Justin Taylor over at The Gospel Coalition has a great little introductory post on Romans 1. Justin covers some of the basics of the basis for the responsibility of unbelief and the universal knowledge of God. It is important, as our contributor Razorskiss pointed out on Justin’s blog, to understand that this is speaking of God and not that all men just have some sort of notion of a generic god. It is also important to notice the consequences of the rejection of God. Check out the post here: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2012/02/15/what-unbelieving-pagans-know-about-god-and-why-they-are-responsible-for-it   HT: McFormtist

Also check out Razorskiss’s article “EXPOSITION OF ROMANS 1:16-2:16 – THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD” in the journal: http://www.choosinghats.com/antithesis-a-reformed-apologetic-journal/in-antithesis-volume-1-no-1-september-2011/

C. L. Bolt’s introduction to Covenantal/Presuppositional Apologetics: http://www.choosinghats.com/post-series/ especially note parts 10 and 11 as well as his post http://www.choosinghats.com/2009/09/sacrificing-the-gospel-on-the-altar-of-unbiblical-apologetics/

Also check out the lectures from Dr. Scott Oliphint and Dr. D. A. Carson from NEXT 2011 keeping this subject at the front of your thinking. http://www.choosinghats.com/2011/06/next-2011-lectures-available/

http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts/2012/02/09/episode-97-presuppositional-apologetics-part-1

Keith says:

February 10, 2012 at 4:15 pm

Great podcast, guys.

One possible approach to presuppositionalism is to make your own, conflicting presupposition using your own invented God.

Imagine how taken aback a presuppositionalist would be in a debate if you said the following:

“I have a confession to make: I am not an atheist. I believe in the god Drusba*. And he inspired me to write down his only gospel. This gospel says that everyone knows deep down inside who Drusba is, and that no understanding of the world is possible without him. Drusba is the giver of logic and knowledge. Drusba also says that no other gods are real, including the Christian God.”

The only response available to the presuppositionalist would be to explain why his biblical gospels are more trustworthy than those of Drusba. But this would require him to abandon his presuppositionalist stance.

—
* “Absurd” spelled backwards.

Atheists are particularly bad at arguendo, proposing something for the sake of argument, or working with a hypothetical. Hence they falter in their attempts at making an overload objection in response to transcendental argumentation. So I would not be “taken aback” at all by the suggestion quoted above.

If the atheist actually converted from atheism to the gospel of Drusba in order to defend oneself then so much for atheism.

If the atheist actually lied about converting from atheism to the gospel of Drusba in order to defend oneself then so much for atheism.

What the atheist is trying to do above, albeit poorly, is to launch an overload objection against the presuppositionalist. If the atheist has to convert from atheism or lie about his atheism in order to defend his atheism then atheism has been defeated. But the atheist does not need to do either. Instead, he may produce a deliberately absurd notion of deity as a hypothetical defeater for the presuppositional argument. The atheist may remain an atheist, and even make his atheism known, without giving up the alleged counter argument quoted above.

Rather than taking the presuppositional argument head on, the atheist points out that if that argument was in fact successful, then it would prove too much. Namely, the transcendental argument can establish the existence of Drusba just as easily as it establishes the existence of the Christian God. And Drusba is a deliberately absurd, invented concept of deity. Hence there must be something wrong with the presuppositional argument, even if it is not readily apparent. But is this claim true?

If the claim in question is true then it is not clear why it is true. For one thing, there are many relevant differences between Drusba and the Christian God encapsulated by the short description of Drusba alone. For example, there is only one gospel of Drusba, whereas there are four Gospel accounts in Scripture, and the Gospel itself refers to the good news of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. All of these tenets of the latter system have been demonstrated throughout the centuries to be a crucial part of the Christian worldview properly understood. There is no Christianity without the resurrection of Christ, for example, and without Christianity, there is no intelligible experience. Efforts have been made elsewhere to explain why this is the case. Christianity has a history and thus is a well-developed system of thought, whereas the gospel of Drusba is obscure. There is only one author of the gospel of Drusba, but many authors of the Christian Gospels and Scripture. The gospel of Drusba claims that everyone knows deep inside who Drusba is, but this is not a part of the claim of the Gospel of Christ, nor is a book like Romans, where the universal knowledge of God is most explicitly described, counted as a “Gospel” in the Christian tradition. The list can go on. The point is that there are differences between Drusba and the Christian God, and they are differences which will radically affect all other claims of the two competing views in question, given their systematic nature.

