Sitting in God's lap to slap him in the face

From Brian Seagraves:

AUDIO

TRANSCRIPT

It's common today to hear statements like, "God can't exist because there's too much evil in the world. God wouldn't allow such a thing, so he doesn't exist," or how about this? "Christians don't treat other people that are different than them with dignity. They don't treat LGBTQ individuals with the worth they are due," or a third example. "From science we've been able to determine that God does not exist," or, "We've been able to determine some other claim that contradicts Christianity." All of this could be put in the category of sitting in God's lap to slap him in the face. Now, I didn't coin this term. I would be proud if I did. I heard apologist, Frank Turek use it several years ago. What's being described here is that this other person is borrowing something from God in order to then argue against him. They're borrowing something that only fits in the Christian world view to then argue against that world view, which is actually kind of a circular argument.

Now, I want to give you three examples, and they're those three we started out with. Evil, dignity, and what I'm going to call rationality.

EVIL

How is it contradictory for someone to say “there's too much evil in the world, so God does not exist?” There are many ways to address this, like “how much evil is too much? Would you be satisfied with a little less?” Now, I'm not being glib there. There are multiple ways to address the problem of evil, but what I want to do today is suggest a way to not even have to deal with the problem of evil. To put the question back on the person and say, "What do you mean by evil?" Let's say they're not a Christian. Let's say they're an atheist. Where does evil fit in your world view? How is evil a thing in a world view that has no immaterial realities, that has only things that are physical? Because a consistent atheist isn't going to believe in God. They're not going to believe in objective morality (That's morality grounded outside of what I think about it. That's the same for everyone in a given set of circumstances and time).

They're not going to believe in those types of things, so when they complain about evil, they're actually complaining about something that doesn't even have a category or a place in their view of the worldview if they're consistent. That last part is key. We often talk in settings like this on podcasts or in books, like an atheist is consistent, or like Christians are consistent. All too often, we are not consistent with our beliefs. We hold contradictory views.

One of the processes and steps in growing up and maturing as a Christian, is to constantly be refining, constantly be reforming our views, and hopefully getting rid of the ones that are poor and don't fit, and harmonizing more and more aspects of how we view the world, how we view God, how we view scripture.

One of these is evil, and Christianity best explains the existence of evil and why people know there is evil. When someone starts complaining about evil, just ask them what they mean by that. “What does that mean? Do you think there's objective right and wrong? Has it always been wrong to, let's say murder someone? Would it be wrong if no one thought it was wrong?” If the atheist is consistent, they're going to have to say, "Well, if people didn't think it was wrong, then it wouldn't be wrong." What they've just shown is, is that the "evil in the world" is just a matter of human opinion. What they're really complaining about is something that goes against their preference or the preference of a large group of people, because actual, objective evil doesn't fit in their world view. They're having to borrow the existence of evil, which fits in a theistic world view from Christianity, in order to then argue against Christianity, argue against God by saying evil isn't compatible with God.

Now, we also need to be able to address the problem of evil: How is it that God exists and evil exists in the world? We'll tackle that another day, but my point is that often the person bringing this up doesn't even have a category in their world view for the very thing they're complaining about. This is an example of sitting in God's lap to slap him in the face.

DIGNITY

What about dignity? How is this an example of the same type of principle? Well, just to put a little context on it, we often hear “equality,” or you see that equals sign on someone's social media icon. What they're really saying is we should treat everyone the same. I think in general there's a good principle there. We should treat same things the same way. Now, we disagree on what a same thing is. I think all men should be treated the same when it comes to what bathroom they could use. I also think that what makes someone a man is their anatomy, their genetics you could even say. We should treat all men the same way. We should treat all women the same way. We do not treat men and women the same way in areas where their sex actually is a meaningful factor.

Now, all of that to say, when someone comes along and says, "Well Christians are not treating everyone fairly. They're not treating everyone with dignity. They're denying someone the right to have a cake made for them, for their same sex wedding." Or, "They're denying a transsexual person the ability to use a certain restroom. They're denying their dignity. They're disrespecting them." To which I'm going to ask, "Are you a Christian?" They're going to say, "No." I would reply, "Well what do you mean by dignity? How do people have dignity? Is that conveyed to us by a majority? By our opinions? By the Supreme Court?" (Some people do think the Supreme Court's job is to bestow dignity. That actually came up this past summer in the Obergefell decision.)

Nonetheless, I'm going to ask, "Where does dignity fit in your world view? What is dignity to you?" More importantly, how can a creature that's just simply a little more evolved than other creatures have this kind of transcendent thing called dignity? Well, I doubt the person's going to have satisfactory answers to these questions. The reason for that is dignity actually doesn't fit in a world view without God. If we are not created, we do not have dignity. Cats do not have dignity in spite of them preening themselves, and acting, and holding their head up at you and pretending like they're better than you when you just want to pet them. Cats do not have dignity. Animals do not have dignity. Humans have dignity because they're created in the very image of God. If that is not true, then men and women do not have dignity and don't need respect in the way we talk about respect. This is an example of borrowing something from the Christian world view -- that people have dignity -- all the while denying the source of the reason for that dignity, which is that we are created in the image of God, as Genesis 1:26 and 27 says.

This is another example of arguing against Christianity based on a principle that's good. I think it's a designed feature that everyone has this instinctive knowledge that people are worthy of dignity and respect. That is an actual feature of being created in the image of God. Now, can that be effaced? Can that be kind of trained out of us over time? I think so, but nonetheless, that's what it means to be created in the image of God. However, you don't have to believe in God to still have that designed feature, to still believe people are worthy of dignity. What it does mean, is you can’t account for why. You can't answer the why question. Just like you can't answer the what is evil question unless God exists. You can't answer the “why does man have dignity” unless God exists.

RATIONALITY

The third example of sitting in God's lap to slap him in the face is rationality. Now, this might be a little more difficult to track with. We don't often think about thinking, but I encourage you to try and make it through this section. It's not going to be that bad.

