I confess to:
- Never having read Karl Barth, Wolfhart Pannenburg, Hans Küng, or Jürgen Moltmann.
- Rejecting a presuppositional approach to apologetics.
- Affirming a local flood as well as an old earth.
- Considering the possibility of evolution as God’s means of creating.
- Being too liberal to be conservative and too conservative to be liberal.
- Being the only person to like Parish Smith better than Eric Sermon when EPMD was together.
- Having cried at the end of My Girl.
- Being an exclusivist when it comes to salvation.
- Rejecting all five points of T.U.L.I.P.
- Believing that Christ Tilling is the world’s greatest blogger even though he won’t buy me any books off of my Amazon wishlist!
.
I plan to remedy the first point in time, I stand firm on the second and third, and am too ignorant concerning the fourth to make any kind of informed decision. The fifth point seems to be enigmatic yet strangely enough the position of so many other bloggers that I encounter. I am simply embarassed by the sixth point :-o and I caught my uncle doing the same thing concerning the seventh! The eighth point I hold because I have to, not because I want to — but it is my conviction that Scripture teaches exclusivism in salvation. In regard to the ninth point I have to call it like I see it — when speaking with my Calvinist friends all of the seemingly contradictory aspects of Calvinism are relegated to divine mysteries or tensions that we must just live with — call me a child of the Enlightenment if you must but I believe we can make sense of a lot more stuff that we think sometimes. The tenth point is sheer fideism on my part — this is the one area where I will appeal to presuppositionalism and not attempt to defend it evidentially! :-)
B”H
Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth 
“Believing that Christ Tilling is the world’s greatest blogger even though he won’t buy me any books off of my Amazon wishlist!”
Verily, verily, the truth of the Lord is with thee! :-)
“Believing that Christ Tilling is the world’s greatest blogger even though he won’t buy me any books off of my Amazon wishlist!”
I agree with Nick.
“Believing that Christ Tilling is the world’s greatest blogger even though he won’t buy me any books off of my Amazon wishlist!”
Yea, I second Moses.
That’s a horrifying thing. Never havind read Barth…. My goodness. And WORSE- the bit about Tilling. I fear for your salvation young man. God have mercy on your soul.
“Christ Tilling” Good grief, you would think Moses and Elijah would know better!!!!!
Dr. West,
Well, if perchance you had sent Barth’s Kirchliche Dogmatik to ME instead of Chris Tilling then points 1 & 10 would have been different!!!
Nevermind that I can’t read German yet ;)
Oh, and I was wondering Chris(t)… if thou wilt, let me make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.
hmmm….sounds like we need to pick up where we left off on the Calvinist Debate…of course, I would only use the presuppositional approach ;)
I have a better idea… Let’s both team up and challenge Gnrhead to a Royal Rumble!
Get out of my head!
I agree with almost all these points, especially 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9. (I have not seen My Girl and don’t know who or what Parish Smith is. I’m very apathetic about the flood. Chris’s blog is good but 10 is hyperbole.)
Regarding 1: I loves me some German theologians but wish they would communicate better! (Would writing chapter outlines, overviews, and summaries really hurt that bad?) Barth is great but way too long. (I do hope to live long enough to read all of CD.) Moltmann is exciting and awe-inspiring but convoluted. I like Pannenberg’s Jesus: God & Man but gave up on his SysTheo after 100 pages. (I decided I didn’t want to hurt myself that bad.) Kung I’ve not read.
For me, it’s Brunner all the way. You can actually carry his complete Dogmatics in one hand.
Sean,
You know what they say… ‘great minds think alike’ ;)
Parrish Smith was one half of the hip hop group EPMD. If you ever want to educate yourself on EPMD then I would recommend this Wikipedia article. And if you are into Rap music then it wouldn’t hurt to pick up a copy of Strictly Business or Unfinished Business — they’re classics.
And rent My Girl as soon as possible!
I’ve interacted with very few German theologians. I have Von Harnack’s History of Dogma in 7 PDF files, and I adore Martin Hengel, but other than that I’m completely ignorant (aside from some second hand treatments from Robert Letham) of German theologians. Hopefully this will all change soon.
Oh. Rap. No thanks.
Re: German theologians. Really a lot of them are quite good. I REALLY like Brunner. Although he was overshadowed by Barth, his theology is far more accessible, which I think is very important. I could see using his Dogmatics as a textbook for a theology class but never Barth’s. Excellent stuff.
I get annoyed with conservative evangelicals when they vilify these guys without ever reading them. If they don’t affirm something like the Chicago statement, they are automatically rejected as dirty liberals. If you read them, however, you can see their vibrant personal faiths and learn many, many new and wonderful things. Just ignore the five pages you disagree with.
Royal Rumble, huh? yea, I like the sound of that
I’d certainly like to hear your critique of presuppositionalism sometime. It is hard for me to image why a Christian would not be a presuppositionalist (I’m of course referring to the Van Tillian, Bahnsen, Frame type) in his apologetic.