Not only has Christianity been worked out as a theological and philosophical system, but apologists have worked to show how it is exactly that it provides, for example, the preconditions of intelligible experience. Not so when it comes to Drusba. We are merely given claims that Drusba accomplishes these few tasks, but no precise explanation of how it does so. Once the proponent of Drusba begins to work through answering the tough questions concerning how exactly Drusba accomplishes the feat set before it, the Drusba advocate will undoubtedly have to modify Drusba to be more and more like the Christian God. But a mirror-image will just be the same God by another name, and that will constitute a concession to the presuppositionalist. In any event, the atheist here has not given us anything remotely close to this deep of an explanation.

Of course, Drusba is stipulated as a counter in the form of an overload objection to the presuppositional argument for the Christian God. “Drusba” is even “absurd” spelled backward. That is, Drusba is knowingly invented, and Drusba is deliberately absurd. So Drusba can be rejected out of hand. Not so with respect to the Christian God, for whether or not the Christian God is absurd is one among many questions that are the very subject of debate. The atheist must be careful not to beg the question against the Christian here.

So far, so good, but how is the presuppositionalist to take a stronger shot at the Drusba advocate? First, it is not the case that the only response available to the presuppositionalist is to defend the Gospels as more trustworthy than the gospel of Drusba, but there is also nothing wrong with doing so. Presuppositionalists rely heavily upon evidences. They are in fact evidentialists. But they are not naïve evidentialists; they recognize the role that presuppositions play in the evaluation of evidence and argument, and they recognize that a lack of evidence is not the unbeliever’s problem. The evidence is abundant and plain. The unbeliever’s problem is the suppression of the truth due to sin. Hence the presuppositionalist is more evidential than the evidentialist. The gospel of Drusba does not have a leg to stand on in the debate over the reliability of its gospel, and refuting the story of Drusba through evidential considerations brings us right back to the atheist’s failure to account for things like logic, science, and morality that was already pointed out by the presuppositionalist.

Yet there is at least one much stronger objection to the Drusba counter. The atheist offers this overload objection from within the context of the atheist position. But the atheist still has not accounted for how he could even use the logic behind such an objection. The atheist is right back to where he began. He is in need of an account of such principles of intelligible experience as logic, science, and morality, and he has not provided one. Instead, he dodged the presuppositional challenge by offering a poorly thought out hypothetical counter to the Christian claims about God and His necessity for intelligible experience.

So the atheist must convert, lie, or account for intelligible experience from the position of atheism. Three dead ends await the atheist.

Finally, if Drusba really does provide the preconditions of intelligible experience, then either some sort of theism consisting of the alleged overlap between Drusba and the Christian God is necessary for intelligible experience or Drusba in particular is necessary for intelligible experience. Either way, atheism fails as a tenable position, either because it precludes the theistic elements involved in the mixed theism and Drusba, or because establishing the mixed theism or Drusba is establishing the one transcendentally necessary set of preconditions, thereby precluding atheism from fulfilling them.

Keith hasn’t gotten us anywhere.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts/2012/02/09/episode-97-presuppositional-apologetics-part-1

kantalope says:

February 11, 2012 at 4:01 pm

You will probably cover this in the next podcast – but the things that occurred to me while listening:

I am no Bible scholar but I don’t recall any big discussion of logic principles in the sermon on the mount or anywhere for that matter. So how come the big logic scholars were Greek and worshipped a whole nother set of gods? Seems like the supposition we should arrive at is that things are comprehensible because of Zeus and the titans and not the Hebrew god.

And the point of the bible and the god there-in is the non-logical miracley parts, no? I am excited to hear how that all works in a presuppositional world. All your logics are belong to us – and the nonlogics and the revelations too.

And I love the polyatheism part…but I would have gone with the much funnier pronunciation of Lou – who ends up being Lou Grant in my mind’s eye.

The covenantal apologist does not have to posit that the principles of logic are explicitly stated in Scripture, but rather that the principles of logic only make sense within the worldview described in Scripture. That is, the Christian worldview provides the metaphysical preconditions of logic.

Greeks are no longer considered the “big logic scholars.” This atheist is outdated. The Greeks, and many others, use logic despite their false beliefs. They do in practice what they cannot justify in principle.

There is nothing illogical about miracles. They entail no logical contradiction.

Rob says:

February 11, 2012 at 8:16 pm

Way too much time and effort has been spent countering these Presuppositionalist clowns.

