Transcendental Arguments (7 of 10) – Summary of Transcendental Arguments, Part 2

[00:00] Well, this third day of our seminar on transcendental arguments, hopefully we’ll finally start mining out some of the cash value of the preparatory work we’ve done in the last two days. I’m going to take this morning, and if I don’t get quite done, a little bit after our lunch break, to expound the use of transcendental method by Cornelius Van Til. And then when we finish that, I’m going to look at the various criticisms of Van Til, briefly showing that most of them overlook the transcendental nature of his argument. And then I’ll look at those criticisms that do attack the transcendental nature of his argumentation, so that by the time we’re done today, we’ll have some idea of how we as apologists can make use of this as a very bold challenge to the unbeliever.

[00:52] It is not my conviction that Cornelius Van Til was infallible. I do have a high regard for the man and his work and a high affection for him as well as one of my instructors that I was very close to. And so I’m willing to put all the sympathy and charity necessary into reading him in the best possible light when he’s criticized. But I don’t think that he said everything exactly right, and I don’t want to suggest that he has thought through with as much detail as, say, Mike Butler was going over contemporary issues and transcendental arguments in the 1970s and 80s. After all, Van Til was developing these things in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and so forth, and doing it from a tradition that’s not like the analytic tradition at all.

[01:38] So I don’t want anyone to get the impression from today’s overall thrust that it’s just adulation for Van Til and he could make no mistakes. I do believe, however, he did not make the major mistakes that people think that he did. And I believe that what he has given to us is the most powerful apologetical tool that’s available. If you want to improve on it, God bless you. Do improve on it.

[02:01] But I hope by the end of the day, you’ll see that it’s usable and that the criticisms that are often directed against that are not cogent ones at all. Up here on the board, I have given you a little bit of an outline of how I’m going to try to cover Van Til this morning. Because I’m going to be saying a lot of things and be in something of a hurry, it’d be good for you to know what we’re going to be traveling over. So when you hit one of these speed bumps, you go, oh, we’re in another part of the outline, I can tell. I’m going to begin with features which commend the transcendental argument for apologetics. Why is it that we should make such a big deal of it? After all, we’ve given three days to this and people have written books on it. Why? What is it that makes this an approach that is commendable? Secondly, I’ll summarize the nature of the challenge. What is it that we are putting out there? What’s the character, the essence of the argument? And then the most important thing I believe that I’m going to be teaching you today is that Van Til and Christian apologists in general make a unique use of transcendental methodology when they defend the faith.

[03:13] What philosophers are doing and have done, in the case of Kant, the idealist, and others in our day, Strauss and whatever, in many ways is not what the Christian apologist is doing. And I’m going to try to explain that to you in terms of entire worldviews being argued, the procedure being concrete, not abstract, and finally resting on authority. And I’ll, when I get to it, explain all those. And then we’ll look at the key issue, as Van Til puts it out there, we’ll kind of boil this down to what is, from a philosopher’s standpoint, the issue that we are pushing when we argue transcendentally.

[03:48] Now, having gone through all of that, that’s like piecemeal through Van Til’s works, then I’m going to go back and I’m going to look at nine or ten pages in his writings, in two publications, The Survey of Christian Epistemology and The Defense of the Faith. And I don’t want to flatter myself, and maybe I’ll have to eat crow when it comes to this.

[04:08] But I think with the introduction you’ve had and with these notes that I’m going to give you about the uniqueness of his approach, that when we read those 10 pages together, you’re going to all of a sudden say, this is amazing. It was all here, but we didn’t appreciate what he was getting at maybe, or we didn’t understand, you know, the background issues and so forth. But we can boil Van Til down to really eight or nine, most ten pages and really cut that in half because I’m doing it in two different books. But I’m going to give you now what is really the filet mignon of Van Til, you know, no fat, no gristle, no bone. This is it. So we’ll see. Hopefully I don’t let you down. You shouldn’t make big promises, you know, unless you can live up to him.

[04:52] All right, to take Van Til’s works as a whole, why does he say the transcendental approach to reasoning commends itself to us? In the Defense of the Faith, Van Til says on page 257, and I’m using the first edition of the Defense of the Faith, the 1955 edition, in my book on Van Til, in the preface, I will publish a formula for finding page numbers, the second and third editions, when the first edition is being cited. Of course, in some cases, you won’t be able to find it at all because that’s what was dropped when they edited. Anyway, I’m using the first edition when I make these things, so it won’t be very easy for many of you to follow.

[05:34] Page 257, Van Til says, man’s own interpretive activity, whether of the more or less extended type, whether in ratiocination or intuition, is no doubt the most penetrating means by which the Holy Spirit presses the claims of God upon man. The most penetrating means by which the Holy Spirit presses the claims of God upon man. If we’re going to use an argument, if you have to choose one. I mean, you’re not in a conversation where someone’s asking you, how do you reconcile the king list of the Old Testament? So obviously you’re going to talk about that to answer their question. But if you’re going to be using an apologetical strategy, choosing one in general, Van Til says that method that shows the greatest promise for the Holy Spirit driving home to the heart of man, the absolute demand of God to turn and embrace him, he says, is one that focuses on man’s reasoning or thinking.

[06:33] His interpretive activity, whether it’s the extended type or very brief local matters of interpretation, whether it’s in reasoning or intuition. What Van Til’s getting at is to make anything intelligible. Focus on that, because that’s what the Holy Spirit is going to make best use of in pressing home God’s claims on men’s hearts. in the book Common Grace, page 62.

[07:02] Man’s own interpretive activity, whether of the more or less extended type, whether in ratiocination or in intuition, is no doubt the most penetrating means by which the Holy Spirit presses the claims of God upon man. Sound familiar? What I just read out of the defense of the faith. Why am I bothering to give you an instant replay? Common Grace is the first book Van Til published in this general area.

[07:26] He wrote on the New Modernism. That was his first publication. And then in The Defense of the Faith, he quotes this again. So don’t take this as an offhand remark. Van Til one day was real enthusiastic and he said, I think the Holy Spirit can really make use of this kind of argument. This is a well-thought-out claim. He may be right, he may be wrong, but I want you to know he maintained it consistently in his career. And why is it that this is the most penetrating means used by the Holy Spirit?

