Tag: presuppositionalism

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’ve lately been looking at the apologetic method known as presuppositionalism. Tonight, I’d like to get somewhat into doctrinal waters and deal with the objection from some that fallen man is incapable of knowing the truth about God.

Now there are extremes here as some have said that it is impossible for fallen man to reach right conclusions. This seems like a stretch however as in the Old Testament, we are told that the wisdom of Solomon was even greater than the pagan kings, implying that those pagan kings were pretty wise. As we have shown, pagans were held accountable for moral laws they ought to have known they were violating.

What about saying that fallen man can be right about other things, but that he can never be right about God? This would also seem to be problematic. For instance, many of us would agree with a number of statements made about God by Greek philosophers. The word “omnipotent” does not show up in the Bible, but we do not hesitate to use it to describe God seeing as we believe He is all-powerful and that has also been because of philosophical thinking in light of Scriptural revelation. Of course, the philosophers made a lot of mistakes, but considering all they had was reason and no Scripture, they did quite well.

We could also ask about fallen angels. Does the devil know that God exists? Does he know that God is triune? Does he know that God is omnipotent and omniscient? If any of these is yes, it would seem to be that we have a problem seeing as if anyone is fallen in all of creation, then it would certainly be the devil.

I am highly aware that presuppositional writers do state that they admit that fallen man can know things, but the question to ask is why is the cut-off line so arbitrary? Why suddenly stop it at God? If a lost person says “I do not know which God is the true God yet, but I know that whichever God created things, he has to be extremely smart and extremely powerful.” While we would say that he did not go far enough in what he said, we would not think that the unbeliever who said this was wrong.

Am I denying that man is fallen? Certainly not. One can be a Calvinist (Not saying I am, and I’m not saying I’m not) and still not be a presuppositionalist. In fact, many critiques of presuppositionalism have come from within the Calvinist camp. It is my contention that the fallenness of man will relate more to the will than to the intellect. Having a pure will would not necessitate being a super genius. The will is that which will effect how the intellect is used and we all know how good we are at reasoning to conclusions we want or don’t want to be true.

We are not forced to say that man’s intellect is so fallen that it cannot grasp the truth, even about God. Now how that fallenness is taken care of, be it in a Calvinistic or Arminian sense, I leave up to the reader to decide. At this point, I just want to say that I do not see the claim about fallen man having much weight.

 

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’ve lately been looking at the topic of presuppositionalism. Last time, we discussed some more about the Scriptures and how we will have to examine them to see which God is the one we should be serving or if any of them even can rightly claim that.

Now I don’t plan on making this a wholesale apologetic on defense of the Scriptures. That can be done and it has been done and I would be glad to recommend resources on the topic. For now, I’d mainly like to deal with the idea that the Scriptures are self-attesting. That is, that the Bible is all we need and the Bible will defend itself.

In a sense, the Bible is self-attesting. It makes the claim itself to be the Word of God. Does that mean that it is the Word of God? No. However, at the same time, it doesn’t rule it out. We should consider that if someone describes themselves to us in a certain way, we can consider that as evidence of their nature. If someone claimed to be a perfect pipeline to God, for instance, we could consider that that is the case, or we could consider it as evidence that this person is quite arrogant.

I am also not wanting to deny that there is a great beauty in the Bible that we ought to recognize. For instance, as someone who has done research on the cults, when finishing reading the Book of Mormon, I found I had a greater appreciation for the Bible as the Book of Mormon is a book written to have the appearance of Scripture and frankly, it doesn’t pull it off well. The Bible’s own writing is quite different.

However, I do not accept the claim that the Bible is the Word of God because it says it is the Word of God. After all, the Koran makes some high claims about itself. Why should I believe one Scripture over another if both are making identical claims about themselves? The answer is that we need to actually look outside the Scripture.

This is what the early church had to do and what people had to do before there was any Scripture. For the early church, all they had was the Old Testament as we see it today. They didn’t have the letters of Paul or the gospels for a couple of decades. They saw the Bible as the Word of God based on the authority of Christ and they were convinced that he had risen from the dead by the testimony of the eyewitnesses and the working of miracles.

I also do not believe we can simply see what Scripture has to say about itself and then go from there. It’s part of the evidence, but it’s not all of the evidence. In our day and age, we simply must give a defense of the Scriptures and their authenticity, which is also what the early church did. Now does the Wisdom of God confound the world? Yes. What does that mean? It simply means that the way that God chose to do things was not the modus operandi the world would use. For them, to say a crucified man was meant to be the king of the world and save mankind was nonsense, but it was the way God worked.

