Dr Greg Bahnsen - Transcendental Arguments: Apologetical Transcendental Arguments (Part 8)

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.

I began by telling you the argument in an apologetical setting that has a transcendental direction is focused on the worldview, not. Not just an element of life or thinking or some concept in isolation from others. We're looking at entire worldviews. And then right before the break, I began by saying, transcendental reasoning is concrete. It's not merely formal or abstract. Mantill says in the Defense of the Faith, pages 384 to 385. We are not answering skepticism with something formal or abstract, he says. Kiefer insists that the concept of faith that he here speaks of is without content. Without content. The claim is all men operate on some kind of faith. You heard that right. People think that's real profound to say everybody lives by faith, everybody has faith in something. But Van Till says, well, he's going to argue with. Kuyper insists the concept of faith he speaks of here is without content. It is inherent in the subject, therefore, not because the subject is unavoidably confronted with God, but simply as such. Here we're just talking about faith as such, or, if you will, generic faith, abstract faith rather than faith with particular content or concrete character to it. By means of this purely formal faith, the human subject is first to become conscious of its own existence. Then, by means of this formal faith, a bridge is to be laid to the external world. The laws of thought by which the environment of man is to be manipulated also rest on this formal faith. By formal, Van Til means just the generic idea of faith rather than the substance or content of faith. And by means of a purely formal faith, you have, first of all the human subject established. I think, therefore I am, you all with me. Just formal faith. I don't know what I am. I know what kind of being I am. But I must exist formally. And then by means of this formal faith, a bridge is built to the external world. Here you have the philosopher who's trying to answer these abstract questions about what is it for me to exist, how can I know objects outside myself, what are thought, and so forth. And Dan Till is upset with Kiefer for buying into that. And I'm going to jump a few sentences. He then says, to be sure all men have faith. Unbelievers have faith as well as believers, but that is due to the fact that they too are creatures of God. Faith, therefore, always has content. It is against the content of faith as Belief in God that man has become an unbeliever. As such, he tries to suppress the content of his original faith. Original faith is evangelist way of saying, we all come into this world believing in God and we suppress that. He tries to reduce it to something formal. I think right before the break, I was saying what philosophers want to do is they want to take features of Jehovah God, abstract them from that concrete reality that God is, and talk about them in general and impersonally. So one of the features of Jehovah God is that his mind is coherent. Everything that he says coheres with everything else he says. And everything he thinks is consistent with everything else he thinks. And so we should, as Christians say, I must think logically if I would be godly in my thoughts, because Jehovah is like that. I give thanks to Him, I honor his name, I worship him when I think logically. Of course, you don't hear a whole lot of that in philosophy departments, do you? No, what we talk about is what the abstract laws of logic, the impersonal. And then that raises questions. People will come along eventually and say, well, what are abstract laws of logic? I mean, they don't exist in rocks and trees and streams and so forth. Where do we find the laws of logic? And then we got to start dealing with metaphysical questions like where do generalizations and abstractions exist? Somebody like Plato would say, well, there's a realm beyond time and space. But in all of this, whatever direction you take, you are abstracting, being formal in your approach, so that what you don't have to deal specifically with Jehovah. If I could change this out of the intellectual sphere into more general life and ethics and general counseling for pastors. There are lots of people, lots of women who in general will say, the notion of submission to a husband is a good one. But submitting to this guy that I'm married to being concrete about that, now, that's a different matter. That's the point. The notion of concrete submission is really quite different from the notion general idea. There'll be people who say, well, I love the idea of fatherhood, but I hate my particular father. And that's because in this case, presumably, that father falls short of the ideal. But you're not real upset if you're that person who hates your particular father, but you love the idea of father. You're not real upset when you have to do a lot of research about fatherhood or write articles on fatherhood and so forth. But if you had to write about your own father, Your blood pressure would go up, you wouldn't sleep at night, you wouldn't enjoy the assignment, and so forth and so on. In the same way, if I can, this limited. But by analogy, philosophers want to talk about fatherhood. They want to talk about conceptual adequacy. They want to talk about logic. They want to talk about uniformity. They don't want to talk about Jehovah. And Van Till saying, we've got to force them to see that in all of that, they're talking about Jehovah. See, that's why this apologetic, I think, is offensive to many people. It's very strong, it's very passionate, it's very religious. Van Till saying, you've got to be converted. I mean, that's just in a philosophy department that's just go to talk that way. We don't talk about people needing to be. That's what you do at a Billy Graham crusade here. We're talking about impersonal, abstract things. And so Van Till's transcendental approach, to make my point here, is not an abstract, formal kind of argument. It's very concrete. We confront the unbeliever with an entire worldview, and