[07:54] As Van Til says at one point, this is the defense of the faith, page 285, that in essence the transcendental argument amounts to nothing less than a call to conversion. Calvin argues that as created in man’s image, every man of necessity has a knowledge of God. This innate knowledge is correlative to God’s revelation in man’s environment. We know God innately, we also know God when we look at the environment. And try as he may, the sinner cannot efface this knowledge. He can only seek to suppress it. Without first knowing God, he could not seek to deny it. Without first knowing God, he could not seek to deny it. He must be originally in contact with the truth in order to love and propagate the lie. Meanwhile, God calls men to conversion. His natural gifts to them are calculated to make them return to God.

[08:52] And so when we challenge people and we’re talking intellectually from the very outset of my presentation, you can see Van Til is not interested in parlor games. He’s not interested in playing academic chess. He’s not interested in just saying, okay, here’s an issue now. I wonder how we can find an answer to that problem epistemologically and so forth.

[09:12] it will probably disturb many people who are new to the halls of philosophy that the vast majority of philosophers live their lives that way. Philosophy may have been a passion for them once, and I don’t deny there are some unbelieving philosophers that are still passionate. But for most of them, it’s really, you know, you punch the clock, essentially. You put in your time, you write your articles, you get your appointments, you teach your classes and so forth. But what that has to do with life and so forth is not all that big a deal. And that’s why a philosopher can go to lunch with you, and you want to talk about some arcane issue about theory of reference, okay? And, you know, he may think that he’s right and you’re wrong, and there may be some personal challenge in there. But, you know, he really doesn’t care all that much. You know, he’s going to go and live his life and play his basketball games and see his movies and so forth, and you’re going to go do your thing.

[10:06] But for Van Til, it’s not like that. this argument, he says, amounts to a call to conversion. I mean, this is life and death stuff. This goes to the heart of what life is. It’s passion, you see. He says the Holy Spirit, if you really understand this, the Holy Spirit can, in the most penetrating way, call men to conversion by showing that they can’t think about anything unless they admit that they’re in rebellion against God and they need to change their way of thinking. So that’s the first feature that I think Van Til would say. I mean, if he were putting out an advertisement, why you should think about the transcendental method? He says, because I think this is what the Holy Spirit can best use to penetrate the heart of man with an absolute call to conversion.

[10:49] Secondly, Van Til would say, and we’ve already covered this in our introductory remarks, but it bears repeating. Van Til says that the transcendental argument is objectively valid regardless of the attitude of the man to whom it comes. Defense of the Faith, page 256. Van Til says, In itself, the argument is absolutely sound. Christianity is the only reasonable position to hold. Now, that quotation shows up in a number of places among Van Til’s critics. It goes to say, well, what kind of argument is it that’s never stated?

[11:56] Well, I’ll give you my interpretation of what Van Til meant, and I think that I stand on pretty good ground, given the long time that I talked to Van Til about these things and my study of his works.

[12:07] I think what Van Til is saying is what I recognize as a teacher when my students give me papers that are on the right track, if I can put it, but they need to be cleaned up a bit. They’re not always the most precise. You know, there may be ambiguities, there may be wanderings, there may be ways in which they can tighten this. And yet I know that underneath the student does have a grasp of the conceptual issue, is moving, you know, through the right steps and to the right conclusion. Now, when I see that in a student, should I say he doesn’t have a good argument or that he has an argument that’s poorly stated, but it’s a good argument? Well, I think, in all charity, I should say he does have a good argument and he can clean up his act a bit. And I think that’s really all Van Til’s getting at when he says the argument may be poorly stated and may never be adequately stated.

[13:00] What determines the adequacy of an argument? Now, I’m a public debater. The response to the argument is… Okay. There is a subjective aspect. The response of the audience is going to be to the adequacy of the argument, right? Well, so you’re almost to the answer then. That’s poorly stated, Bill, but I think that you’re on the right track. This is a good example of what I’m getting at. Basically, the adequacy of the argument has to do with communication with a particular audience, doesn’t it? And so it may be that you cannot universally state the argument so that every audience picking up this argument says, wow, what an argument. Some people may be confused. Some people may need other kinds of illustrations. So Van Til says maybe it will never be adequately stated for every audience. And maybe it’s poorly stated. But he says this is an objectively valid argument regardless of the attitude of the person to whom it comes.

[13:58] It’s not one of these arguments. some people try to reduce suppositionalism to, well, that’s a good argument if you’re already a believer. Van Til says this is a good argument regardless of your attitude.

[14:10] And not only does he in general say that it’s objectively valid, he says this argument is not affected adversely by the subjective elements in disputes over the canon of Scripture, the translation of Scripture, and the interpretation of Scripture. I’m going to be looking at the Survey of Christian Epistemology, page 221. Before I read the quote, though, let me explain to you why some people think that presuppositionalism, you know, gets kind of rocked when people raise questions about canonicity or translation or interpretation. See, our argument is if you begin with the Bible, God’s revelation, then you can make human experience intelligible. If you don’t begin with the Bible, you can’t do so.

[14:53] Now, somebody comes along and says, oh yeah well that’s great as a general claim as an abstract claim but what’s the Bible? You know and so if you say well it’s that book over there on the shelf and somebody’s going to say well but now what more precisely is the Bible? Because we have to argue over canon don’t we? What books belong in the Bible? And then there’s a question about how should the Bible be translated? Which is the best translation? Should it be translated at all? And then whether you translate it or not how do you interpret the Bible? And so people will come back around and say Well, Van Til, what you’ve said sounds good formally, but until you actually have a concrete interpretation of the Bible that has been verified in terms of translation and you have some argument about the canon, those subjective elements are getting in the way of this great objective argument that you have.

[15:40] And I have to be honest with you, I heard critique like that and had to, you know, think as a Van Tilian, a presuppositionalist about that and so forth. And I don’t know how long it was, but I mean, I was pretty familiar with that kind of polemic long before I went back and looked at this and realized Van Til had one paragraph where he actually brought it up himself. I think that’s great when he anticipates the arguments that are possible, right?

[16:05] Speaking of Taylor and Bowne, he says, We say their argument against the idea of an absolute scripture was that man must always at some point or other introduce a subjective element. When you’re arguing for an absolute scripture, but the subjective element is we have to accept what is the canon of scripture, we have to do translation, we have to do interpretation.

