non Christian worldview. I didn't mean that. That is the one and only thing we can say as Christians. That was just one illustration of my general argument, which is what? Without the God of Christianity, nothing in experience is intelligible. And so then I take as an illustration this specific logic. In my debate with Edward Tabish, this specific was science. Can you use toothpaste tube and expect that your past experience will guide you in the future. None of those arguments stand by themselves. They're all but illustrations of the general strategy or technique. So in that regard, I agree with Mr. Frame that the transcendental argument is something of a general strategy. But you've got to put flesh on those bones. After all, you've got to talk about something specific with the unbeliever. Number two, he says, I do not agree that the traditional arguments necessarily conclude with something less than the biblical God. Well, I suppose we can't overgeneralize one way or another, but it is true in many, I would think, close to most of the cases, that the God that is proven by the cosmological argument doesn't have a whole lot to do with the biblical God. And in the case of Aristotle, the God that is proven as an unmoved mover that has no contact with the world, in fact couldn't be the biblical God. So I'm not sure why this point is being made and how important it really is. All he wants to say is, well, can't we prove bits and pieces of our worldview at a time? What's the answer? You know this yes and no. We can talk about bits and pieces at a time, but we don't prove bits and pieces at a time. As though we first prove causality, then we prove logic, then we prove personality, block by block by block. But that's what the traditional arguments attempted to do. So in that sense, the traditional arguments don't really work within the framework of the total Christian worldview. 3. He says it should be remembered the traditional arguments, that the traditional arguments often work. They work because whether the apologist recognizes this or not, they presuppose a Christian worldview. For example, the causal argument assumes that everything in creation has a cause. That premise is true according to the Christian worldview. But then he adds, and this is the kicker, but it is not true in a worldview like that of Hume or Kant. Precisely. But the traditional arguments do what they assume that you can understand cause within Hume or Kant's worldview and from that move to the Christian worldview. And so what can he mean when he says they often work? The explanation sounds pretty good. To the degree that they work is because they already presuppose a Christian worldview. The difficulty though, is that as traditionally formulated, they did not in fact, they openly denied presupposing the Christian worldview. It was like we can all agree commonly about there being caused. Now what do we know as a result of that? I still want to affirm that part of what Mr. Frame said here, though, that to the degree that people argue at all, they're presupposing the Christian worldview. Number four, he talks about Van Til's slogan, Christian theism is a unit. And he says that he wants to make some qualifications. I do not think that the whole of Christian theism can be established by a single argument. He says you can only talk about elements of the Christian system at a time, but he grants those elements have to be understood as part of the total ordinance. Well, isn't he just saying in his own way what I've already taught you? Of course we can only talk about certain things at once, but the way you talk about them, if we're going to be true to Christianity, is to talk about them in the context of the Christian worldview. So again, over and over again, these criticisms of Van Til are really not, I think, landing any punches like taken in one way they're not true, or taken in a way in which they are true, they're not different from what Van Till has taught anyway. And then he adds, this is number five for him. If we grant Van Til's point that a complete theistic argument should prove the whole biblical doctrine of God, then we must prove more than that God is the author of meaning and rationality. He says, ironically, at this point, Van Till is not sufficiently holistic. For besides proving that God is the author of meaning, we must or may in some cases prove that God is personal, sovereign, transcendent, eminent, trinitarian, not to mention infinite, eternal, eternal, wise, just, loving, omnipotent, omnipresent, etc. Thus, for another reason, the transcendental argument requires supplementation by other arguments. This is the weakest and the saddest of all of the salvos, I think, because Van Tiel is not attempting to make one element of his argument prove the whole system. And why isn't he? Because he openly rejects the block house method. He doesn't think, I've got one block and now I'm going to go prove another block and another block and finally I'm going to build this house. What's his method? I said it's to stand within this worldview. This whole worldview is not standing within a worldview where God is the author of meaning. He's standing in a worldview where the transcendent, sovereign, infinite, eternal gods is the author of meaning. And comparing it to this worldview over here. And so by thinking that the transcendental argument, since we only talk