it's personal. And it's in your face, if you don't mind me using that expression. Jehovah is confronting you, and if you do not submit to him, then you will die. Now, we're used to hearing that kind of in preaching, meaning eschatologically, you will die. We're talking intellectually as apologists. We're saying intellectually, you will die if you do not bow to Jehovah. And the way in which we're demonstrating this is by a transcendental program reducing the unbeliever's philosophy to absurdity, showing that no experience is intelligible apart from this very concrete kind of God and worldview that we're dealing with. Bill. Which means the truth is personal, which is hard for us to imagine one thing. And so the philosopher wants to make it impersonal. So what is the close bear meat? Well, yeah, the truth will make you free. So that's engraved in the big bricks at the top that surround the building. Other philosophical maxims too, but that's the one that honors Jesus. The truth will make you free. But of course, what Jesus said is, I am the truth, he said, and you will know the truth if you abide in my word. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. So Jesus is not talking about truth in the abstract, making men free. He's talking about the specific truth about him that makes men free. And so here, in an attempt to honor Jesus, they actually insult Jesus by generalizing and taking away the concreteness and specificity of what he was getting at. Van Til says, we are not being speculative. We're not interested in finding the highest philosophical concept and then calling it God. That's from Common Grace, page eight. In Common Grace, page 104, he says, we're not positing an indeterminate God. You know what an indeterminate God is? Just the formal idea of a God out there of some sort somewhere and unspecified. We're dealing with a very particular kind of God. In fact, he says, in the Defense of The Faith, page 46, also pages 25 to 29, I obviously don't have time to read all these things. I learned that my first hour. Van Till says in the Defense of the Faith, that. The issue between the believer and the unbeliever from an apologetical standpoint is precisely the specific kind of God that we seek to proved. Van Til says, is, most unbelievers are not all that adverse to admitting that a God exists. Isn't that right? The same way that somebody who hates his father says, oh, fatherhood's a good idea. And if you talk to most unbelievers, there are some that are real gnarly, you know, they just don't even want to use that language at all. But when all is said and done, most unbelievers say, oh, yeah, well, I think the universe is a whole. Yeah, God exists. The whole of reality is bigger than man. So there's something bigger than man. Call it God. Yes, yeah, God exists. Well, what kind of challenge is that? I mean, that doesn't impinge on you ethically, doesn't confront you intellectually. It's just Vantil says, therefore the argument is not over whether a God exists. The argument is over whether the God Jehovah exists. Now, in light of this remark about transcendental reasoning being concrete, I think you can appreciate I do want to read this quotation from Introduction to Systematic Theology, pages 190 and 191. Van Til maintains that our apologetical argument, or our method in general, starts with the actuality of the Bible. Listen to this quote and then kind of ruminate on it. Let this kind of sink in. He says, the Reformed faith has set the idea that we must begin with the actuality of the book over against the rationalism and irrationalism of unbelieving thoughts. The Reformed faith has set the idea that we must begin with the actuality of the book. Now, listen, we must not pretend that we have established the possibility of the book and the necessity of it in terms of a philosophy that we did not get from the book. We have, as Christians indeed learned with Calvin to interpret ourselves in terms of the book and that on the authority of the book. And then we look to the book for the interpretation of the meaning of the facts. That's another one of those buried nuggets that if I were doing this, you know how modern books often have quotations, you know, put in a box in the middle of the page? That's one of the ones that I'd really put on a boilerplate. Not everyone gets the point immediately, and that's why I want you to think about this. Van Till says, I'm not going to come to the Bible with a philosophy that's outside the Bible that has allowed me to say this is possible or even necessary. Devastating. I'm not going to begin. How can I put this? Well, I'll use a modern illustration. I'm not going to begin with Quine's philosophy and come to the unbeliever and say, you know, if we're good Quinians, I can show you the necessity of the Bible. So you have no objection? Now, when I come to the Bible, evangelist says, I don't work up to the possibility or even the necessity of the Bible from outside the Bible, a philosophy that now makes it credible or respectable to turn to the Bible. He says, I begin with the actuality of the Bible. Or if you will, this apologetic is immediately in your face. It's like Jehovah has spoken. I'm not going to talk about the general idea of revelation or the notion that wouldn't such a God reveal himself? Isn't it very probable? I'm going to say, here's a book, it claims to be from God, a very specific kind of God. And. And it says, you are in rebellion against him. You need to repent. You begin right there with the actuality, the concrete, full details of the Christian worldview. That's not what transcendental arguments look like when you follow Kant or Strawson or anybody else. So I hope you get a notion here, or you can pick up on this notion of uniqueness, of the presuppositional approach, but with that in mind, that we're dealing with an entire worldview, not just abstractions and so forth, a very concrete kind of God, the actuality of the Bible, then we reason transcendentally and we say, without this worldview you can't make sense out of anything. This is the precondition for the intelligibility of human experience. For which