Jeff,
Thanks for asking — I hope I can give a sufficient answer. Basically, my approach to apologetics is to give a reason/defense of why I believe what I believe. For this reason I am an evidentialist since it is the evidence that compels me.
Now if one views apologetics in the sense of trying to compel others then I can understand the presuppositonal approach in the Calvinist paradigm — they don’t believe that all the evidence in the world could compel the unregenerate — but I’m not a Calvinist and my apologetic is more concerned with supporting my beliefs.
In the end I find the presuppositional approach as an attempt to legitimize question begging. I’m sure that you can articulate your position much better than I can and I don’t say this to demean the approach, but I can’t find a good reason to accept it.
I’m not into apologetics so much (as a neo-ortho I’m not so down on fideism), so I don’t know too much about presuppositionalism. From the little I’ve seen, I do think it is very useful in discussions to understand how other people think and how their worldviews work. However, it seems to me some of these people say, “My presuppositions are right, therefore my conclusion is right, regardless of the evidence.” At that point they are on very shaky ground.
This is probably a bad example, but I recall a guy over at P&P who said that all people who don’t believe in inerrancy should be excommunicated from the church because his presuppositions said that the Bible HAD to be inerrant. Inerrancy is a deduction from the doctrine of inspiration, and a logical one too, but if the evidence doesn’t support it… Maybe the presupposition needs to be re-examined. The same thing could be said about some views of creation.
But please, correct me if I’m wrong.
Actually, that is somewhat like the position from which Karl Barth begins his theology; we must start with the belief that the God of the Christian faith is true. (Though, I certainly don’t think that he’d say you couldn’t understand anything without that presupposition. Also, there is the recognition that this is theology and not apologetics; at some point we must move on from trying to prove things. Finally, neo-orthodoxy recognizes the gap in our knowledge and experience that can only be bridged by faith.
I was exposed to presuppositionalism in Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth (it was a gift). She wrote that there is something wrong with your worldview if reality contradicts it. So far so good. But then she attacks evolution and promotes creation science and ID. Um, Nancy, say what you will about evolution, but they aren’t making that evidence up. You can’t say that your worldview perfectly comports with reality by denying the facts the evidence testifies to.
Sean,
I’m pretty much in agreement with you. The fact is that we all have presuppositions — but I believe that if our ultimate goal is arriving at truth then we need to allow the evidence to reshape our presuppositions when necessary. This is why I’m an evidentialist.
Presuppositionalism as an apologetic (as I understand it) basically begins with the belief that the Judeo-Christian God (i.e. the Trinity) is the only true God and the Bible (66 book canon) is his Word. It is said that this is the necessary precondition to make sense out of anything. I’ve heard Greg Bahnsen argue his position from what he calls the ‘impossibility of the contrary or opposite’ — meaning that no other worldview can provide the necessary preconditions for understanding anything, and anything that does make sense in another worldview has been borrowed or stolen from the Christian worldview.
The reasoning, I believe, and Jeff can correct me if I am wrong, is that there is no authority higher than God, and to try to establish his authority based upon outside evidences is actually an affront to God’s authority. As I see it this apologetic simply assumes the truth of its conclusion, which I don’t particularly find persuasive.
Thanks guys for your responses. I am working on a response and I’ll post it, hopefully by the end of the day. I’ll have to leave it at that though. I’ll certainly come back and read responses, but I can’t go any further. I am trying to make my way through 1 & 2 Kings (in prep. for an exam on Tuesday) this weekend, on top of other class work. So please bear with me. :)
Sean,
You said:
That is exactly my approach to apologetics. I no longer attempt to prove my case — I simply give the reasons for my belief. I’m well aware that we can’t make anyone believe anything they don’t want to — all the evidence in the world won’t change a hardened heart.
Presuppositionalism I have been told is a Reformed (i.e. Calvinistic) apologetic and I believe that they would agree with me that evidence can’t change anyone’s heart or beliefs — the difference being that they start by presupposing the truth of their system whereas I am led to the truth by the cumulative evidence.
__________________________
Jeff,
Take your time brother. I understand completely. My prayers are with you as you work your way through seminary. We need more seminarians with your character! Even though we’ll probably never see eye to eye on this I still respect your work as an apologist — your blog is definitely one of my most used resources. God bless!
I am so glad I will never have to take an exam again.
Although grading them is worse.
Well from what I have read from Van Til on presuppositionalism, the point of the apologetic approach is to show that the unbeliever cannot maintain their worldview (for instance, wanting a good governement, even thoughts of the ethical good, etc…) with their unbelieving presuppositions (either atheism, or things like libertarian free will, knowledge through reason alone, etc…).
