A Presupper Responds to Dr. Richard Howe
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In this video, Eli provides a response to Dr. Richard Howe's criticisms of presuppositionalism.
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- Alright, well, I would like to introduce this video as a response to Dr.
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- Richard Howe's criticisms of presuppositional apologetics. Dr. Howe was invited onto Cameron Bertucci's Capturing Christianity YouTube channel, which, by the way, if folks aren't aware of the
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- Capturing Christianity YouTube channel, you should definitely go over to YouTube right now and subscribe. There are a lot of great apologetic resources there that I highly recommend, especially some debates that were hosted on that YouTube channel as well.
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- And so, you know, this response to a guest that Cameron had on his show is by no means anything against his
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- YouTube channel in general. I think he has great material there, and although we would not share the same presuppositional, or rather apologetic methodological issues, there is still much to be learned.
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- And people who know a little bit about my ministry, I definitely am the kind of person that appreciates the work that other apologists are doing, even in the midst of our internal disagreements.
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- I think it's important to learn from one another. So with that being said, I do want to provide a response to the interview that Cameron Bertucci had on Capturing Christianity with Dr.
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- Richard Howe. Now, in this response, I want to say right off the bat that I highly respect
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- Dr. Howe, and he is a fine scholar and definitely a far more brilliant mind than my own.
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- But I want to offer my two cents with regards to his criticism of presuppositionalism as an apologetic method and some of the issues that he perceives the methodology has.
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- And hopefully in my response here, it will help to clarify some issues, and by no means am
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- I doing this to convince anyone of the presuppositional method. If after I have offered my response to Dr.
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- Howe that you still disagree with the presuppositional methodology, it's not the end of the world, right?
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- As long as you at the end of it understand it a little better, and I hope to explain it in a sufficient way and address the issues that were brought up the best that I can.
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- So with that being said, the interview with Cameron Bertucci of Capturing Christianity and Dr.
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- Richard Howe was originally titled, I think he might have changed the title, but it was originally titled A Sound Refutation of Presuppositionalism.
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- And so maybe he was being a little clickbaity there,
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- I'm not sure, but the attempt was to soundly refute presuppositionalism.
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- He might have changed the title there to something more softer, which is fine.
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- But let's take a look at what were some of the issues that Dr. Howe had with the presuppositional methodology as he perceived it.
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- There are two things that came into the discussion in the defense of Dr. Howe and Cameron. The interview was like 26 minutes long or something like that.
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- And so, of course, there are a wide variety of areas that can still be covered and expanded upon. And so, you know, you could only address, you know, these issues to a certain extent, given that limited time.
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- So be that as it may, let's identify some of the major issues that or criticisms of presuppositionalism that came up.
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- Well, number one, there was the assertion that presuppositionalist confused the issue of ontology and epistemology.
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- And we'll explain, you know, what those. Well, let me kind of define it for you.
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- Ontology deals with being, with metaphysics, the nature of being. And epistemology deals with knowledge, one's theory of knowledge.
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- How does one ascertain knowledge? Things like that. Epistemology pertains to those sorts of things. And so the criticism was that presuppositionalism conflate the two, confuse the two.
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- We're going to get into that in just a few moments. And the second criticism was this issue that any worldview can use the same kind of argumentation that the presuppositionalist use.
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- And hence, it renders the presuppositional argument usually associated with the transcendental argument for God's existence really superfluous.
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- And that it really results, it really kind of just boils down to an assertion. So, for example, within a popular context, those who are familiar with the presuppositional methodology and line of argumentation, they usually hear the transcendental argument quickly summarized as something like this.
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- That the proof for the truth of the Christian worldview is that if it were not true, you couldn't prove anything at all.
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- And so that's kind of the, in a very popular encapsulated form, the transcendental argument.
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- And so the criticism is, well, what is to prevent someone from replacing the Christian worldview as the necessary precondition for intelligible experience and knowledge?
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- Replace it with some other worldview. And of course, the example that was brought up in that interview was
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- Islam. And so we'll address those two criticisms. Number one, the criticism, number one, is that the presuppositionalist confuses ontology with epistemology.
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- And criticism number two, any worldview can be used, can use the same form of argumentation. And so it renders really the presuppositional form of argumentation quite superfluous at that point.
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- Okay, so let's take a look real quick at Dr. Howe's complaint and observations with regards to his exposure to the presuppositional literature.
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- He says this, and I quote, this is what I think is the perennial mistake in all that I've read of all the presuppositionalist that I've read, including
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- Bonson's material. When they define presuppositionalism, they say it this way, quote, the assumption of God is the precondition of knowledge.
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- But when they try to explain what that means, what they end up defending is God is the precondition of knowledge.