Science is based on a few things. We're not going to get into all of them today, but one of them is that you can observe and repeat an experiment, and if you actually do it well, then you will get meaningful data. Now, that data needs to be interpreted, and all that type of stuff, but the fact that the universe is orderly, that things will always work the same way in the same circumstances, doesn't make sense if everything came about randomly. Why would everything that came about by random chance then work orderly and non-randomly? Well, I don't think that fits.

That's one aspect where science pre-supposes things are orderly, but can't explain for why they're orderly. They're borrowing from the Christian world view, which says, "God created everything and therefore it's orderly." They're borrowing the orderly part. Then they're using that to somehow say, "Well science in some area says that God can't exist," (which is something it can't actually do as we've discussed before, but nonetheless people will make that claim.) My point is that the idea that things are orderly doesn't even fit outside of a theistic world view.

There's another aspect of doing science, that doesn't fit apart from the existence of God. That's that we can analyze data and come to meaningful conclusions. If you are consistent as a naturalist, as someone who doesn't believe there's a God, you have to say that everything is just molecules in motion. There's no mind, there's no soul, there's no in-material self, however you want to explain that. We are kind of, to borrow another Frank Turek term, "meat machines." We are no different than a computer, except better at some things and worse at others.

If that's true, then what does it actually mean to make a decision, to exercise the will, to look at data and come to a conclusion? Well, if everything is just predetermined, it's molecules in motion, it's just a really complicated version of a pool table, well then there is no such thing as making a decision, making a determination, having choice. None of that exists unless men and women have an immaterial self, have a soul. In other words, unless they're created in the image of God.

The ability to do science and come to conclusions is actually based on the idea that man is a creature that has a will, that isn't just a predetermined set of chemicals and a biological bag of skin and bones.

Now, there's so much more that could be said about these three categories, but I want to start you thinking in this way of how does a world view actually explain the different features and facets of reality, and does it fit together? Are you having to borrow something from someone else in order to then argue against them? Are you borrowing some scientific principle or experiment, which could only work in a universe God created to then argue against God? Or, are you saying that evil exists and is a problem for God's existence, but your world view doesn't even have a category for evil? What about dignity? Do you think people need to be treated well, as a bedrock principle, and that's based on nothing in and of themselves.

Well, if that's true, then you're borrowing once again from the Christian world view. You're sitting in God's lap to slap him in the face. What you will often find in conversations with people who have thought about these things, is in an intellectual way, they may be fine saying, "Well actual objective, evil doesn't exist," or, "Man is actually ... Yeah, he's just an animal. He doesn't have intrinsic dignity." What's interesting is people may give intellectual, they may give verbal ascent to that, but when it actually comes to how they live their life, how they treat their kids, what they complain about in the world, they act and indeed cannot deny the fact that objective evil exists. Men and women have intrinsic dignity, and are worthy of respect. They can't help but live that way. They can't help but live in contradiction to their world view.

I would encourage you to pay attention when people make statements about evil, or dignity, or rationality, or science, or thought, and see if you can pick up on their world view. Maybe use some questions to draw them out as I've kind of modeled here, in order to get a conversation going, to point them hopefully to the fact that their world view has some contradictions. Internal inconsistency and contradictions are the sign of a world view in trouble. There's something that doesn't fit and the person should want to address it. Who wants to have an incorrect picture of reality? I don't.

I hope you're a little more equipped to address world view concerns on a higher level when we don't always have to get into the weeds and the nitty-gritty, though we should be prepared to do that too.

Well, I look forward to spending this time with you next week on Unapologetic.

(Source)

Was Van Til a voluntarist?

(Posted on behalf of Steve.)

Jeremy Pierce 1/17/2016 12:12 AM

I haven't read any Van Til directly, so I don't know where it is, but people I know who have studied him at length have said that he held to the Cartesian view that God created the laws of logic and mathematics and that even the truths we take to be necessary God could have made false. God could have made true contradictions and so on. Voluntarism about ethics follows from that, I think, although I don't know if he explicitly held that. I'm pretty sure Descartes' voluntarism about logic and mathematics is what influenced Locke to hold to voluntarism about ethics. So Van Til is my guess about where this is coming from, anyway, if it's legitimate at all.

Of course, there was that confusing and confused piece from Scot McKnight recently that simply confused Calvinism with voluntarism. It just occurred to me that it might have something to do with that mess.

A few observations:

1. A friend of mine said he only knows one sentence is Van Til's voluminous output which might possibly suggest the Cartesian position:

   The law of contradiction, therefore, as we know it, is but the expression on a created level of the internal coherence of God’s nature. An Introduction to Systematic Theology.

   Even in that case, he doesn't say the law of contradiction is created, but rather, the law of contradiction "as we know it" is created. Seems to me his qualifier is just a variation of the Clark controversy, where Van Til denied that man's knowledge is identical at any point with God's knowledge. So I take the qualifier to be in reference to the human understanding of logic, and not logic itself.

2. Even if Van Til were a Cartesian possibilist, I don't think that would entail ethical voluntarism unless it was combined with divine command theory. On natural law theory, there'd still be right and wrong because human social ethics and individual ethics are, in no small measure, grounded in God's design for human nature. To that extent, ethics is contingent, because human nature is contingent, but it's not relativistic.

   In theory, there could be different ethics for extraterrestrials if their nature (physiology and psychology) is sufficiently different. But it wouldn't be cultural relativism or moral relativism. Given the same nature, the same morality would always be in force. Universal in time and place for that kind of creature.

3. Finally, I ran this by John Frame, who replied:

   I’m quite sure that VT was not a voluntarist.

   There are three alternatives: (1) logic is above God, (2) logic is created by God, and (3) logic is an aspect of the divine nature.

   In his various polemics, VT often opposed (1).

   He was less clear on (2), but he was critical of the classic “voluntarist” philosophers like Duns Scotus. His basic picture was that (1) is rationalist, (2) is irrationalist, leaving (3) as the biblical alternative.

   Of course, he didn’t want to say with Clark that “logic is God,” so his witness to (3) was blunted somewhat.