For Van Til, “full fledged Christianity” – which was Calvinism accoridng to Van Til – is the ultimate opponent for worldviews that are built upon philosophies of men. For instance, in my philosophy class, the professor found it difficult to respond back to my critiques of their worldviews because I did not accept their epistemic premises nor the autonomous freedom of man apart from God which most worldviews are built upon. Essentially, what the presuppositional approach is is having a consistent Christian worldview and starting off with that foundation and maintaining it. In other words, Van Til argued, that when the Christian begins with the presuppositions of the philosophies of men, then it is only inevitable that they are able to come to the anti-Christian conclusions that they do. And when the Christian tries to use their method and presuppositions then they fall prey to them.
For instance, I do not accept the classical proofs for the existence of God because they do not necessarily yield the Christian God. Logically speaking, they only prove a “designer” or a “prime mover” or “that being which no greater can be conceived”, etc…they do not say who it is, what this being is like, if it is a person at all, etc…rather, that information comes by way of revelation (an epistemology not readily accepted by the world). Hence, when the professor critiqued the proofs, to his amazement, I agreed with his critiques and them replied, “that’s not the God that I’m trying to prove…one who is subject to human reason.”
Those are my thoughts….I remember I posted a big ole response on your initial critique some time ago and it was lost….I wrote on the fly so I didn’t copy it and couldn’t remember all my points…
Moses
Sadly, yes. And for some reason when I imported all of my posts from blogspot to WordPress not all comments came with them. I wish I did have that original comment because I never got the chance to read it. I originally just approved it figuring it would post directly to the blog and I would read it then but because I had changed to the beta version something went wrong.
Thanks for your explanation.
Again, what prchdaword described sounds a lot like Karl Barth’s approach to theology. I wonder what the intersection of the two looks like. Barth was a Calvinist but not a traditional Calvinist, so I don’t know what those in the latter category like van Til would think of him or how much they would borrow from him.
I’m going to make this quick at this point, I do hope there is something coherent here:
Nick, you state:
“Basically, my approach to apologetics is to give a reason/defense of why I believe what I believe. For this reason I am an evidentialist since it is the evidence that compels me.”
First, I would say that it is the Spirit that compels you, working through the evidence. I believe this would be a more acurate and biblical way to state it. I would deny, on biblical grounds that facts (of themselves) are what compel anyone to believe. I’m assuming we can both agree that men is dead in sin and without the work of the spirit in our lives, this is where man will stay.
Second, giving a reason/defense certainly does not drive one to a a pure evidential method. Presupper. acknowledge 1Pet. 3:15. In fact, I like the way Van Til defines apologetics as “the vindication of the Christian philosophy of life over against the various forms of the non-Christian philosophy of life. So, Christianity is certainly vindicated through evidences, but it is also vindicated through the fact that other worldviews can not live up to what they claim or what they assume about the world, but is not part of their system.
Therefore, when Sean, you say “I do think it is very useful in discussions to understand how other people think and how their worldviews work” this blows my mind since this (worldview analysis and the destruction thereof) is the hallmark of a presuppositional methodology.
But, you know very well that as you might count one thing as evidence, the unbeliever will not. We both believe that God created the universe and therefore the beauty and the wonder of it speaks of his handy work (therefore his existence). The unbeliever certainly doesn’t see it this way.
Paul, does not divorces his theology from his apologetics. His theology drives his methodogy, as so should ours. We shouldn’t lay aside our theology (the fact that we believe God exits, that this God is Triune, etc.) in order to answer the atheist. We don’t do this with the cultist, which in my mind is just another form of atheistic idolatry.
If you have not heard it already, I would recommend the Barker/Manata debate.
See also A Sound Proof for God’s Existence by Ronald W. Di Giacomo. or If Knowledge Then God: The Epistemological Theistic Arguments of Plantinga and Van Til, by James Anderson. Calvain Theological Journal, (April 2005) and I would recommend the book Revelation and Reason: New Essays in Reformed Apologetics. Ed. K. Scott Oliphint & Lane G. Tipton (P&R, 2007; ISBN#: 9-78087-55259-69).
I do apologize that I had to keep my own comments short, but time (for these things) is not what I have these days. :)
I have this article online, but if I had the power I’d taken it down, edit it and rework some of it (i.e. it’s not that good).
Thanks for the times brothers!
Nick,
I saw that you had posted on the Leveller’s blog about the Creation/Evolution Debate. There are lots of resources out there — I just published a review essay of several of them in the Alban Institute magazine — Congregations. I called it “Charles Darwin Goes to Church.” I’ve also reviewed several books in more detail on my blog — but perhaps the best place to start is with John Polkinghorne. He’s both a physicist and a theologian. Alister McGrath has written on this topic — though I’ve not read it — from an evalngelical position. For fun check out the web site for Evolution Sunday — http://www.evolutionsunday.org
So Nick,
Is it time to update the confessions based on your newfound understanding of presuppositionalism?
Ranger: Not quite yet. I’m still an evidentialist at heart and my main beef with presuppositional apologetics is that it seems that any theistic faith could use it as a method of defense.