A Concise Outline for the Transcendental Argument for God’s Existence

I’ve finally taken the time to write my own little digest of TAG in the context of Christian apologetics:

• The argument is indirect, not direct. That is, transcendental arguments do not argue from facts and evidences to a conclusion by induction or deduction like traditional 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.”[1] For x (some aspect of human experience) to be the case, y must also be the case since y is a precondition of x. Since x is the case, y is the case. It is “not a deductive consequence of the premises of the argument but rather the metaphysical and logical ground of the very possibility of the premises themselves.”[2]

The only “proof” of the Christian position is that unless its truth is presupposed there is no possibility of proving anything at all. The actual state of affairs as preached by Christianity is the necessary foundation of “proof” itself.[3]

• That means a transcendental argument can be used not just for a few aspects of reality, but for all aspects of reality. One fact is just as problematic for the unbeliever as another. Thus, reasoning by presupposition pits one entire worldview against all the others (unbelief), which is clearly the biblical approach (i.e. Col. 2, Acts 17).
• Thus, in inductive and deductive arguments the conclusion (or reliability and/or probability of it) is changed if one of the premises is negated, but in a transcendental argument the premises can be negated and the argument can still result in the same conclusion.[4] The premise “I experience meaningfulness” requires the same transcendental foundation(s) as the premise “I experience meaninglessness.” The same is true for objective morality (“This is right”/“This is wrong”) truth claims (“x is true”/“x is not true”), epistemology (“I know jack”/“I don’t know jack”) teleology (“there is design”/“there is not design”) and even predication itself (“x is the case,”/“x is not the case”) and the laws of logic (“x is not y”/“x is y”) etc. As Collet says, “Presuppositional or transcendental arguments may be distinguished from implicational or ‘direct’ arguments in terms of ‘the truth-functional relation of their conclusions to their premises.’ In view of this distinction, the claim that traditional forms of the causal argument yield ‘a transcendental conclusion’ becomes questionable. To qualify as a transcendental conclusion, the truth of the conclusion in a direct argument would have to be in some sense independent of the truth value of its antecedent premise. However, both modus ponens and modus tollens, two classic forms of direction argument, fail to meet this criterion…the truth of a ‘transcendental conclusion’ does not depend upon the truth value of its antecedent premise, regardless of whether this premise affirms causality or any other principle, since a transcendental conclusion constitutes the very ground for the proof of that premise.”[5] This has been demonstrated formally in Collet’s essay, “Van Til and the Transcendental Argument Revisited” in John Frame’s Festschrift and previously published in Revelation and Reason. In short, traditional arguments may show how God is the transcendent cause or designer, etc., but that is not the same as showing how God is transcendentally necessary for the intelligibility of all things.
• Transcendental argumentation allows Christians be consistently Christian; they never have to put into question God’s existence (which is distinctive of unbelief). A transcendental argument for God’s existence “highlights the necessary character of God’s existence – that is to say, it does not grant the possibility that God’s existence is falsifiable…in theistic argument the concept of God’s existence must not be allowed to function on the level of logical contingency,”[6] for in that case, like classical arguments, logic would be more fundamental to reality and/or more ultimate than God. Nowhere in Scripture are we suggested to treat God as possibly existing…
• Transcendental argumentation is biblical argumentation. TAG is essentially a restatement of biblical apologetics. Colossians 2, for example, is a primitive transcendental argument for God’s existence and the supremacy of Christ’s Lordship:

“…Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.” (Colossians 2:2-10 ESV, emphasis mine)

Human intellectual invention, innovation, and thought is directly contrasted with the divine authority that is found in Christ.

Paul, also, in his entire speech in Acts 17, assumes God’s existence from his first sentence and builds upon that transcendental foundation. Whether it’s the fact that God is Creator (v. 24), that he is self-sufficient and all men depend on him (v. 25), that all men come from a common ancestor and God is the Lord of history (v. 26), that God demands repentance (v. 30), and has appointed a final day of judgment (v. 31), or that Christ was raised from the dead, Paul argues for his worldview from his worldview which – as the launch pad of his apologetic – works together as a unit,[7] and does no argue neutrally for various facts in piecemeal fashion.

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[1] Michael Butler. “The Transcendental Argument for God’s Existence” in The Standard Bearer, ed. Steven Schlissel (Covenant Media Press, 2002), 79.

[2] Don Collet. “Van Til and the Transcendental Argument” in Revelation and Reason, eds. K. Scott Oliphint and Lane G. Tipton (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2007), 261.

[3] Cornelius Van Til. “My Credo” in Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions on the Theology and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, ed. E.R. Geehan (Phillipsburg:  Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1971).

[4] Greg Bahnsen. Van Til’s Apologetic (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1998), 501-502.

[5] Collet, Revelation and Reason, 271.

[6] Collet, Revelation and Reason, 261-2.

[7] Van Til, Christian Apologetics, 149.