   [JF: better to say that yes, logic is God; but mercy, justice, wisdom, eternity, are also God—i.e. God from various perspectives.]

   He should have been more careful in his thinking on this matter which was, unfortunately, distorted by intra-Reformed polemics.

Crosslinguistic influence

Yet this is not the whole truth of the matter. We do assert that God, that is, the whole Godhead, is one person…. In other words, we are bound to maintain the identity of the attributes of God with the being of God in order to avoid the specter of brute fact.” 

…Over against all other beings, that is over against created beings, we must therefore hold that God’s being presents an absolute numerical identity. And even within the the ontological Trinity we must maintain that God is numerically one. He is one person. We we say that we believe in a personal God we do not merely mean that we believe in a God to whom the adjective “personality” may be attached. God is not an essence that has personality; He is absolute personality. Yet, within the being of the one person we are permitted and compelled by Scripture to make the distinction between a specific or generic type of being, and three personal subsistences.

—Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology (1971).

i) This wasn't Van Til's finest hour. It's a bad way of making a good point. The basic point, I take it, is that the Triune God isn't three persons stuck onto an impersonal essence. Rather, God is personal through-and-through. 

However, Van Til's formulation, as it stands, is contradictory and unorthodox. 

ii) So what was Van Til thinking? What did he put it that way? And is it possible to gives his statement a coherent, orthodox sense?

This may be a case of crosslinguistic influence. To begin with, English was not Van Til's first language. 

An example of crosslinguistic influence is the fact that the sense of some NT words is based, not on secular Greek, but on OT Hebrew filtered through the LXX. What David Hill calls Greek words with Hebrew meanings.

By the same token, it's possible that Van Til is using "person" in the sense of "hypostasis. That's a standard term in Trinitarian usage. And it's a flexible term, because it can mean both "person" and "substance." 

Suppose we were to substitute "hypostasis" for "person" in Van Til's statement. Suppose Van Til said "God is one hypostasis and three hypostases."

That could mean "God is one substance and three persons." That's both coherent and orthodox. 

If he's using the same word with the same intended sense throughout, then the statement is contradictory and unorthodox. If, however, he's using the same word with alternating senses, then the statement could be logically consistent and theologically orthodox.

It doesn't really work in idiomatic English. It only succeeds on the assumption that he's using "person" as a synonym for "hypostasis." 

Frame's presuppositionalism

I'm going to comment on part of this:

http://ecalvinbeisner.com/freearticles/ClassPresup.pdf

In general, Beisner's analysis suffers from the hermeneutic of suspicion. He is so hostile to Van Tilian apologetics that he always assumes the worst interpretation of Frame's statement.

One wonders why Frame capitulates to epistemological relativism with the qualifier “for Christians, faith governs reasoning.” Does faith not govern reasoning for non-Christians? Or, is it true for Christians that faith governs everyone’s reasoning, but not true for non- Christians? Certainly Frame believes neither of these. Yet his statement implies one or the other. But presumably this is to be explained as a careless expression.

I take Frame to mean Christians acknowledge the authority of revelation whereas unbelievers do not. For Christians, revelation consciously governs their reasoning, whereas unbelievers consciously reject revelation, or they are simply ignorant of revelation. 

Frame has an aggravating habit of qualifying what he says but not defining the qualifiers. For instance, he writes over and over again (not only in this essay but also elsewhere) of “human reason” and “human logic”–a habit that he shares with Van Til. “The content of faith, Scripture,” Frame tells us, “may transcend reason in these two senses: (1) it cannot be proved by human reason alone; (2) it contains mysteries, even apparent contradictions, that cannot be fully resolved by human logic. . . .”20 But what purpose does that modifier, human, serve in these statements? Is there some other reason or logic that is not human? Perhaps Frame means not reason or logic in the abstract but the attempt at reasoning by particular persons–though if that is what he means, we might plead with him to say so. But what is reason or logic other than the way God’s mind thinks? The logic humans use includes the law of contradiction; does Frame have in mind some logic that excludes it, a logic that he would describe as “nonhuman logic”? Would that even be logic? Until Frame specifies the axioms of a nonhuman logic, or of a nonhuman reason, his qualifying reason and logic with human is meaningless. 

Yes, there is some other reason that is not human. For instance, there is angelic reason. More to the point, there's divine reason. God's reason is timeless, infinite, and infallible. Man's reason is temporal, finite, and fallible. 

Likewise, there's a difference between "the way God's mind thinks" and human systems of logic. Human systems of logic reflect the human understanding of logic, and that evolves. Consider developments in logic in the 19C and 20C. 

Does Beisner believe Skolem's Paradox is the way God's mind thinks?

I suspect Beisner's antipathy to Frame's distinctions and qualifications goes back to the Clark Controversy. Is it possible for the human understanding of logic to correspond to God's understanding of logic to a degree sufficient that human's can distinguish truth from falsehood? I guess that's what Beisner is getting at. He thinks distinguishing human reason or human logic from divine reason results in skepticism. That may be a legitimate objection to how Van Til formulated his opposition to Clark. However, Beisner is not getting that from Frame's statement. 

Consider Frame’s statement that “[We] should present the biblical God, not merely as the conclusion to an argument, but as the one who makes argument possible.” The apodosis (second half) of the sentence is not properly parallel to the protasis (first half). After reading that we should present God not merely as the conclusion to an argument, we expect to read that we should present Him as the axiom (starting point) of an argument. That is, the first clause focuses on the parts of an argument, not the conditions for one. But Frame tacitly turns from the parts of an argument to a statement about the conditions under which argument can occur. God is not merely the conclusion of an argument, but “the one who makes argument possible.” Now of course the classical or evidential or cumulative case apologist will agree that had God not existed, or had God existed but never created anything, or had God created only nonrational things or only rational things that never erred, no argument could have taken place (unless of course God argued with Himself–in which case the god that existed would not be the God of the Bible). But that is surely not the point Frame wants to make…we might also wonder why, instead of writing the nonparallel sentence “[We] should present the biblical God, not merely as the conclusion to an argument, but as the one who makes argument possible” Frame did not write, “We should present the biblical God, not merely as the conclusion to an argument, but as the major premise as well.” That would balance protasis and apodosis, and it would be precisely what Frame believes. It would be unfair to assume that Frame avoided that clarity because it made the absurdity of his position too obvious, but it is not unfair to notice that the imprecision has the effect of hiding the position’s absurdity, regardless of intent.