quotation? Yes, I believe the pagination is the same. Even though I've got the spiral down edition. I think they just photograph these pages. For the one that you have that's bound. I'm going to give you two answers, David, to the question, where did Van Till get this? Did he come up with it himself? And so forth. Van Till was a very godly man, a very humble man. If you asked Van Till that question, his response was, and you find this written in his literature. But he used it publicly. When he was done, he said, I merely am standing on the shoulders of giants. Van Til said, calvin and Kiefer and all these great Reformed theologians have taught me. And if I'm able to see a little bit further than them. Van Till felt that he was being more consistent with what Kiefer believed from Calvin and so forth. That if he was able to do that, it's only because he was standing on their shoulders and would be that God gives us all such humility to recognize we've learned from others. That's what Van Till would tell you. And that's true enough as far as it goes. But now, somebody who doesn't have to be humble. I mean, being the person you're talking about, an outsider talking about Van Till. I wish Van Til had been a better writer and so forth. So that much of this stuff had been organized in a way so we could come to it and be more readily accessible. But apart from that defect, I believe he's one of the most brilliant men who ever lived. Not because I knew him, not because he was a beloved teacher. But you read this stuff and you say, this is just incredible. I think he's drawn together streams from all sorts of things. He knew his philosophy inside and out. You're going to think this is a peon for Van Till today. I don't mean it that way. I would talk to Van Till in his office at Westminster Seminary. And I mean, he had books everywhere. I mean, he would go from ancient philosophy to Kant to Barth and Bruner and so forth. Just. I mean, it's just massive, the stuff he had. He told me that when he was in graduate school at Princeton. That they had to read Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel in the original. Well, you know, I'm not sure I want to read Hegel, even in translation. But, I mean, he mastered the heavyweights, and he mastered them in their Original languages and so forth. I think he was just a brilliant man. He knew his philosophy, and he stood on the shoulders of Calvin and Kiefer and others. And that just gave him a really advantageous position to see what we have to do in terms of argument. And I would add to it the godliness of his life. That's why I say Van Till was never willing to let apologetics or philosophy become passionless. It's always a claim on your heart. It's always a matter of will you be faithful to God. For sometimes you'd listen to Van Til teaching in the classroom, and you weren't sure if he was teaching or preaching or if you listen to Van Till. We go across the street to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church right across from Westminster Seminary, and Van Till would be preaching the pulpit. I still remember my first year there listening to Van Till preach. He was preaching. Well, usually he preached on the whole Bible. You couldn't get Van Till to stick to a particular text on all sorts of things. That's because of the breadth of his knowledge and what he was trying to say. But what I want to tell you about is I remember sitting there and listening to Van Till preach about Noah's neighbors. And Noah is preaching, you know, the gospel. He's telling them they've got to repent. They've got to get right with God. The judgment of God is coming. And then Van Till portrays Noah's neighbors and saying, what's wrong with you, Noah? Don't you realize that there's no relationship between the I thou and the I it? Relationship? Listen, he's preaching on Sunday morning to a congregation. He just pulls in, basically, its dimensionalism. It's Kant all over again. How do you get the causal world in connection with the personal world or the world of freedom? So his philosophy was preached, and his philosophy in the classroom was preached as well. I mean, it was just because of that godliness. I think he also saw that we could never do apologetics or philosophy in a way that allowed it to be made abstract without that claim being put on it. So in answer to your question, I think Van Till has done a unique service to the Christian church. And if I can stand on his shoulders a little bit, I'd like just to clean up a bit of the way he put it and make it more accessible to the public. In most of my teaching, I feel that's what I'm doing. But Van Chill, you don't find it as good, I don't think, anywhere else. But of course it's there. In Tertullian, it's there in Calvin, it's there in other philosophers. I have a paper written by one of my students on the transcendental argument, the features of transcendental argument in the apologetic of CS Lewis that I had out on my desk. I was thinking of sharing part of that with you. We won't have time. Manfield's not the only one who thought this way, but I think he's the only one who systematically pulled it together. In the case of C.S. lewis, I mean, some of you who know him, some of his best stuff is transcendental. You know, the self contradiction of the naturalist. You know, if all we have is nature, then we don't ever have any reason to believe what nature forces us to believe. The S. Luis stuff, he takes the unbeliever's worldview and basically this tweak that turns it inside out, destroys it on its own terms. That's transcendental reasoning. So I don't want to say only Van Till saw this, but I do think Van Till had a context and a passion and a system in terms of which he presented it. Well, I probably said, enough. I have to finish this lecture at some point. The uniqueness of the presuppositional use of transcendental argument is that it deals with entire worldviews and it's concrete, not abstract. And finally, the position that we are arguing rests on authority. It rests on authority. And two brief. Well, just one quotation. And then a reminder that I said, for Van Till, this