The first thing to realize is they are trolls. They have no interest in actually having a conversation or a fair debate. Their goal is to confuse and thereby embarrass their opponent.

That said, presuppositionalism need not be all that confusing. They pick out some abstract concept (usually ‘the laws of logic’, ‘absolute morality’, ‘the uniformity of nature’, or induction) and then demand that the atheist ‘give an account’ of that abstract concept.

Giving an account of those concepts is difficult.

Then the presupper gives his account, which is “God did it”.

IMO opinion, trying to ‘give an account’ is the wrong strategy. Rather, it is enough to show that “God did it” is no explanation at all.

On the contrary, way too much time has been spent countering these atheist clowns. The first thing to realize is they are trolls. They have no interest in actually having a conversation or a fair debate. Their goal is to confuse and thereby embarrass their opponent.

You see, anyone can make empty, insulting assertions about someone else. There is no argumentative value in what this guy has written. And what a load of nonsense that I am not interested in conversation or fair debate. I’ve had plenty of them.

The charge that presuppositionalists are out to confuse their opponents says more about Rob than presuppositionalists. Rob is just confused, and I can see how that might be embarrassing. He admits that accounting for logic, morality, the uniformity of nature, and induction is difficult. In fact, he thinks it is a bad strategy to try and account for these fundamental features of intelligible experience. Spoken like a true atheist. There is no account for them in that view.

Accounting for the aforementioned concepts within the Christian worldview is a bit more involved than saying that, “God did it.” So Rob is ignorant of systematic theology and Christian epistemology. That is not surprising, but it does not hurt the case of the presuppositionalist.

Reynold says:

February 12, 2012 at 11:15 am

Xian presuppers can’t use the “unvarying laws of the universe” or the “absolute morality” to make any case for their god simply because:

1) a god who performs “miracles” shoots down the idea of the “invariant laws of nature”

2) a god who orders things like the killing of pregnant women and kids shoots down the idea of “absolute morality”. If killing babies and pregnant women is wrong when people do it, it would always be wrong if “absolute morality” actually existed.

As for the laws of logic, there is nothing in the bible that details them. One can find verses where perhaps some laws of logic are used, but there is no hint that the bible writers knew of the laws in general.

Unlike the greeks who actually took the time to spell them out.

Reynold thinks that covenantal apologists are committed to some concept of “unvarying laws of the universe,” but this is not necessarily the case. Some do not even believe that there are any such things as “laws.” Perhaps laws are merely descriptions of the regularities we observe in nature. And the Christian knows that these regularities obtain through time and location because it is God who oversees them in that manner. But the atheist has no basis upon which to affirm this understanding of regularities as one of their own, David Hume, famously pointed out.

The question here is not about instances where nature does not behave in a regular fashion. Anomalies presuppose regularities. The Christian can account for the regularities in virtue of God controlling and ordering His creation. The atheist cannot.

Perhaps there are laws of nature, and they do not vary. In that case, God could intervene such that some law is not broken, but neither is it in play in that instance. So there is no successful objection here, and the atheist is still left having dodged, rather than answered, the problems raised for his own view by his own camp.

Absolute morality, whatever that is, would apply to human beings in one sense, and not necessarily to God in that same sense. There are relevant differences between God and His creatures even in the realm of morality. This is nothing new. It has been a part of Christian theology for thousands of years. So, for example, it is perfectly right for God the Creator to take the life of one of His creatures – He owns that life – but it is completely wrong for a human being to take the life of another without God’s permission. So there is no good objection here either.

The examples in question are geared more toward the emotions than they are toward rational thought. And the atheist still has not provided his own understanding of morality, or why murder is wrong. I dare say most atheists are fine with abortion, which is the murder of an unborn baby. Atheists are wicked people, so they are forced to play fast and loose with questions about their moral standards.

No one need claim that the laws of logic are spelled out in the Bible. I have already addressed this strange complaint above in my response to kantalope. Some of the writers of the Bible were familiar with the Greeks, but the Greeks were not the logical giants that this atheist, like another above, makes them out to be.

Michael says:

February 12, 2012 at 6:14 pm

The podcast brought back a flood of memories of the TULIP teachings of my youth. You can’t even think, argue or question without the sovereignty of God pressing down irresistibly on every thought or breath. The doctrine of the utter unworthiness of any human enterprise was used to good and suffocating effect by the elders. God loves you so much he will shame and humiliate until you agree. I’d forgotten the technique until the podcast and realized what a luxury we’ve enjoyed in dealing with lightweight American style fundamentalism.