I think Beisner misses Frame's point. Frame isn't trying to create a symmetry between the protasis and the apodosis. Rather, he's making the deeper point that if God didn't exist, there'd be no basis for rational argumentation in the first place. God is the source of human rationality. God is the source of necessary truths as well as contingent truths. God's nature is the foundation of logic. This would stand in contrast, to, say, secular Platonic realism. 

It is precisely these challenges that apologetics must answer, and merely reasserting the opposite is no answer, it is again a petitio principi, an argument in a circle. There are more logic problems in them, but my primary purpose in citing these paragraphs was to point out the ambiguity of Frame’s conceding that “There is a kind of circularity here, but the circularity is not vicious.” The careless reader might think that Frame then goes on to define the “kind of circularity” he has in mind. But aside from denying that it is vicious (that is, that it is logically fallacious)–in which he is simply mistaken–Frame never does say what this “kind of circularity” actually is or how an argument can be circular but not vicious. He descends to the same ambiguity when he writes, as I cited once already, “But are we not still forced to say, ‘God exists (presupposition), therefore God exists (conclusion),’ and isn’t that argument clearly circular? Yes, in a way. But that is unavoidable for any system, any worldview” and “One cannot argue for an ultimate standard by appealing to a different standard. That would be inconsistent. [para] So there is a kind of circle here. But even this circle, as I indicated earlier, is linear in a sense.” 

i) To begin with, there's a sense in which circular reasoning is a necessary condition of a valid argument. To be valid, the conclusion must be implicit or contained in the premises. 

ii) Likewise, there's a sense in which many sound arguments beg the question. That's because a sound argument presumes the truth of the premises. A sound argument is not an argument for the truth of the premises, but for the truth of the conclusion. It takes the truth of the premises for granted. That's an unproven presupposition of the syllogism. In that respect, a sound argument assumes what it needs to prove. Given the truth of the premises, the conclusion is true–but unless you grant the truth of the premise, to claim the argument is sound begs the question. 

iii) So what makes some arguments viciously circular and other arguments virtuously circular? There are at least two possible considerations:

a) If the truth of the premise is not in dispute, then the argument doesn't beg the question. Keep in mind that's person-variable. 

b) In a deductive syllogism, the premises are reasons in support of the conclusion. They are intended to warrant the conclusion. So there's supposed to be some logical progression from premises to conclusion. If, however, the conclusion is essentially a restatement of the premises, then all it's done is to reassert the same claim. A disguised, repeated, unjustified assertion.

iv) Truth claims are ultimately circular. An appeal to reason presumes the reliability of reason. An appeal to memory presumes the reliability of memory. An appeal to testimony presumes the reliability of testimony. An appeal to observation presumes the reliability of observation. An appeal to Scripture presumes the reliability of Scripture.

Circular reasoning in that sense doesn't ipso facto mean the appeal is arbitrary. These may be necessary preconditions of knowledge. The alternative is global skepticism–which is self-refuting. Mind you, that, in itself, is a tacit appeal to reason.  

Cartesian doubt

Descartes was an interesting man. A math genius: founder of analytical geometry.

In philosophy, he's known for Cartesian dualism, the Cartesian demon, the Cartesian Circle, the "Cogito, ergo sum," a version of the ontological argument, his rejection of final causes, his rejection of Scholastic empiricism, a quantifiable definition of matter (in contrast to the Aristotelian-Thomistic qualitative definition), and his methodological doubt. 

He's often dubbed the first modern philosopher because he attempted to make a clean break with the past. Make a fresh start. 

I'd like to briefly focus on his methodological skepticism. In a couple of respects, there's a Van Tilian aspect to his methodology.

i) In a sense, his methodological doubt is naive. We can't really abstract ourselves from our social conditioning. We can't avoid being influenced by the history of ideas. 

However, to give his method a more charitable interpretation, this is an exercise in becoming presuppositionally self-conscious. We have many guiding assumptions which may be so engrained that we're not even aware of them. 

It's a useful exercise to take a step back and consider all the things you take for granted without giving it a second thought. 

ii) Apropos (i), it's good to consider how many of your beliefs may be unjustified or unjustifiable. 

Of course, we can't do that with everything we believe, but it can be useful to do that with important beliefs. After all, many beliefs are questionable. 

iii) Conversely, this sifting process can make us more aware of essential beliefs. By process of elimination, what beliefs are indispensable to morality and rationality? Bracketing one or more beliefs, then considering the adjustments that must be made in their absence, is a way of means-testing worldviews.  

Likewise, what kind of world must we live in to ground essential beliefs? What other things must be in place to sustain our essential beliefs? 

Take the typical Christian apostate. They think they can leave God behind without leaving anything else of consequence behind. Indeed, they think that's an improvement. They are so shortsighted.

It's natural for them to continue believing many things they used to believe as Christians, because these are indispensable beliefs. So they don't stop to consider that atheism commits them to dispensing with these beliefs. They don't consider the intellectual cost of atheism. 

iv) Methodological doubt can be taken too far. It's an intellectual exercise. We need to distinguish between paper doubts and real doubts. Just because we have the ability to dream up intellectual traps that we can't escape from doesn't mean doubt is actually warranted in that contrived situation. That reaction confuses imagination with reality.   

“The Self-Contained Fullness of God”

Cornelius Van Til never wrote a “Systematic Theology”. He did write an “Introduction to Systematic Theology”. He begins with God. John Frame writes:

Evidently, then, our first priority in trying to understand Van Til’s metaphysics of knowledge is to explore his doctrine of God. On the first page of his Introduction to Systematic Theology, he says, “Fundamental to everything orthodox is the presupposition of the antecedent self-existence of God and his infallible revelation of himself to man in the Bible”.

