0:00 Opening Remarks…Greg L. Bahnsen Announces What He Will Cover In This Lecture: Expound The Use Of Transcendental Method By Cornelius Van Til; Look At The Various Criticisms Of Van Til (Briefly Showing That Most Of Them Overlook The Transcendental Nature Of His Argument); Look At The Arguments That Do Attack The Transcendental Nature Of His Argument (Will Result In Equipping Christians In Boldly Challenging The Unbeliever).
0:52 GLB Expresses His Thoughts About Van Til.
2:10 GLB Gives Outline Of The Lecture:
2:28 ——-#1) Features (A,B,C,) Which Commend The Transcendental Argument For Christian Apologetics.
2:47 ——-#2) The Nature Of The Challenge.
2:56 ——-#3) Van Til (And Christian Apologists In General) Make A Unique Use Of Transcendental Methodology When They Defend The Faith … What Kant & Strawson Are Doing In Many Ways Is NOT WHAT THE CHRISTIAN APOLOGIST IS DOING; … Entire Worldviews Being Argued; The Procedure Being Concrete Not Abstract; Resting On Authority; What Is (From A Philosopher’s Standpoint) The Issue We’re Pushing When We Argue Transcendentally?
3:48 ——-#4) Look At 10 Pages Of Van Til’s Writings: The Survey Of Christian Epistemology & The Defense Of The Faith … (GLB Promises To Give “The Filet Mignon” Of Cornelius Van Til).
4:53 GLB Asks The Question, Why Does Van Til Say The Transcendental Approach To Reasoning Commends (Being Worthy Of Regard) Itself To Christian Apologetics? — (GLB Gives Preparatory Remarks).
6:15 ——- #1) Features (A,B,C,) Which Commend The Transcendental Argument For Christian Apologetics.
6:15 FEATURE (A) – [Answer To Question Above] : DEFENSE OF THE FAITH Page 257, 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. 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 is 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. 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. Okay, and why am I bothering to give you an instant replay? Common Grace is the first book Van Til published in this general area. 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.
7:50 Cont. — And why is it that this is the most penetrating means used by the Holy Spirit? Because 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.
9:13 GLB Comments About The Behavior Of The Vast Majority Of Philosophers.
10:49 FEATURE (B) – Van Till 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, it is an insult to the living God to say that His revelation of Himself so lacks in clarity that man himself, through and through a revelation of God, does justice by it when he says that God probably exist. The argument for the existence of God and for the truth of Christianity is objectively valid. We should not tone down the validity of this argument to the probability level. The argument may be poorly stated and may never be adequately stated, but in itself the argument is absolutely sound. Christianity is the only reasonable position to hold.
11:46 GLB Addresses The Criticisms Van Til Received From His Quote (Feature B) … WHAT KIND OF ARGUMENT IS IT THAT’S NEVER STATED?
13:00 Cont. — What Determines The Adequacy Of An Argument? 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 Cont. — 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.
14:32 GLB Expands And Addresses The Critique Of How Subjective Elements (like the Canon of Scripture) Get In The Way Of Van Til’s Grand Objective Argument.
16:05 Cont. — (Van Til Addressing The Aforementioned Critique) THE SURVEY OF CHRISTIAN EPISTEMOLOGY Page 221, 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 GLB Gives A 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?
17:58 Cont. — You see, the point is in the transcendental argument, as I’ve told you many times now, you can’t argue against Christianity without assuming the Christian worldview in terms of which your argument can be stated, can make sense, can be intelligible. Okay, 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. In fact, we’re going to come to the point where Van Til says you have to be concrete, not abstract.
18:29 Cont. — 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, you know, 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. There’s just no way to escape this. So Van Til is 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.
19:25 Cont. — 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? Just means that we’re precising, we’re making more adequate our interpretation.
20:04 CLASS COMMENT – The Game Of Telephone, But With GOD Sovereignly Controlling It.
21:13 GLB Expands On The Class Comment – 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 tell you, that’s a pretty tough thing to deal 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.
