Greg Bahnsen R C Sproul Debate Part Two Presuppositional vs. Classical Apologetics

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

Be brief.

Well, very brief. Okay. Without a doubt, reason was built into what Eve was doing. The question becomes, in apologetics, what are the foundations of that proper reason she used after the Fall? Those foundations are now called into question. In the scripture text that I was searching for is 2nd Corinthians 11:3. Paul says, I'm afraid, lest as the serpent deceive thee by his craftiness, that your mind should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion which is to Christ. I'm sure there must be many questions.

Yes, Bill. Releases based on maturity that you talked about, is that based on reason or experiencing faith or a combination of both?

Experiential faith. Meaning what in your question, Bill? No, that's all right. You've said enough to. I know what ballpark you're in, and I would say it's neither that it's not reason. If you mean by that manipulation of the laws of logic as we might do our homework, you know, as seminary students, or experiential faith, in that we put it to the test and experience and found out that it works out. By the way, neither one of those can give you the assurance, the infallible assurance that you are saved that the Bible offers us. I would say rather that God has given a clear revelation which can be defended because it's the only foundation for knowing anything whatsoever, and that that clear revelation, in conjunction with the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, gives us an infallible assurance of our faith. But I do not believe that the Holy Spirit takes probable evidence or uncertain evidence and turns it into certain evidence or certainty or infallible assurance in our hearts. I think he takes certain evidence, infallible evidence, and with his infallible moral persuasion, turns it into infallible faith in our hearts. Identify yourself, Josiah.

What? The Alabama bankroll.

You said something, and I just want to know what you meant by.

He said that our duty is confrontation with the world on its own terms. What I meant by that is apologetics in the classical sense of an ad hominem response to where the world is coming from, where we come off the reservation, we duel with them in their own backyard. Now, I think what I meant by that, Josiah, I don't want to put words in Greg's mouth, but I would assume that that is not a point of controversy between us. I hope not. I hope this doesn't. Well, it's looking for More agreement to disagree. I hope we're not going to uncover more disagreement. What I mean by that, you see, the concern at this point is to show, we both agree that the whole life and worldview of the pagan is built on a lie. God reveals himself clearly to all men. Men have that knowledge. They exchange the truth of a lie, therefore they become pupils. We see brilliant men in the world. We see Sarts, the Sarts and the Humes of this world that are formidable minds, intellects, and they construct fantastically complex and intricate philosophical systems that are very intimidating sometimes to us. Very, very clever. But we know that in the final analysis, their whole systems are so much exercises in futility. And wouldn't that be the case if their starting point is a rejection of God's revelation, if they refuse to acknowledge what they know to be true at the beginning of their thinking? You know, Greg and I both agree there's an objective general revelation. We're both agreeing that there is an objective natural theology. Gee, I thought I heard you say that the knowledge gets through.

Objective general revelation. But natural theology is taking knowledge about nature, which does not itself have anything to do with the presuppositions of God and all the rest, and moving from them independently and autonomously to another conclusion, namely that there is a God. We do provide it as an objective argument for God's existence, but I don't happen to think it is natural theology. I think it's a transcendental argument.

What I mean about natural theology is. What I mean by theology is a knowledge of God. What I mean by a natural theology is a knowledge of God that comes through nature. You don't buy that?

Oh, I'm willing to buy it. But there's a distinction within what you're calling the knowledge of God, whether it's mediate or immediate. And there's also a distinction between types of arguments.

Okay, so. So? Well, I mean, we forget that. I just thought that we had a point of agreement there, which obviously we don't. Because you're rejecting the media dimension.

No, I'm. I'm rejecting the nature of argument that the old Princeton school used to substantiate that knowledge of God.

Okay, but we're not into that right now at this point, Greg. We're talking just simply about whether or not we agreed that there was a natural theo. A natural knowledge of God that all men have.

And I would say that is immediate.

Okay, probably immediately.

No, I'd also say that the apologist can give an immediate, transcendental and objectively valid proof for God's existence. But that's not what Aquinas was doing.