“Self-existence,” sometimes called aseity, refers to the fact “that God is in no sense correlative to or dependent upon anything besides his own being. God is the source of his own being, or rather the term source cannot be applied to God. God is absolute. He is sufficient unto himself.” Often Van Til summarizes this concept by referring to the “self-contained God.”

He quotes favorably a passage from Bavinck to the effect that all of the other virtues of God are included in his aseity. Thus, when Van Til goes on to discuss God’s immutability, he bases that doctrine on the divine aseity: “Naturally God does not and cannot change since there is nothing besides his own eternal Being upon which he depends (Mal 3:6; James 1:7).” Since God’s immutability is based upon his “self-contained fullness,” it is quite opposite to the immutability of Aristotle’s unmoved mover, an abstract thought [which is] thinking itself.

Notice how [Van Til] moves here from “self-contained” to “self-contained fullness.” That is important…

(From John Frame, “Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought”, Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, ©1995, pgs 53-54.)

Reading this, I was struck by the comparative use of the term “fullness” by Rome. Rome says it has “the fullness of the faith”.

Consider that term in juxtaposition with another account of what can be called the “self-contained fullness of God”. Here is the account by Scott Oliphint:

The first thing that is necessary to grasp about the attributes, properties, or perfections (which I use as synonyms) of God, therefore, is that a basic distinction must be made between God as he is and exists in himself and God as he condescends. The theological (i.e. biblical) reason for this distinction is that it is obvious that before anything was created, there was and has always been God. That is, God himself is not essentially subject to time; he does not, according to his essential character, live, move, and have his being in a temporal context. He has no beginning and will have no end. Not only so, but before there was anything created, there was only God. It is not as though things existed—ideas, concepts, properties, and so forth-alongside God prior to creation. Before creation, there was nothing but God. To put it more starkly, before God created, there was not even nothing. There was God and only God.

(K. Scott Oliphint, “God With Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God”, Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2012, from the Introduction, pg 13.)

Consider, for a moment, “the self-contained fullness of God”, compared with what Rome calls “the fullness of the faith”. Let that thought sink in for a few moments.

Retooling TAG

i) I'm going to take another stab at TAG. It's not my objective in this post to expound Van Til or be faithful to Van Til. If what I say is consistent with his original vision, fine. But this shouldn't be a personality cult. 

Likewise, I don't care whether I ended up defending what is technically a transcendental argument, or merely something like a transcendental argument. All I care about is whether there's a good argument to be had–and not the pedigree of the argument.

ii) One preliminary issue is whether TAG is worth salvaging. This has been kicking around for decades. It was controversial at the time. It's still controversial. Not much progress has been made in turning Van Til's programatic claims into a full-blown apologetic. 

So we should be open to the possibility that this is a failed idea. It seemed to be promising, but the more it's scrutinized, the less is has going for it. Frankly, there's a certain amount of Reformed chauvinism that's responsible for clinging to this argument no matter what.

That said, I will, in fact, be defending TAG, or a variation thereon.

iii) One difficulty is the interpretation of TAG. In this respect, TAG is like the ontological argument. One of the things that makes the ontological argument difficult to evaluate is attempting to understand what Anselm's claim amounts to. Did he offer one or two different versions of his own argument? What do they mean? You can't even assess the argument unless and until you interpret the argument, although it's possible to give alternative interpretations, then handicap each one.

Of course, Scotus, Descartes, Leibniz, Gödel, Plantinga, and Lowe have all offered their own versions of the ontological argument, so it's possible to bypass Anselm. 

iv) A limitation of transcendental argumentation is that this is essentially concerned with epistemology rather than ontology. Here's one definition:

Transcendental arguments are partly non-empirical, often anti-skeptical arguments focusing on necessary enabling conditions either of coherent experience or the possession or employment of some kind of knowledge or cognitive ability, where the opponent is not in a position to question the fact of this experience, knowledge, or cognitive ability, and where the revealed preconditions include what the opponent questions. Such arguments take as a premise some obvious fact about our mental life—such as some aspect of our knowledge, our experience, our beliefs, or our cognitive abilities—and add a claim that some other state of affairs is a necessary condition of the first one. Transcendental arguments most commonly have been deployed against a position denying the knowability of some extra-mental proposition, such as the existence of other minds or a material world. Thus these arguments characteristically center on a claim that, for some extra-mental proposition P, the indisputable truth of some general proposition Q about our mental life requires that P. 

http://www.iep.utm.edu/trans-ar/

I don't think that definition is necessarily a problem for TAG. However, if the pretension of TAG is to present the only adequate argument for God's existence, then this limitation is a serious problem. Surely arguments for God's existence should include metaphysical evidence, and not merely what is needed to ground our mental life. Epistemological arguments shouldn't be the only arguments for God's existence. 

v) What is TAG trying to get at? In my view, TAG is not so much a direct or positive argument for God's existence as it is an explication of the consequences which follow from denying God's existence. Depending on the consequences, that, in turn, becomes an indirect argument for God's existence.

Technically, this may not be a transcendental argument, but I'm not a purist. 

What have you got to lose by denying God? What's at stake? What's the cost? Once you deny God, what else must you deny? What does that commit you to? After the dust settles, what's left?

The force of TAG depends on how damaging the repercussions are of denying God's existence. After making some minor adjustments, can we leave everything important still intact? Or is the denial of God's existence a universal acid that dissolves everything of consequence? 

vi) In that respect, TAG is not one argument, but a family of arguments. Arguments of a kind.

Put another way, TAG is not in itself an argument, but an argumentative strategy. It selects for or develops arguments that share that particular orientation. In that respect, we could regard TAG as a research program. 

By the same token, this means there may be some good theistic arguments that don't pertain to that strategy or family of arguments. 

vii) If successful, this approach has number of advantages:

a) There are preexisting arguments that dovetail with TAG. Take the "argument from reason" (Lewis/Reppert) or Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism. Take the moral argument for God's existence. And so on and so forth. 

