Van Til and the Ligonier
Apologetic*
—
John M. Frame
Introduction
*
R. C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley, Classical Apologetics
(
Classical Apologetics has been eagerly awaited. This book puts
into systematic (and at least somewhat technical) form an apologetic approach
of considerable interest, which up until now has been expressed primarily in
popular writings and taped lectures. It is also notable for its critique of
“presuppositionalism” (mainly in its Van Tillian form). This book is one of the
most extensive critiques of Van Til to date,1 and I think of all the
critiques of Van Til this one shows the most thorough research and the most
accurate interpretation.2 In saying this, I should acknowledge
a possible conflict of interest: The authors express indebtedness to me for
correspondence between myself and Gerstner which “significantly sharpened our
understanding of Vantillian apologetics.”3 However, in commending
these authors for their understanding of Van Til, I am not intending to commend
myself. My contribution to their formulations was relatively small (and, as it
turns out, not always understood and/or accepted). But Gerstner himself is a
former student of Van Til and has (as I know from personal discussions) been
mulling over Van Til’s position for many years, with an intense interest and
scholarly
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care
not matched, in my view, by other critics of Van Til.4 Thus the credit
for the book’s high critical standards must go to the authors themselves.
I shall not discuss the details of the
book’s historical studies, though these are interesting and are among the
book’s best features. Gerstner was a professor of church history for many
years, and this is his chief area of expertise. In general, the historical
sections argue that a kind of “evidentialism” similar to the Ligonier type5
has been the common view of orthodox Christians through most of church history;
hence it deserves to be called the “classical” or “traditional” view. This
argument is supported by studies of Augustine, Luther, Calvin,
seventeenth-century orthodoxy, Eastern and Roman orthodoxy.6 However, the
authors believe that classical apologetics today is “sick and ailing,” though
not dead.7
“Presuppositionalism,” they tell us, “has become the majority report today
among Reformed theologians, although it cannot even be called a minority report
of church history.”8 Other reviewers more historically inclined than I
will doubtless seek to evaluate this thesis. Substantial arguments, I think,
can be presented on either side. Of course, the issue is not terribly important
in evaluating the relative validity of the two approaches. If Van Til’s view is
relatively new, it is not on that account false; Protestants are not
traditionalists.9 In general, it seems to me that the history of
apologetics before our century is ambiguous on these questions. Orthodox
Christian apologists have always believed in the supreme authority of Scripture
over all human reasoning—the essence of the Van Tillian position. On the other
hand, they have also spoken of various kinds of reasoning that in some sense
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legitimately
“precede” faith.10 The apparent contradiction here was, in general, not
perceived as a problem until after Kant’s “Copernican revolution” which greatly
increased the epistemological sophistication of theologians and philosophers.
Only after Kant could the logic of presuppositions be systematically
investigated (as it was, even before Van Til, by thinkers like Hegel, Marx,
Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, and by Christian apologists like James Orr). Thus to
ask whether Calvin was a “presuppositionalist” or an “evidentialist”11
is a bit like asking whether Augustine was a Protestant or a Catholic.12
As to the modern situation, many of us
will be surprised to hear that presuppositionalism is the “majority report”
among current apologists. It all depends, of course, on how you define
presuppositionalism. I suppose that a case can be made, that, in this age,
following Kant, Hegel, Marx, Einstein, pragmatism, phenomenology,
existentialism, Wittgenstein, Kuhn, Polanyi, Hanson, Dooyeweerd, and many
others, most apologists have taken seriously the issue of presuppositions. In
our time, it is exceedingly difficult to deny that human thought (whether
scientific, logical, historical, philosophical, religious, or whatever) is
influenced by our “pretheoretical” attitudes and commitments.13
Perhaps this fact is what suggests to our authors that presuppositionalism is
ascendant presently; they do not document their assertion, so it is hard to
say. In my view, this openness to considering the influence of pretheoretical
commitments on thought is a long way from a full-fledged presuppositionalism.
Still, it is a positive development in the dialogue. One of my great
disappointments about the current volume is its failure to deal in any serious
way with these powerful philosophical currents which create,
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for
many, considerable presumption against the Ligonier type of apologetic.