about element after element after element or piece by piece. Since we only do that, it's assumed that the transcendental argument is trying to build up by separate arguments the Christian worldview. And then he says, very truly, no one argument can prove everything. Well, that's right, but no one argument is intended to prove everything because we're not proving point by point by point. We're taking this worldview and saying, now watch what happens when you deny this worldview. Here's an element that's lost. Here's an element that's lost. Here's an element that's lost. And so I think this really is misconstrued. Van Til, number six. All this suggests a further reason why there is no single argument that will prove the entire biblical doctrine of God. To generalize, any argument can be questioned by someone who is not disposed to accept the conclusion. Such questions may require further arguments to defend the original arguments and so forth. Since there is no single argument guaranteed to persuade every rational person, there's no argument that is immune to such additional questioning. He says, therefore Van Till's transcendental argument is not sufficient by itself to prove the existence of the biblical God to everyone's satisfaction. Well, this is disheartening because apologetics has nothing to do, has nothing to do with persuasion. I mean, we're interested in persuasion. So maybe I'm overstating it. My point is apologetical arguments not gauged by what persuades, it's gauged by what proves. You can have an argument that proves something and a person refuses to be persuaded. So if I give the transcendental argument to somebody and they're not persuaded, yeah, I'm going to try something else. I'm going to try to hit them over from this angle. Right now, I'm going to run over to this angle. Does that mean my arguments are not in themselves good arguments? They don't prove my point. No, it just means that in the interest of persuasion dealing with this subjective character out here, I'm going to try to say a lot of different things to him. But all of the arguments may be good as far as arguments go on their merits. And so he concludes that there's not a distinctively transcendental argument which rules out all other kinds of arguments. Where have we ever argued that the transcendental argument rules out every other kind of argument? Our only point has been that all other kinds of arguments have to be pursued. What? Within the general framework of the transcendental argument? So if somebody comes to me and says, we know, here's my big problem with becoming a Christian. The text of the Bible shows a lot of variant readings, that's all. Explain to me what that problem is. And after they do so, then I go to the evidence of textual history for the Bible and I showed that to the person and they're satisfied. Now, I've used a different kind of argument. I haven't said, unless you accept this, you can't understand anything. I've been willing to go with the argument as far as the person had asked. And if at that point the person's satisfied, great. But what if they started getting kind of ouchy about things instead of, yeah, but what about this? What about that? Then I might eventually go to that fourth level that was up there on the board and say, I kind enough to hit you with a little bit harder stuff. You don't apparently understand that in our assessment of the textual history, we were already presupposing the Christian worldview to do that assessment. And so it's not as though it's a different kind of argument. It's just an extension of the broader argument. Frame says the biblical God is more than this, but certainly not less. And we should certainly not say anything to an inquirer that suggests we can reason, predicate, assess probabilities apart from God. Well, that's the point I was just making. I may go to the evidence of textual history, but I don't want to go to it and say, by the way, we're doing this neutrally. We're doing this without God being the precondition of intelligibility. But for argument's sake, I'm willing to talk about that limited element and see if that satisfies the person. Must we bring up. Must we bring this point up explicitly in every apologetic encounter? The transcendental point? Must we bring that up in every encounter? Must we. We always say God's the precondition of meaning? He says, I would say no. I wrote in my margin, I agree. We don't bring it up every time. We talk about a lot of different things. Maybe we talk about how things are going at home. Why is it the autonomy in your life that's creating all these difficulties in your family? You know, maybe that's what I'm talking about. I don't always talk about the precondition of logic, the preconditions of causality. And so if Mr. Frank thinks that's what he's disagreeing with, that's sad, because no presuppositionalist, at least any thoughtful one, believes that we have to always use the same argument with the same word over and over and over again. Let me read a paragraph. In contrast to the things that I've just been saying about Frame's critique of Van Till, that I think is really great. I do appreciate him, though. He raises these questions and I think shows some misconceptions of what the transcendental argument with Van Till was all about. Nevertheless, he says, still, modern apostles to intellectuals will find many occasions to stress