Presuppositional apologetics is an entirely failed enterprise and my stalking horse will be Greg Bahnsen, who was perhaps the most well known popular defender of this apologetic method. Every man who seeks for truth must assume that his cognitive faculties and senses are generally reliable. But the Presuppositionalist is committed to denying this fundamental truth. He seeks to subordinate sense perception and even reason itself to Divine Revelation, this position is labeled as Revelational Epistemology (RE). This theory of epistemology prohibits any reasoning from logical or empirical grounds towards the existence of God, and claims that believers must instead presuppose the existence of God.
“So then, positively the Christian apologist presupposes the self-attesting authority and truth of Scripture, refusing to answer criticism in terms of secular premises, standards, and method; negatively, he performs an internal critique of the unbeliever's system of thought in order to demonstrate its vanity.” (Greg L. Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended, printed in Georgia by American Vision Press, 2008, pp. 76.)
It is impossible to begin with the presupposition of the truth of Scripture or even the existence of God, because this requires the assumption that one’s cognitive faculties are reliable and capable of ascertaining truth. Perhaps someone did not actually receive any divine revelation but is merely deluded into thinking that they have. Or perhaps a divine revelation was indeed given, but misinterpreted by the fallen and created intellect of the recipient. The only tools for evaluating whether some claim of divine revelation is valid are reason and sense data.
“Every system must have some unproven assumptions, a starting point not antecedently established, with which reasoning begins and according to which it proceeds to conclusions. Therefore, all argumentation over ultimate issues of truth and reality will come down to an appeal to authorities which, in the nature of the case, are ultimate authorities.” (Ibid. pp. 87.)
This primary unproven assumption could only be of our own cognitive faculties. There is no way to get outside of your own head and check whether your faculties work properly and are capable of attaining knowledge of the divine accurately. To develop any argument for anything you must assume that your senses and capacity for reasoning are at least generally reliable in the pursuit of truth. To believe any claim as true or any divine revelation as true, you must first comprehend what that divine revelation is then decide to believe it.
Suppose that God revealed to me the sentence, “I am the Lord God, and I exist.” I must first make sense of that sentence using my faculties of reason before I can decide whether or not to believe this claim, and I must decide whether or not the origin of this revelation is in fact divine. In other words, one must presuppose the reliability of their own powers of reason when one accepts any divine revelation as true. In contradiction to this obvious fact, Bahnsen claimed,
“Faith must necessarily start with the clear, authoritative, self-attesting, special revelation of God in Scripture coordinated with the Holy Spirit's inner testimony to the regenerated heart.” (Ibid. pp. 4, 5.)
But what does this claim amount to? There is no way for any written document to be “self-attesting” because every man must use his own senses, and reasoning when reading any written document. He must see the words on the pages and recall the meanings of words he sees while comprehending the grammar of the passages he ponders. Any divine revelation must still be comprehended by a created intellect. Bahnsen goes so far to say that our very reasoning and use of logic must be subordinate to Scripture,
“We are under obligation to submit every facet of our lives to Scripture—whether it be morals, vocation, emotions, deliberations, reasoning, or even the use of logic.” (Ibid. pp. 22.)
But this would obligate us to the view that even if the Scriptures asserted logical absurdities, such as, “there is a married bachelor,” or “red is a number,” we ought to accept them as true, because our use of logic must be subordinate to whatever the text says. Of what use is such an obligation? The Bible does not contain such logical absurdities, and we ought to admit, if the Bible did command believers to assent to logical absurdities, then this would be problematic!
Suppose someone brought forth a book claiming to be the word of God himself, in written form but this book also contained the claim “2 + 2 = 7.” When pressed on this mathematical absurdity, the man defending this book shouts, ‘We must subordinate our logical and mathematical intuitions to his book! The equation is actually true, even if it appears false!’ Nobody would take him seriously. And rightly so. Neither should RE be given any weight. Natural theology, arguing for the existence of God from the most general features of the world, is something affirmed implicitly at various places in the New Testament. (Rom. 1:19-20; Acts 17:20-28, et al)
Underlying all presuppositional apologetics is the assertion that Christianity is true because of the “impossibility of the contrary.” Or as Bahnsen put it, “Christianity as an absolute presupposition for all predication, reasoning, evaluation, and thought.” (Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended, printed in Georgia by American Vision Press, 2008, pp. 260.) Elsewhere I have summarized why the epistemology underlying this apologetic method is absurd, but here I will present direct objections to their arguments.
Not surprisingly, the presuppositionalists are not fans of spelling out their arguments in the form of syllogisms. Nor are they careful and analytic in their expositions. So I must endeavor to spell out the argument formally in their behalf,
It is true that objective morals, and rational thought exist.
There is an explanation for why objective morals and rational thought exist.
The Christian God is the only possible explanation for the existence of objective morals and rational thought.