I. Ligonier and Van Til
I shall now try to analyze the authors’
critique of Van Til, before discussing their positive apologetic. In the book
itself this order is reversed, but I feel that in this review questions of
methodology and epistemology ought to precede discussion of the authors’
arguments for Christianity; and the former questions are inseparably bound up
with the critique of “presuppositionalism.”
Van Til’s apologetics is essentially
simple, however complicated its elaborations. It makes two basic assertions:
(1) that human beings are obligated to presuppose God in all of their thinking,
and (2) that unbelievers resist this obligation in every aspect of thought and
life. The first assertion leads Van Til to criticize the notion of intellectual
autonomy; the second leads him to discuss the noetic effects of sin. The
Ligonier group criticizes Van Til in both areas, which we shall consider in
that order.
1.
Autonomy, Reason, and Circularity
The initial description of
presuppositionalism shows insight in the prominent place given to Van Til’s
critique of autonomy:14 this is, I think, the foundation of
Van Til’s system and its most persuasive principle.15 We must not
do apologetics as if we were a law unto ourselves, as if we were the measure of
all things. Christian thinking, like all of the Christian life, is subject to
God’s lordship.
However, the book’s analysis of
the autonomy question reveals unclarity and/or misunderstanding. The authors
deduce from Van Til’s statements about autonomy that he wants us to “start
with” God, rather than with ourselves.16 Now “start with” is
(like “precede”
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and
“priority”) an extremely slippery phrase in theology and apologetics. It can
indicate a pedagogical order of topics, an emphasis, a method of study, a
conviction about prominence or importance, a relation of necessary or
sufficient conditionality, or a criterion of truth. I believe that Van Til
almost always has the last alternative in mind, though there is occasionally
some ambiguity. At any rate, one would expect the Ligonier authors to offer
some analysis of this concept, to make some attempt to define it (both for Van
Til and for their own system). But no such analysis is forthcoming. The authors
write as if the meaning of the idea were perfectly self-evident.
So they insist that we must, in coming to
know God, “begin with ourselves,” and therefore reason autonomously in some
sense. “One simply cannot start outside himself. To begin outside oneself, one
would first have to depart from himself.”17 Now certainly in one
sense this is true, and Van Til quite readily admits it. Our authors even quote
him to this effect,18 but they claim that it represents
an inconsistency in his thought, a kind of embarrassing admission.19
Anyhow, on Van Til’s view, the self is the “proximate,” but not the “ultimate”
starting point.20 What this means, I think, is that it is the self
which makes its decisions both in thought and practical life: every judgment we
make, we make because we, ourselves, think it is right. But this fact does not
entail that the self is its own ultimate criterion of truth. We are regularly
faced with the decision as to whether we should trust our own unaided judgment,
or rely on someone else. There is nothing odd or strange (let alone logically
impossible) about such a question; it is entirely normal.
Therefore, there are two questions to be
resolved: (1) the metaphysical (actually tautological!) question of whether all
decisions are decisions of the self, and (2) the epistemological-ethical
question of what standard the self ought to use in coming to its decisions.21
Van
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Til
and the Ligonier group agree, I think, on the first question, though it is not
of much interest to Van Til; but that agreement does not prejudice the answer
to the second question. That one still needs to be posed and resolved. And it
is the second question that Van Til—and Scripture—are concerned about.
Scripture regularly calls God’s creatures to submit their judgment to that of
their creator. If someone objects that even a choice to serve God is a choice
made by the self and therefore “starting with” the self in one sense, Van Til
can simply grant the point, while reminding his questioner that in another
sense, in a far more important sense, this choice does not “start with” the
self.22
The same sorts of distinctions need to be
made in the discussion of human reason, another topic prominent in this book. Classical
Apologetics is rationalistic with a vengeance. The authors attack the
anti-intellectual trends of our time,23 laud signs of a
“retreat from this anti-intellectual binge,”24 show at length from
Scripture our obligation to reason with unbelievers.25 “Fideism” is
the great enemy.26 Van Til, however, they say, abandons apologetics,27
refusing to reason with unbelievers. He doesn’t believe in proofs28
or evidences.29 He denies that you can find God at the end of a
syllogism.30 The present reviewer, that notorious Van Tillian,
cannot engage in rational argument with anyone:
[The
Arminian] can argue with Frame, but Frame will not argue with him. Frame can
only tell him that he is in error and that he must change his mind because he,
Frame, has been illumined by God to see otherwise.31
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On the contrary, say our authors: just as
we cannot avoid “starting with ourselves,” so we cannot avoid the use of reason
(in any area of life, particularly apologetics). Any attempt to persuade an
unbeliever of Christian truth requires reasoning; indeed, rational argument is
necessary if we are going to show the “rational necessity of presupposing God.”32
And, in fact, presuppositionalists do give reasons.33 In practice,
“there is no real difference on the matter of autonomy.”34
Buttressing all of this is the familiar
argument that some basic principles of reason (such as the law of
noncontradiction) must be presupposed in any intelligible discourse; indeed, “The
law of Noncontradiction (is) a Universal Prerequisite for Life.”35
You can’t question logic without presupposing it; you can’t argue against the
primacy of logic without presupposing it as primary.