the transcendental direction of apologetics. Autonomy has been routinely assumed in secular thought since the days of Greek philosophy and its Eastern counterparts. Intellectuals are often proud of their autonomy, sometimes called neutrality, unbiased objectivity, etc. And that pride must be abased. An intellectual will often agree to submit to Christ as Lord in every area except that of the mind. Sacrificiam intellectis sacrifice of the intellect is a dreaded concept among modern thinkers. And he quotes, oh, yes, Jesus is Lord, but we must believe in evolution because all the best scholars do. Jesus is Lord, but all the best Bible scholars deny biblical authority and inerrancy. End of quote. In reply, it is important for us to tell inquirers that Jesus demands all, not some, of our loyalty, and that includes loving him with the mind, which may well entail holding some unpopular views on scholarly matters. Praise God. That's exactly right. No neutrality. And he says, and for that reason, the transcendental direction of arguments is really good. I'm only sad that he thinks the transcendental argument is this narrow, abstract sort of thing that he says requires supplementation. What I'd say is it doesn't require supplementation. It simply recognizes that we need to give some illustrations of the general claim that we're making that autonomy destroys, you know, the intelligibility of human experience. Having said that, we need to go on and show how that's in this case, in this case, in this case. And that. Okay, one more thing from Frame, and that's his assessment of the transcendental argument itself. Here he says the transcendental argument is really not all that distinct. He says, certainly arguments of this form are often useful, but I have a question about them. Are indirect arguments. Remember how I described transcendental argumentation as indirect? Compare total worldviews, argue from the impossibility. The contrary, he says, are indirect arguments really distinct from direct arguments? In the final analysis, it doesn't make much difference whether you say causality, therefore God, or without God. No causality, therefore God. Any indirect argument of this sort can be turned into a direct argument by some creative rephrasing the indirect form, of course, has some rhetorical advantages at least. And I think it's here that he makes note of my debate with Gordon Stein and says Stein was just. I mean, he wasn't prepared for that way of doing it, so rhetorically at an advantage. But if the indirect form is sound, the direct form will be two, and vice versa. Indeed, if I say, without God, no causality, the argument is incomplete unless I add the positive formulation. But there is causality, therefore God exists, a formulation identical with the direct argument. I already told you I appreciate John Frank a great deal. He taught me a great deal. But the day comes sometimes when you simply have to flat footedly say, I'm sorry, Hair professor, you're wrong and this is not correct to say that indirect transcendental argumentation is just a rhetorical reworking of direct argumentation. When I was discussing this with some other philosophy students, graduate students who were studying under me, one reminded me of the remark of Wittgenstein that I used in my lecture when I was there at Westminster. Wittgenstein once said, you know, for a mistake, this is too big. For a mistake, this is too big. We don't call some disagreements mistakes because in order for them to be a mistake, you've got to be within at least the right ballpark. And then being within the right ballpark, you can get things wrong. And you say, well, you've made a mistake, that's like a foul ball. But you know, to say that in the baseball game he kicked a field goal, that's not a mistake. It's like you just totally got the games wrong. You with me, that's a good little expression for a mistake. This is too big, it can't be a mistake. It's too big to be a mistake. And I must say that what Mr. Frame has said here is it's just too big to be a mistake. It's just overwhelmingly wrong. A transcendental argument is, is not a version of direct argumentation. You can see this in case of the cosmological argument, perhaps by my saying the cosmological argument says we have this event over here that has a cause, but that cause had to be caused. This cause had to be caused by something further. Until we finally get down to the end of the line, it would appear. And then we say, and there must be one more cause, and that's the one we call God. So that God is put, if you will, on a horizontal level. Of all the other natural causes, it's just he's the biggest or the first of the natural causes, God becomes one more cause in the chain on that argument. But in the transcendental argument, God doesn't become one more cause in the chain of causes. He becomes the precondition of the intelligent, of thinking causally at all. Do you all see the difference? One kind of argument asks for what's the first of all the causes. The other kind of argument says what would have to be true for us to think about causes at all. And so transcendental arguments are not a version of direct arguments. You cannot just creatively rephrase things and get the cosmological argument out of this. Though I've admitted this in our class already, there is some similarity between the cosmological argument and the