A few thoughts on the presuppers. In a lot of ways their arguments are not different from the fundamentalist ones.

The demand to justify our theories of knowledge, morality and logic is a variant on the god-of-the-gaps. The assertion that “what your theory can’t explain” [the gap] is proof that our god is the answer — is not better in the presupps hands than it is in the creationist’s. Just more sophisticated in its appeal to western philosophy. I think the presuppers get their traction from that fact that more people today know their biology than know their ‘history of western thought.” Would that as many know Hume as Darwin.

In fact our worldview begins with existence and perception. We don’t worry that much over where the “absolutes” like the speed of light, inverse square law of gravity, behavior of particles, come from — they simply are and we deal with them. Ditto the laws of logic. At the heart of presupp demand for your rationale is the hoary old ‘prime mover’ argument with a whiff of the ontological argument thrown in for flavoring. The same counter apologetics should apply.

The other observation from my unmisspent calvinist youth is that the scholastic god demonstrated by their ‘proof’ is such a far cry from the biblical revelation they claim to cherish. The god there is neither logical nor moral. The presupp god might be transcendentally ‘necessary’ but it sure isn’t worthy of any decent person’s worship or thinking persons assent.

Clearly Michael struggles with shame and humiliation, though he gives no indication as to what it is in particular that makes him experience these emotions. At the very least he has an insufficient understanding of the Gospel, the most basic element of the Christian worldview. He is in no position to try to go beyond that and critique Christianity or presuppositional apologetics.

God-of-the-gaps argues that since there are gaps in our scientific understanding God must exist. But that is a terrible type of argument, and is unrelated to transcendental arguments. Transcendental arguments move from some given general principle or operative feature of intelligible experience and conclude that some set of preconditions is necessary for said principle or feature to obtain. This is accomplished by denying the alleged metaphysical preconditions and generating some inconsistency.

God-of-the-gaps pertain to science. Transcendental arguments pertain to epistemology. God-of-the-gaps start with a gap in knowledge. Transcendental arguments start with knowledge. God-of-the-gaps arbitrarily posit some entity to explain an unknown. Transcendental arguments posit the only entity that can explain an unknown. God-of-the-gaps do not result in irrationally holding to some general principle or operative feature if they are rejected. Transcendental arguments result in irrationally holding to some general principle or operative feather if they are rejected.

Claiming of laws of nature and logic that “they simply are and we deal with them” is not accounting for them at all. It’s just hand waving in an attempt to save face in light of well-known philosophical concerns that you cannot answer. Transcendental arguments are not traditional cosmological or ontological arguments. That is a category error.

Since the God in view in the covenantal apologist’s arguments is the God of Christian Scripture He is not “scholastic” or far from biblical revelation. Just asserting that God is neither logical nor moral is rather humorous. Atheists often aim for nothing and hit it every time. This atheist in particular grants that God may be transcendentally necessary but then whines that according to his own misguided subjective opinion God is not worthy of worship or even intellectual assent. And again that says much more about the atheist than it does about either God or presuppositionalism.

How sad.

Chris begins his critique of the counter-apologetics podcast Reasonable Doubts as it addresses presuppositional apologetics.

The counter-apologetics podcast may be found here – http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts/2012/02/09/episode-97-presuppositional-apologetics-part-1

An initial comment on the podcast may be found here – http://www.choosinghats.com/2012/02/reasonable-doubts-about-presuppositional-apologetics

Paul Baird was kind enough to point me toward a comment he made here – http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts/2012/02/09/episode-97-presuppositional-apologetics-part-1/#comment-6876 – on the Reasonable Doubts site. The podcast on that page pertains to presuppositional apologetics. The first episode on the topic attempts to summarize the method and the next podcast will critique it. My time is very limited but I did offer some thoughts in a comment:

“If you do want to interact with a ‘sane’ Presuppositionalist then I’d recommend Chris Bolt of Choosinghats.com”

They can start with this 6 part series critiquing Justin Scheiber who is one of the hosts on the program above.

http://www.choosinghats.com/2011/07/praxis-presup-episode-6/

http://www.choosinghats.com/2011/07/praxis-presup-episode-7/

http://www.choosinghats.com/2011/07/praxis-presup-episode-8/

http://www.choosinghats.com/2011/07/praxis-presup-episode-9/

http://www.choosinghats.com/2011/07/praxis-presup-episode-10/

http://www.choosinghats.com/2011/07/praxis-presup-episode-11/

Justin told me that he was not pleased with his performance during this exchange. His arguments were essentially the same as those he used in his lecture to an atheist meet-up on the topic of presuppositionalism and likewise similar to those he used on Gene Cook’s Unchained Radio.