All right? Aquinas was going for median immediate, not immediate. He wanted to prove immediate thing. That's what I'm trying to do. That's what Calvin believed in. And we're waiting on. I got those quotes here if you want me to document that. I'm not just saying that. Calvin you very perfect immediately when he speaks of Romans 1:18. That's what Romans 121 following check, look it up. But the other point I want to get across here is that what we're both trying to do is show that those pagan systems which proceed from a rejection of general revelation, be it immediate or immediate. Skip that for the minute. They still know there's God and they refuse to acknowledge God as God. Grant that, okay? They all know that there's a God. Sartre knows very well that there's a God. Hume knew that there was a God. Now, their starting point then, for the construction of their philosophy is based upon a refusal to acknowledge what they know to be true. Paul calls that foolishness. And if you're careful, exegetes. You realize that the word fool in the New Testament is not merely a judgment of one's intellectual capacities. It's a moral judgment. Foolishness is a sin from a New Testament perspective. So we have a moral problem of man now in this repression or suppression, stifling, holding down whatever you want to call of this general revelation. So what? The task of the. Of. One of the tasks of the apologist is to expose the lie and the bankruptcy of this system that is built upon an initial refusal to acknowledge what a man believes to be true. The starting point is a lie. Now, on the basis of that lie, he can build very sophisticated, clever worldview. Both of us are trying to show the foolishness of it and expose the foolishness of it. I might let me say this about presuppositional school, particularly Westminster Seminary. I don't think there's been any school in its history of the Christian church that has produced a more devastating, scintillating and effective critique of alternate worldviews to Christianity than the advocates of the presuppositionalist school in general and Westminster Seminary in particular. Let me say it again. I don't think there ever has been in the history of the church a single school or I mean an institution or a school of thought. The disciples of Dr. Van Til and company of the presuppositional school have been more effective in exposing the weaknesses and the fallacies in terms of comprehensive critique of all alternate systems to Christianity. There's no dispute there when it talks about challenging the grounds upon which these other life and worldviews are established. There we're very, very close. I think our disagreement is on how we then replace what we've demolished with a positive presentation of the truthfulness of the Christian faith. Now, getting back to the question about what I meant, Jodi, you didn't want to ask me that about going out and beating them on their own grounds. What I mean by that is to go out and show them that they say we have reason, we believe that only that which is rationally demonstrative is true. Okay, Their presupposition is rationalism, or the empiricism that Greg is talking about over here. Now, what I'm going to try to show them by arguing on their own grounds is they can't have their cake and eat it too. I'm going to say if you're really into pyrrhuses and have any confidence whatsoever in sense perception, I'm going to try to drive them to show them that sense perception as a method of knowing demands that they submit to a notion of God because without God there's no guarantee whatsoever that sense perception has any correspondence to reality. And if he's a rationalist who's arguing for the law of contradiction and would say without God there's no guarantee that reality will correspond respond to reason. Okay, so I'm trying to show him, by arguing his own grounds in that homage fashion, that he can't have a viable sensory system or empirical system without God. And I'm trying to show him the rationalist that he can't even have his reason that he's trying to use to critique Christianity without God because he is ultimately presupposing the existence of God as the basis for his rationality or sense perception without acknowledging that.

Amen.

Okay, now there is where we are in total agreement. And when he talks about a transcendental argument in Kantian terms, about what is necessary for any of these things to make sense or be meaningful ultimately in Kantian categories, transcendental doesn't mean transcendent in the normal way we use it. But he's just asking the question, what are the preconditions of knowledge? In that sense, Dr. Van Til himself makes a distinction between ultimate and proximate presupposition. If you're asking me or any advocate of the evidentialist school, do we believe that God must be the ultimate presupposition of any knowledge, fact, or proof unless there's a God. Rationality meaningless unless there's a God. Sense perception ends in the kind of skepticism Dr. Clark talks about. We know that. We grant that we're not dummies. You know, we understand that rationality, for it to have any meaning, has to be based ultimately on God. We believe that, and we know that the dispute takes place in how we proceed to argue for it. We want to move simply from epistemology to ontology, and we must maybe misunderstand the presupposition.

This is why we like to get.

Together and try to get this. Because I only know Dr. Van Til from reading his books. I've met him, talk to him, his conversations, but I haven't sat in his class and asked him a thousand questions like Greg has and others. That's why I like to talk with advocates of the presupposition school as much as we possibly can to clarify these differences, if they are. And maybe they're just tempest in a teapot, I don't know. But the point we're trying to get at is we want to start with epistemology and move to ontology. They want to start with ontology and then show that all epistemology is based upon that.

Can I get my version of that? I mean, sure, we're getting somewhere when we talk about what we have in common and what we don't. Boy, the last few minutes of what Arthur's saying just sounds like pure presuppositionalism, and it's just grand. And he's right. The question is, after you've done the internal critique and you've shown the foolishness of unbelief and you've driven the man to the skepticism and this nihilism and all the rest, how do you then go about showing that it's not simply.

A shot in the dark?