transcendental, because the cosmological argument captures to our way of thinking something unique, that causal principle. And we say, well, we've been caused by God. We know that in our heart of hearts. Still, for all of it, the arguments are not doing the same thing at all. And for a mistake, this is too big. John Frame is a good philosopher and a good reader and a good theologian. I argued he was sitting in the audience, and so it's all with goodwill and love and charity and humility. But I argued that there must be something else going on here than just misconstruing what a transcendental argument is. What is it that makes us say things which are outlandishly mistaken? Most students, by the way, would not have caught that. I mean, because they don't understand the history of philosophy. They may not specifically understand transcendental logic. And so he says that, and they trust him and go on. But anybody who studied Kant, anybody who knows the nature of transcendental argumentation is not going to think that when Kant said, we think causally because our mind imposes that on all of our experience, that Kant was saying, causation is just one more. What I have is one more clear and distinct idea. He wasn't being a rationalist, nor was he saying, I have an observation like the empiricists would say. Kant was not being a rationalist or an empiricist. He was doing something different altogether. He's saying what has to be true for any of this to make sense. So again, people should know that my beloved professor has made a mistake here. How could he make a mistake like that? Well, in my estimation. I'm psychologizing now, and he's heard me say this publicly, so we're not talking behind his back. I think that Mr. Frame has such a godly and Good desire. Such a godly and good desire to bring unity within the Christian world, to try to get these warring parties to lay down their weapons and to listen to each other and be teachable. But he has such a. That's a good and godly thing. But he has such a desire for that that that's interfered with the intellectual assessment of what's going on. Better to knock off the edges and to, if you will, rub down the differences so that we might think like we can get closer together. Because that would serve the purpose of unity among Christian apologists. That's my guess. But anyway, it's a big mistake and I have to disagree with it. The transcendental argument is distinct from rational and empirical argumentation. It does not require supplementation. It simply requires illustrative expression. And so if that's all he's talking about is, well, you've got to apply it to causality, you got to apply it to logic, you have to apply it to human meaning and language and so forth, that's fine, but I don't consider that supplementing it. I just consider that carrying it out. Okay, and then the second version of the it does not prove enough. Criticism of presuppositionalism says it does not show Christianity to be the only. Only position which can provide the preconditions of intelligibility. Please turn the cassette over at this time. I'm in a hurry. I'm just saying. Does not provide the transcendental. The preconditions of intelligibility. The argument is that when we present our transcendental case for the truth of Christianity, we are not showing Christianity to be the only position this argument or this criticism will grant. That we are showing that Christianity is a precondition of intelligibility or that it has preconditions of intelligibility. That is the argument would grant. Yes, if you have a Christian worldview, then you do have logic, you do have causality, you do have human personality, freedom, rationality, on and on and on. However, you have not shown in any of that that you're the only physician that is able to do that. So one of the questions that we got here in class reads, do we say atheism presupposes theism, or do we only show that each brand of. Of unbelief considered on a case by case basis, one at a time, is untenable because it can't justify the use of reason and then show that Christianity does not have these particular defects. Let's put it another way. How do you get from the claim that the Christian self authorizing circle is objectively true and provable? How do you get from that claim let's that you've made good on that to the claim that the Christian's worldview is the only objectively true and provable one. When we must negate various brands of unbelief with internal critiques on a one at a time, on a case by case basis. Okay, I think that's very well put. You should understand the criticism. We have a lot of different varieties of autonomous worldviews out there. And so I talked to somebody and he has variety. 