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- So notice the key difference there, right? This is unquote, I'm talking now. Notice the key difference there.
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- The assertion is that presuppositionalist will say that the assumption of God is the necessary precondition for knowledge.
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- So in order to have knowledge, you need to presuppose God. But then he thinks that we conflate this issue of the existence of God as being the precondition.
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- So what is it? Is the assumption of God the necessary precondition for knowledge, or is the existence of God the necessary precondition for knowledge?
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- This kind of reminds me of the important distinction with regards to the moral argument for God's existence, right?
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- And things that come up, you know, in these sorts of discussions, oftentimes when the
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- Christian uses a moral argument for God's existence and says something to the effect that the existence of God is required for there to be objective moral values and duties, oftentimes the skeptic would say something to the effect, are you saying that because I don't believe in God, I can't be a moral person or I can't do moral things?
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- And what is the apologist's response? Well, of course not. You don't have to believe in God in order to be moral, but God must exist in order to be objectively moral or do objectively good things, right?
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- So it's the existence of God, not so much the belief in God. And I kind of see the similarity here, you know, the assumption of God being the precondition versus the actual ontological existence of God.
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- Now, before we get into kind of the main gist of this, I think it's interesting that Dr. Howe's assertion with regards to what he's read in the presuppositional literature that he said that in every place, in any presuppositionalist that he sees trying to explain this issue, that they explain the assumption of God is the necessary precondition for knowledge.
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- He says that the presuppositionalist always ends up explaining how God is the precondition.
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- Hence the accusation that we confuse the epistemological issue, the assumption of God, and the ontological issue, the existence of God.
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- Okay. And how would the presuppositionalist answer this? I don't think, of course, as a presuppositionalist myself,
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- I don't think we conflate the issues. And, in fact, the issue of ontology and epistemology and the relationship between the two are, in fact, mentioned quite often in the presuppositional literature, more specifically in Bonson.
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- So it made me wonder if he had read Bonson extensively as opposed to just kind of grabbing onto what he thinks is an adequate summary of the methodology and then kind of just basing it off a piecemeal approach.
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- Again, I want to give Dr. Howe the benefit of the doubt. He's a fine scholar, and so I hope he's read Bonson and Van Till in the sense that he's read them holistically and kind of understands how they're piecing this all together and how they're understanding these things within a presuppositional framework.
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- But I thought it was interesting that he kind of said that this is in every place by every presuppositionalist that he's encountered.
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- This is kind of the conflation that's often made. But I think to answer the alleged confusion of ontology and epistemology within presuppositionalism,
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- I think it can be summarized really quite simply. And we as presuppositionalists would say that if man does not have knowledge of God at the outset, if man does not have knowledge of God at the outset, then he is going to be trapped in some form of subjectivism.
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- That's important. So we would say, if we were to say, for example, if someone were to ask the question, you know, why do we need to start with God, right?
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- We would say as presuppositionalists, as people who hold to a revelational epistemology, we would say that knowledge of the self, okay, is simultaneous with knowledge of God.
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- Now, this is very, very important, because in the debate between the classicalists and the presuppositionalists, which often comes up, is when the presuppositionalist says, well, you need to start with God to have knowledge, right?
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- And the classicalists will often say, well, wait a minute. No, you don't start with God. You start with yourself. You have to start with yourself.
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- You can't get outside yourself, right? So you have this kind of, where do we start? Ourselves or with God? Well, you can't start with God, because you must start with yourself.
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- We get these kind of distinctions. Very, very important. But what we're saying is that if man starts with himself and not with God, he's not going to be able to escape what is called the egocentric predicament, okay?
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- The ultimate metaphysical and epistemological truths of the universe rely solely on the sufficiency of man's mind, if you're starting with man.
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- But because man, by his very makeup, he's fallible, he's finite, and he's subjective, right?
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- He can't escape the problem of what we call the egocentric predicament. And egocentrism can only end in subjectivism.
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- And subjectivism obviously will lead us to skepticism. So in like fashion, if we don't start with God, with the objective revelation of God at the outset, we can only, by definition then, start with our own subjective experience.
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- And so if subjectivism is the inevitable result of—how can
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- I say this? If subjectivism is the inevitable epistemic and psychological state of man, then
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- I would say that he's reduced to subjectivism. And subjectivism, of course, is going to lead us to skepticism.
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- Now again, we understand that we need to, in a sense, start with ourselves, okay?
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- But we need to clarify, and I think perhaps presuppositionalists, at least at the popular level, haven't done a good job in explaining this.
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- Although I do believe this is explained in the literature, is we make a distinction between proximate starting points and ultimate starting points.
