This post, and the next few following it, will be centered around presuppositional apologetics. To summarize, presuppositional defends the Biblical Christian faith by starting with the Bible to demonstrate that the Bible is consistent while all other worldviews are illogical. Yes, this is circular reasoning, but it is necessary. A person’s metaphysics (criteria they use to judge something as true) and epistemology (things regarded to be true) are inter-related: you can’t take get one without the other. Therefore, any determination of the truth of a person’s metaphysics and epistemology must be judged on the metaphysics and epistemology itself. The question then is whether this circular reasoning is consistent or not. In practice, presuppositional apologetics is accomplished by showing how Christianity is the only worldview that provides a basis for the preconditions of intelligibility. The preconditions of intelligibility are those assumptions every person must make in order for thinking to occur. For instance, the laws of logic are preconditions of intelligibility: they are assumptions that are made in order to make sense of the world. Other preconditions of intelligibility are reliance on senses (the assumptions that one’s senses actually convey real, consistent information) and the principle of uniformity (the idea that the same laws of logic and nature apply everywhere in the world in time and space). Christianity provides a support for these preconditions of intelligibility in the nature of God and His act of creation. Since God is eternal, omnipresent, and unchanging, we can be assured that His creation will also be consistent. Since God made us to have dominion of His creation, and since God does not lie (is not deceptive), we can trust the senses He gave to us. Since God is eternal, wise, and just, we can rely on the unchanging nature and consistency of the laws of logic. In contrast, all other worldviews are either unable to account for the preconditions of intelligibility (and thus must adhere to these preconditions arbitrarily) or are contradictory to the preconditions of intelligibility, the resulting conclusion being that all other worldviews are inherently illogical.
That is a very brief summary of presuppositional apologetics. Of course, there is a whole lot more that can be said about it. If you are interested in learning more about presuppositional apologetics, I would recommend the book The Ultimate Proof of Creation: Resolving the Origins Debate by Dr. Jason Lisle, published in 2009 by Master Book. This is a fairly easy read. A more in depth book is Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended by Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen, edited by Joel McDurmon, published in 2008 by American Vision Press and Covenant Media Press. Also, there is a CD series, Defending the Christian Worldview Against all Opposition by Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen.
As you may notice from some of the titles that were given, presuppositional apologetics is presented as the end-all to all apologetics: presuppositional apologetics is unassailable and capable of defeating all other worldviews. In addition, it appears that presuppositional apologetics is presented as the only apologetics that a Christian should use; that all other apologetic arguments end up defeating Christianity, rather than supporting it. I am unclear as to the extent of this latter statement. For instance, I do not know whether a design argument for the existence of a Creator is seen as a faulty argument that should be rejected or is merely a weak argument that can only be supported by presuppositional apologetics. The unassailability and singular usage of presuppositional apologetics is the topic of the following posts.
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This is a great overview, and I am looking forward to the rest of your thoughts. I listened to some old Bahnson cassettes, but I wasn't quite sure how stringent his opinion on other methods of apologetics was either. I may be completely misremembering, but I thought I read somewhere in R.J. Rushdoony's writings that the problem with evidentialism, etc, is that unbelievers are unwilling or unable to see evidence or reason unless God opens their eyes, which only presuppositionalism recognizes. But my memory is notoriously bad.
ReplyDeleteJoel McDurmon spoke at our church conference this year, and I had no idea he edited Bahnson's writing.
Have you seen "Collision," or any other form of the series of debates between Doug Wilson and Christopher Hitchens? It's interesting to see presuppositional apologetics at work on that kind of level.
Again, looking forward to more on this.
No, I have not seen "Collisions." I have been fairly recently (like, within the last several months) to presuppositional apologetics, so I am not entirely familiar with where those ideas can be found.
ReplyDeleteWell, as was said in the blog, much of my questions about presuppositional apologetics has to do with how much or whether or not other apologetic methods can be used. Part of that stems from just simply not knowing how stringent people like Bahnson are. Many times, I understand some of the critiques of other apologetic methods (for instance, evidentialism is subjetive to a person's worldview). Probably my biggest problem with presuppostional apologetics is the claim that Bahnson made in Presuppositional Apologtics: State and Defended, where he says that God never appeals to an authority other than Himself. While I understand that as meaning God to be the ultimate authority and not dependant on anyone or anything else, I understand miracles as being an appeal to human senses (that is dealt with a little bit in part 2). I do not know the presuppositional view of miracles and what their purpose as a witness to God is.