39. I compare my worldview to his. I show that his has internal defects. He doesn't have the preconditions of intelligibility for human experience. He makes nonsense out of life and thinking and so forth. I show that my worldview does not. Now the criticism is this. You haven't thereby shown that yours is the only one. You've just shown that yours works and his doesn't. But there's still 22 more other versions out there. No, can't do my math right on the spot. What's 57 minus 39? Whatever it is, there's another one and another one. And by the way, if you spent all your life refuting worldview after worldview after worldview, you still wouldn't be able to say there's not another one out there. There. So you all understand the criticism. I'm proud of you for thinking of that in this class, because I've known people who've done doctoral dissertation. Well, I know one doctoral dissertation that was written and that was the very point that was argued against cancer. But it too rests on a misconception. I think at the beginning of our class period today, I said, you must remember that we can only talk about one point of view at a time. I can't talk to you about existentialism and empiricism and hilozoism and so forth all at once. You just can't say everything at once. So I got to deal with one person at a time or one point of view at a time. However, what I'm dealing with here is just an illustration of a broader perspective. We have only two perspectives, broadly speaking, the whole enchilada of the Christian worldview, remember me putting it that way. And then you've got the autonomous approach. Now, among the family of autonomous thinkers, there's a lot of variation. And some in the family like Chinese food, some in the family like Mexican food. But the Point is, they're all in the same family. The fact that I'm only dealing with one member of the family doesn't mean I haven't dealt with the problems of everybody in the family. Because the problems that I have with the Mexican food version of autonomy will prove to be the same problems from the Chinese food version. It's just that I'm not talking to the Chinese food version right now. The presuppositional argument is not an inductive survey. You must put that in your notes if you don't understand it. Now go home and think about this. I said about another criticism that we dealt with, that the transcendental approach is not a block by block approach. Prove logic. Oh, okay, now prove causality. Now prove personality. Put all these blocks together and eventually you get the worldview. I said, no, we start with the worldview. It's ready made. And we say, if you don't stand within this worldview, then here are some of the problems that you have. Here are some of the blocks in your worldview that get knocked out. So we're not saying, first prove this element, then prove that element. Likewise, presuppositionalism is not a case by case by case inductive survey. It's not like we're going out there and saying, okay, here's a version of theonomy. It didn't work. Now let's find another one. Oh, now this second one didn't work. Now let's find another one. This third one didn't work. And then eventually we stand back, either because we've gotten tired or we think we've done enough work and we say, well, then all of them won't work. That is not the argument. If it were, it would be weak. Because any inductive survey that's incomplete, you don't know how much more is out there. But that isn't the argument. We don't consider this. I believe Christianity is the only option on a case by case basis. I begin by saying Christianity is the only option. Now who wants to fight? Now the existentialist steps up and says, well, boy, you got these problems. The evolutionist steps up these problems. I don't go back and say, okay, now I'm keeping score. I've got one worldview taken care of, two worldviews taken care of, three worldviews taken care of. I'll bet you I could beat anybody. It's not an inductive survey. What I'm saying is this is the only conceivable option. Now who wants to Step up and talk about that. But what I say to the existentialist about his problems is going to be repeated regardless of the illustrations they use. When I talk to the hylozoist or the evolutionist or anything else, it's just illustration after illustration of the same general claim. Let me put this to you another way. Kind of clear the register. I said we compare entire world, right? The entire enchilada of Christianity versus the entire worldview of the existentialist or the evolutionist or what have you. Now, is a worldview disproven if one of its essential claims is false? When you can't be that tired, this is an easy one. Let's see some nodding. Yes, Dr. Mawson, isn't that obvious? If I'm comparing two worldviews, we use our square and circle. Here are our two worldviews and I can show that an essential element of this worldview is false, then in fact it's not coherent, is it? The worldview is not going to be adequate. You can't use a false position as the foundation for all that. You think. Well, I mean, you can, but the point is it will not be intellectually successful to do so. That's why when I debate with the atheist, I point out your worldview can't salvage logic. But you need logic. What I'm saying is your worldview is not a precondition of intelligibility. You can't make sense out of life on your worldview. So if I show a false e element in his worldview that I've destroyed his worldview as the precondition of intelligibility, everybody knows what I'm saying here. Now, if the Christian worldview claims to be the exclusively true precondition intelligibility, that claim is either true or it's false, isn't it? Christianity says this is the only way. Well, if there's another way besides Christianity, then Christianity is wrong to say it's the only way. And if Christianity is wrong to say this is the only way, then you've got a faulted worldview. Can a faulted worldview be the precondition of intelligibility? No, it can't. Therefore, if Christianity is the precondition condition