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- And when we say we need to start with God, we're saying that with regards to the ultimate starting point, we need to start within the context of the revelation of God.
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- That without that ultimate context, knowledge would be impossible, right? So not only do we presuppose the ontological truth of God's existence, but we would also say that the assumption of that ontological
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- God is necessary in order to have knowledge because of the close interrelation between ontology and epistemology.
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- How can you know something independent of simultaneously considering the ontological situation?
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- That is hugely important, right? So revelation from God, the assumption of God, is a necessary precondition for knowledge just as the ontological truth of God is a necessary precondition, okay?
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- A friend of mine has constructed a very interesting kind of deductive argument to answer the apparent confusion of ontology and epistemology, and I think kind of as a basic structure, it's somewhat helpful at this point.
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- He says, for human knowledge to be the case, man must have revelation from God, who is the sole deposit and giver of any and all knowledge, because this is a precondition for human knowledge.
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- Point two, or premise two, it is the case that all men do possess knowledge, and so conclusion, therefore, it is the case that all men have revelation from God, who is the deposit and giver of any and all knowledge, okay?
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- Now, this is important because I think the key difference between the presuppositional framework and the revelational epistemology framework is different than many of where classical apologists and philosophers are coming from.
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- Okay, many classicalists would argue that we can't begin with knowledge of God, right?
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- We have to begin with ourself before we kind of work our way to knowing about God, and this is very much related to, you know,
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- Rene Descartes' Cognito Ergo Sum. I think, therefore, I am. This is kind of like a basic point that we can't escape.
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- We have to start from here, and again, I'm not conflating the two. I understand that there's a difference between what Descartes was saying and some of these classical folks are saying, but the point is we have to start with ourself.
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- Okay, and so the question in this discussion then arises, we either start with man or we start with God, which is the case.
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- Well, many classicalists would say, well, you can't start with God. You have to start with yourself because you can't escape yourself, right?
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- But when we frame the question in that way, you know, do we start with man or do we start with God? We would say from the presuppositional perspective that that's really it's a false dichotomy, right?
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- We could ask the question, why can't we start with both knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves being simultaneous?
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- Because from within our perspective, the presuppositional framework, we believe the knowledge of God is innate.
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- Man knows God immediately, okay? God made man in his image, and so, therefore, everything man does, every aspect of his experience, quite literally images his creator.
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- Knowledge of God is not only through the immediate route, the looking and seeing, right?
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- The heavens declare the glory of God. We know that, right? You can know about God through what is seen.
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- No presuppositionalist would deny that, okay? But every aspect of his experience, right, of man's experience, images his creator.
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- So knowledge of God is not only seen through the immediate route, but we would argue that knowledge of God is also immediate.
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- Knowledge of ourselves and knowledge of God, we would say, is simultaneous given revelation.
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- Think about this. If everything created is a revelation of God and man is created and man's mind is created, then it would follow that man and man's mind, right, his whole constitution is itself a revelation of God.
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- And so there is a knowledge of God not only that is received through looking and seeing, but also in the fact that we are conscious agents made in the image of God, okay?
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- So man necessarily finds himself couched within the context of revelation and so cannot escape the revelation of God.
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- He cannot escape it by looking out, right? The revelation of God is all around him, and if he closes his eyes or plucks out his eyes, he can't escape the revelation of God because he himself is a revelation of God.
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- His rational capacities are revelation from God. The very fact that he is a conscious agent is itself revelation of God and puts him face to face with the knowledge of the
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- God in whose image he was created, okay? So Howe says, you know, that he's found no solution to this issue of ontology and epistemology, but again, the solution can be found easily in literature.
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- One example would be in Greg Bonson's book Presuppositional Apologetics on pages 32 through 33.
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- Here are the quotes, right? Bonson says, God only is wise, from Romans 16, 27, and he's made the world according to his wisdom,
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- Psalm 104, 24. Man cannot search out God, Job 11, 7, for God's thoughts are higher than man's thoughts,
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- Isaiah 55, 8. Consequently, man cannot know God and hence God's world without revelation.
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- A vain man who rejects God's revelation will certainly never get understanding, Job 11, 12.
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- The Lord is the one who teaches man knowledge, Psalm 94, 10. It is he who leads man in the truth and instructs him.
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- Thus, God tells us to apply our hearts unto his knowledge if we are to know the certainty of the words of truth.
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- Attend unto my wisdom, incline thine ear to my understanding that thou mayest preserve discretion and that thy lips may keep knowledge.
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- Man must begin, Bonson says, man must begin with the revealed truth of God if he's going to have knowledge, right?