So our authors support the “principle of
the primacy of the intellect.” This does not mean that the intellect is more
excellent than the God whom the intellect discovers; rather, “primacy of
intellect means that we must think about God before we can actually know him.”36
Thus, when Van Til speaks of a “primacy of the intellect based on the
creator-creature distinction,” he seems to be talking nonsense. If the
intellect is primary, its primacy is not “based on” anything. And if God is
somehow known prior to intellectual activity, then how do we know him at all?
But here, as with “starting point,” some
distinctions must be made. “Intellect” or “reason” can mean various things:
laws of logic, the psychological faculty by which we make judgments and draw
inferences, the judgments and inferences themselves, systems of thought.37
It is certainly true that reason as a psychological faculty is involved in any
rational activity. Thus putting it tautologically emphasizes the obviousness of
the point. It is the same sort of obviousness we saw earlier in the proposition
that one must “start with the self.” But just as “starting with the self”
leaves open the question of what criterion of truth the self should
acknowledge, so
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“starting
with reason” leaves open the question of what criterion of truth human reason
ought to recognize. As a psychological faculty, reason has the choice of
operating according to a number of different principles: different systems of
logic, different philosophical schemes, different religious commitments. Van
Til, therefore, may (and does!) grant that reason is involved in all human
thought and life. But for him the important question is, What criteria of truth
ought our reason to acknowledge?
Our authors would answer this question by
saying, first of all, that reason ought to acknowledge the law of
noncontradiction. (Perhaps they even define reason in terms of the laws of
logic, so that for them the “primacy of reason” means, not the primacy of a
psychological faculty, but the primacy of logic; that, again, isn’t clear.)
Again, however, the main point is true in a sense. The law of noncontradiction
denies that p and not-p can both be true at the same time and in the same
respect. That is a Christian principle, presupposed by Scripture itself. But it
is, of course, also highly abstract. Nothing more concrete can be derived from
the law of noncontradiction alone. To derive concrete conclusions we need
additional principles, principles which are religiously, as well as
philosophically, problematic.38 Hence the tendency for
various philosophers to define rationality in terms of their particular
systems. It is at this point that Van Til enters the discussion and demands
that God’s voice be heard in the selection of rational principles. It is at
this level, with this sort of concern, that he talks about “a primacy of the
intellect based on the creator-creature distinction.” He refers here to a
reasoning process which recognizes God’s standards as supreme. Perhaps for
clarity’s sake he would have been wiser not to speak of the “primacy of the
intellect” at all;39 but it isn’t difficult to
understand what he means. Reason is always involved in the human search for
knowledge; but reason must always choose its standards, and that choice is
fundamentally a religious one.
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Our authors reply, however, that we must,
after all, “think about God before we can know him.”40 And if we are
trying to think about God before we know him, then, obviously, at that
stage of our inquiry, we cannot presuppose God. We cannot make God our supreme
standard until we know that he exists. Therefore we must adopt some other
standard, at least “provisionally.”41 But this analysis
(1) denies the clear teaching of Romans 1 that everyone knows God already (vv.
20, 21 ), (2) posits an exception to 1 Cor 10:31:that when you are just
beginning your quest for knowledge, you do not need to think “to the glory of
God”; you can justifiably think to the glory of something/someone else. Such
notions fall by their own weight. They are intolerable to the Bible-believer.