of intelligibility, it must be the only precondition of intelligibility. It must be the only worldview that will do that because it says it's the only worldview. I hope you notice I am not coming before you and saying Christianity says it's the only one. So that's it. It has to be the only one. What I'm saying is if Christianity is going to be accepted as a pre, as providing the precondition of intelligibility, it can only do so if it's the only one. Because essential to this worldview, essential to this whole enchilada is that it's the only enchilada. And that's why I don't have to worry after I've knocked down nine or 10 opponents out there worldviews that maybe the 11th one's going to come along and get me. As a Christian, my certainty rests in the self attesting authority of God given the self attesting authority of God in this worldview I can make sense out of human limitation as well as human rationality, the good in man and the bad in man. I can make sense out of particularity as well as universality, on and on and on. So it does appear to provide the preconditions of intelligibility. But if it should be wrong in a major claim, an essential claim that it's the only one, then it's not in fact a worldview that provides the preconditions of intelligibility. So that's why I say if ours is, it must be the only one. More version of the does not show Christianity to be the only position. One of the ways in which we should be satisfied that it's the only one is I'm not resting in this. One of the ways is we should say, well where's the alternative? Right? It's legitimate to take that approach. I say, I'm the only guy who can do this. Where's my competitor? Let's have him come up now. After a while people stop coming. You know, one steps in and goes, oh yeah, well I'm a rationalist. And then you refute him. Another guy comes up, I'm an empiricist. After a while people stop coming up. We say, where are the opponents? Come on, what does Paul say? Where is the scribe? Where's the debater of the sage? Come on, hasn't God made foolish the wisdom of this world? Aren't you satisfied? Haven't we beat you up enough? Where's the next guy? No one steps forward now it's legitimate in terms of our social interchanges. Say this is the only one because it's the only one we can find. But then someone will say, but you don't know what might come up in the future. I love it when mass criticism is made of presuppositionalism I say, now wait a minute, let me see if I understand the scenario as you're presenting it to me. We have all these different worldviews out there, all these different options are out there. And the ones that are out there that we know about, when Christianity gets into debate with it, boom, boom, boom, boom, they get all knocked down. And then somebody who's been knocked down, knocked down, knocked down, knocked down, all these vain hopes of having an alternative to Christianity have been slain. He doesn't have a clue as to what the next one would be, but he says, maybe, maybe in the future somebody will have one. You see, that isn't what you call. We don't call that reasoning, we call that blind trait. And the irony to me is that, and I've been in academic circles for many years, the irony to me is that's the way the unbelieving world thinks. Christians operate. The unbelieving world thinks. We're the ones who say, oh, we can't answer this, but maybe in the future we just have this blind faith, the eschatological cop out, as we put it. The day is coming when God will make it all clear. But we couldn't possibly answer you now. And lo and behold, now we have the unbeliever saying that. And we're supposed to say what? Well, we shouldn't have any confidence that we're right because maybe out there somewhere somebody will develop an alternative. That's just wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is not an argument. What's apologetics about argument? We can all get together and exchange wishful, hopeful ideas of what might happen someday, but that's not an argument. So if apologetics is about argumentation, if all the opponent of the presuppositional theory has this wishful thinking, I have nothing to worry about. And of course, that wishful thinking is totally inadequate for the present debate anyway, because it's not in the future that my thinking becomes intelligible, it's in the present that my thinking is intelligible. How is it that my thinking is intelligible now? And the thinking of the entire human race going back all these thousands of years has been intelligible, but no one has ever had a clue as to how it could be intelligible. You see, this wishful thinking is worse than just a few failure to argue. It's a failure to look at what we've been doing all along. It's just one more version of saying, the facts may point to God, but I am going to close my eyes and I Don't want to think about it. So I don't think either one of these versions of it does not prove enough are really effective against the presuppositional theory. Nor do I think that theory proves too much is effective. And the time has to come when I just say, okay, I quit. I've laid it out for you then the best I can. I hope that this seems cogent to you and that you're satisfied. We got to stop dealing with theory and eventually get into the ring. Okay, let's take a two minute break, clear our mental registers and we come back. Then we're