[16:26] Van Til says it makes no difference whether that subjective element comes in when there is interpretation or translation or canonization or even when there is reception of revelation. It must come in at one or at several places. Van Til says, oh, I realize that. As people, we’re going to have some, you know, there’s going to be some fuzziness around the edges, if you will. We’re going to have to decide which books actually belong in the Bible, how they should be translated, how they should be interpreted. But he says, now this argument we have pointed out against Christianity or against the apologists. You can’t have an absolute Bible because you can’t be absolutely sure of what it’s actually saying. He says, this argument we have pointed out rests upon the anti-theistic assumption that the human consciousness can function independently of God to begin with.

[17:17] Word of advice to budding apologists. When someone raises an objection, even though it looks like it’s internal to your claims about an absolute Bible, Van Til says, what foundation are they standing on when they raise that objection? Van Til is not trying to beg any questions about canon, translation, interpretation. He’s saying, yeah, we’ve got to do all those things. That’s fine. He admits that right there. No doubt about it. When somebody argues against the Christian worldview, saying, well, you can’t really be sure what the Bible is until all those things are made objective and absolutely certain, Van Til says, when that person uses that criticism, What’s he standing on when he says that?

[17:59] You see, the point is in the transcendental argument, as I told you many times now, you can’t argue against Christianity without assuming the Christian worldview in terms of what your argument can be stated, can make sense, can be intelligible. Somebody says, well, but then how do we know what the Bible is? Can you put Playboy magazine between the covers of the Bible, pull out the other pages and just use the argument anyway? No, Van Til’s not saying anything so absurd as that.

[18:25] In fact, we’re going to come to the point where Van Til says you have to be concrete, not abstract. We are talking about a concrete revelation of a very specific kind of God. But Van Til maintains that we can know, if you will, the essence or the substance of that, even if there are boundary conditions that have to be, you know, tacked down, even though we may have to talk about the exact extent of the canon or how to translate. The point is, because God made man and made him in his image, man couldn’t even be thinking about this problem of making more precise the boundaries if he wasn’t in touch with God. It’s the transcendental argument now used in defense of the transcendental argument, if I can put it that way.

[19:11] There’s just no way to escape this. So Van Til’s willing to say, yeah, we can talk about getting more precise in our interpretation of the Bible. But the point is, if you didn’t have the substance of the biblical revelation, you couldn’t be talking about making it more precise. It’s not a matter of, well, is the Bible just anything? Could it be Playboy magazine? No, he says the content is there, and when we understand that content, then we can use it as a foundation to go back and make more precise our understanding of the content. Or in other places, it’s called the hermeneutical circle. We all jump on the merry-go-round somewhere, we understand the Bible, But every time we go through the Bible, we understand it better. So we are correcting our original understanding of the Bible. But that doesn’t eliminate everything we understood to begin with, does it? It just means that we’re precising. We’re making more adequate our interpretation.

[20:03] Somebody had a… Yeah, one of the…

[20:06] I spoke to this a lot in the argument of the way that that’s how the main thing really comes up in some form or another. and the most popular illustration I use is the whole game of telephone where someone says something and then taps on. That probably more correlates with translation and interpretation than maybe canonization, but I think it’s still in the context of it all.

[20:28] That one used to trip me up a little bit. I used to try to dance around it, and then one day I was with a group, and all of a sudden it clicked in my mind, and you can tell me if this was an accurate way to do it. I played the game telephone with them, and they were right i said you’re right but let’s play the game again and this time and i started the game that time this time i started the game and when i passed the sentence on i went with it and we ended up with the same thing right what we’re saying one one presupposes that god doesn’t exist that’s right or at least that he doesn’t exist he gave us something then he went away yeah and the other one says that god exists and that’s the foundation and he’s after we Oh, I give you very high marks. That’s very, very good.

[21:13] Yeah, because you see, if you see the problem in one kind of light, imagine that we have this message that has to be passed down, and it’s a chance universe. Then, boy, I’ll tell you, that’s a pretty tough thing to do with. But then, to use your analogy, imagine that God is sovereignly present, controlling everything that happens. Now, we may want to touch up the boundaries a bit because of human foibles, But the fact is, God’s never going to let it go so badly that we can’t have any idea that, lo and behold, we end up with Playboy magazine instead of, you know, the Gospel of John as our Bible. It just isn’t going to happen in God’s universe. So that’s, again, using the transcendental argument to defend the transcendental argument. Are we reasoning in vicious circles then? Let’s not answer that yet. Van Til’s going to have his own particular answer that I really like.

[22:02] But one more thing about the second feature commending this is its objectivity. One more way in which Van Til discusses the objectivity or the objective validity of the argument is that he says in Common Grace, this is page 50, and I’m going to back up and read from page 49, that in essence, what’s great about this argument is you don’t have to worry about any future research changing it, undermining it. Men ought, if only they reasoned rightly, to come to the conclusion that God exists. That is to say, if the theistic proof is constructed as it ought to be constructed, and you now know what that means, transcendentally constructed, it is objectively valid whatever the attitude of those to whom it comes may be. To be constructed rightly, theistic proof ought to presuppose the ontological trinity and contend that, unless we may make this presupposition, All human predication is meaningless. Judgments of the subject predicate form. He says the words cause, purpose, and being used as universals in the phenomenal world, the world of experience, could not be so used with meaning unless we may presuppose the self-contained God.

[23:19] If the matter is put this way, one argument is as sound as the other. What he means is you can argue about purpose, you can argue about cause, you can argue about being. What he’s getting at here is, yeah, we have, if you will, our version of a cosmological, our version of a teleological, our version of an ontological argument. He goes, really, it doesn’t make much difference. If you’re reasoning transcendentally, these are all a matter of illustration. If the matter is put this way, one argument is as sound as the other. In fact, then, each argument involves the others, nor is any one of the arguments then at any point vulnerable, and future research cannot change their validity.

[24:06] And I just set the book. 49, is that what I said? Yeah, 49 and 50. Sorry.