apologetic calls for conversion. Ultimately, the unbeliever who's being refuted by our argument needs to see he has to throw away the authority by which he's been living and now live a new kind of life. He needs to come under a different authority. Another way in which you see this rest on authority, though, is that we have to ask, well, how do we get the Christian worldview? Do we get the Christian worldview by building up block by block, element by element? Logic, self consciousness, uniformity in nature, moral absolutes, the personality of God? Is that how we do it? And finally we get the Christian worldview and then we go out and we say, okay, we've got this worldview. We challenge you. What's your worldview say, by contrast? Is that our method? Do we build up the Christian worldview block by block? No, we don't. Not at all. I'm stressing this point. Trust me, I'm a trained professional. I know what I'm doing here. Don't try to do it at Home. But I can do it here. I have run into the objection so many times. That's why I want to make sure you've got this clearer in mind. So when you hear the objection, you say, oh, well, that's the difficulty here. People will say to me, well, Dr. Bahnson, why does it have to be the Christian worldview? Why couldn't somebody come along and just say, well, my worldview is a God. That's the foundation for logic and the uniformity of nature and moral absolutes. That is, just take as much of what you've been talking about as is convenient for my intellectual purposes and then just get rid of all the other stuff. You know, the Old Testament stories and miracles and redemption and eschatology and all that. Wouldn't that kind of worldview defeat you? And I know many people that get really hung up on that, and they say, yeah, why can't we just have deism be the transcendental for the meaningfulness of everything? And the answer is, where did you get your worldview? Did you get your worldview building it up block by block by block, element by element? If so, then the person who proposes deism, or this reduced version of Christianity, must show every element to be necessary and coherent with every other element on its own. He cannot begin with the system and then say, okay, now I want to throw this part out. Throw this part out and throw this part out. Why? Because if you begin with the Christian system, if you begin concretely with the Christian system, you're not allowed to throw any elements out. So anybody who gives me, I'm going to make up a name for this system that looks like Christianity. That's the evil twin of Christianity to a certain extent. Okay, let's just call that mumbo jumbo. That's my worldview. Mumbo jumbo. Mumbo jumbo's got a God. Mumbo jumbo's got a God that controls every faculty universe. Mumbo jumbo is a God that creates every path of the universe, on and on and on. And so the person says, you got Christianity? I have mumbo jumbo. And I say, fine, where'd you get mumbo jumbo? What defines that worldview? What determines that worldview? Now, one possibility to answer that question is, oh, well, I took the Bible and I edited. I got rid of all the stuff we didn't need, and that's mumbo jumbo. I say, oh, well, then you didn't actually start with the Bible, because if you started with the Bible, the Bible says every jot and tittle's got to be there. So now let's go back and ask you again. You did not begin with an affirmation of the biblical system and then start. The guy says, okay, well, I didn't accept the Bible and its authority. I just got my ideas from the Bible. I say, okay, then each and every one of them got to be built up individually, you know, right back to the old rock in a bottomless ocean. The unbeliever can't do that. He can't take individual elements. First you get logic, then you get nature, then you get a human mind. He can't bring all these things together. He's in the same boat as the guy who's trying to do it from scratch. Or the person's going to say, well, I got this from another God. Oh, okay, now we have something to talk about. Where did this God reveal himself, if it is a he or a person? Now we're doing apologetics with world religions, right? One of the biggest mistakes the Christian in the pew makes, I think, when it comes to apologetics with respect to world religion, is they think world religions have something that matches what we have. And so how can we claim the Bible? They've got their holy book, too. You've got to ask about what kind of holy book you're talking about. The Bhagavad Gita is not in the same ballpark with the Bible. Why not? Well, because the Bible says we have a personal God who thinks rationally and clearly, speaks verbally, and has recorded that in this book. Is that the Bhagavad Gita? First, the Bhagavad Gita does not have a God that's separate from the individual who's reading about God. That individual is God. Because if you understand the Bhagavad Gita, all is one. This God, whatever you want to call it, is not personal because it can have no definite characteristics. Personality or impersonality are equally illusion, because all is one. This God doesn't speak verbally and therefore doesn't record his personal revelation in a book. Bhagavad Gita is a religious book, but it's not anywhere like with the Bible. And on and on and on we go through the various options. The point is, where did mumbo jumbo come from? Then it turns out that anybody who wants to take Christianity and just, you know, edit it down has an authority outside of the Bible by which he's living, right? And by that authority, he edits the Bible. But if that's true, then by that authority, he must establish every point that he puts into his system called mumbo jumbo. And that's the same as the argument with any garden variety and believer. You can't formulate a worldview that makes experience intelligible on a piece by piece basis. And so Van Till says, our transcendental argument is about entire worldviews. It's reasoning that it's concrete, not formal and abstract. And we openly admit that our position rests on authority. See, I've asked the adherent of mumbo jumbo, where did your position come from? And