Even if these aren't specifically "transcendental," the approach I'm suggesting can point them in that direction. What's there to lose by denying God? 

b) Conversely, consistent secular philosophers make damaging concessions. 

c) It puts the unbeliever on the defensive. 

d) It supplies a unifying principle for a number of otherwise disparate theistic arguments. 

viii) But to succeed, it is necessary to develop detailed arguments. For instance, what's the status of abstract objects in a Godless universe?

An unbeliever may say abstract objects are explanatorily necessary, but offer a secular alternative for grounding them. Platonic realism. If so, a Christian philosopher or apologist must show the inadequacy of that alternative.

Or an unbeliever may say abstract objects are explanatorily unnecessary. He may propose secular alternatives which do the same work at a lower metaphysical cost. Fictionalism or structural realism. If so, a Christian philosopher or apologist must show the inadequacy of those alternatives. 

And, of course, a Christian must propose a positive model for how God grounds abstract objects. 

ix) A casualty of this approach is that TAG ceases to be a silver bullet. It's no longer a snappy comeback to stop the mouth of the unbeliever. For the real work has just begun. Formulating the arguments is painstaking work.

However, the silver bullet was always a blank. The simplicity was illusory. To seriously engage secularism, TAG has to become very sophisticated, to operate at the same level as the best of the secular competition. 

x) Finally, whether someone is an evidential or presuppositional apologist can often have less to do with the merits of the respective positions than the aptitude of the apologist. Some people have a knack for sifting historical evidence, but no great philosophical aptitude. Take Kenneth Kitchen or Richard Bauckham. They operate at a very concrete level. Historical particulars. 

Others have greater aptitude for abstract reasoning. Take Alvin Plantinga.

Plantinga and Kitchen simply have different skill sets. They couldn't do what they other does even if they tried. 

So a certain degree of pluralism in apologetic methodology is to be commended. We need people who excel in different things.

Alien science

It's commonly said that Christians should follow the evidence wherever it leads. And sometimes that's good advice.

However, Van Tilians have noted that raw data doesn't necessary point in any particular direction. We interpret the evidence in light of other beliefs about the nature of the world. Debates over methodological naturalism, the argument from silence, the burden of proof, the uniformity of nature, &c., illustrate the value-laden nature of assessing where the evidence leads. 

That doesn't mean it's subjective, so long as we can justify our beliefs about the nature of the world which feed into how we assess the evidence. Of course, there's a degree of circularity here. For our interpretation of the evidence figures in our beliefs about what is actual, possible, or impossible–just as our beliefs about what is actual, possible or impossible figure in our interpretation of the evidence. In that sense, there's no starting-point from one to the other. You must have a sense of both. 

This issue was forcibly impressed on my when I intercepted a communiqué between two aliens from Torona IV, one of whom was stationed here as a covert observer, in preparation for first contact. He was being debriefed by his supervisor. 

The covert alien observer was attempting to infer the rules of soccer (and related or analogous games) from watching soccer games. From observing players, fans, and the like, this is what he concluded. 

(I'm translating directly from the original Jaradan language.) 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Supervisor: What did you study?

Spy: Sports. Many earthlings are obsessed with games or athletic contests. Therefore, I thought that might be a good way of finding out what they value and how they reason.

Supervisor: What sports did you observe?

Spy: Mainly soccer, ice hockey, and golf. 

Supervisor: What did you discover?

Spy: To judge by their behavior, the objective of soccer is for a team to avoid kicking the ball into the goal. 

Kicking the ball into the goal is an error. Errors are displayed on the scoreboard. The higher the score, the more errors. The team with the highest score loses.

If a team begins to rack up a higher score in relation to the rival team, that makes it much harder for the high-scoring team to recover. 

Supervisor: How did you draw that conclusion?

Spy: Because they rarely kick the ball into the goal. 

Supervisor: It is possible that they are aiming for the goal, but simply miss most of the time?

Spy: I considered that alternative explanation. However, tens of millions of earthling boys practice soccer. Of that number, only the most talented become pro soccer players. They receive special coaching. They practice incessantly. 

It's inherently implausible that players who are supposed to be that good would miss that often. So it must be the other way around. They intentionally avoid kicking the ball into the goal.

Supervisor: Yet they sometimes fail?

Spy: On rare occasions they accidentally kick the ball into the goal. That happens when players on the rival team maneuver them into a position where they can't avoid it. 

Supervisor: Do you have any collaborative evidence for your interpretation? 

Spy: Yes. In soccer there seems to be a disqualification phase. The best team is the team that wins the very first time. It wins by having the lowest score. The fewest errors. 

Having won, it can sit out the rest of the season. Take it easy. 

But the losers must keep playing more games. That's because they need more practice in how to avoid kicking the ball into the goal. The worst teams, who are slow learners, end up in the finals. What earthlings call the World Cup. 

Supervisor: You said you studied other sports.

Spy: Yes. Golf is analogous to soccer. It's unmistakably clear from repeated observation that objective of golf is to not hit the ball into the hole. Indeed, it's set up to make that virtually impossible. A player begins by hitting a ball from a ridiculous distance. Earthlings have poor distance vision. The terrain is uneven. The turf is soft. There are obstacles along the way: ponds, sand traps. The implements they use ("gold clubs") are singularly inefficient. 

As an earthling statesman once quipped: "Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an ever smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose."

If the objective was to get the ball into the hole, they'd simply pick it up and drop it into the hole. They'd enlarge the holes. And if they insisted on using clubs, they'd at least have hard flat surface. 

For instance, Tiger Woods used to be the world's worst golfer. He took the fewest stokes get a ball into the hole. But with diligent practice, he's gotten ao much better. 

Edward John Carnell

https://douggeivett.wordpress.com/2015/04/25/remembering-edward-john-carnell-some-reflections-of-a-great-apologist/

Aquinas, “existence”, and the failure to observe the Creator-creature distinction

Van Til, in his Introduction to Warfield's “Inspiration and Authority of the Bible”, notes that Roman Catholicism does not “start with the Creator-creature distinction as basic to all their interpretation of doctrine. They started with the idea of being as such and introduced the distinction of Creator and creature as a secondary something” (p. 49).