Our authors, therefore, have failed to
show that Van Til abandons rational argument, proofs, evidences. He does
abandon neutral, or autonomous reasoning; that is all. And nothing in Classical
Apologetics shows that he is wrong in rejecting these. For the record, let
me emphasize that Van Til does not reject proofs, arguments, evidences; on the
contrary, he endorses them in the strongest terms.42 The Ligonier
authors are quite aware of this, but they dismiss it as inconsistency or insist
that Van Til’s arguments aren’t really arguments at all.
However, it is quite impossible to argue
for Christianity, or anything else for that matter, without making a
presuppositional choice. One cannot reason without criteria of truth. And
criteria of truth come from a wide variety of sources, ultimately religious
commitment.43 Those criteria will either be Christian or
non-Christian.44 If
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they
are non-Christian, they will be self-defeating and subject to divine judgment.
To say this is to say that argument for
Christianity will always be in one sense circular. Arguments for Christianity
must be based on Christian criteria, which in turn presuppose the truth of
Christianity. You can’t prove God without presupposing him. This is one of the
principles of Van Til’s apologetics which most irritates our authors.45
To them, circular reasoning is a logical fallacy, pure and simple.46
But what is the alternative? Again, the alternative seems to be that an unbeliever
begins his quest, either with no criterion at all or with a “provisional”
criterion of a non-Christian (or perhaps “neutral”) sort; then by linear,
noncircular reasoning, he learns that he must adopt the Christian criterion.47
But, as we noted earlier, this construction violates Rom 1:18ff and 1 Cor
10:31. According to Scripture there is no one in this position—no one without a
knowledge of God’s criteria. Those who seek to adopt non-Christian standards
(and there are no “neutral” ones) are simply disobedient to the Revelation they
have received. If one could proceed from neutrality to truth, then noncircular
argument would be possible. But of course it is not possible, because Scripture
condemns autonomy.48
Does this circularity entail the death of
all reasoning, as the Ligonier authors fear? No: (1) All reasoning, Christian,
non-Christian, presuppositional, “classical,” is in this sense circular. There
is no alternative. This is not a challenge to the validity of reason; it is
simply the way in which reason works. (2) There are distinctions to be made
between “narrow circles” (e.g., “The Bible is God’s word because it says it is
God’s word.”) and “broad circles” (e.g., “Evidence interpreted according to
Christian criteria demonstrates the divine authority of Scripture. Here it
is:…”). Not every circular argument is equally desirable. Some circular
arguments, indeed, should rightly be dismissed as fallacious. (3) Reasoning on
Christian criteria is persuasive because (a) it is God’s approved way to reason,
(b) it leads to true conclusions, (c) and everyone, at some level, already
knows that such reasoning leads to truth (Romans 1, again).
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2.
The Noetic Effects of Sin
Why is it necessary to presuppose God,
according to Van Til? The Ligonier authors have a theory about that. They
attribute to Van Til the notion that “The fundamental fallacy of the
traditional approach is in not recognizing that without knowing everything one
cannot know anything.”49 (Without the double negatives: what
they are saying is that for Van Til we cannot know anything unless we know
everything.) This point comes up elsewhere in the book,50 and the
authors think it is important enough to embellish poetically: “…one cannot know
the flower in the crannied wall unless he knows the world and all.”51
On this account, Van Til would be teaching that we need to presuppose God in
order to have, somehow, that omniscient perspective on reality. However, they
never give any references in Van Til’s writings to show that he believes any
such thing; and of course they cannot, for this is not his position. Van Til
does sometimes argue, in terms reminiscent of idealism, that true human
knowledge presupposes the existence of a comprehensive system of knowledge; but
unlike the idealist, Van Til finds this comprehensive system in the God of
Scripture. He explicitly denies the similar-sounding proposition that we
human beings must have comprehensive knowledge in order to know anything:
One
of the points about which there has been much confusion when we speak of the
objectivity of human knowledge is whether human knowledge of the world must be
comprehensive in order to be true…. But we believe that just for the reason
that we cannot hope to obtain comprehensive knowledge of God we cannot hope to
obtain comprehensive knowledge of anything in the world.52
Van Til, in fact, explicitly denies the
principle that we must know everything in order to know anything. He attributes
this principle to “the non-Christian methodology in general, and that of modern
phenomenalism in particular.”53
On the contrary: to Van Til, our need to
presuppose God has nothing to do with such idealist epistemologial
speculations. Rather, we presuppose God because in the nature of the case that
is the
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right
way to reason, and because, therefore, we are obligated to reason that way. The
necessity is an ethical necessity.