he's had real problems with it. And he says, I can ask that question of you, where'd your position come from? And I say, God revealed it. Well, why do you accept it on his authority? Wait a minute, you can't just accept this on authority. And I say, well, if the ultimate authority is speaking here, I can. Because if it's the ultimate authority, who's speaking, there is no authority outside of that by which I can establish his authority. Now I'm not telling you that you just need to ask no questions, just fall down and accept this authority. But I'm saying when you read this book, you'll find out that the book's got to be accepted on its own. Say so because of the nature of what it claims. If the Bible is true, the Bible has to be the highest authority. The guy says, I'm not prepared to say the Bible's true. And I said, well, that's why we're arguing, what's your alternative? There's the transcendental argument, right? The alternative is this long discussion we have about how could you have science, how could you have logic, how could you have moral absolutes if you don't accept the ultimate authority of the Bible? But the point is those of us who accept the Bible don't accept it because of some authority outside the Bible. Because if we did, the Bible wouldn't be what it claims to be, the highest authority of all God speaking to us. Yeah, and he should say that about the Quran. And in a sense this question would fit in better down the line. But I don't want to put you off, so I'll answer it here. When we compare worldviews, we have to compare the content of the worldviews, not just authority claims. But it is true that if Allah is the true God, his word's got to stand on its own. Say so that's formally correct. And so when we deal with the Muslim, we don't just say, I've got an authority, you have an Authority, we can't talk. We say we better read what these worldviews are all about. So compare a worldview that says that if you fall asleep praying, Satan will urinate in your ear to a worldview that says Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Compare a worldview that says that you have these angels virtually on each shoulder that are influencing you. On the final day, your good deeds are going to be weighed against your bad deeds. And ask, how is it that Allah can forgive any bad deed? How do you outweigh them against a worldview that says God can't deal with bad deeds. He's too just. And so he's got to pay the price for them. So you start comparing internally what the worldview is. Plain. Yes, exactly. Someone who quoted a mumbo jumbo and their, their worldview is a mirror image of Christianity. I mean, it can be redemptive. Well, now make up your mind. Is it a mirror image or a mirror image to a large degree? Well, no, I would say. You see the difference. I'm committed as Christian, so I'd say, yeah, there's going, there's going to be problems internally within a world. But are you gonna, are you going to end up arguing with them evidentially to say at some point it's your, it's your Savior historical or something like that? Well, actually, there's a place for that. There's a transcendental necessity for my work. And then why you have a classic transcendental Necessary. Yeah, the reason why you don't. Ultimately, after lunch, that was going to be the first thing we talked about is why can't you have multiple transcendental, you know, worldviews that will do the job in the end? The only way you could have two, they'd have to be a mirror image of each other. Not just to a large extent, but if they're a mere image, you know what we're doing, we're just changing names. Now you have the same worldview. It's just you've assigned. Instead of calling him Jesus, you have some other name that you give to him. So it's either exactly the same or it differs. Now, if it differs, all the details of the Christian worldview have to be taken into account. We've already said that. And that includes Jesus being born in Bethlehem, dying on a cross, being raised from the dead, so forth and so on. That all must be there. You say, well, that doesn't look very transcendental. That looks evidential. Van Till never had problems with going to the evidence and so forth. He said, but you can't make sense out of any evidence if you don't have the framework. Christian theology. But I'm going to add to that. Van Till also would say that too is transcendental, because we wouldn't be able to know about Jesus dying on the cross, being raised from the dead, unless this universe is what Christianity says it is. Jesus redemptive work is necessary to make sense out of what we're doing intellectually. Because you have to ask yourself, I mean, we're getting very abstract. We have to ask yourself, why is it there's any need to have an epistemology at all? Why can't we just take for granted that everything people believe is true? Well, that means you have to have some view of human nature which calls for a certain view of history, man being a sinner, so forth. That's just a thing. You can have other alternatives, but whenever other alternatives are posed, we can show that they are incoherent and meaningless, that scratch rewritten responsibility, Transcendental. Changes in authority to be as. What are the alternatives, you're saying is the transcendental. Okay, okay. The question here then is how do we know what belongs in the canon? No, no. Oh, yeah. Paul did use the transcendental argument. He's a story and we are authority of Scripture. Well, yeah, the authority of Christ speaking in him, Galatians 1. But he sees that as the authority of the Old Testament as well. He tells the Bereans, go look at the Old Testament to see if what I'm saying isn't what the Old Testament said. The transcendental is the Christian worldview. And the Christian worldview can grow within a limited range. And I say that because Abraham's understanding of redemption is obviously not as much as David's. And David's understanding of redemption is not as much as Matthew's before the cross. And Matthew's understanding of redemption before the cross is not as great as Paul writing after the cross. So there again we see