C. Therefore, the Christian God exists.
The second premise seems most dubious. It may simply be that morality is necessary and requires no further explanation. God is supposed to be an unembodied mind who has been rational from eternity, but his rational thought has no further explanation because God is a necessary being—therefore, we might suppose that if the Universe were necessary that rationality may be a necessary feature of the world itself. There are also numerous other alternative models, for example Platonic theology.
Plato believed in the existence of a Creator God but he did not claim that morality, logic, and ethics depended upon the existence of this Creator. Plato argued that universals (which he called “forms”) like the laws of logic existed necessarily, outside of the physical world and independently of the Creator God. Universals are conceived as necessarily existing abstract objects which are co-eternal with the Demiurge. (Timaeus 49a, Republic 6.508b-c) Therefore, although Plato believed in objective morality, he did not ground it in the Deity. The Presuppositionalist must demonstrate that all such explanations are impossible or premise three also falls.
But there is certainly no logical contradiction inherent in any of these alternative explanations. Or perhaps these objective morality and rational thought are brute contingencies, an unwelcome but logically possible scenario. Recall that their claim is that no other worldview or explanation could possibly account for these things. Van Til was fond of the maxim, “the impossibility of the contrary.” If another explanation is even logically possible (i.e. does not entail an express contradiction) then the central argument of presuppositionalism is false. Note how logical possibility is invoked by Bahnsen,
“Refusing to presuppose the sovereign God revealed in the Bible as the source of all material and logical possibility, and hence failing effectively to challenge or internally criticize the very feasibility of knowledge, logic, factuality, interpretation, or predication as based on the boasted autonomy of "free-thinkers," apologists found their defenses razed by those who (likewise) postulated that bare possibility was a principle more ultimate than God.” (Ibid. pp. 23.)
It is absurd to suppose that God is somehow the “source” of “logical possibility” because the God of the apostles is subject to logical constraints. God is immortal, which entails that he cannot commit suicide because it would be a contradiction for an immortal being to kill himself. St. Paul says that “God cannot lie,” because it would entail a contradiction for a morally perfect being to lie. (Titus 1:2) How can God be the source of logical possibility if he is himself subject to it? God himself is rational and logical, he is not somehow ‘above logic,’ because such a claim could have no meaning.
Humans are finite things. Humans can reason from their partial knowledge of the world to the existence of some particular deity, but it makes no sense to speak of absolute certainty or the impossibility of contrary hypotheses in this regard. Our Savior offered miracles as evidence of his claims, these miracles are called “signs,” which signifies that they were visible and empirical evidence of his powers, tangible proofs of his dominion over the laws of nature. (Joh. 2:11, 18, 23; 6:26; 9:16) Nicodemus confessed,
“Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher because no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” (Joh. 3:2)
The miracles of Christ are themselves an instance of evidential apologetics, because they were performed as signs or demonstrations with the purpose of causing people to believe his claims. And what is the function of Messianic prophecy in the New Testament except evidence for Christian claims?
A rather bizarre claim on the part of many presuppositionalists is their strange reading of Romans 1:18-21 from which they argue that there are no genuine atheists. They reason that even the most ardent atheist knows deep down that God exists,
“Although he outwardly and vehemently denies the truth of God, no unbeliever is inwardly and sincerely devoid of a knowledge of God. It is not a saving knowledge of God to be sure, but even as condemning knowledge natural revelation still provides a knowledge of God…. If the unbeliever were a total idiot he would be free from guilt. But Paul’s point in Romans 1 is that the unbeliever’s rebellion is willful and knowledgeable; he sins against his better knowledge and is thus “without excuse” (vv. 20-21). And while he suppresses this better knowledge in unrighteousness (v. 18), that knowledge provides a foundation of his (limited, but real) understanding of God’s world.” (Greg Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith, published in Texas by Covenant Media Press, 1996, pp. 33, 34.)
Bahnsen claimed that the opening chapter of Romans proves unbelievers and believers alike have a “knowledge of God.” For the unbeliever this is not a salvific knowledge, but it is a “natural revelation,” innate in all of mankind, but surely this is a misinterpretation of St. Paul who elsewhere says that “not all have faith.” (2Thess. 3:2) The opening chapter of Romans is merely asserting that the existence and general attributes of God are evident from the general features of the world. There are many passages elsewhere in the Scriptures which describe people who truly do not believe that God exists,
“The fool says in his heart: “There is no God.”” (Psalm 14:1)
The man described by the Psalmist does not believe there in God, in his very heart of hearts, he says that there is no such being. The word which signifies belief or faith is πίστις and it is used at Jas. 2:19,
“You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder.”
This verse signifies that even wicked spirits believe in the existence of God although they rebel against him, but the Bible also speaks of men who lack any belief in God whatsoever, they are called “faithless (ἀπίστοις),” that is, lacking belief, literally, “belief-less” or “faith-less.” (Rev. 21:8)
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