Well, I want to be a Christian because it's pretty uncomfortable being a nihilist and all the rest. That is, what is the nature of the positive argument for Christianity, by the way? That's the sort of thing that really encouraged me when R.C. and I had this plane trip and we were kind of going back and forth because it's quite evident that he and I want to both do that, destroy the interleaver system and leave him nothing to stand on. But now the question is, what is the type of argumentation that is first morally required and epistemologically sound and in dealing with a positive presentation of the gospel? And I would say that the reason I have this problem with Accepting the term natural theology is that natural theology says that on autonomous grounds, that is, without any commitment to there being a God or not taking a neutral perspective, we can take some fact about the universe, for instance, that every event has a cause, and from that we can reason to there being a God. Now, RC's presentation of the cosmological proof this afternoon, for all of the detailed philosophical intricacies we may be talking about, my real problem has to do with this one. I don't believe the argument is sound. Secondly, even if it were, would only lead to probability, and consequently it is not an adequate apologetical tool. One, because good philosophers can in fact disprove that form of argumentation. And secondly, even if they didn't disprove it, it would not give us, in fact, this full assurance we've been talking about. On the other hand, there's a form of argumentation that's called transcendental, that would say nobody's autonomous and nobody is neutral. And in fact, while we all pretend to be autonomous and neutral, we couldn't even say the grass in the field is green. We couldn't even do predication, as Van Zo says, we couldn't predicate one thing of another if we didn't already depend upon the knowledge of God, which we have immediately in creation and conscience and all the rest. And so the transcendentalist says, what are the preconditions of knowledge? He doesn't argue from an imminent platform up to a transcendent God. He argues that in fact, you couldn't know anything, you couldn't even argue at all, one way or another, up, down or sideways, without a God. And so that's why it is not moving from metaphysics to epistemology, or epistemology to metaphysics that separates us. Let me explain that, because I know some of you have not been in the technical courses where those terms are used. Metaphysics is the doctrine of being. What is real, what is true, what is the structure of, and what does actually exist in the universe, those things which have existence. Metaphysics and the doctrine of God is a metaphysical doctrine because we're talking about there being a God, especially a transphysical being, be it God or laws of logic or whatever it is. Metaphysics, epistemology asks, how do you know what you know? What are the criteria of knowing? What is a belief state? And questions having to do with knowing and the knowing process. Now RC is saying that he wants to start with epistemology and move to ontology. Or metaphysics wants to start with the law of Non contradiction, the basic reliability, sense perception, law, causality. And from those epistemological platforms, from that platform, move to the existence of God. What I want to say is you can't begin even with that platform if you don't already have the existence of God. And that's not an ontological statement, because we'd agree ontologically there wouldn't be any logic or sense experience if God hadn't created the world and was a coherent God. I'm making an epistemological point that it doesn't even make sense to use mathematics or empiricism or natural science of any sort without already knowing that there is a God. That is the context in which interpretation and predication is possible. That's a transcendental argument saying that the precondition of intelligibility and knowledge is already the existence of God. And that does not purport to be a probable argument for God's existence, but a certain argument, a necessary argument, an inescapable argument, and so over. Now, we may not be able to play this out and we may not be able to do our homework very well. But what the program and what the criticism are formally, is that natural theology, Thomas Aquinas, the old Princeton approach, one, does not use good philosophically sound reasoning, and two, if it did, it would only lead to probabilities and therefore would leave the unbeliever with an excuse for his unbelief, because there's only probability. Whereas the transcendental or presuppositional approach doesn't move from an autonomous natural premise to a transcendent conclusion, but says that in fact, that is a transcendental precondition of all knowledge, that you can't prove anything. You can't even prove that your car is out there in the parking lot without first ultimately presupposing that there is a God. And Archie's right. Dr. Van Tilde distinguishes between ultimate and approximate presuppositions.

Professor Bronson, how is that an argument?

The transcendental argument.

How is what you've said now an argument?

I'll give you an example of a transcendental argument.

May I explain that?

Sure.

You've described it as a precondition, a presupposition and an argument. I can understand that it's a presupposition and a precondition, but I would like a little clarification as to how it's an argument, how it's an argumentative force.

Yeah, of course. Now, Kant's not the subject of discussion tonight, but you can Be very sure that Immanuel Kant thought he was arguing in his Critique of Pure Reason and when he set forth his transcendental philosophy. But I'll give you a simpler thing to follow transcendentally. That was much prior to Kant, something which neither Arthur nor I would dispute with, I would imagine, in Aristotle. Aristotle says, how do you prove the law of non contradiction? And in his short little paragraph, and it's very short, but it's devastating, Aristotle says, well, you can either try to argue for it or on its own grounds, in which case it's circular reasoning, or you can have an argument that goes to other premises and other premises and other premises which lead to eternity and never settle the issue because neither one of those are going to work. But he says we can argue for the law of non contradiction from the impossibility of the contrary. He says, pretend that you don't hold to the law of non contradiction. What are the effects? In fact, you can't even argue that if you don't hold to the law of non contradiction. And for all the talk about rationality and logic and all that, Dr. Van Till and Frame and Bonson and Poythras and all the rest, we've never denied that for a moment. The question is whether the law of non contradiction is in fact its own ground epistemologically or whether there must be something beyond that. And I would argue that there is. But Aristotle has a transcendental argument from the impossibility of the contrary. And that's exactly Van Til's language when he says we can prove that God exists from the impossibility of the contrary.

From that point, it's an argument for necessary. Benny, let me, let me ask him a question here that may help everybody. When you talk to me about a transcendental argument, all the con. I said this to you on the plane and we never got a chance to really speak about it. Are you saying, Greg, that. Or what I'm hearing? Is that your understanding of Van Til? Is that what Van Til is coming up with here is a very sophisticated and somewhat restatement of the ontological argument.