21:56 ARE WE REASONING IN VICIOUS CIRCLES? (GLB, Sets Up The Question That Will Be Answered Later…)
22:03 FEATURE (B) – COMMON GRACE Page 49, 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.
23:05 Cont. — 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. 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. Because it really 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.
24:12 CLASS COMMENT – There’s No Conflict Of Any Subjective Elements When Arguing Transcendentally.
24:24 GLB Expands On The Comment – My way of putting it is, Van Til sees all of those as 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 is his future research doesn’t change the validity of the argument.
24:59 GLB Uses THE RESURRECTION To Illustrate How Future Research Can Change The Validity Of An Argument. – 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? Of course. 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.
25:34 GLB Expresses His Confidence And Takes Comfort In The Transcendental Argument (Relating These To Feature B) — 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 is said and done, they all have to face the same questions. 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.
26:30 REVIEW FEATURES – So, the first feature that commends the transcendental approach is that the Holy Spirit makes use of this in the most penetrating way. It’s an absolute call to conversion. Secondly, it’s objectively valid.
26:43 FEATURE (C) – This Argument Is A Forceful 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.
27:24 Cont. — DEFENSE OF THE FAITH Page 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.
28:02 Cont. — (There’s No Room For Idolatry Anywhere) 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. Van Til says the transcendental argument says there’s no room for idolatry anywhere. Nothing can be said, any dimension of experience for idolatry.
28:41 Cont. — DEFENSE OF THE FAITH Page 354, Van Til is replying to a critic and 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? 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, and what? You’re saying the unbeliever, given his chance, philosophy can’t make sense out of counting? Out of weighing? Out of measuring? Van Til says, that’s what I’m saying.
29:24 GLB Expands And Asks The Class The Question, Why There Can Be No Counting (No Mathematics) In A Chance Universe? — 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 CLASS COMMENT (Indiscernible Audio) — GLB Comments On The Stunning Ways Van Til’s Critics Misunderstood Him Regarding Mathematics And Implies That The Unbeliever Is Stealing From The Christian Worldview In Order To Make Sense Of Counting Because Their Principles For Their Worldview/System Can’t Make Sense Of It.
31:15 CLASS COMMENT (Indiscernible Audio) — GLB Comments On CHAOS And CHAOS THEORY.
32:14 CLASS QUESTION : Is The CHAOS THEORY Contradictory? — 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 that what’s going by 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, okay – well Plato would be very happy with this. Therefore, 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 between them, but they’re not the same thing.
33:20 CLASS QUESTION : How Would A Presuppositionalist Deal With Chaos Theory? — [The Book Of Zumbamba] 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 that you’re…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. I said, 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. The guy’s 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 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.
34:47 CLASS COMMENT – Dealing With Probability Added To Chaos Theory [Alphabets Thrown On Table Enough Times Will Make The Book Of Genesis] — 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. So how do you argue with that? Well, the guy’s killed himself, right? You don’t have to argue with it. You don’t have to argue with it. You can 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. 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!
37:02 FEATURE (C) — 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. 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. 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. And it’s any fact you talk about, and it’s only Christianity that allows you to talk about it. Now, I realize 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? Van Til says, because in principle, you can’t account for anything except within the Christian worldview.
38:45 CLASS QUESTION (Indiscernible Audio…Something To Do With Bahnsen Corresponding With Gordon Stein After Their Debate) — GLB Addresses The Comment.
40:09 FEATURE (A) – 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 apologetics, says, 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, is 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. 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.
41:49 GLB Reiterates The Power Of Van Til’s Transcendental Argument.
42:34 CLASS COMMENTS – Agrees With The Power Of Van Til’s Argument Over Against Other Apologetic Methods … Biblical Archaeology Discoveries [Recommended Viewing: The Facts Don’t Speak for Themselves (2 of 3); The Place of Evidence in Apologetics (1 of 3)].
44:08 ——- #2) The Nature Of The Challenge.