[24:12] To repeat what you just said, it doesn’t cause purpose and be…

[24:16] Yeah, he’s referring to the ontological argument. Well, discuss transcendentally. There’s no conflict, ever. No, my way of putting it is, Van Tilcy’s, all of those, is just illustrations of the same point. So, if you want to talk about baseball, if you want to talk about medical research, or you want to talk about something abstruse like being, the point is to talk about any of those things, the reason at all, we use the transcendental approach, you have to assume the framework of the Christian worldview. And so he says, yeah, all of those are fine arguments. But the point is, if you’re arguing transcendentally, this is what I’m getting at, he says future research doesn’t change the validity of the argument.

[24:59] Let me ask you about the historic argument for Christ’s resurrection, which has a place, I’m not doubting that for a minute, but can future research change the validity of that argument?

[25:09] Sure. Of course.

[25:11] In the nature of the case, new information may weaken or strengthen the case that you’re making. That is the logical structure of an inductive or historical or natural argument. It’s all a matter of what is the pool of relevant data, and what you add to it or take from it affects the strength and weakness of the argument. Van Til says, the kind of argument that I’m suggesting is not affected by future research.

[25:35] Well, wouldn’t that commend an apologetical? Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to keep up with all the journals and all the sciences and history and so forth and say, I mean, I feel very comfortable. I hope, I really hope, not at all in an arrogant, self-confident way, but I feel very comfortable with the transcendental argument so that I don’t worry about who I run into. I don’t care what stage they are in life, their academic preparation. I don’t care whether they’re trained in nuclear physics or they’re trained in historical research, whatever. Because I realize when all’s said and done, they all have to face the same questions.

[26:07] They’ve all got to come through the same bottleneck of logic, causation, you know the reliability of sensation and all that so i can let them talk all they want be fascinated by what they’re working out and still say now what’s the foundation of what you’re standing when you do this and i don’t have to worry if my argument’s a good one to begin with i hope it is but the point is the validity is not going to be changed by anything down the line so the first feature that commands the transcendental approach is that the holy

[26:35] spirit makes use of this in the most penetrating way is an absolute call to conversion secondly it’s objectively valid. Thirdly, Van Til says in his writings that this argument is a forceful all-or-nothing challenge. An all-or-nothing challenge. It’s all-or-nothing because according to Van Til, the unbeliever cannot make any aspect of his experience intelligible. So it covers every kind of experience. We don’t have to worry about, therefore, what we are talking about, what the subject matter is, or what people will bring up. Anything to be made intelligible is subject to this kind of analysis and can be used to prove God’s existence.

[27:23] Thus, I’m sorry, Defense of the Faith, 197. Thus, the Christian theistic position must be shown to be not as defensible as some other position. It must rather be shown to be the position which alone does not annihilate intelligent human experience and then skipping a bit he says but all this is out of line the idea that there’s a twilight zone of neutrality between the believer and the unbeliever where you don’t have any kind of religious you know demand on you all of this is out of line with calvin’s institutes which stress with the greatest possible force that the revelation of god to man is so clear that it has absolute compelling force objectively and then he argues against somebody who says, well, Christianity can be shown to be the most probable or the best position available. He says, even if it be said that Christianity is more probably true than is the non-Christian position, this is still to allow that objectively something can be said for the truth of the non-Christian position. Something objectively valid can be said for idol worship as well as for the worship of the true God. Vantel says, the transcendental argument says there’s no room for idolatry anywhere. Nothing can be said, any dimension of experience for idolatry. Page 354 of the Defense of the Faith, he’s replying to a critic, he says, why do you object when I point out, and here’s the part of the quotation I want you to get, that the philosophy of the non-Christian cannot account for the intelligibility of human experience in any sense.

[28:58] Would counting, weighing, and measuring be possible in a universe that’s run by chance? Is it not true that unless the world is controlled by God, there could be no science? Well, a lot of people laugh at Van Til for this. What? You’re saying that the unbeliever, given his chance philosophy, can’t make sense out of counting? Out of weighing? Out of measuring? As Van Til says, that’s what I’m saying.

[29:24] A little digression here. Why is it that counting is impossible in a chance universe? Well, there’s no order. What’s that? Order. Yeah, there’s no order, right? Counting presupposes, well, the laws of mathematics, but it presupposes order. And order means you can identify, re-identify, and distinguish. You can individuate one thing from another. But in a chance universe, you can’t individuate anything. If everything’s ultimately random, I can’t even count the number of times that I’ve seen, say, a car. Because for all I know, it’s the same experience over and over again. I can’t individuate anything in a random universe. So you couldn’t have mathematics in a random universe.

[30:04] Why would a critic? Well, because critics look out and they say, unbelievers are very good at weighing and measuring. How could you possibly say such a thing? Now you’re thinking, how could they have misunderstood Van Til so badly? it. But if it hadn’t happened dozens of times in print, maybe I’d have difficulty with you, but I just have to tell you straight out, David, when Van Til says these things, he’s talking about making intelligible what you’re doing, and his critics read him as saying they’re doing it. Van Til says, of course you’re counting, but in your worldview, you wouldn’t be able to make sense out of that. So you must be using my worldview while you do your counting.

[30:50] Yeah, well, he’s talking about their system, in principle, would not allow them to do that. If they carried out their theory, that is, if they were principial in their reasoning, if their theory were consistently carried out, there would be no counting. And so what they say with their mouth is apparently not what they really believe in their hearts, because they do continue to count, don’t they?

[31:13] That makes me tell an article about the years of problems in the internet where I find problems in theory that water is actually… Oh, is that what it was? I think I saw that article.

[31:33] Well, that’s what we love, though. It’s like the evolutionist, right? The evolutionist says, life came from not life. Yeah, right. Qualities come from their opposites. You say, well, if you study the history of philosophy, and actually the history of just Western thought, we have been taught, even by unbelievers, that it’s that kind of magical, irrational thinking that made the progress of thought and science impossible. And so, now it turns out that those who are the most advanced in their rational approach to the world are going back to the mythic, magical foundations of pagan thought and saying, oh yeah, I guess order did come from disorder.

[32:14] That right, the theory of chaos, self-control.