Which brings us to the question of the
noetic effects of sin. At this point, I find a surprising amount of agreement
between the Ligonier authors and Van Til. “The pagan’s problem,” they say, “is
not that he does not know that God is, but that he does not like the God who
is.”54
The nature Psalms and Romans 1 tell us that God is clearly revealed in the
world, and all human beings know God through this revelation.55
Thus the unbeliever is without excuse. This “natural theology,” they argue, is
mediated through the creation.56 (I agree that this is the teaching
of Romans 1, but I would add that this fact does not preclude other forms of
revelation in addition to the mediate form described in Romans 1.) Why, then,
do people need complex arguments in order to believe? The answer is that they
repress the truth revealed in creation.57 They are not morons,
but foolish.58 Their problem is not intellectual weakness, but
moral refusal to accept what is clearly revealed. Or, to put it more precisely,
they do have intellectual problems, but “The intellectual problem is produced
by the moral problem, not the moral problem by an intellectual one.”59
They know God, but they do not know him savingly. Honestly, in all of this (and
in their summary)60 I have not found anything that I or
Van Til would disagree with! The Ligonier men seem to think that Van Til holds
a very different position—that he thinks sin destroyed the unbeliever’s
reasoning power,61 but as usual they fail to document adequately their
interpretation and they ignore statements in Van Til to the contrary.
I will surprise them even more by saying
that I agree, in general, with their account of the testimony of the Holy
Spirit.62
The utterly
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fideistic
view which they attribute to me63 is their own creation, made up out
of thin air. They present no documentation of it from my writings. Apparently
they believe that my other positions necessitate such a view. I find that hard
to believe! They say that for me “the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit
must be utterly apart from and prior to speculative knowledge and evidence of
the inspiration of the word.”64 Nonsense. I quite agree with them
that the Spirit witnesses to the word through witnessing to evidences (along
with other ways, to be sure). As for the Spirit being “prior to speculative
knowledge,” I think I have expounded sufficiently the ambiguities of “priority”
language in theology. In any case, I grant what I think they want me to, that
people sometimes reach true conclusions about God without the witness of the
Spirit.
Van Til’s writings do pose some
difficulty here. He does clearly recognize that unbelievers know the truth (Rom
1:21) and that they sometimes reach true conclusions “in spite of themselves,”
i.e. in spite of their unbelieving presuppositions. However, there are points
at which he seems to say that unbelief always leads to intellectual error and
that no propositional truth is possible apart from the Spirit’s witness. His
representations, I think, are not fully consistent. What is more, he has
admitted some difficulty in this area.65 The problems stem
from Van Til’s realization that even though unbelievers do know the truth,
their rebellion often infests their intellectual activity. Much pagan
philosophy can be explained precisely as attempts to evade the truth of God’s
revelation. Therefore, it is not sufficient to say (as the Ligonier writers
seem to want to say; but see below) that the unbeliever’s problems are
moral rather than intellectual. Morality influences intellectual judgments.66
At times, indeed, the authors of our volume recognize this fact: they write,
“The intellectual problem is caused by the moral problem, not the moral problem
by the intellectual one.”67 I agree, and I note that here they
at least recognize that there is an intellectual problem as well as a
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moral
one, though they don’t stress that fact very much in their discussion.
The interesting net result is that on
paper there is very little difference between the Ligonier group and Van
Til on the noetic effects of sin and the testimony of the Spirit. Both maintain
that depravity is total, that it causes repression of the truth, that the
unbeliever has intellectual difficulties because of his moral rebellion, that
he has knowledge of God but not saving knowledge. To both, the testimony of the
Spirit works with and through our apologetic arguments to break down that
rebellion and lead the unbeliever to acknowledge the truth which he already
knows. Part of the reason for this agreement is that the Ligonier form of the
traditional apologetic (as opposed, e.g., to that of Clark Pinnock) is self-consciously
Calvinistic.
But the Ligonier authors are not very
consistent in their confession of total depravity. Note here what they say
about people who are not yet Christians, but seeking the truth:
[Van
Til] always assumes that the person who begins to examine the universe without
presupposing the existence of the divine Lawgiver necessarily presupposes his
own status as a lawgiver. That is by no means a necessary assumption of the
person who begins by examining the data which he has at hand…. They do not necessarily
deny the divine being as Van Til insists that they do. People do not assert
their autonomy against an initially known God as Van Til insists that they do.