In my apologetics classes I have what is called a reconstruction of the ontological argument along presuppositional lines. Difficulty is, most of that's been developed by John Frame and myself and you don't find it anywhere in Vanthil's literature. In a sense you can call it a reconstruction of the ontological argument, but you see, in another sense it's a reconstruction of the cosmological argument. And ultimately, I think some interpreters of Van Till are right when they say it's really a reconstruction of a teleological argument. What it's saying is. What it's saying is basically in Van Til's little pamphlet, why I Believe in God, which is really perhaps the best single statement of what he does in apologetics that you can find. One, it shows the character of the man, what a precious Christian gentleman he is, and secondly, it shows you the nature of his reasoning from the impossibility of the contrary. Van Till says, you know, on your presuppositions you can't account for either order or disorder, that is unity or disunity in this world. You can't show me why there is unity or disharmony in anything, why everything's not the same or why everything's not ultimately diverse. It says, on the other hand, on my system of thought I can give you the basis for unity and diversity, the one and the many. And therefore that's a transcendental argument. But you see, in a subtle sense that sounds like the teleological argument. I can show you the rational or the intellectual epistemological order of all things. If you start with my God, the revelation of my God, it's certainly not teleological in the traditional natural theological sense, but it has a parallel or an analogy, something of a reflection of that. But you're right, there's elements of the ontological movement in that transcendental thing as well. By the way, as a philosopher, what fascinates me so much? It is a very subtle but powerful argument.

Question somebody. Craig Craig Van Dilder School Michael, just for a moment, you're talking about arguments after we got to the point, Fortunate manner helping us an estate camp out of his system and replace it with.

A delicate listening Creator.

Is there anything at that point which out of necessity forces him or drives him to move to such a revelation.

And content with such a revelation?

Or can he not say, Stephan, that.

Set of chances of self existence are greater?

It's an excellent question and the. I sort of quickly alluded to the answer to that today, but it was so quick it. Maybe you didn't pick it up, but what I getting at is that in apologetics, the science of Christian faith, I'm not interested in stopping in a self existing eternal something, okay, we want to get to the cross. And that's why I said where? He says, okay, that's all there is. Then we go. Colin would say from creation to providence, which means dealing now with special revelation as it occurs. In history and specifically as it's recorded in the Scripture. So the next major item of apologetics has to be the defense. The historical integrity, reliability of Holy writ. Okay, that's where I would take them next. Because general revelation only gives us general knowledge of God. It doesn't give us the Trinity, it doesn't give us the redemptive process and all of that. Can I finish this and then you can respond? Of course, as soon as we get into questions of history. As I was saying today, you get more and more and more and more and more into induction. And that's what everybody seems to be all uptight about, because induction involves the problematics of sense perception and this whole thing that Dr. Bronson has been stressing, and that's the question of assurance and certainty. I'd like to take three minutes in connection with the answer to your question, but at the same time be responding to some of the things that Greg has pointed out. Because this whole question of certainty is one that I keep getting all the time. One of the chief criticisms we get is, is that all we leave people with are probabilities, whereas the presuppositionist approach leaves us with certainty. And I certainly am the first one prepared to say that I can get very metal headed at times and miss things that I shouldn't miss. But I still have not been able to see how a higher degree of certainty comes through presuppositionalism than through our system, because it looks to me like we get less certainty. And let me explain why I'm getting into this and why we get into history and Lessing's ditch and the whole thing. Let me use the standard syllogism as an example of the basic problem of object subject epistemology and ontology. Let's take the old one. All men are mortal. Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal. Now I say let's write a conclusion. Socrates is mortal. Have I proven that Socrates is mortal in this syllogism?

If your premises are true.

Yes, if my premises are true, then I have given you demonstrative, compelling argumentation for the truth of the conclusion. Socrates is mortal. That I call philosophical certainty. It's compelling, rationally compelling, but what's the problem with it? The truth of the conclusion depends upon the truth of the premise. How do we know that all men are mortal? Can we ever know with certainty that all men are mortal? I'm talking about philosophical certainty. What would it take for us to know that all men are mortal? All men would have to die and for me to know that all men are mortal. The only way I can know it is posthumously. I can look at 10 zillion examples of mortality, but from an empirical perspective, an inductive perspective, I'll never be able to know that this side of the grave.

Unless God told you before.