Now does that mean that we can never trust the power of Scripture? No. If someone wants to become a Christian by hearing Scripture alone, then great. If not and we need to defend the Scriptures and show their authenticity, then we are prepared to do that also.

We shall continue next time.

 

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. Last time, I wrote in our series on presuppositionalism of how I do believe that God is necessary to explain reality, but the knowledge of God is not necessary for someone to claim knowledge of reality. The question then becomes which God will it be. Will it be the “generic” god of natural theology?

We are often told that only the true God can explain reality. That is correct. Only a God who exists can bring about reality. Using reason alone, what is the God that exists?

The first quality is that this God must exist. By this standard, faiths like Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all claim that their God exists. What else do they have to say about their God? Well God is omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent in each one. In fact, using just natural theology, there really isn’t a way to tell the concepts apart.

Note this. A Muslim, Christian, and Jew can each use the same theistic proofs in order to make their case. Maimonides and Avicenna both would have been fine with using the five ways of Thomas Aquinas for instance. A Muslim or a Jew today could use the Kalam Cosmological argument that William Lane Craig uses.

At this point then, the philosopher simply lists some attributes of God using reason alone and all three faiths can claim that their religion fits with that. Of course, there are other systems that could fit just as well. A deistic concept could explain the existence of the universe and objective morality. So how is it then that we can determine which concept is the true one?

If all we have is philosophy, we cannot. All our philosophy can do is tell us which concept is not true. It is not capable of showing which one is true. While we would affirm that the triune God is the one that explains reality, the question is if we can simply use reason and get to the truth of the gospel from that.

In no way. Philosophy cannot prove Christianity. Many a Christian can study philosophy thinking that he will prove Christianity. He cannot. Does that mean it is useless? Far from it! Philosophy can support Christianity and prove false arguments that are used against Christianity as well as increasing our understanding of Christian doctrines. It is quite important to a Christian.

However, to say that reason could deduce the gospel is really to lower the gospel. It is to say that we do not need God to reveal the gospel or His nature for us to understand them. We can figure them out on our own. The traditional views of apologetics have it that we need God to reveal Himself to know these things. One cannot reason to the God of Christianity, although they can reason to a God who has many attributes of the God of Christianity.

Consistency is necessary for truth, but it is not sufficient to prove something is true. A detective needs more than a consistent theory to prove that X did the crime. He needs evidence. So how are we going to get the evidence of which worldview is true? Will we have to examine the writings themselves and see what they say?

Interesting thought that.

And that is something to discuss another time.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’ve been writing on presuppositionalism lately and the knowledge of God. I’ve already made several points about moral knowledge. What about knowledge of God Himself? Is it possible for the pagan to have knowledge of God without having a salvific knowledge of God?

In a way, it seems that the presuppositionalist is in a bind. We are told on the one hand that man can have no knowledge without being able to support it in the triune God. On the other hand, we are told that all men know who God is and need to repent of their rebellion against him. Which is it that is the case? Does man know God or not?

Romans 1:18-21 is often the key text cited. However, it is a difficult one that many exegetes have wrestled with. When man is said to know God, what exactly is meant? It can’t be salvific knowledge of God here or else that would mean that those who were saved apostasized. An arminian would not have a problem with that, but one who is a Calvinist, as presuppositionalists are, would. This does not mean Calvinism or eternal security or the perseverance of the saints is false. It simply means that believing in presuppositionalism entails believing in Calvinism and believing in Calvinism means one cannot accept this interpretation.

Then if it isn’t salvific knowledge, what is it? Does it mean that everyone knows that God is triune and that He has revealed Himself in Christ? Doubtful. We would need some evidence that there were any among the pagans or even among the Jews themselves prior to Christ who were affirming the doctrine of the Trinity. Not something like the Trinity such as the Jews having the idea of multiple hypostases and plurality possibly being in God or pagans supposed having a Trinity when they have a triad instead. It would need to be the bona fide Trinity.

What does it mean then? It refers to man has a knowledge of God that is basic and can grasp His basic attributes even if imperfectly. That this knowledge is not necessarily salvific is a far cry from saying that it is false. One can read much of Aristotle’s work in the Metaphysics on God and see much that is true from a Christian perspective. Some of it is false, but not all. How did Aristotle get there? He reasoned from the things that were seen.

Are we to say Aristotle had lucky guesses or did He have knowledge of God? I believe the latter. How is that possible however? How could you have knowledge of God without knowledge that God is triune? It is because that knoweldge of God is knowledge of being. We can know something about existent things without knowing how we know them.