I appreciate that the hosts of this program are attempting to provide a reasonable critique of the presuppositional method of apologetics, however I am only five minutes in and am already disappointed by some of the mistakes that are being made. So, for example, even the post above claims, “Gods existence  cannot be proven,” but this is not the claim generally made by traditional presuppositionalists. In fact, they generally make the opposite claim that God’s existence *can* be proven. (Interestingly, Justin S. should be familiar with Sye T. since he has interacted with him at length. Sye’s URL is “www.proofthatgodexists.org”!) Or, another example, self-deception is automatically conflated with outright lying, when it is not necessarily the case that they are the same thing. Self-deception is nothing new in philosophical thought. Neither are presuppositions or transcendental arguments for that matter.

In any event, I look forward to finishing this episode, and hearing the critique in the next one. But I do hope Justin has improved upon said critique, as at least one host at the beginning of the program admits that he is ignorant of presuppositionalism, and Justin appears to be doing most of the talking!

“All Protestants will agree with one another that the doctrines of Protestantism must be defended as over against Romanism. But not all agree that there is a distinctly Protestant method of defending Christianity as a whole. Some hold that Protestants should first join the Romanists in order with them to defend the doctrines that they have in common. All Christians, we are told, believe in God. All believe that God has created the world. All Christians hold that God controls the world by His providence. All believe in the deity of Christ. These and other doctrines may therefore be defended in the same way by all Christians. There is no specifically Protestant way of defending the Christian doctrine of God. How could there be since this is the common property of all Christians?

Other Protestants contend that there must be a specifically Protestant defense of all Christian doctrines. Their argument is that all Christian doctrines are interdependent. Each major doctrine implies all of the others and colors all of the others. A Protestant’s doctrine of the atonement will, to some extent, color his doctrine of God and vice versa. in fact, the difference with respect to all other doctrines rests ultimately on a difference with respect to the notion one has of God.”^[1]

1. ^[1] CVT, A Christian Theory of Knowledge, pg.12 ↩

We had a fabled metaphysical subjectivist in channel recently. They are quite fascinating. He took the time (quite wastefully) to object to our conception of God, express his moral outrage at the conception of God as judge over creatures, et al. It was quite an interesting exercise in utter confusion.

It reminded me of some things one of my children used to do. My now 11 year old used to have an imaginary friend with the festive name of “Jingle Bells.” Along with all the usual hijinks a young man has with an imaginary friend, they were quite regular chess opponents, even at the age of 4. One day, they had a falling out. Jingle Bells was being mean in a chess game – and they were quits. Jingle Bells was sent away, never more to return.

The Money Man was also an interesting creation. He was a mystical being who gave (and took) money from the tops of clothes dryers, the world over. Our boy was quite convincing that this Money Man was a frequent visitor at our house, for several months. One of those strange little ideas that children come up with.

While relating my experiences with the erstwhile subjectivist above to my children and wife over supper, they posited that it seemed as if this guy was trying to convince Jingle Bells (us), that the Money Man (God) was evil.

I think I agree.

In this issue of In Antithesis:

Click here for the current issue!

THE NEW ATHEISM, FAST COMPANY, AND THE INTEGRITY OF DOUBT
Stephen Rodgers
GOD’S PROBLEM: REVIEW AND SOLUTION
Alan Rhology & Matthew C. Martellus
HOLLYWOOD, GENEVA, AND ATHENS – A REFORMED PHILOSOPHY OF FILM
Nathaniel Claiborne, B.S., Th.M.
BOOK REVIEW – A REASON FOR THE HOPE: ESSAYS IN APOLOGETICS BY MASSIMO LORENZINI
Chris Bolt, B.A., M.Div.

We hope you enjoy reading it, and are both exhorted and encouraged thereby.

In September 2011 Choosing Hats published its first issue of the In Antithesis electronic journal. This journal is devoted to exploring the topic of covenantal/presuppositional apologetics.

I am pleased to announce that the second issue is undergoing its final edit this very moment and will be available soon.

But there is even more exciting news…

We want your article to appear in our next issue of In Antithesis! There are innumerable subjects to write about and various types of submissions to consider. These types of submissions include but are not limited to Articles, Book Reviews, Bibliographies, Interviews, and Responses. Click here for more details on submitting an article, and we look forward to hearing from you!