Clarifying Presuppositional Apologetics: A Response to Caveman – Part I

A number of months ago I posted “When Man’s Ways Trump God’s Ways: A Case Study in Apologetic Method.” I received an email from “caveman” with a number of criticisms directed at this article, and I want to briefly respond.

Jamin, I was deciding whether or not I should respond to your blog post about presuppositional apologetics on aomin.org.  I know you have a lot of stuff about it on your blog, but this one caught my attention at the point you said:

It is quite another to be academically smart and defend Christianity like a Christian. That’s why every apologist who takes their faith seriously must be presuppositional.

I think that rhetorically that sentence is effective as an emotional pull, but I actually disagree with the statement.  First of all, the sentence is constructed in such a way as to imply that all non-presuppositionalists don’t take their faith seriously.  Intended this way or not, I wasn’t sure, but I thought I’d bring it up because that’s how it reads.  It hints of a apologetic elitism which I think hurts the effectiveness of the post.  After all, how you state arguments is an important factor (though, again, I disagree with it’s validity).  Rhetorical style issues aside, here are some issues I have with the content itself:

I still think the statement I originally made is true. What I mean by “take their faith seriously” is not a Christian who says “I go to church alot” or “I’m a scholar” or “I’m sincerely confessional in my theology” or what have you, but a Christian who says “my theology determines my apologetic methodology.” So, what I mean is that the person who takes their faith seriously will not suspend it in order to argue for it – which is precisely what every non-presuppositionalist apologist must do at one point or another. If you don’t begin with your faith and most basic commitments, they are clearly not your most important beliefs – or if they are, you are not letting them drive your thinking. Much more could be said, but I can only refer you to The Portable Presuppositionalist.

You made very strong claims about Presuppositional apologetics being THE biblical way of apologetics.  Of course, I’ll simply point to my paragraph above about my rhetorical style qualms, but here’s what you wrote:

And that’s where the rubber meets the road, when the ultimate presupposition, the hidden agenda, the little monster comes out of the classical apologist’s closet: good apologetics just doesn’t have to be biblical apologetics.

I’ve nowhere seen this implied nor explicitly argued in any non-presup author.

Then you’re not looking caveman. It’s implied by virtually every non-presup author there is because that’s the nature of all non-presuppositionalist methods. Listen to the first hour of the August 29th, 2010 STR podcast and tell me where Jim Wallace even entertains the idea of doing apologetics according to how the Bible tells us to. Read Sproul’s Classical Apologetics and Defending Your Faith, Kreeft’s Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Craig’s Philosophical Foundations for the Christian Worldview and On Guard, etc., and observe how not once is there an assertion that “The Bible is sufficient to tell us how to do Christian apologetics, and therefore, we should develop our apologetic method according to it, and here it is…” Of course, there are always a few passing references to I Peter 3:15 and Paul’s missionary journeys and so forth, but insofar as consistently applying a fully-orbed biblical theology of apologetics to every major battlefield in the enterprise of apologetics, it can really only be found from presuppositionalist material.

In fact, many of them go out of their way to try and demonstrate their view that non-presupp methods of apologetics are more biblical than presupp.

And their arguments have been met by Bahnsen, myself, and others.

Their intention is to do biblical apologetics.

If you mean to say that, “if you ask any non-presuppositionalist apologist if they want to do biblical apologetics, they will say ‘yes’,” well of course. But just because a person has good intentions and wants to remain orthodox doesn’t mean he is always being consistent.

So to thrust upon them such an “ultimate presupposition” as you state above I think is a bit over the top…word theatrics, if you will.

You said in your post:

As I have demonstrated in The Portable Presuppositionalist, presuppositional (biblical) apologetics has received considerable resistance from classical apologetic circles because the arguments of presuppositionalists (namely, transcendental arguments) simply do not fit the box of classical arguments. “That’s not an argument,” we’re told. Thus, presuppositional apologists are mistaken for fideists, who say we believe in Christianity for no reason at all.

From the classical apologetics works I’ve read, the arguments against presuppositionalists are that they don’t 1) Agree with circular reasoning 2) Don’t think negating alternative world views is sufficient without a classical case being made for Christianity.  But I can’t interact with your classical apologists you mention because you didn’t cite them in this post.  Perhaps you can send me a few such quotes to look over.  I’ll be happy to grant you this point once I see some prominent C.A.s make such arguments.  But none were provided in the post.

That’s because if I did I would have a blog post over a hundred pages long, which is why I published such an essay with over 240 footnotes both in print (here) and online available to anyone (here). You have plenty of quotations to interact with.

Also, while I think presuppositional apologetics brings much to the table, and much of it should be adopted, it has its downsides too.  First, while it is true that God must exist for logic to exist, one must presuppose the truthfulness of the laws of logic before one can consciously establish God as his ultimate presupposition.  What I mean by this is: if we don’t assume the truthfulness of “A cannot = not A” then we are left with the possibility that God can = not God.  An absurdity, but a possible outcome in the mind of the unbeliever without presupposing the truthfulness of the laws of logic first.  If the laws of logic aren’t presupposed, what argument avoids having it’s exact opposite true at the same time?  Thus, every argument you make about God being an ultimate presupposition is meaningless to an unbeliever who rejects the laws of logic as a presupposition.

Untrue. This is something Sproul also unfortunately misunderstood on page 223 of Classical Apologetics, where he said, “It is logically impossible for us to start with God for we cannot affirm God without assuming logic and our ability to predicate.” While it is true that we presuppose the laws of logic in order to make a transcendental argument, it is not true that this presupposition of logic undermines the transcendental argument. We are arguing – on the basis of many assumptions besides logic, no doubt – that God is the ontological foundation and precondition for absolutely everything (including logic). And the fact that I use something first chronologically does not put it on a higher plain ontologically. I need myself to exist, for my eyes and hands to work, for 2+ to = 4, and for everyone else in the world listening to my argument to have brains that aren’t dead for my argument to work. But does that mean my existence is therefore more basic to God’s? Does it mean my sensory experience is more necessary than God’s? Does it mean math is more fundamental to God’s attributes? No, of course not.

And so when I use the transcendental argument for God’s existence, I need all kinds of things like logic, ears, and conscious people for the argument to work. But more than anything, I need the Creator of logic, ears, and conscious people to exist for the argument to work. So, again, the fact that presuppositional apologetics requires the laws of logic to work in no way undermines presuppositional apologetics.

Also, your assertions about “in the mind of the unbeliever” are purely theoretical and have no basis in either Scripture affirmation or repeated, documentable public experience.

Frame gets it right, in my opinion, when he describes things as circularities.  I would take that idea and say the laws of logic and God’s existence are both part of the same circularity which needs to be our ultimate presupposition.  But practically speaking, the laws of logic need to be the point of entry into the circularity because it is the basis upon which you negate other competing circularities (to use Frame’s terms).Granted, it’s 1am as I write this and parts may be rambling, but I trust in your ability to decipher what I’m getting at.

I do, but it’s not correct. God is a se, completely independent, as is true and the teaching of Frame. Logic is not a se. The nature of any circularity between something in creation and something transcendent of creation is going to be radically different. Yes, we depend upon logic. But logic depends upon God and God depends upon nothing but Himself. The only legitimate circularity with regards to ontology, epistemology, and ethics is between God and God, because only God is the foundation of Himself in each of those realms.

Part II coming soon…