Again, this is not denying that the existence of God I think is necessary for there to be an explanation for such things, but it is saying that one does not need to have knowledge of the existence of God in order to say one knows these things. At this point, the question can be asked “Well which God does provide that basis if not the triune God?” Let us look at that tomorrow night.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve been looking at Presuppositionalism lately and pointing out how it is possible to have knowledge of truth without having direct awareness of the God of the Bible. Of course, I do not deny that that God exists, but I do deny that one has to have epistemological knowledge of Him to have knowledge, a.k.a. justified true beliefs. An atheist reader who I respect responded to what I said yesterday and was asking about laws like what we find in Leviticus.  The Ten Commandments are for us some, but how do we know what is and isn’t?

Good question.

Right off, I’m pleased that the question is being asked rather than the usual canard that’s thrown out of “Well the Bible says homosexual activity is an abomination, but it also says the same thing about eating shellfish.”

To begin with, both of the injunctions against homosexuality in Leviticus are to be found in chapters 18 and 20. I’m not going to go through the whole list, but I want to call attention to how each of those chapters ends.

First, Leviticus 18:24-28.

²⁴ “‘Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. ²⁵ Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. ²⁶ But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the foreigners residing among you must not do any of these detestable things, ²⁷ for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. ²⁸ And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.

And now, we move on to Leviticus 20:22-24.

²² “‘Keep all my decrees and laws and follow them, so that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. ²³You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them. ²⁴ But I said to you, “You will possess their land; I will give it to you as an inheritance, a land flowing with milk and honey.” I am the LORD your God, who has set you apart from the nations.

Notice something in each of these passages? In each one, God tells the people that the inhabitants of the land are being cast out because of committing these acts. In the Bible, you do not see God punishing other nations for failing to keep the ceremonial Law of Israel. Note also the distinctions that are made for Israel such as dietary are later shown to be no longer in effect in the New Testament, such as in Mark 7. Does that mean these were wasteful and pointless laws? Not at all. They were established to keep in the mind of the Israelites purity.

What about abominations?

The word can refer to an abomination in two ways. One is in a ritual sense and one is in an ethical sense. Consider how it would be wrong to throw dirt onto your neighbor’s carpet. It would also be wrong to murder his wife there and spill her blood on the carpet, but when we say both of those are wrong, we do not mean they are wrong in the same sense.

How is it known which is which? The context is the key. Moral laws are generally upheld throughout the Bible as a whole. Ceremonial and civil are not. For instance, with ceremonial laws, God Himself states that He does not desire sacrifice but rather pure hearts. Why have sacrifices then? To point to Christ and to show that there is a price for sin. See also judgments on other nations.

The Law of Israel was given for Israel and Gentiles were never to be under it. The Natural Law of morality however is for everyone and everyone is accountable to it. Of course, those with Scripture are more accountable as they should definitely know better with explicit commands from God, but sadly, we often do not.

I hope this clears up any difficulties.

 

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’m going to be continuing our look at the presuppositional approach tonight by going to the beginning, that is, the book of Genesis. Can we find that the writer did affirm truth outside of an explicit knowledge of God or not?

To begin with, let’s start with some moral truths. The only command we know of given to Adam and Eve is to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Other than that, they are given quite free reign. The question has often been asked how it is that they would know that they ought to obey God. However, the Genesis account indicates a unique relationship between Adam and God in that God walked in the garden and Adam was not too surprised to see Him, only ashamed that he was naked before God, and that God brought the animals to Adam to see what he would name them. It is likely that Adam did understand where he came from as a creation of God to some extent, though this does not make him a master theologian.

His children meanwhile are knowledgeable of sin somehow and what they ought do and ought not do. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long before murder enters into the picture. Note in the passage as well that Cain fears justice from other people. We can spend so much time answering the question of Cain’s wife that we miss the concept of justice.

The preaching of Noah is much much later. However, we are only told of Noah’s preaching and no miracles. The world is to understand that they are doing wrong. This is an important point in that without the aid of Scripture which did not exist at the time, people were to know moral truths. This is something I plan to look at in much more detail when we get to Exodus.

There is similar activity taking place with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. God tells Abraham that the outcry against the towns is great. Why did judgment come to these towns? Because they ought to have known better. They would root this knowledge in the power of reason. Now there is no denial that God’s existence explains the ontological source of the moral truths, but how one knows the moral truths is different. One can know moral truths without holding to a theistic worldview.