They simply operate according to human nature.68
Here, note that they deny what they
earlier affirmed on the basis of Romans 1, that the unbeliever knows God.
Further, they deny that all unbelievers are hostile to God, repressers of the
truth. At least some unbelievers, in their opinion, are sincere seekers after
truth, operating merely according to the necessities of created human nature.
Seriously, now: is this a doctrine of depravity worthy of Calvinists?
So, though on paper the differences in
this area are not great, there is in the Ligonier authors a lack of seriousness
in the application of the doctrine of depravity to apologetics. Similarly, on
the question of “common ground,” our authors state a position which is
precisely identical with Van Til’s:
If
we consider common ground to mean a common perception and perspective of
reality, then obviously no such common ground for discussion exists between
believer and unbeliever. From the believer’s vantage
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point
every aspect of life, every bit of experience, every dimension of reality, is
understood and interpreted from a theological perspective…. It would appear
that both [believer and unbeliever] enjoy a univocal understanding of the
daffodil…. (but] The believer acknowledges the significance of that
daffodil, not as a cosmic accident, but as something that in itself bears
witness to the majesty and beauty of the Creator God. This the unbeliever does
not acknowledge, positing, instead, a completely opposite and antithetical
understanding of the daffodil’s significance.
From
a different perspective, however, there is common ground, namely the whole of
creation. Believer and unbeliever live in the same universe. Each sees the same
phenomena. The unbeliever and the believer can agree that two and two are four,
and at certain principles of deduction are valid while others are invalid. Thus
a kind of common ground is established.69
In my opinion, Van Til himself could have
written this formulation, except for the bit about a “univocal” understanding
which raises a few (in my view minor) problems.70 In fact, paragraphs
nearly identical to these might be pasted together from Van Til’s writings. But
both Van Til and the Ligonier authors have had trouble maintaining consistency
here, Van Til tending to forget the areas of agreement between believer and
unbeliever (“in spite of themselves”), and the Ligoniers tending (as we have
seen) to compromise their concept of “a completely opposite and antithetical
understanding” between believer and unbeliever.71
One last comment in this area: It is
unfortunate that a demonstrable misreading of Van Til at one point leads the
authors to a serious misrepresentation of Van Til’s position. On p. 214 they
quote Van Til as saying that the Christian “has no point of contact with
the non-Christian.”72 They take this as a statement of
Van Til’s own view, but in context it is actually a paraphrase of Stuart
Hackett’s critique of Calvinism. I could write this off as a minor mistake,
except that it shows, in its way, an extraordinary ignorance of Van Til’s
position. Van Til would never say that the Christian has no point of contact
with the non-Christian; in fact he has said the opposite innumerable times.
Mistakes like this make one wonder how seriously
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these
authors have tried to understand Van Til. Could they have simply dismissed as
inconsistencies the countless positive references in Van Til to “point of
contact,” focussing upon this one reference as his definitive formulation,
without even trying to explain the others? Or did the author of this section
have such a poor knowledge of Van Til that he actually thought this was a
representative formulation? It is hard to account for this sort of blunder
except as a serious lapse of scholarship stemming from ignorance and intense
prejudice, a desire to make Van Til say something he does not actually say, in
order to make him more vulnerable to criticism.
II. The Ligonier
Apologetic
I must needs be briefer in dealing with
the book’s positive argument for Christianity, because of the demands of time
and space, and because the argument itself is not as novel or interesting (to
Me!) as the critique of Van Til. Still, there are a few new wrinkles.
The Ligonier authors believe, as we have
seen, that traditionalist apologetics is sick and ailing, though not dead. One
of the reasons for the malaise, in their view, is that other modern classicists
have abandoned the traditional claim that the truth of Christianity can be
demonstrated, settling for arguments which merely claim probability.73
Here, interestingly, is another point of agreement between the Ligonier group
and Van Til. Our authors here frequently sound Van Tillian notes: that if
Christianity is not certainly true, then we have, to some extent, an
excuse for unbelief.