Protestants, from the earliest days of the Reformation, understood a “categorical distinction” between God and all of the rest of creation: the “Creator-creature distinction”. On the other hand, while God is Creator within the Roman Catholic system, God is not “above and beyond”, in a totally other category. He shares a trait, and that trait is “existence”.

In other words, the first category in Roman Catholicism is to start with “existence”: God has “existence”, and he passes this characteristic along to every other created thing. Down below and in subsequent entries I’ll begin to show how that cashes out in the Roman Catholic understanding of the universe.

This is not something that “damns them all to hell”. But this kind of difference at the starting point does lead to the kind of confusion in which Roman dogmas and Protestant doctrines cannot be reconciled after 500 years of differences.

There is also a caution that goes along with all of this.

How to Answer the Fool

Sye Ten Bruggencate asked me to review his film: How to Answer the Fool: a Presuppositional Defense of the Faith. I'm going to comment on some representative statements in the study guide, which supplements the film.

Why is it then that when someone says: "I don't believe in God," we believe him, we give him evidence, and we don't think that he's a fool, when Scripture calls him a fool?

That's a non sequitur. How does giving someone evidence for God's existence imply that you don't think he's a fool? 

When someone denies the existence of God, what do we do? We think they are of sound mind. We believe them enough to accept their arguments as valid. Then we give them evidence that we contend they have the right and ability to accept or reject as if they are gods!
We have seen that when we present evidence to the unbeliever, we elevate them to the position of judge, and now we see that evidence is not even the issue, the issue is the authority with which we interpret evidence. Either we submit to God as our authority, and interpret evidence according to His standards, or we deny God as the authority, and interpret the evidence according to our own standards. 

This jumbles several things together that need to be distinguished:

i) To say unbelievers may have the "ability" to assess the evidence is not to say they assess the evidence by their own standards. Likewise, that is not to say they have the "right" to judge for themselves. 

Unbelievers have no choice but to use their God-given minds. To that extent, they can't avoid divine standards. They have to use God's logic. They can't escape their creatureliness.  They have no alternative. Try as they might, they can't be truly autonomous. To some degree they must fall back on divine standards. 

ii) Unbelievers vary in the degree to which their standards are consciously and consistently opposed to Christian theism. Due to common grace, many unbelievers retain a lot of common sense. They operate with the residual standards of a Christian worldview, even if they are unaware of that fact. 

It's remarkable that many leading apologists are teaching Christians how to defend their faith in a probability. A probable "god," however, is not God at all.
Why do you think that Christians use arguments representing a probability rather than the certain God of Scripture? 

i) Not all "traditional" Christian apologists have the same epistemology. Some Christian apologists think it's rational to believe in God and rational to disbelieve in God. They think both belief and unbelief can be justified or warranted. You can be a sincere unbeliever. The evidence for God is ambiguous. Clearly that's contrary to the outlook of Scripture, which views belief as culpable–the result of rebellion rather than ignorance. 

ii) However, you don't have to take that position to acknowledge the limitations of human argumentation. It's important to distinguish between what we can know and what we can prove. 

By claiming that "a god" might exist, and there is evidence that might lead an unbeliever to consider the existence of a god, is not the approach of the Bible. The first verse of the Bible states: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." There is no attempt to prove that God exists. It's the fact of His existence that makes sense of the world that He created for us.

That's misleading:

i) To begin with, Genesis was addressed to the covenant community. So it natural takes God's existence for granted. Consider the target audience.

ii) In addition, if we accept the ostensible life-setting of the Pentateuch, Genesis was initially addressed to the Exodus-generation. These are people who personally observed God's miraculous deliverance from Egypt and miraculous provision in the wilderness. Sye is overlooking the background of the audience. The historical context of the text. 

iii) Although there were probably some atheists in the ANE, the predominant viewpoint wasn't belief in no gods, but belief in many gods. Not atheism, but polytheism. Gen 1 is singling out the God of the patriarchs and the God of the Exodus as the one true God. He is the actual Creator, in contrast to the pagan pantheon. 

Read Isa 40:12-31. Does the image of God portrayed in Isaiah 40 reflect the way Christians defend their faith?

In Isaiah 40-48, the Jewish prophet doesn't simply take God's existence for granted. Rather, he argues for God's existence based on God's foreknowledge. The classic argument from prophecy. He sets that in contrast to pagan idolatry. 
Who needs evidence that God exists?…Scripture tells us that they are "without excuse," precisely because God has made Himself evident to them (Rom 1:18-22; Ps 19). 
No one needs additional evidence for God. According to Scripture, everyone has sufficient knowledge of God to be condemned for their sin against Him.  Even the most brilliant people in the world are condemned by God as fools if they claim there is no God. 
Read Ps 14:1; 1 Cor 1:18-20; Eph 4:17-19. What is the common theme presented regarding those who deny God?

i) It's not that clear-cut. There's a shift in Rom 1 from what they "know" to what they "knew" (a shift in tense or verbal aspect from present tense to aorist). This is reinforced by Paul's statement that their understanding has been "darkened" (v21, cf. Eph 4:18), as well as their "suppression" of God's self-revelation (v18).  So are unbelievers still in the condition of knowing that God exists, or has their darkened understanding obscured that awareness? If the latter, then they may indeed need to be confronted with the additional evidence to remind them of what they blocked out or to correct their distortions. 

ii) Moreover, even if we grant that unbelievers already know God exists, this doesn't mean they know that Christianity is true. So don't they still require evidence for the specific claims of Christian theology? 

Read Lk 1:3-4, Jn 17:6-8, Acts 2:36, Heb 11:1, and 1 Jn 5:12-13. What do those passages say regarding whether or not people can know things of God with certainty?