[32:18] Well, I think sometimes the discussion of the theory of chaos is misconstrued for the affirmation of metaphysical chaos. It’s a really complicated thing, what’s going about this technical name, chaos theory. That indicates that you can’t stipulate all initializing conditions in advance. There’s always something that’s going to mess up the experiment. And therefore, as Plato would be very happy with this, As much as you try to have progression out from your initializing conditions, and you can ideally tell us what the outcome is going to be, there’s always more things that go into the initializing conditions, and so you can’t get a precise calculation. and therefore everything is chaos, well, it would take me too long to get into it and I’m doing it off the cuff here, but the popular notion of chaos and what chaos theory is have analogous relationships, but they’re not the same thing.

[33:20] I get a question. I don’t know if you can do it real quick, but somebody that doesn’t know a thing about the theory of chaos, I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t read it and don’t know how it goes. Somebody brings that up to me unapologetic old accountant. How would I pre-supposition and deal with that?

[33:37] Okay, well, let me give you a general technique to use whenever you run into something you’re not familiar with. Let the unbeliever hang himself. Okay, so you’ve heard something about this chaos theory, and this person started saying, well, you know, studies in chaos theory, blah, blah, blah. What you should do is say, well, tell me about that. I haven’t done as much reading as you, so you know, flatter him and learn something from him and say, well, what? But then you have to start looking for the right questions now to needle him with when he starts telling you what his understanding of chaos theory is. So that’s true with anything that you run into.

[34:10] If I were in an airport and some, you know, adherent of a cult came up to me and said, have you ever seen this book, Zumbamba? And I say, no. He says, well, I think it’s the answer to life. And I say, well, tell me about it. You know, I’m not going to worry that because I haven’t read the book and worked out an apologetic, I can’t do it. I think I was going to say, well, talk. And as many of you know, my theory is give enough rope to the unbeliever, he’ll put it around his own neck. And so that’s what I would do in any case that you run into it. But make sure you understand the fundamental issues every theory is going to have to deal with. That’s why I think Van Til is so powerful, you know.

[34:46] Yeah. I’ve had a problem dealing with that. When one guy came up with, he threw probability into the chaos thing. And he says, who’s to say that we just don’t live in that one part of probability in a chaotic universe where there is order? For instance, if you pour a box of alphabet down on the table enough times, there will be some time probability that you’ll pour out Genesis chapter 1 right on your table. If you do it enough times. We just live in that one time, and we’re only self-conscious of that one time. And in that one time, we are, there is design, but design is going to be wiped out at some point in time by the random chaos universe that continues to bore the boxes, you know, and scoop the outfits off the table in Florida again.

[35:30] Yeah, I’ll give you Van Til’s popular answer to that. Oh, in other words, you do have a man made of water who can construct a ladder of water to climb out of the water. If it’s all chaos in the popular sense, is the context. And then in the midst of this chaos, we see what appears to be some order. Notice we are imposing the order mentally on it. It’s not real, because it’s in an ocean of chance, right? And in the midst of our, how is it that we are ordered enough to impose order on the chaos round about us? And so even people who say we have this sliver of time or order in the midst of chaos are having to say, ultimately, it’s illusion. It’s all chaos. Because we think that we have order, but it can’t be order. As you just said, everything is chaos.

[36:22] So how do you argue with that? Well, the guy’s killed himself, right? You don’t have to argue with it. You say, just keep talking. Yeah, just say, oh, well, then in other words, this is just an illusion, this order. Now, if he says, no, no, no, I mean this is real order in the midst of chaos, and say, you just contradicted yourself. Yeah, that’s right. If it’s in the context of chaos, then it can’t be order. What you’re really saying is somehow something got out of that context and was real order.

[36:52] Christianity alone makes facts intelligible. It’s not just that any fact can be used to prove Christianity, but it’s only Christianity that makes the facts intelligible. The Defense of the Faith, page 264. He must therefore present the facts of theism and of Christianity, that is, of Christian theism, as proving Christian theism because they are intelligible as facts in terms of it and in terms of it alone.

[37:22] So that one quotation, just to make clear that Van Til is not saying, here’s a sufficient condition for the intelligibility of our experience, Christianity. of him. He’s also saying it’s a necessary condition. It’s the only condition that will make the facts intelligible. So the third thing that commends this approach is that we don’t have to be concerned with some people not being interested or some people not being touchable by this argument or we’re dealing only with special facts like miracles. It’s an all or nothing forceful challenge that is given. The unbeliever is not given the privilege of saying, well, Christianity is pretty good up to this point. It’s all or nothing. And you can’t say, well, some unbelievers are susceptible to this argument, others aren’t. All unbelievers are susceptible.

[38:16] And it’s any fact you talk about, and it’s only Christianity that allows you to talk about it. Now, I realized when Van Til says that kind of thing, his critics go, you know, They really want to dance on his head for this. I want to say, it can’t be that way. Why? Well, because unbelievers are doing pretty well. They’re making their lives intelligible. Comes back to what David was asking about earlier. How can you make this all or nothing? And so it says, because in principle, you can’t account for anything except within the Christian worldview. Thank you.

[38:54] It’s been a while since I’ve read the correspondence, so I may have this out of order. But I believe that after he realized now what I was claiming, his comeback was, well, you can’t answer those questions either. See, I’d been I’d been needling him with, you know, how this was possible, how that’s possible and so forth. And then when he said, well, I do balance my checkbook, I said, of course, you that’s because you’re thinking, you know, in terms of the Christian framework, you’re believing in God, even while you say you don’t believe in God. And that’s shown by the fact you can’t answer these problems.

[39:26] but I can. And his comeback was, well, you can’t answer these philosophical problems either. And I said, well, maybe so. Basically, I said back to him, well, watch me name that tune. Which one would you like me to start with? Because I mean, I wouldn’t have been throwing those things out there if I didn’t have some way. But of course, as Bill’s pointing out, my way of answering those problems would never be satisfactory to him subjectively because he wants them answered in an autonomous framework. And what I come back and say If I could boil it all down, as I come back and I say, given my worldview, that’s not a problem. I don’t even have to worry. It’s only a problem because you begin with the separation of the subject and the object of knowledge. My worldview begins with God creating both, so what’s the difficulty?