Unless God told me, okay, but then I have to face the question, how do I know that the voice I heard in my ear was the voice of God? Because I'm still dependent upon my sense perception and induction at that point of distinguishing that voice from the voice of the devil. So anyway, in terms of my syllogism here, my primary premise is dependent to some degree on induction, which throws me into a level of uncertainty. How do I know Socrates? Even if I do know that all men are mortal, how do I know that this particular fellow Socrates is a man? Maybe he's a clone, Maybe he's a first century, the fourth century BC Bionic reconstruction. You know, there were a lot of good sleight of hand magicians in those days. Do I know for sure that he's a man? For absolute certainty, no evidence is pretty strong empirically that he is. But I don't know that for certainty. I don't know all there is to know about that individual. All I can say is that if all men are mortal, if Socrates is a man, then certainly he's mortal. Tell you that much. Okay, that's what I was trying to get you at to today, that if something exists now tell you this much, something's always existed because something can't come from nothing that I'm certain about. Okay? Now the fact that something exists, that anything exists, but even I exist involves induction, and that gives us uncertainty. Only way we can have absolute philosophical certainty about anything is in the pure formal realm. So that anything exists and even I exist involves induction, and that gives us uncertainty. Our only way we can have absolute philosophical certainty about anything is in the pure formal realm. But unfortunately that doesn't get us into the real world. As soon as we get into induction, we get into the level of uncertainty. Okay, now here's a problem with that word certainty. That word certainty is used at least three different ways. One, in terms of philosophical rational demonstrability, that is compelling. Okay, My assertion is only formal logic and deduction can do that. That doesn't help us in terms of getting to the real world. Two, the term certainty is used to describe a feeling state that is associated with an idea or an assertion here. I think David Hume has done us a great service in his analysis of the nature of belief. You can say to me do I believe in God? And I can say to you no. Or I can say to you no. I can say I don't think so. I say I don't know. Or I say maybe, or I say I think so. I say yeah. I say yes, and I'm ready to die for all. Those are different degrees of statements, of feeling states that associate with an idea. We talk about surety, we're insurance. The anchors that hold our souls and make us go the way they go. Then the other kind of certainty we talk about is what we call what Dr. Greg called moral or cop out. And that's moral certainty. I don't think it is a cop out. We use it very effectively in our society. Let me give you an example what I'm talking about. Guy comes into a courtroom, he's on trial for murder. Let's take Jack Ruby in front of television screens. 50 million people watch him shoot down Lee Harvey Oswald in a Dallas police station. Not only 50 million people see it on TV and record on videotape, but there's 50 people in the room that see it through him in person. See him do it in person. The gun is in his hand. His fingerprints are all over the gun, the bullet in the body and the ballistics matches the chamber of the gun and the barrel of the gun and all of that stuff. Okay, now we come to the courtroom with the evidence that Ruby shot Oswald. Is it absolutely certain that Jack Roby shot Lee Harvey Oswald? Certainly not. Certainly not. The whole thinking of it stays by NBC to delude 50 million people. And the 50 guys in the station could have been corroborative or they could all have been on an acid trip, what was going on and it was done with mirrors. But you say, wait a minute, the guy's fingerprints are all over the gun. And we know that no two people in this world have the same set of fingerprints. We don't know that no two people in this world have lost that fingerprint any more than we know that all men are mortal because we haven't examined every set of fingerprints. No two that we found yet are exactly the same. But maybe the one we find to mars this is the probability quotient skepticism that Hume gives us would show that maybe Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby didn't in fact find a gun. So here I'm just a defense attorney and I stand up in court and I say maybe the whole thing was massively contrived deal by NBC, mass illusion by the people there. They were all in lsd. And Jack Ruby's fingerprints may match the ones in the guns, but they're not the same guy. And I can argue philosophically that the court cannot prove his guilt. That's why we have a category in this world of reasonable doubt, of moral culpability. How much evidence is required for God to give the world before he holds us accountable? Who says that we have to have rationally inescapable arguments before we're morally culpable to respond to Jesus Christ? Whoever entered that into the game? The Bible doesn't say that. The Bible says that God is holding us accountable for the evidence he has given us, that it's sufficient to cause us to acquiesce to the evidence that's been brought forth. Now, if you want philosophically perfect evidence, a perfect knowledge of anything, including your own existence, not to mention the word of God and the existence of God, I'm going to tell you what you're.

Going to have to have.

You're going to have to do better than a transcendental presupposition because you always pay for charge. Your own presupposition of the existence of God is arbitrary. And sure, it's the only thing that makes sense sense out of the world. It's the only thing that makes rationality.

Out of the world.

But one maybe, maybe the world doesn't make sense. Big deal. But that's the only one that'll work. That's when the nihilist thinks back and says so doesn't work. Give me that stuff about we start with God. You don't have any certainty there. You have a preference. You have a personal assertion. Philosophically you have less certainty because it's subjective than you have when you have objective data.

It's a four day now.

How many funny hits? Okay, before you get on site, The problem we're dealing with here is the problem with creaturely. The only way I can think of to have absolute certainty about anything is to have omniscience. And that we don't have that belongs to God. We are creatures who deal on the basis of the information and the testimony by which God gives us. And what kind of evidence does God give the world by which he holds the world callable? Does God just give presuppositions? Or does he raise Jesus Christ from the dead and have eyewitness testimony in a manner of history and says therefore you know, these former days of ignorance did God overlook. But now God commands all men everywhere to repent. He's shown that he has judged people by this One whom he had proven the high resurrection. God considers the resurrection of Jesus Christ as evidence that makes the whole world morally comparable. Sure, we don't have perfect certainty. We've got enough to send us to hell, we don't submit to it. I think that.

A lot more needs to be said about certainty and we're not going to get to a lot of questions if I say as much as I'd like to. But let me give just a few very quick points about certainty. As RC has mentioned it, he says that a certainty applies only to deductive certainty like that. I'd like to say that it doesn't even apply to that. Or strange as it may seem in terms of modern logic and in terms of transcendental argumentation, I can assure you that in fact that's not even a certain proposition. I give you the truth of the premises. Notice that this is the form of the argument.