44:13 DEFENSE OF THE FAITH Page 256, According to Van Til, Christianity is not merely just as reasonable or just as defensible as any other position. 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. 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. So we’re not accepting any ties. Nor are we accepting that our opponent can score any points whatsoever.
44:58 GLB Gives Football Team Analogy – As Christians, We Don’t Play For A Tie. 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 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 to 0.
46:01 DEFENSE OF THE FAITH Page 197, The Christian theistic position must be shown to be the position which alone does not annihilate intelligent human experience.
46:20 Cont. — THE SURVEY OF CHRISTIAN EPISTEMOLOGY Page 221, Without the Christian worldview, human experience is reduced to absurdity. Our argument then is that those who come apparently ever so near the Christian position, but stop 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. 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, 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.
47:26 Cont. — DEFENSE OF THE FAITH Page 266, 267, 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 GLB Comments That Van Til’s Apologetic Is Exhilarating And Rises Above The Muck Of Grant The Unbeliever Points And Probabilism.
48:36 Cont. — COMMON GRACE Pages 8, 82, Van Til says Christianity is the only position which is philosophically justifiable. It’s the only rational, objectively valid position.
48:52 REVIEW – All right, so now you know the features which would commend this kind of argument, and you know what the challenge is. It’s a 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 ——- #3) The Apologetical Presuppositional Use Of Transcendental Arguments – (Van Til – And Christian Apologists In General – Make A Unique Use Of Transcendental Methodology When They Defend The Faith)
49:41 DEFENSE OF THE FAITH Pages 132, 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.
50:49 Cont. — INTRODUCTION TO SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY Pages 14, 55, He 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.
51:45 Cont. — GLB Comments On The Quote Above – 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.
52:02 Cont. — Referring to Valentine Hepp’s (Dutch Theologian 1879-1950) 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 inasmuch as it is based upon the assumption of the ultimacy of the human mind, and inasmuch 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.
52:33 Cont. — GLB Comments On The Quote Above – So here’s somebody that Van Til is talking about who looks at Kant and says, hey, we should do what Kant is doing. 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, stories, and then he has bruteness of fact, irrational facts out there, and you never can bring these together. So Kant doesn’t save the intelligibility of experience.
53:14 Cont. — INTRODUCTION TO SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY Page 45, 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 (Herman Bavinck Dutch Theologian 1854-1921) 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. 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 WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE? – What makes the Vantillian 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?
54:48 (ANSWER) 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. 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.
55:33 Cont. — 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.
56:13 CLASS COMMENT – The Conceptual Ontological Relationship To Van Til’s Worldview Transcendental Approach. GLB Responds…
57:58 CLASS COMMENT (Indiscernible Audio) — GLB Comments, Somebody comes along, let’s say I’ve gotten done with Gordon Stein and I’ve 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 that 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.
59:05 Cont. — 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. 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.
59:44 Cont. — 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.
1:00:40 Cont. — 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.
1:01:36 Cont. — 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 as 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.
1:02:19 GLB Expands – 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. 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.
1:03:26 DEFENSE OF THE FAITH Page 126, Van Til says 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. 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.
1:04:21 GLB Expands – We’re not trying to go through and devise first the transcendental argument for God’s omniscience, transcendental argument for creation, then a transcendental for experience, whatever 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. Okay, let’s take a five-minute break.
- Four Types of Proof (1 of 10)
- Van Til’s Why I Believe in God (2 of 10)
- Kant in Context (3 of 10)
- Contemporary Transcendental Arguments, Part 1 (4 of 10)
- Contemporary Transcendental Arguments, Part 2 (5 of 10)
- Summary of Transcendental Arguments, Part 1 (6 of 10)
- Summary of Transcendental Arguments, Part 2 (7 of 10)
- Apologetical Transcendental Argument (8 of 10)
- Back to Basics (9 of 10)
- Van Til’s Critics: Hoover, Dooyeweerd, Frame (10 of 10)