[40:10] One more thing that commends the transcendental approach we mentioned here is that it justifies the rejection in advance of hypotheses which contradict Christianity. It justifies rejection in advance of hypotheses which contradict Christianity. So if somebody offers a theory to be explored, and that theory contradicts the Bible, other approaches to apologeticism, well, we’ve got to get out there and just pursue our research and our reasoning and so forth, and hope that we can keep up with the unbeliever and show that his theory, which contradicts the Bible, In fact, there’s not a good one. Van Til says, I don’t even have to worry about going out there and doing battle that way. I can tell you that if your theory contradicts the Bible, it’s wrong in advance. It allows me that kind of a priori authority to say, oh, you’re going to go on an expedition looking for the bones of Jesus? That is an irrelevant hypothesis. Irrelevant or, if you will, that’s a hypothesis that can be repudiated without any further study.

[41:16] Somebody said, well, a minute. I mean, that really bothers people. you can’t determine what happened in history you say well God can and God revealed himself in the Bible and if we don’t think in biblical terms we can’t think at all so there you have it it won’t do you any good to go looking for the bones of Jesus because if we lived in a universe where the bones of Jesus could still be there then the Bible wouldn’t be true the God of the Bible doesn’t exist and you couldn’t go searching for the bones of Jesus because you couldn’t make sense out of science and research anyway

[41:46] now Now, whether you’re buying the transcendental approach or not, at this point, wouldn’t you agree with me that if there were an approach that called for conversion, it was a passionate sort of thing, the most penetrating way by which the Holy Spirit can challenge men, that is objectively valid, you don’t have to worry about future research taking away the validity of it, is a forceful, all-or-nothing thing, any fact is usable, and it’s only Christianity, not religion in general, not God in general that is going to be proven by this and allows you in advance to say anything that contradicts Christianity is ipso facto wrong if there were such a thing wouldn’t that be grand? Bill?

[42:34] For me it’s relevant to think about future research taking away from it and also in advance a priority you can say that that theory is wrong about a year ago Wall Street Journal And they found the tomb of Caiaphas in a little over a year. And I thought, oh, naively, I’m thinking, oh, this is great. I can use this to my non-Christian friends. So this is really good stuff to have. They’re really impressed with that, aren’t they? They’re really impressed with them, yeah.

[42:57] And then around near the end of the year, I saw in our local paper, it’s talking about the historical Jesus. You know, this is at Christmas time. And it said the new researchers, they even found Caiaphas bones. Oh, yeah, yeah, here we go. And it goes, I’m sorry, the context was, and some new discoveries, like the bones of Caiaphas, the high priest who presided at Jesus’ trial, get tantalizingly close to Jesus himself. And I saw that word, tantalizing, and I thought, oh, they’re looking at completely different. They’re, in other words, hungering to find Jesus’ bones next from the people that I’m thinking. No, that’ll take you to the Bible, right? Well, they might have meant it’s getting, in terms of historical artifacts or, you know, objective pieces of evidence, tantalizingly close to the life of Jesus. Here’s somebody who intersects the life of Jesus.

[43:46] Yeah. They’re salivating now. Oh, for the bones of Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[43:55] So hopefully this kind of argument does exist, is usable, because it sure would be a good one if we had it. Right. Well, I’ve got good news for you. I think Van Til is on to something here.

[44:08] Let me next talk about the nature of the challenge itself. This is what it’s all about. According to Van Til, Christianity is not merely just as reasonable or just as defensible as any other position. Defense of the Faith, page 256. So when someone says, I’m free to believe what the Bible teaches, because that’s no less problematic or no more problematic than any other theory, Van Til says, that’s not good enough. You don’t want to say it’s just as reasonable.

[44:40] So you have people out here, they look reasonable. Well, I can be reasonable, too. Van Til says, that’s not the transcendental argument. And he says, it’s not merely a matter of it being more probably correct.

[44:50] so we’re not accepting any ties nor are we accepting that our opponent can score any points whatsoever you know what I’m getting at here you all know that I’m a proud alum of USC the greatest football program in the world where we never hang our heads in shame but simply say we didn’t lose that game the clock simply ran out when we were behind give us more time we can beat anybody No, anyway. At SC, the tradition there is we don’t play for a tie. Well, whether you like SC or not, pardon the humor, as Christians, we don’t play for a tie.

[45:31] But it’s even more than that. Van Til says we don’t just reject playing for a tie. We don’t allow the unbeliever to have any points. I think most people in an argument would be glad. I mean, you’re in a public debate and it’s being scored and your opponent gets, you know, 19 points and you get 46 points, you say, hey, that’s good. I wiped this guy out. 46-19. Van Til says, ultimately and in principle, when we debate with the unbeliever, the score is 100-0.

[46:01] And so the claim, the nature of the challenge is, and I’m going to take this from page 197 of the Defense of the Faith, the Christian theistic position must be shown to be the position which alone does not annihilate intelligent human experience. Without the Christian worldview, Van Til says in the Survey of Christian Epistemology, page 221, human experience is reduced to absurdity. Our argument, then, is that those who come apparently ever so near the Christian position but stops short of maintaining the fundamental conceptions of an absolute Christ, an absolute scripture, and regeneration reduce experience to an absurdity. And he’s talking about people who come close.

[46:52] He’s talking about those people that we think are being friendly. They’ll give a little bit to, you know, Jesus, a little bit to the Bible. Of course, it has flaws in it too, and so forth. And, well, men don’t need to be regenerated, but they do need to have some kind of change. They could clean up their life. Van Til says, it makes no difference how close they come, what their religious outlook is outside of Christianity. It reduces experience to absurdity. On unbelieving assumptions, everything is meaningless, everything is unknowable. Or as Van Til puts it, if Christianity is not true, nothing is true. The Defense of the Faith, page 266, 267.

[47:32] One makes no deal with this new man. He’s referring to the fallen man. He’s not like Adam. So the unregenerate man. One makes no deals with the unregenerate man. One shows that on his assumptions all things are meaningless. Science would be impossible. Knowledge of anything in any field would be impossible. No fact could be distinguished from any other fact. No law could be said to be a law with respect to facts. The whole manipulation of factual experience would be like the idling of a motor that is not in gear. Thus, every fact, not some facts, every fact clearly and not probably proves the truth of Christian theism. If Christian theism is not true, then nothing is true.