that there's a development of detail, but it's the same worldview that we're talking about. We still need this doctrine of redemption that is there. And we believe that God, for his own reasons, decided to work in history and to progressively reveal it. Now, the cash value of this remark is that we can do apologetics more effectively now than could Amos in the Old Testament. Now, that isn't to say we're inspired like Amos. He had advantages, we don't. And in my view, during the period of revelation, special revelation, God's messengers also performed miracles and things of that nature to add validation to what they're doing. But the miracles by themselves don't validate it. You still have to have the word of the prophet previously given in terms of which the miracle takes place. But my point would simply be after God completes the presentation of the Christian worldview, we're obviously in a better position to argue the richness of our worldview against other ones than if you were at the very beginning. But I don't think that goes on and on and on. God stops the process of revelation when the key work of redemption has been accomplished. It's now being applied. We're now taking the word of God. We preach it to the hearts of men that they might be redeemed. It's applying it, and we're arguing apologetically from within that worldview. We can do, as I said, a better job than those who didn't have the whole system. But we're not going to do as good a job as when God opens up the canon again and Jesus returns and has an open revelation of himself to all men. Obviously, that's going to be a lot stronger apologetical presentation than anything that I'm doing. Okay, so there. But what I want you to see is there's continuity. Even though there are degrees of detail and persuasive power in there. It's the same worldview. Abraham had the same worldview as Paul. Did Abraham say everything that Paul did? No, but he did see Jesus day and he rejoiced. I mean, so there's something there. And do I see the Christian worldview right now, even with the completed canon? As good as I'm going to when I'm in heaven glorified? No. So there's unity and diversity in this. It's the same worldview. And yet I do allow for diverse details or, if you will, greater depth of conceptual adequacy in that worldview. Well, he uses the transcendental argument, I think, at the areopagus. Excuse me. Yes, and with Agrippa, we see it, though Paul. I'm talking about actual speeches of Paul. We can see it, but you see it directly when Paul says in First Corinthians that the wisdom of this world is made foolish by God. What he's saying is, take all the philosophers of this world. God reduces them to absurdity, to foolishness, to use false terms. Okay, okay, okay, okay. I've been very generous in letting you guys. You interrupted me. I still haven't read the quote. And so I'll read The quote. And then? And then I'll take your question first. I'm sorry. My point is that what makes Van Till's use of the transcendental program different includes that he says, I begin with my worldview on authority. I openly admit that it's a self authorizing thing and I'm calling for people to be converted. They have to change authorities in their lives. Okay, Common grace, page eight. Where am I? We accept this God upon scriptural authority. In the Bible alone do we hear of such a God. Okay, Muslims may talk about a lot. We say, it's only in the Bible you hear about this kind of God. Begin with the Trinity. There's an obvious difference, right? Such a God to be known at all cannot be known otherwise than by virtue of his own voluntary revelation. If God is absolute, if he is the Creator, if he is transcendent, if he's distinct from creation, if he is sovereign, if he is self contained, if he is in need of nothing, this kind of God, Van Till says such a God could only be known by his own voluntary revelation. He must therefore be known for what he is and known to the extent that he is known by authority alone. We do not first set out without God to find our highest philosophical concept in terms of which we think we can interpret reality and then call this highest concept divine. I alluded to that already. We don't start abstractly talking about generic philosophical problems, find the unifying concept and say, oh, that must be God. Mantle says we begin with a God who is personal, concrete, and he reveals himself in terms of his own authority. And now I'm going to skip a few lines and this too is a boilerplate quotation in my estimation. Have we no philosophical justification for the Christian position? Or are we to find a measure of satisfaction in the fact that others too non Christian scientists and philosophers as well as ourselves have in the end to allow for some mystery in our system? Van Till says, well, are we just to be satisfied that everybody's got mystery in their system? We don't have philosophical justification and so we just accept our position on authority. Amazing thing is, he wrote these words, 1947, I believe it's a check. John Warwick Montgomery years later portrays Van Till as saying that very thing. We're all in this context of mystery and I've got my authority, you've got yours. Van Til anticipated it again in his first major apologetical discussion. Let me finish. Have we no philosophical justification with the Christian position to all this? We must humbly but confidently reply by saying that we have the best of philosophical justification for our position. It is not as though we are in a bad way and that we seek for some comfort from others who are also in a bad way. We as Christians alone have a position that is philosophically defensible. The frank acceptance of our position on authority, which at first blush because of our inveterate tendency to think along non Christian lines, seems to involve the immediate and total rejection of all philosophy. This frank acceptance of authority is philosophically our very salvation. Some of you who have been in class where professors want to dismiss your point of view as being religious or theology, not doing philosophy. That's exactly what Van Til's talking about