going to do some fighting. Discussion didn't get on tape. I think it would be helpful to others to hear that as well. But hey, that's next time with our Muslim apologetic seminar, Annie will get one of her relatives. Sure. Okay, as we start up again, we turn now to the practice of apologetics. I hope it's not true, but maybe some of you would have been just as happy if you would have started right here. Get rid of all this theory and all this other meta theory talk and so forth. Let's just get down to it and find out what do you say about this and what you say about that. And our time is short this afternoon. I'm not going to be able to present everything that I prepared and brought, but I would like to illustrate the practice of apologetics in at least three different kinds of settings. Maybe I haven't chosen your favorite philosophical problem or scientific problem, but I'll at least give you an idea of how to deal with each of these areas. I'm going to look at a philosophical attack on Christianity, a scientific attack on Christianity and a religious attack on Christianity to show how we give a reason for the hope that is in us. Hopefully with gentleness and respect. The philosophical attack will come from the modern world of philosophy. 20th century, problem of life, religious language that's fairly contemporary, though it's lost some of its death by this day and age. But over the last 30 years, it's been a live issue. The scientific attack I've chosen is the evolutionary approach that says you can't trust what the Bible says about creation. And then the religious attack, I thought the one he's the most interested in is the attack of, of Islam against Christianity, because after all, they're supposed to be so close to us that maybe they can do everything we can do, right? And I'd like to demonstrate that that isn't at all acceptable. Okay, let's practice apologetics in the philosophical realm. Or studies. The question or the attack will sometimes be broached against Christianity. The rhetorical question is all this talk about God even meaningful? Is it even meaningful to talk about God. In philosophical circles? During much of the 20th century, two issues which have dominated discussions in philosophy of religion, and thus two of the most popular polemics against the credibility of Christian commitment, have centered on the meaningfulness of religious discourse. Religious discourse involves pocket about God, about immortality, about miracles, about salvation, about prayer and values and ethics. To speak of the existence or attributes of God, for example, is to make religious utterances. All religions which are promulgated publicly must in some measure use religious discourse, and Christians in particular engage extensively in utterances concerning in God in their faith. After all, Christianity is preeminently a religion of verbal revelation from God and personal profession of faith. And thus Christians are always talking religiously. They're talking religiously in sermons and prayers and confessions and didactic lessons and catechisms and personal testimonies and songs and exclamations and tell them counsel and encouragement and on and on. The challenge made by many modern philosophers has been that talk of this kind is not really meaningful in any cognitive sense, even if it has the deceptive appearance of being so. For years and years and years, it may have seemed that when Christians used language about God and salvation, it was possible to make pretty good sense of what they were saying. Not everybody believed that what Christians would utter was true, but the God talk of believers was at least thought to make or entail assertions which carried rationally intelligible, if not spiritually intoxicating meaning. But not so, according to modern philosophers. The view that's been adopted over the last 30 or 40 years is that religious utterances are worse than false, worse than false. They make no sense at all. The magnitude of the charge which has been made against the intelligibility of Christianity must be appreciated by believers here. When philosophers claim that God talk is meaningless, they're saying something far stronger and far more devastating than that talk about God is false is not true. Their criticism is that religious utterances don't even qualify to be false or true because they don't amount to talk that makes any cognitive sense. It doesn't amount to any talk that conveys information in the first place. You might think about it this way. It's one thing to correct criticized the Chicago Cubs for not winning the 1991 tenet. It's altogether another thing to charge that the Cubs were not even a baseball team to begin with. Okay, so it's one thing to say that religious utterances are not true, they're false. It's altogether nothing to say they're not even intelligible utterances, and thus religious language, many would charge a single simply meaningless. If I say it snowed in Dallas last summer, I've uttered a sentence which is meaningful but is false. It makes a cognitively meaningful claim which happens to be an error. However, if I say some last dallies snow, I haven't made an intelligible claim at all. That's simply meaningless on any ordinary reading and conveys nothing which could be true or false. And many critics of Christianity claim that its utterances similarly are not subject to being either true or