[48:19] That’s exhilarating, what I tell you. Rising above the muck of all this probabilism and all of this granting of points to the unbeliever and saying, really, it’s a complete route. It’s all or nothing. If Christianity is not true, nothing is true. Van Til says, Christianity is the only position which is philosophically justifiable. It’s the only rational, objectively valid position. Look at Common Grace, pages 8 and 82, if you’d like to get the quotations.

[48:52] Alright, so now, you know the features which would commend this kind of argument, and you know what the challenge is. It’s an all-or-nothing challenge about intelligibility in human experience. It’s not a probability claim. It’s not that we do better than others. It’s that you can’t reason at all. You can’t have truth at all if you don’t have the Christian worldview.

[49:14] Now I’m going to move in to what I think is the most important thing for you to get from our seminar on transcendental arguments. The apologetical, presuppositional use of transcendental arguments for all of the connections and similarities that we might find is nevertheless a unique kind of transcendental argumentation. So I want to talk about the uniqueness of the presuppositional use of the transcendental method. Just so that you understand that Van Til himself pointed this out, I’m going to give you some quotations.

[49:48] From the Defense of the Faith, pages 132 and 133, Van Til says that we are using a transcendental method but in a way that the idealist and Kant could not. He says, without the presupposition of the truth of Christian theism, no fact can be distinguished from any other fact. That’s one illustration of how you destroy intelligibility. And now listen to this. To say this is but to apply the method of idealist logicians in a way that these idealist logicians, because of their own anti-Christian theistic assumptions, cannot apply it. I realize that’s just one sentence in passing, but that’s crucial. Van Til says, I’m not arguing as an idealist argues, ultimately. I’m not arguing as Kant might argue, ultimately. I’m taking their program and I’m using that in a way that they could not, because of what? Their anti-Christian assumptions.

[50:48] In the Introduction to Systematic Theology, on page 14 and then page 55, Van Til says the same thing. It says, again, we may speak of our method as being transcendental, but if we do, we should once more observe that our meaning of that word is different from the Kantian or modern meaning. Kantian thought does not really find its final reference point in God. Modern thought in general does not really interpret reality in eternal categories. It seeks to interpret reality by a combination of eternal and temporal categories. For all non-Christian thought, as we have observed before, eternity is never anything more than a correlative of time. It is only the Christian who really interprets reality in exclusively eternal categories because only he believes in God as self-sufficient and not dependent upon time reality or temporal reality.

[51:44] Okay, so we are using a transcendental argument, but different from the way Kant would use it. And then he says, you know, Kant tries to mix the eternal and the temporal, and that’s why his argument will not work. And then page 55, referring to Valentine Hepp’s writings, Van Til says, Hepp does not point out adequately that on Kant’s basis there can be no science at all, either for the things of this life or for those of the next. If he had shown that Kant’s foundation of reasoning is wrong in as much as it is based upon the assumption of the ultimacy of the human mind, and in as much as it has assumed the existence of brute fact, he could never have said that Kant sought the solution of the question of certainty in the same direction in which a Christian should seek it.

[52:34] So here’s somebody that Van Til’s talking about who looks at Kant and says, Hey, we should do what Kant is doing. If Kant was good, he’s seeking the answer to the problem of certainty in the right way. And Van Til says he never should have admitted that. In general, you can say we’re going to do what Kant set out to do, but we can’t do it the way Kant did it because time and eternity get mixed. That’s what the first quotation said. Another way of putting it is he has the ultimacy of the human mind for the categories, and then he has bruteness of fact, the irrational facts out there, and you never can bring these together. So Kant doesn’t save the intelligibility of experience.

[53:10] Then one more remark, and then we’ll get on to the difference. Van Til says in the Introduction to Systematic Theology, page 45, that what we offer as Christian apologists is not an abstract critique of unbelieving thought, which any unbeliever could make. Van Til says, A non-Christian idealist might readily say what Bavinck said on this point. It is not enough for a Christian to point to the mere fact of the necessity of an a priori element in science. He must also show that unless that a priori be given the Christian theistic basis, it is no true a priori.

[53:52] So, unbelievers criticize each other philosophically. We criticize the unbeliever philosophically. But Van Til says that our criticism is something that no unbelieving philosopher could utter against another unbelieving philosopher. So, yes, we’re using a transcendental program, but Van Til himself has already flagged in his writings, I’m not arguing as Kant, not arguing as an idealist. In fact, my critique ultimately is not one that any unbeliever could utter.

[54:23] With that in mind, what is the difference? We’ve been looking at transcendental arguments generically, if you will, kind of getting their features and so forth. What makes the Vantilian or the Christian presuppositional use different from what a Kant or a Descartes or an idealist might be doing or a modern analytical philosopher with respect to reasoning transcendentally? And I want to suggest that the first and most important difference is that we are not arguing about particular isolated principles or operations. We’re not just talking about causality or logic, that the argument is over entire worldviews. We’re using a transcendental program to argue about an entire worldview, not about an element of a worldview.

[55:16] As Van Til said over and over again in his writings, Christianity must be defended as a unit, not in a blockhouse fashion. I’m not going to be reading these pages, but for your notes, you might want to put Defense of the Faith, pages 131 to 132. We do not take the elements of Christian theology as so many blocks, like a children’s pile of blocks, and say, okay, here we have the creation doctrine, and here we have the incarnation doctrine, and here we have this doctrine and that doctrine, and block by block by block, then we build up the edifice of Christian theology. Van Til says we are not defending Christianity in a blockhouse fashion. We are defending it as a unit. That doesn’t deny that there’s, you know, distinction between the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of incarnation and so forth. But the point is it all hangs together. And what we are defending is the entire unit.

[56:14] You know the way of saying that what Mike was talking about yesterday, there was only one ontological market where all the unbelieving blocks that deal with conceptual transmedal. They can’t possibly deal with an ontological.

[56:32] I’m not sure this is the same thing, Scott. The conceptual ontological is a distinction having to do with the way in which we have to think over against anything in the world corresponding to those concepts. Whereas Van Til is saying here, it’s not a matter of just one concept we have that we’re arguing about. We’re looking at an entire conceptual scheme, an entire worldview.

[56:54] Which is rooted in an ontological… Oh, yes. Yeah, we do believe it as ontological force, yes. But the unbeliever can’t. Well, he… That doesn’t seem to be in trial.