here. Let me say it again. Van Til says, the frank acceptance of our position on authority, which at first blush because of our inveterate tendency to think along non Christian lines, seems to involve the immediate and total rejection of all philosophy. Okay, we're doing transcendental, presuppositional, apologetical argument. Somebody says, well, where do you get your worldview? And I say, well, I accept it on authority. The authority of God speaking in this book. It's because God is the ultimate authority that that book doesn't have any higher authority. So I accept it on authority. I'll tell you straight out, I'm not embarrassed by that. Mantle says, we do blush. Why? Because of our inveterate tendency to think like unbelievers. He's not being mean. But isn't that true? Why does that bother us to say that to unbelievers? I accept this on the authority of God. Well, because they're going to make fun of us. We want to think like unbelievers think. Well, they don't think on the authority of God. So now there's real tension, right? Van Till says at first blush this seems to be, how does he put it? The immediate and total rejection of all philosophy. So I'm dealing with a philosophy professor in class or just an intelligent unbeliever out on the street. And he says, well, what's your philosophy of life? I mean, okay, you've reduced me to absurdity. I can't answer your questions, but what do you offer by comparison? And I say, well, I have this worldview, this very concrete worldview, this particular kind of God. He goes, well, why do you accept that? And I said, well, I accept it on authority. I begin with it on God's authority, because, oh well, then you're not doing philosophy. You've immediately reject philosophy. Can't be done on authority. And how's Van Till reply this frank acceptance of authority is, and he puts it, he sets it off grammatically with the word philosophically, which is a real hammer blow. He says, this frank acceptance of authority is philosophically our very salvation. So my reply to the person who says, well, you're not doing philosophy anymore. My reply is, let me tell you, buddy, this is the very salvation of philosophy. If you don't start with authority, this authority, this God, this worldview, you're going to destroy all philosophy. So when you tell me philosophers can't do this, I tell you then philosophers must die. I mean, not we're going to stab you to death, but you're going to destroy your philosophy, right? Philosophy cannot survive under your stricture that you cannot begin with authority, you must begin with authority. And I've already shown, if you begin with your authority, what do you end up with? Absurdity. Page eight. If nothing else, I hope I've convinced you all that Bantill's writings could have been organized in such a way that some of these juicy quotes, if they've been gathered together, would have really helped many of us. Right on page eight. Yeah, we can put this a lot of different ways, but let me rephrase that. I begin with authority. You begin with authority. You begin with your own authority. That subjective, therefore reduces the skepticism. The authority I begin with is. Is God's authority. Therefore, I don't fall prey to the subjectivism of your worldview. We all begin with authority. Yours destroys reason. Mine gives a foundation for reason. So if you want to keep reasoning, you'd better right now confess your sins and give thanks to God, because only because of God can you reason at all. That's heavy duty stuff. So they come back and they're going to say, did you? But it's your subjective understanding of God's authority. Okay, now we're back to canon translation and interpretation. Van Till says, what's the foundation on which you're standing? When you tell me that, when you start questioning it, you're standing on my foundation. And together we can try to make my interpretation of the Bible better. But the substance of the Christian worldview is the only one that makes sense out of anything, even when we're talking about biblical interpretation. And that gives, by the way, for those of you who've studied hermeneutics with me, that gives a really, I think, brilliant insight and depth to this remark the Reformers made that the Bible interprets itself. You know, you've got to have the biblical system before you can even go and let the Bible speak clearly to You, I mean analogy come up before. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Now we increase and improve our understanding of lock. We understand terms more analytical so we improve the ability to use. Most first year student logic are not given this information. They may discover it by watching or reading journals and so forth. Logicians argue with each other about logic, okay, they don't always agree. In the history of philosophy the best example is the law of excluded mill. There have been schools have thought to reject the law excluded middle and schools that affirm it. But there are other more arcane examples that could be given. Now Randy says here are logicians arguing about logic. Now do they reject the authority of logic while they're arguing, while they're refining? Of course not. They assume logic even while they're trying to get a better what self conception of what logic is all about. Even while they're reflectively trying to develop a science of logic, they're using logic when they do that. So when someone says well what about interpretation and all that? We say well yeah, we're trying to work out better, more adequate interpretation but all the while we're assuming the truth of the Bible as we're trying to interpret it better. Believe it says, well you've just chosen that God as your Lord. And you go no, no, wait a minute, that's not what I'm saying. When I was studying on that, I found that he actually chose me. Well, is that what you were actually getting to when you say is he metaphysical? No, no. What you're saying I think is a valuable point because it shows that all along God is the conditioning context and that I didn't choose him. He made it possible for me to choose Him. That's true, but what I was saying is we don't just