Whether an atheist is being consistent or not is a different question, though it is an important one. However, that one cannot explain necessarily how they know certain truths does not mean that those truths cannot still count as knowledge. Few people overall are philosophers who will ever sit down and examine truth this way. Ask the average person on the street when he was born and he’ll tell you. Ask him how he knows and he could point to testimony of parents and/or birth certificates. Ask him how he knows those are reliable and he’ll give something else. At one point, unless he just walks off out of irritation he’ll say “I just know!”

There are some who start philosophy in a position of denial saying they don’t know anything. This seems problematic at the start for how can we say that we know that we don’t know anything? How could such a claim be backed unless one had an argument and one thought that that argument was valid. Of course. some philosophers have still used a similar method. Descartes decided to start with only believing whatever could not be doubted at all. Descartes’s claim of “I think, therefore I am” has been called into question. Why should the fact that he thinks lead to his ontological existence?

Descartes had started with a method. Why not start with a truth instead? We look at what we know and then ask “How is it that I know this thing that I know?” This was the method of the medievals and I believe it’s the method most of us would use. It doesn’t mean we accept all things blindly. We can question ourselves on some knowledge claims and should, but there are things that we do just know.

Why is this important? Because in Genesis, judgment is assumed to be understood to be deserved. Even if one does not know the God who is doing the judging, one is to know that they are doing something wrong and they are living in violation of a moral law. For theism, Abraham was called out and it is unlikely he had such a theistic knowledge that he was able to speak about the Trinity at that point.

Why bring this up? For the ancients, knowledge was possible. This was even without at times having access to direct revelation of God, such as Scripture, since it did not exist. One could appeal to reason in this case, and there is nothing wrong with that! God created reason and meant it to be a mechanism for finding truth. The problem is not reason but reasoners. Of course, I agree with the presuppositionalists in saying the problem of man is moral largely, but that does not mean I agree with the way they get to the truth.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’m going to take the time now to return to my look at presuppositionalism. Mainly, the claim that one has to affirm the God of Christianity if they are going to be able to coherently affirm anything at all. To do that, I’d like to take a look at your typical Joe Canaanite in the ancient world around the time of Abraham.

This is a man who does not have a Bible yet at all. After all, Moses has not been born so he has no way of reading the book of Genesis, or any other book, save maybe Job. He does not have a personal prophet to him although one could say that in a limited sense, he has the traditions of his fathers that have passed down. However, he has no way of archaeologically confirming a flood or that even YHWH was the one who revealed himself to Noah.

What is it that he is to be told? He is to be told that he knows the truth of the God of Scripture and that he is denying it. Now I do agree that Romans 1 makes a strong case that one is aware of God by looking at creation. In many polytheistic cultures even if not all, there is belief in one high god who is supreme over all the little gods.

The problem is that Joe Canaanite cannot point to a Scripture that he is denying and he certainly can’t make statements like “God is triune” at this point. This is important since the presuppositional approach makes a constant appeal to the self-attesting triune God of Scripture. The same is also said of Christ, but what is it that this person can know of Christ really?

Now the question I have to ask is “Does Joe Canaanite know anything?” I see no reason to think otherwise. I think he can know who his parents are, where he lives, what his name is, what he had for breakfast, how to hunt wild animals, the names of the pagan deities that he worships, etc. All of these are knowledge claims that can be held by him.

Now does that mean that God is unrelated to knowledge? Not at all. If there was no God, there would be no knowledge. It is agreed by Christians that God’s ontological existence is necessary to explain reality, but having knowledge of God is what is disputed. Does one have to know God as a Trinity who revealed Himself in Christ in order to have knowledge? This would be a much more difficult claim to defend.

Joe Canaanite presents a problem. How could he have knowledge of the Trinity and Christ at the time he lives? Does he have some knowledge of God available to him? Yes he does. This is only a basic rudimentary knowledge however and likely it’s to be filled with errors. Your average Canaanite would not have the philosophical acumen to reason like Aristotle. (For that matter, your average and even above-average modern doesn’t either!)

Does Joe Canaanite still need to repent? Yes. Why? Because he has the moral law that he can have knowledge that he’s violated. The moral law consists of truths that we simply can’t not know. If you need an argument to convince you that murder is wrong for instance, it is quite likely you need more than an argument. You need a good therapist and I need to do the best I can to avoid you.

What about his salvation? I cannot answer definitively on that except to say that the judge of all the Earth will do right. For the time being, I can say that I have no reason to think Joe Canaanite can make no claims to knowledge and that he can have zero knowledge of God. How this happens will be worked out in future blogs.