Rationally certain.

It's not even rationally certain. All A is B, C is A written therefore what Z is V. Now there's two reasons why that in fact is not deductively certain. First of all, if this is certain, it must be an application of the law of modus ponens, alright? That's the basic law of logic. If A, then B, A, therefore B. Now do I know that this is an application of the law of modus ponens? Well, we're pretty sure. It seems rather simple. We couldn't be wrong. Until you take your analogy of logic to mathematics and you start saying, well, is 2 plus 2 4. Are we certain of that? Well, we seem to be because it seems fairly easy.

It's low level and all that.

But now, very quickly, if I were to give you a five digit number and a five digit number and then give you an answer and say, now is that also true? Well, we might look at it quickly and say yeah, that's true too. And then lo and behold, you go back and you say, as much as I know the rules of math and as much as I know what those figures are, my senses didn't deceive me. In fact, I made a mistake in math. So it's not a question about the laws of math, it's a question of whether I've applied the laws of math. And even in low level cases of all men being mortal and Socrates being a man, the question arises, even for logicians, are you applying your formal laws, you can be mistaken in identifying a case of modus ponens. And you see, that's one of the things that Pagan man Willard Van Orman Quine, the logician at Harvard, has pointed out so tellingly that nobody can be purely formal and nobody can have deductive certainty of that sort. And secondly there's this. Why is the law of modus ponens to be accepted? Well, I'll give you a very black box explanation of it. Modus ponens this. If A, then B, A, therefore B is to be accepted on these grounds. If this black box is true, and I'm not going to fill in all the technical philosophy for you because it just bore you and probably sends you home, but whatever it is, if that is true, then modus ponens holds. Second premise, all those things said in the black box are true. Conclusion, modus ponens holds. Now how do you know that modus ponens is a valid form of logical argumentation? Well this is my argument for modus ponens. Simply put, what's the problem? The very argument is using modus ponens to prove modus ponens. Even though there's something beyond modus ponens in a sense it still has to be cast in this form. And therefore that argument in fact is uncertain in the most radical sense. In two one, because I'm not sure it is a case of modus ponens because I can always make mistakes in math and logic. And secondly, even modus ponens can't be argued for without modus ponens. If it's the case that only logic and math give a certainty, my answer is just playing the part of the devil's advocate. Even they don't give you certainty. Well what does give you certainty? Well it's been a reform distinctive, you know, for these 400 years. Sola Scriptura. Not my reasoning, not my identification of the green grass. Nothing is certain in this world, not even my apologetic arguments for that matter. The only thing that's certain is the word of God. It's certain because the one who speaks it can make no mistakes. Well now we're going to get to that. Let me see, as Calvin put it, there is this objective general revelation in the self attestation of the Scripture. And as the Westminster Confession says, that by all these means it does show itself to be the word of God. And Paul says that in fact all men are without excuse if they don't accept the preaching of the Gospel. Now what kind of argument could Paul have been thinking of? Well in Romans and in first Corinthians where he makes these kind of statements, he talks about the foolishness of unbelief. And what happens if you reject those statements? I dare say that that is a primitive form of a transcendental argument. He's arguing from the impossibility of the contrary. By the way, I have an article entitled Pragmatism, Prejudice and Presuppositionalism, which talks about philosophical or epistemological certainty and how presuppositionalists deal with that. I'm just going to refer you to that. If you have only probability that the Bible is the word of God, or that God exists for all the rest, that must mean at least this, that while there are many reasons to think that the Bible is the word of God, there are some to think that it's not. Because if there were no reasons to think that the Bible is not the word of God, it wouldn't be probability, it would be certainty. And so when RC or any old Princeton apologist says that very probably the Bible is the word of God, he is also saying there's a slight probability that it's not slight. You may think that the probability that it is is greater than the other, although I dare say nobody knows how to rate probability when it comes to those kind of arguments. So saying one is more than the other doesn't get anywhere. Everybody's lost in a sea of skepticism if it's only probability. But even if you could say there's a greater probability of the Bible is the word of God than it's not, you're still saying that there's some reason to think that it's not. And I dare say that you haven't met Paul's condition of leaving the believer without excuse, because on the day of judgment he could say, but Lord, don't you see there was some reason to think that Bible wasn't the word of God. Paul says there is no reason to think that, that the man is without an apologetic. And that's why I say we've got to press the man back, back, back to see that if he doesn't have a transcendental foundation, he doesn't have anything. And that is a form of certainty. And then one last point that I really want to let another question come. Is the Resurrection evidence? And is it God's proof that Jesus is divine? Without a doubt, God has given us evidence of all sorts. You know, from the 500 witnesses of the Resurrection to the millions of stars in the sky. Everything that exists, every fact is proof that God exists and holds us morally accountable. And the Resurrection is evidence par excellence. But notice what Peter says. Let the house of Israel know with full assurance, not just probably, that he rose from dead was full assurance. The apostolic Word gives us in fact absolute certainty of the resurrection and not just moral persuasion, not simply probability. I'd say that's possible because the apostles realized that sola scriptura, the word of God, is the foundation of all certainty. And to deny that, one had to deny the very conditions of intelligibility.