choose this authority in abstract. We are looking at a worldview that has detail to it. This worldview claims ultimate authority. So yes, I accept that I'm its authority. But what happens if you don't? Then you have what? The impossibility of the contrary. You reduce the alternative to absurdity. And so somebody says but your worldview that you said you started with, there's questions of interpretation. I say yeah there are, but we're still assuming the truth of the Bible while we try to get a better grasp of the Bible. What's the key issue? Van Til says, I really wish I could quote here, but we're going to not have our lunch if I do. The key issue is yeah, that's right. The better students would say Dr. Bonson, we'd rather have Van Til than a hot dog. The issue, he says, is not what the unbeliever can do intellectually. Van Til is not talking about the intellectual accomplishments of unbelievers. He would be the first to say unbelievers are brilliant in many areas. They've done grand things. The issue is not what the unbeliever can do intellectually, but whether he can give an account of it. The little aphorism that he would use in class for students to pick up on this, really helpful, he said. I'm not saying unbelievers don't count. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I'm not saying they don't do math. I'm not saying they don't count. I'm saying they can't give an account of their counting. They can't give a worldview in terms of which counting makes sense. So I'm not saying unbelievers can't go to the moon, can't cure cancer, can't do all these great things, build bridges, whatever it may be, write symphonies. I'm saying. But they can't give an account of how that's possible. They can't give intelligibility to their own efforts. What we must do, Vanchill says, is find within a worldview an answer to the basic epistemological questions. How do we know? How is meaning possible? How is science possible? We must find an answer to the basic epistemological questions within a worldview. And as he puts it in Common Grace, page 64, I can find it quickly. Van Till says the ontological Trinity will be our interpretive concept everywhere. God is our concrete universal. That's jargon, for God is the one who has universal knowledge, but also all the details. As a concrete person, God doesn't gain universality in his understanding by becoming abstract. He's the concrete universal. And now listen to this. In him, thought and being are coterminous. In him, the problem of knowledge is solved. And so the key issue here is what worldview will enable you to settle the problems of epistemology? Van Til says it's the worldview of the triune God in terms of that epistemological problems can be solved. And the key question for Van Till is not the only way of putting it. But Van Till, over and over and over again, comes back to this orientation as he challenges unbelieving philosophers. The question is, who first gives order to the particulars? Is it the mind of God that gives order to the particulars? Or does the mind of man, running side by side with the Mind of God give order to the particulars first. Or as Van Till elsewhere puts it, who first rationalizes the facts? Who first makes the particular facts rational, gives them coherence or system? Is it God or man? Defense of the Faith, page 116. You find a similar remark on page 165, but I'm just going to settle with this one. I think on a non Christian basis, facts are rationalized for the first time when interpreted by man. You have all these brute facts, all this random world out there, and man brings order to the facts when he interprets them. He gathers them together and then he gives a system of interpretation. On a non Christian basis, facts are rationalized for the first time when interpreted by man. But for one who holds that the facts are already part of an ultimately rational system by virtue of the plan of God, it is clear that such hypotheses as presuppose the non existence of such a plan must even from the outset of his investigation be considered irrelevant. Who first rationalizes the fact? Does God? Is his mind that which gives intelligibility, coherence, meaning and order to the facts? Or does man first do it over and over and over again? Mansell says, you have to choose between one of those worldviews and if you choose that man does it first. What is it reduced to? Class, subjectivism and then skepticism. That's exactly right. Start with man, you're going to end with man and you won't be able to have objective knowledge. You must begin with the Christian worldview, where the order that's given to the facts is there because of the mind of God. He is the one who plans and creates all things. In another place. The foreign pastor in Modern Thought, page 89. Mantill says the consistently Christian conception of the a priori that which we know apart from observation, is that which presupposes the creator creature distinction and makes the covenant inclusive of all the activities of man. We begin with the Christian worldview. Everything, the creator, creature, distinction, the covenant, all the activities of man. Thus there is involved in every active interpretation a twofold activity. An activity of God and an activity of man. The two are not opposed to one another, nor do they work at different times or in different dimensions. No facts can be interpreted without reference to the activity of the human mind. But if skepticism and subjectivism are to be avoided, there must be back of the activity of man, the activity of God. Van Till says, your mind is active. You're trying to interpret things. But if you don't have a worldview that says back of all my interpretive efforts is God's original interpretation. Then you'll be reduced to subjectivism and skepticism. The facts will never be brought together. There'll be no coherence, no order, no intelligibility. Now, with this introductory lecture or discussion, after we come back from lunch, I'm going to read just nine or ten pages of Van Til and I hope you're going to say it was all there. This is the filet.

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