But how can we reach the level of
demonstrative certainty? On the Ligonier view, decisive appeal to special
revelation is excluded; that would be “presuppositionalism.” But that means the
argument must be wholly based on human sensation and reason, unaided by special
revelation. Everyone agrees that human reason and sensation are fallible. So
whence the desired certainty? The Ligonier authors believe such certainty can
be attained by appeal to certain “universal and necessary assumptions.” These
are assumptions which, though sometimes challenged, cannot be regularly and consistently
denied. As such, they are prerequisites of science and, indeed, of all human
life.74
These are, the law of noncontradiction, the “law of causality”
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and
“the basic reliability of sense perception.” Since these principles cannot be
regularly and consistently denied, the book argues, they must be regarded as
certain, along with all of their implications. Thus the authors try to show
that Christianity is one of those implications: to deny Christianity is to deny
one or more of those “universal and necessary assumptions.” Since we cannot
deny those, Christianity also must be regarded as certain.
The argument is “transcendental,”75
presuppositional in a sense. The authors are asking “What are the assumptions
necessary for life and knowledge to be possible?”76 Van Til asks
the same question and concludes that the whole content of God’s revelation is
such a necessary assumption! In one sense, the Ligonier authors are saying the
same thing, but less directly. To deny Christianity, they say, is indeed to
deny truths which we cannot consistently and regularly deny. Van Til,
similarly, says that unbelievers cannot consistently and regularly deny
Christianity, that they can exist only on “borrowed capital,” inconsistently
making use of Christian ideas which they wish to reject. I am tempted,
therefore, to read the Ligonier argument as a kind of “indirect
presuppositionalism,” an attempt to show (more concretely than Van Til) the ways
in which Christian assumptions are unavoidable. On such an approach, the
authors would be asking the non-Christian to presuppose Christian concepts
(concepts compatible with Scripture) of logic, cause, sense-experience, since
denying these concepts leads to chaos. Van Til and the Ligonier group, on that
interpretation, would again be very close. In my view, the cogency of the
Ligonier argument arises from the fact that something like this is going on.
But, on the other hand, we have to remember all the talk in this book about
autonomy, the inconsistencies on depravity and so on. Whatever may actually be
the case, these authors at least think that they are reasoning on a
neutral basis, with concepts of cause, etc., which are not distinctively
Christian, even though they imply a distinctively Christian world-view.77
A brief look now at the authors’ theistic
proofs. Their ontological argument, following Jonathan Edwards, is virtually
Parmenidean: We have an idea of being; in fact, we can think of nothing else
than being. Nonbeing is unthinkable. Thus being must be eternal,
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omnipresent,
limitless in all perfections—in other words, God. There is an obvious objection
to this, however, which the book doesn’t even mention. However infinite being
may be, our idea of being extends to finite being as well. Therefore, if
“being” is divine, then finite beings are part of that divine being. In other
words, without some modifications, the argument proves pantheism. And the
argument fails to draw any distinction between the kind of “infinity,” “eternity,”
“omnipresence,” etc. attributable to a pantheistic god, and the very different
(but similar-sounding) attributes revealed concerning the God of Scripture.78
The cosmological argument: Our authors
state the “law of causality” first in what they admit to be tautological
fashion: “Every effect has a cause.”79 Since the world is
contingent, they argue, it must be an effect. What, then, is its cause? The
world is not a mere illusion (nonbeing-see above), nor is it self-created,
which is nonsense. If it is self-existent, then it is in effect transcendent
and divine, so God’s existence is proved. If it is created by a self-existent
being, then again, God is proved. An infinite number of contingent beings
cannot be the world-cause: if no one of them is sufficient to cause the world,
then the whole series will not be sufficient either. Much could be said (and
has been said) about this sort of argument. What is most notable to me is that,
as in the Ligonier version of the ontological argument, the authors fail clearly
to rule out the pantheistic alternative, namely that the universe is its own
god. About all I can find in the book responding to this objection is one
sentence: “(God) is personal because He is the pervasive cause of all things
including the purpose and the personal.”80 But it is by no
means obvious that a being must itself be personal in order to be the cause of
personality.
The ontological and cosmological
arguments together suggest that on the Ligonier view, being is unlimited and
therefore possesses all excellencies in infinite degree.81 These
excellencies include all the traditional attributes of the Christian God
including personality. Therefore God exists. However, the concept of an
“excellency,” a perfection, is religiously problematic. What is excellent to
one person is a defect in the eyes of another. Personality is a perfection to a
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Westerner
imbued with Christian teaching. To a Buddhist, that would not necessarily be
the case. Therefore, the sort of proof offered in our book presupposes a
particular set of values, or else it is simply invalid. It is, in other words,
either a presuppositional argument or else it is a failure.