Greg, how do you know the Bible is the word of God? I haven't heard a single response in that question. You quoted the Bible. But you haven't.

I know it from the impossibility of the contrary. James Jeremy Cobb Mr. Boston, I wonder if you might give us your evaluation of Paul's apologetical method that he used on Mars Hill. I think you will try and show us that he was a presuppositionalist. And I wonder then if you would.

Allow us to respond to we have 12 minutes. That's a formidable project.

Let me just say that I have a published essay that deals with that question that's available in the bookstore and RC is going to speak on that subject tomorrow night. So maybe that will.

You have had a chance How, David, are you.

Identify yourself, sir.

Chest of you can know nothing for certain empirically or inductively correct what you're saying, then you can't know anything at all for certain. Right? It seems to me though that scripture and here it gets back to the same argument. I suppose the scripture does say you can know certain that over and over again the scripture writers say these things are written probably you can know certainly, and that you state that men know certainly that God exists, but you can't know for certain that men know certainly God exists. See, if you seem to end up in the same skepticism that Gordon Clark does, I would wonder what your response to that would be. Again, let me repeat the difference between how the word certainty is used. The Bible speaks of having assurance. I have a blessed assurance. But my knowledge of what the Bible is and what the Bible says is fallible because I'm less than omniscient when I'm talking about certainty. I'm talking about philosophical certainty in a very technically defined manner. And in that sense I don't have certainty about anything even I'm right here. Deduction, I think, can give us far more certainty than Grego in terms of relationship propositions and the laws of immediate inference and that sort of thing. But I grant that that's even then only if rationality is valid and the only way you can have rationality valid I've already yielded is that ultimately that God exists. But I cannot know for certainty by you know that God exists. I can have full assurance of heart when the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit comes. See, I look at the evidence is already overwhelming. Holy Spirit tells me, hey, that evidence is for true. That's for real, you know, Cool. How do I know for sure that the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit isn't indigestion? I'm playing a devil's advocate. I have to deal with pagans every day and not just Christians. And I'm not going to go out to them and say because I say so. And that's what you're left with. And that gives you precious little certainty. Because then in the final analysis all I have is the autonomy of your presupposition about the boldest assertion the world has ever heard, the existence of God. I want to know how you escape subjectivism. I want to know how you escape fideism. I haven't heard it yet. I keep hearing denials about fideism. Fideism historically means the rejection of natural theology by definition, historically, going all the way back to Qcinus, right up through the history of philosophy, the term Judaism has meant that any knowledge of God must come not through natural theology, but through faith. I've heard all night that we don't come through natural theology. We do come through faith, but we're not. Phineas, I'm absolutely bewildered at that point.

Could I answer before you go any further, that in fact the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with rational argumentation. It has to do with subjective persuasion and that it's the objective evidence that the apologist has to deal with. And then we must pray, you know, God willing in his grace, that the subjective testimony of the Spirit accompanies that making a man pliable to the evidence. But Van Til and the presuppositionalists are not saying that we know it's true because of the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. They're saying there's a self testing revelation of God that if it is denied, you have denied the grounds of rational argumentation.

But how do you know that your presupposition is true? Where does your certainty come from? That's what I keep trying to ask.

From the impossibility of the contrary.

All right. How is the contrary impossible?

Well, want me to go through a few of the schools of philosophy and show you how is it?

Is it utterly impossible, utterly impossible and unthinkable that there be no God?

We have one school of thought Rational words. Rational says anything that is true has got to be coherent.

All right?

And you have another school of thought, empiricism. Anything that's true has got to meet the standard of sense experience. Then there are other schools of thought to try to combine rationalism and empiricism in any number of ways. So a lot of permutations of the combination. Now I'm saying that we know that the Bible is the word of God from the impossibility of the contrary. If somebody denies that the Bible is the word of God and that the sovereign triune God of Scripture doesn't exist and he wants to be a rationalist, then we can start asking him about the possibility of coherence in a chance universe. Because as RC has shown, if nothing else in his lecture this afternoon, those are the alternatives. All right, we can show, in fact, the rationalist has to be an irrationalist to get his rationalism going. How about the empiricist? Well, he says, sense experience, it won't do any good to be up here in the clouds with all these formal systems that don't do anything material for us. The empiricist says, sense experience is the criterion of truth. And then you say, well, then do you know that sense experience is the criterion of truth because you validated that through sense experience? No, I haven't. Well, then you don't know that it's true. And so you've undermined your ultimate presupposition. And then there are people say, yeah, but what if we try to put the. The two together and hook them up and make some sort of epistemology that way? And as Anthony Flew says, what good is it going to do you to take one leaky bucket and add it to another leaky bucket? You're just going to have a twofold leaky bucket now. And so all those things are subject.

To the same thing.

There's the history of philosophy and a thumbnail sketch from the impossibility of the contrary. You can't have logic, you can't have sense experience without something that goes beyond them, a transcendental foundation.