[57:06] Yeah. Remember we talked about Transcendental arguments that are efforts and transcendental arguments that are accomplishments. Well, he may make the effort, but he can never accomplish it. Right. He can be successful at it. Yeah, but I’m just not sure that what you’ve brought up, as important as it is, ties into the point I’m making right here. Modern transcendental arguments. Mike talked about Strawson’s book, Individuals. Strawson is not giving us a whole lot. When he gets done, I mean, it may be important notions and concepts, But he’s not giving us an entire worldview.

[57:40] Well, he’s giving us actually individuation between things as existing over time, even when they’re not perceived, okay? But you need much more than that in order to live your life and to have a conceptual scheme that accounts for all of human experience. Van Til says we have to begin with an entire worldview.

[58:03] I’m sorry? Just the beginning of a response to the guy who said, well, English is not a God. Oh, yes, yes. Very good, yes. Now I understand your question.

[58:13] That’s very insightful. Somebody comes along. Let’s say I’ve gotten done with Gordon Stein. I said, see, you don’t have the laws of logic, given your worldview. Somebody comes up to me and says, well, guess what? Stein should have just said the laws of logic are their own foundation. Here’s the transcendental argument for the laws of logic. And yes, now in answer to what you brought up, this is the beginning of the answer. and we say, we’re not arguing about the laws of logic only. We’re also arguing about science, the mind, its relationship to the world, ethics, everything. It’s just we can’t talk about everything at once. And so we have to pick out some issue to discuss with the unbeliever. But it’s not enough just to have the laws of logic. You also have to have a mind that uses the laws of logic in a world that is, in some sense, correlative to the mind using the laws of logic and on and on and on.

[58:59] Van Til says, where do I want to begin here? You can tell I’m struggling with time. He says, All men presuppose whatever name they may use for it, a synoptic view of reality as a whole. We continue to call it metaphysics. He says that in the case for Calvinism, page 115. Alternately, for convenience, we speak of this total outlook on reality as a world and life view. The Protestant Doctrine of Scripture, page 103.

[59:27] And then in the Introduction to Systematic Theology, page 6, The fight between Christianity and non-Christianity is in modern times no piecemeal affair. It is the life and death struggle between two mutually opposed life and worldviews.

[59:43] And so the Christian, perhaps thinking that his argument with the non-Christian is simply over the truth of, say, an external matter such as creation versus evolution, may set out to prove from science that the alternative is implausible, that evolution is implausible, but if you pursue that argument with people very long, sophisticated, educated people, you will find that the two of them, the Christian and the non-Christian, also disagree over the genuine character of science. They disagree over the nature of scientific theorizing. A Christian may think that his argument with the non-Christian is simply over a fact like Christ’s resurrection from the dead, and may set out to prove from history that that event occurred. But soon, if you argue with a sophisticated, thoughtful unbeliever, you will see that the Christian and the non-Christian also disagree over the proper character of historical research, historical reasoning, and evaluation. We may think as Christians that we’re only arguing with the non-Christian over philosophical matters having to do with coherence and practicality that can be found in what the Bible says. Is the Bible coherent? Does it contradict itself? Is it practical? But if we deal with thoughtful unbelievers, ultimately we see that the two of them also disagree over the nature of meaning, they disagree over the nature of utility, they disagree over the nature of possibility, they disagree over the nature of explanation. These are worldview differences is what we’re trying to get at here. And so because they operate out of the context of conflicting worldviews, the believer and the unbeliever will find if they’re consistent and their dialogue pushes into deeper reasons for differing with each other, that their disagreement covers their theory of knowledge, as well as what they claim to know about God, the world, man, life, conduct, and values, their metaphysics, their ethics, as well as their epistemology.

[61:36] And thus Van Til taught, and I’m quoting here from the Protestant Doctrine of Scripture, page 5, if man does not own the authority of Christ in the field of science, he assumes his own ultimate authority is back of his effort. The argument between the covenant keeper and the covenant breaker is never exclusively about any particular fact or about any number of facts. It is always at the same time about the nature of facts. And back of the argument about the nature of facts, there is an argument about the nature of man. However restricted the debate between the believer and the non-believer may be at any one time, there are always two worldviews ultimately at odds with one another. If I want to argue with an unbeliever about some particular fact, I also have to be able to talk about the nature of facts. But it isn’t enough to know the nature of facts. I also have to know the nature of man who understands the facts and argues about them. So Van Til says, ultimately, every argument is going to be an argument that’s at the presuppositional or worldview level.

[62:42] And this is different from what you find in people using transcendental programs. You know that it’s different with respect to Kant, because Kant began by saying what? We can’t know the nature of reality. Kant said, I’m only restricting myself conceptually to the way the mind works. If experience is going to be intelligible, my mind has got to make it intelligible. Idealist logicians don’t start with worldviews. They begin with particular conceptual problems. Van Til says, I want to argue transcendentally, but what I want to do is to bring two worldviews into conflict, make them come up against one another. And the way in which we’re going to argue over the worldviews is by transcendental methods.

[63:26] In the defense of the faith, Van Til says on page 126, the argument for Scripture is the same as the argument for God. Now, how could he say that unless what he meant is We’re arguing for the whole shooting match here, the whole enchilada, the whole worldview. Since we’re arguing for the whole worldview, then one aspect of the worldview is how do we know about God from the Bible? But then what does the Bible tell us about? It tells us about God. So whether you’re arguing about God or arguing about the Bible, you have to bring both into the same context. They both have to be on the platform at the same time when you’re arguing. It’s the whole worldview that we’re talking about.

[64:06] And Van Til says in The Defense of the Faith, page 167, that we have to present to the unbeliever the fact that he must accept or reject the whole of the Christian system. He must reject or accept the whole of the Christian system. We’re not trying to go through and devise first the transcendental argument for God’s omniscience, transcendental argument for creation, then a transcendental experience, what the philosophers want to make. because he’s convinced that one of the ways the philosophers flee from God is that they want to take certain elements of God. Now, if Jehovah exists, he provides order for the natural world. And so philosophers are willing to talk about order for the natural world, but they never want to get personal about it. They don’t want to get concrete. They don’t want to talk about Jehovah. Let’s take a five-minute break. Thank you.