I shall pass over the teleological
argument to look at the authors’ presentation of Christian evidences. Here the
authors follow the pattern of other books of this kind. They begin with the
premise that the Gospels are “reliable historical sources.”82 (It would not
do, of course, to presuppose more than this, that these books are the word of
God. That would be circular and presuppositional.) In these reliable historical
sources, we learn about Jesus: that he worked miracles and that he claimed to
be God.83
Jesus’ miracles prove divine attestation of his claim; therefore he is God, and
his testimony that Scripture is God’s word is to be believed. At that point, we
conclude that Scripture is our ultimate standard. Thenceforth, we argue on the
basis of biblical authority—i.e., like presuppositionalists!84
A few comments on this argument: (1) The
authors overestimate, I think, the current scholarly consensus on the
reliability of the Gospels. They assume that almost every NT scholar will
concede that the Gospels are “generally reliable.” I doubt it. (2) Even if we
grant that some very unusual events took place in the ministry of Jesus,85
how can we be sure that these can be explained only as a divine attestation to
Jesus’ authority? It is extremely difficult to prove (apart from Christian
presuppositions) the negative proposition that no other cause could have
produced these events. The authors need to prove this proposition in order to
make their case, but nothing in the book amounts to such a proof. (3) Recall
that these authors boasted earlier that they were offering, not just a probable
argument,
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but
a demonstration, warranting certainty. Now I can understand how they can make
this claim for the earlier part of their argument: the “universal and necessary
assumptions,” the theistic proofs. (I do not think they succeed in making good
this claim, but I can understand why they think they have made it good.)
But when they get to the historical evidences, I do not find even the slightest
plausibility in their claim to demonstration. The assumption of the Gospels’
reliability is highly debatable; the argument that miracles always testify to a
divinely appointed messenger is also weak. And some have questioned whether
Jesus did warrant belief in the Scriptures. Of course, on these matters I think
the Ligonier authors are right and the liberal critics wrong. But if they look
at these questions without the full range of Christian presuppositions, I don’t
see how they can responsibly claim anything more for their argument than a high
degree of probability.
Some Formal Matters
At the risk of losing the reader’s
attention, I think I should point out some editorial problems in the book which
ought to be corrected in future editions. There are a great many of these,
possibly in part because of the triple authorship. (1) I do not understand the
need,in context, for three pages dealing with theological creativity (pp.
64ff). (2) The excursus on probabilism in theology (pp. 125ff) seems also to
belong somewhere else. It breaks up the discussion of dysteleology. (3) On p.
185, the third point does not make much sense to me; at least it does not seem
clearly distinguishable from the second point. (4) Note the typographical error
on p. 187—the “poetic influence of sin”(!) (5) On p. 220, the authors give the
impression that Van Til’s Survey of Christian Epistemology is a
different book from his Metaphysics of Apologetics. Actually, the two
books are one and the same, the former being a more recent printing of the
latter.86
(6) Recall our earlier point about the misreading of the Van Til reference on
p. 214. (7) I agree with the authors’ assessment of Runner’s concept of
“republication” (p. 251f), but it fits rather
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awkwardly
into the context. (8) On p. 254, second paragraph, who is speaking? Van Til,
Sullivan, or the Ligoniers? (9) The material on Duns Scotus (p. 260), also
seems out of place.
Conclusions
There is much here to make us think. I
was surprised at how close these authors were to Van Til at various places.
There are, I think, some areas here for further dialogue between Van Tillian
and Ligonier apologists. There is much similarity in regard to general
revelation and the noetic effects of sin. There is recognition of the need for
more than mere probability in grounding our faith. The authors also recognize
that evidential arguments presuppose some elements of a Christian world-view.
The chief difference is in the evaluation of autonomy. There is also room for
further debates as to who is the most consistent with the shared Calvinistic
premises.
Surely, there is plenty of room for
mutual support and encouragement in the Lord. Speaking personally, I owe a
great deal to John Gerstner, who for several decades was the most cogent and
tireless defender of the Reformed faith in western
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