I'm up. That's not the impossibility of the contrary. It is. That's what you. What you have done is shown us that without God, we got leaky bucket. Okay? Without God, you can't even say you haven't shown me. It's that you haven't shown me why we can't be in one big leaky bucket. Identify yourself. Lee burke, s.c. but. Presupposition wasn't leading to some type of orthodox thinking seems to need to get away from the historical fact of what happened with the Princetonian thinking of polynegenics. How they allowed it to seep into their systematic theology. The point that Vonsi brought out about how they allowed their natural theology to be debated for their proving of scriptures, particularly Alexander's two books on the canon and how he defends that. And even as far as the way it's going, well. And all the other Presbyterians fall into the same trap. If you're going to follow your natural theology, you're going to have to cut.

It off at some point of where.

It'S going to be just your apologetics.

And your apologetics is not going to.

Be able to be related to your systematic theology. And in my understanding, you don't have that problem with predomposition. One observation before I let you answer. I think we ought to be careful about saying of men like Fonduel and others that they fell into a trap if they thought something, we had better take it seriously, even though we come to the conclusion that they were wrong. Dr. Sproul?

Yeah.

I'm perfectly delighted with what the Princeton school did with their defense of Scripture. I think it's the best defense of scripture the world has ever seen. I don't think it's been improved upon, and I wish we'd get back to it. So I know I have no reason to apologize for B.B. warfield's defense the infallibility of Scripture because it does provide objective evidence and not just a gratuitous assumption that this is the Word of God. I'd like to know the difference between how a presuppositionalist defends the Scripture as the Word of God and a Muslim defends the Quran. Now I know how Gordon Clark does it. This is the Word of God. It says it's the Word of God, since it is the word of God and says the words of the word of God must be the word of God. You know, you might call that a beautiful circle. See, I call it a vicious circle. And that does give the pagan an excuse for rejecting it. I agree. Good.

I'm Herb Clinton.

Nobody from nowhere, unlike Steve. Celeste.

In the midst of my question, I'm going to ask you a yes or no question. What you're saying is that philosophically men cannot be certain.

You've said that, right? Ultimately, yes.

And could God, therefore, since he at the source of all logic, the source.

Of truth and wisdom, is he certain? Can God be certain? Yes. Yes. Okay. I knew you'd say yes to that. Well, then what I really want to.

Know is I want to be sure of your position. I want to know exactly what you meant. Are you saying then that the only one that is philosophically certain is God?

Yes.

And therefore for us to have any certainty at all, and not the philosophical, but the feeling certainty you were talking about is to look at God's revelation of Himself. And that gives us the certainty and the Holy Spirit working within us that those together give us that feeling certainty that you are talking about. And therefore the only way we can have that feeling certainty is to look to God's revelation in nature.

No, that's not what you mean. No, I'm saying that God has created us as creatures. I'm talking as a Christian now. I think he's created as a creature. He's given us finite capacities for learning. I'm not a skeptic with respect to meaningful knowledge and meaningful discourse. I am a skeptic with respect to the technical concept of absolute philosophical science. But I'm not a common sense skeptic. You know, I think that God has given us creaturely abilities to learn things. He's given us a mind by which we can learn at 2 and 2 or 4. He's given us not perfect sense perception. Our senses can in fact be deceived. Nevertheless, when I see a truck coming down the street, I get out of the way. I have enough trust in the basic reliability of my sense perception and a common sense level. As a creature created in the image of God, finite, limited in my perceptions, dim and dull in certain aspects of my sensual abilities. Nevertheless, I have a talent for knowledge that is workable, that is practical, for which I am culpable of making creaturely moral decisions. All I'm saying at that point is that I'm not omniscient. I don't think that warrants at all the kind of skepticism that Hume was talking about or even that Dr. Clark talks about. It's almost unfair to say that what we say is, well, probably God exists. You know, there's an emotive connotation to that word. And it's one thing for me to say, yeah, probably God exists. It's another thing for me to say, I grant that I'm not infallible and I'm not on mission and I can't give you the kind of certainty that God can speak with. But I'll tell you what, pal, the evidence for the existence of God is so overwhelming that you better repent in a hurry. You know, I'm not saying, probably there's a God. I'm saying, surely there's a God. I'm sure there's a God. Here's why I'm sure. I think the evidence is overwhelming that there's a God and that you have to flee from reason and flee from normal sense perception in order to escape the evidence for the existence of God. We're saying that the evidence for the existence of God is overwhelming. That if a man denies the existence of God, he's flying in the face of, you know, it's an immoral decision. Not because there's a deficiency of the objective evidence. See, Calvin never says the evidence is insufficient to make us culpable. The insufficiency rests with our moral disposition against God. There's enough evidence to convict us of the sin of rejecting God and his Savior, Jesus Christ in this world. But I mean, I just. Just be careful about how we're talking about that probable stuff now. I'm not just saying. I'm not going to say. Well, you know, see, probably God is.

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute. Duplication, sharing and distribution is encouraged. For more information about the life and Ministry of Dr. Greg L. Bonson, visit our where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.