false. They make no significant claims about the world or about the world of human experience anyway, and thus they are cognitively meaningless in one of the following ways. The utterance of an explanation exclamation like ouch. Is neither true nor false because it doesn't claim that anything is the case. It's merely expressive in its linguistic function. And many people have maintained that religious language should be interpreted in the same way as simply emotive talk rather than informative talk. Others have gone further. For them, talk about God makes absolutely no practical difference to a person's observations of the physical world or a person's operations upon the physical world. That is, the claims made by religious believers and the counterclaims made by their opponents have no distinct conflicting cash value in the public domain. Believers and unbelievers just perceive and do the very same things, but they talk about it differently. Their respective interpretations or explanations of what they perceive and do are really meaningless. That is a verbal difference that makes no practical difference, just empty talk. But others have gone further than that. Religious discourse is for them simply unintelligible, like superstitious gibberish with cannot be rationally translated. When people talk about God, the afterlife, miracles, or salvation, they're engaging in a kind of linguistic ritual which is learned by imitation and passed along without any cognitive understanding. And that explains why the uninitiated why unbelievers cannot have religious utterances put in their own language, why they do not catch on. They do not feel intellectually compelled to affirm what believers say and indeed care very little about it anyway. It's just meaningless. Balance. However, the meaningfulness of religious language has come under attack in philosophical circles in two particular ways in this sense, and I want us to look at each one of them in this lecture. The first can be designated the verificationist challenge to religious discourse. So we're going to Talk about the verificationist challenge. And the second is designated the falsificationist challenge, and I think neither has proven to be successful. Start with the verification challenge. The meaningfulness of Christian discourse In the earlier part of the century, a school of thought known as logical positivism zealously promoted empirical science and disparaged any kind of metaphysics. According to the positivist, any proposition could be tested for meaningfulness by applying to it quote the verification principle. Logical positivism acknowledged two different kinds of meaningful sentences. Certain sentences in a language will be known to be true simply by means of analyzing them logically and linguistically. For instance, all bachelors are unmarried. That can be verified by reference to the laws of logic and subject semantic definitions. However, such truths as these, called analytic truths, are devoid of significant information about the world of experience or observation and thus are always trivial. For a sentence to tell us something interesting or to have a factual component to it, its truth must be verifiable by looking beyond logic and meaning to one's observations or experiences of the world. Thus, a significant or non trivial sentence is meaningful, according to the verificationist, only if it can be empirically confirmed. Its truth or falsity would make a difference in our experience of the world. Meaningful sentences should be translatable either into observation terms along alone, I.e. descriptions of the immediate experience, or into a procedure used to confirm the sentence observationally. The effect of applying the verification principle, the positive was concluded, would be the dismissal of all metaphysical claims, including theology and all ethical claims, both of them being dismissed as nonsense from a scientific standpoint. Since the religious language of Christians is filled with terms which are not taken from observation, references to God, to omnipotence, sin, atonement and so forth, and claims for which there is no empirical means of confirmation, such as that God is triune or that Jesus is interceding for the saints. Logical positivisms verification principles principle seemed to rule out the meaningfulness of what Christians said. So how can we reply to that? Well, I would reply, what sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander? Is that homey enough for you? As it turns out, the effect of applying the verification principle of meaningfulness was really much different than what the logical positivist had envisioned or intended. The result of applying the verification criterion across the board was in fact more than embarrassing to the critics of religious language. You see, the logical positivist, just like the Christian, holds a particular view of the world of man and reality, a whole. And this outlook leads the logical positivist, just like the Christian to endorse and follow certain standards or rules for human behavior and reasoning. For the logical positivist, there is no supernatural reality, and man is simply one more random component of the physical world, though amazingly, almost miraculously comprehensive, complex. Given this outlook, men are obliged to live and speak in a certain way. This message is continued on the next tape.