Of course, that has reference to Christians, not unbelievers. 

i) Another problem with Sye's position is how his denial that unbelievers need additional evidence meshes with his chapter on proving God's existence. In chap 4 he sketches a transcendental argument for God's existence. He does the same thing in chap. 6 (e.g. objections #2, #7, #11).

But if additional evidence is superfluous, what is the value of TAG? What does that contribute? Isn't presenting a transcendental argument for God's existence giving the unbeliever additional evidence for God's existence? How is that essentially different from the moral, cosmological, or teleological argument?

Sye may say it's a different kind of argument, but it remains supplementary evidence for God's existence. Yet, according to Sye, isn't that redundant if unbelievers already know God exists? TAG is giving them an additional reason to believe in God.   

ii) Moreover, TAG doesn't single out Christianity. A theistic justification of truth, knowledge, or logic operates at a more generic level than Christian theism or Christian theology. That doesn't prove Bible history. 

iii) I'd also add that Sye's version of TAG is very crude and simplistic. It's scarcely an argument. More assertive than argumentative. 

Indeed, there are people in this world who claim that miracles are impossible. So what do Christians do? Rather than speak on the authority of God's Word, we try to prove the possibility of miracles! We give them evidence that they will judge for themselves independent of God!…We reduce miracles to the realm of the plausible in order to satisfy the demands of the skeptic, and then we are amazed when they don't see the truth. We remove God from the equation.

Sye cites a rationalistic explanation for the miracle of Jonah, as if his survival inside the fish can be explained in purely naturalistic terms. But proving the possibility of miracles doesn't require "removing God from the equation." 

What is incredible to believe is that the world came into existence on its own, that life spontaneously appeared out of a biotic soup and that that soup produced the information necessary to gradually evolve over billions of years into the life forms we see today, including living, breathing human beings with minds and a moral sense.

I agree. However, when Sye appeals to "information," he's getting that from intelligent design arguments. 

You see, we all get the same evidence, but we examine the evidence according to the beliefs we take to the evidence, our pre-beliefs if you will–our presuppositions.  With a presupposition that God does not exist and miracles are impossible, it doesn't matter what evidence we give the unbeliever, apart from the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, they cannot conclude that God exists and that miracles are possible. 

That depends on how tenaciously the unbeliever clings to his presuppositions. Unbelievers are not all alike. Some unbelievers are impervious to the evidence. But evidence can wear down other unbelievers. Keep in mind that many unbelievers are very ignorant, thoughtless, and superficial. 

When we challenge unbelievers with the fact that they must assume God to argue against Him, and ask them to justify truth, knowledge, and reasoning apart from Him, we will see, with their inability to do so,  that this Biblical apologetic is not merely a tool in the toolbox, but is the very floor on which the toolbox rests. 

That fosters false confidence. An apologetic method is no substitute for expertise. Some unbelievers are very savvy. They do have alternative models for grounding truth, knowledge, and reasoning apart from God. Yes, those are inadequate, but demonstrating their inadequacy isn't always a quick and easy task.  

After watching debates by Christians who do not employ the Biblical method of apologetics, I often hear the comment: That Christian is so smart, I could never debate like him." The second biggest compliment I get after a person listens to one of my debates is: "Oh, I can do that!" Apologetics is easy, when you read your Bible and do what it says.

i) Once again, that fosters false confidence. To be blunt, an apologetic method is no substitute for brainpower. Brainpower is a great advantage in debate. Take the Gospels. Jesus bested his opponents, not merely because he was right, but because he was bright. He outsmarted them. When they set traps for him, he trapped them in their own traps. 

ii) In addition, unbelievers can also watch Sye's public debates. They can learn what to expect. I'm reminded of an episode from The Ultimate Fighter. One contestant had a great guillotine. He had that maneuver down pat. But that's all he had. He won two matches with his guillotine. But he lost the third match because, by that time, his competitors wised up.  If all you have is a method, it won't take long for some unbelievers to catch on. 

Rather than concede our position at the outset and argue according to the unbeliever's presuppositions, we must argue according to God's own presuppositions that are carefully set forth in the Bible. 
The more complex answer is an internal critique of each worldview to expose their inability to account for rationality without presupposing the God of the Bible. 

i) But an internal critique does involve arguing according to the unbeliever's presuppositions. You're evaluating his position by his own criteria. Therefore, Sye seems to be giving contradictory advice. Perhaps he merely means that when we internally critique a position, we adopt the unbeliever's standards or presuppositions for the sake of argument.

ii) An internal critique is not the same thing as TAG. Performing an internal critique on Scientology or Rastafarianism isn't equivalent to mounting a transcendental argument for God's existence. Disproving Scientology or Rastafarianism doesn't prove God, or vice versa.  Hence, there now seem to be three disparate elements to Sye's "presuppositional defense of the faith":

a) No one needs additional evidence for God. Everyone already has sufficient evidence for God, because God has made himself evident to everyone.

b) We should deploy the transcendental argument for God's existence.

c) We should internally critique opposing positions.

But if (a) is true, then doesn't that render (b) and/or (c) redundant? Isn't that overkill? Why resort to (b) and (c) unless (a) is inadequate? Either (a) moots (b) and (c) or (b) and (c) moot (a).

transcendental arguments do not argue from facts and evidences to a conclusion by induction or deduction like traditions arguments (which assumes that logic is more fundamental/ultimate/epistemologically necessary than God), but rather asks how facts, evidences, etc. can even exist, have meaning, and be intelligible to human beings in the first place. Thus, transcendental arguments "attempt to discover the preconditions of human experience."

Do traditional theistic proofs really assume that logic is more fundamental/ultimate/epistemologically necessary than God? Did Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, or Leibniz (to name a few) make that assumption?  

We are trying to get unbelievers to see the truth SO that they will repent, when Scripture tells us that they need to repent SO they can see the truth. We have it exactly upside-down. Without repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, NO amount of evidence will convince the unbeliever of the truth, and with repentance and faith, no amount of evidence is needed. 

Why would they repent unless they perceive the truth of their lost condition? What is the object of their faith if not perceived truths about the Gospel? Sye has them repenting in vacuum. Believing in a vacuum.