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- That whole idea of starting with God, right? You need to start with God, okay? Not just ontologically, but epistemologically as well.
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- Therefore, humble submission to God's word must precede all of man's intellectual pursuits and he must renounce the arrogant independence of secular thought.
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- Talk no more proudly, let not arrogance come from thy mouth, for Jehovah is a God of knowledge.
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- All knowledge is founded in him and his revealed word, hence no man dares to challenge God's word. Man must begin with the truth of God's word in order to obtain knowledge of any area, for when he attempts to proceed in an autonomous fashion, he'll end up in darkness of total ignorance if he's consistent.
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- The declaration of the psalmist is, in thy light we shall see light, right? It is only within the context of the light of God can we see light, okay?
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- Man cannot attain knowledge. Check this out, this is what Bonson says, and Dr. Howe says this is, he didn't find this anywhere.
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- Man cannot attain knowledge without a prior knowledge of God and his revelation.
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- He must begin with God in order to find out about anything else at all.
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- I'm going to read that part again because that's specifically addressed. Now again, you can disagree with Dr. Bonson on this point, that's fine.
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- But to say that you've never found anything addressed here where this is clarified in the literature, I think, well, we need to make sure we're reading someone holistically and kind of looking at specific areas.
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- Where they address these questions, right? Bonson says, man cannot attain to knowledge without a prior knowledge of God and his revelation.
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- He must begin with God in order to find out about anything else at all. Continuing on with Bonson's quote, without the light of God's revelation, man would be at a loss to self -generate the light of knowledge.
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- I'll say that again, without the light of God's revelation, man would be at a loss to self -generate the light of knowledge.
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- Again, this is an implicit rejection of autonomous reasoning and the ability for man to autonomously acquire knowledge.
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- Back to Bonson's quote, because God is the Lord and source of all knowledge, it is necessary for man to presuppose the revealed truth of God before he can meaningfully pursue knowledge of any field and have theoretic grounding or direction for science and philosophy.
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- We can see light only within the prior light of God. It is the Lord who must enlighten our darkness.
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- Thus, it is the entrance of his words that give us light and understanding. Scripture must be presupposed if man is to have understanding.
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- Consequently, he cannot presume to utilize self -wrought understanding to decide if scripture should be accepted.
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- We can see light only in the light of God, and God gives this light by the entrance of his word.
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- Presuppositional apologetics stated and defended, pages 32 through 33. Okay, so that's a lot going on there.
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- Very, very interesting. So, again, so we do not, as presuppositionalists and as revelational epistemologists, we don't confuse ontology with epistemology.
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- Rather, we understand that in order to have an adequate epistemology, the ontological situation must be the case.
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- So ontology and epistemology are intricately related, and you can't separate the two. So the ontological existence of God is a necessary precondition for knowledge, as well as the assumption of God is a necessary precondition of knowledge.
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- And because we believe that all man has innate knowledge of God, all men, by necessity, assume God. But what's the difference between the
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- Christian and the non -Christian? You see, the non -Christian suppresses that knowledge, but draws from that knowledge to make sense out of the world he finds himself in.
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- And so it is there where we have the sinful man suppressing the truth about God, right?
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- And so he is suppressing that truth that leaves him without excuse, because the knowledge of God is both innate, and that innate knowledge provides the necessary context to understand that external knowledge of God, the things we learn about God through the created order, by the looking and seeing process, okay?
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- And that kind of pertains to the issue of, like, natural theology. Man is able to theologize about God, but that theologizing about God does not bring him to the conclusion that God exists.
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- Rather, he starts with the knowledge of God, and that knowledge of God gives him the very ability to even engage in theologizing about God.
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- So super, super important, okay? Again, you don't have to agree, but we want to make sure that we're reading, you know, the literature in a charitable way, and that we are taking into consideration what people have said throughout their writings, not just in piecemeal fashion.
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- Again, I'm not denying that Dr. Howe has read sufficiently in this area.
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- He is a brilliant mind, and I highly respect him. But here, I think he's missed the target here, and so I just wanted to point that out respectfully.
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- All right, well, what about the second objection, all right? We mentioned two objections that Dr.
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- Howe raised in the video, in the interview. One was the issue of the confusion of ontology with epistemology.
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- And the other one was this idea that for the transcendental argument for God's existence, you can replace the
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- Christian worldview as being the necessary precondition. You know, for example, you can replace the idea that the
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- Christian worldview is true by the impossibility of the contrary. You can replace that with any other worldview perspective.
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- And so the proof for the truth of the Christian worldview is that if it were not true, you couldn't prove anything at all.
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- Assume the opposite of Christianity, and you can't make sense out of anything. And so what's the assumption of Dr. Howe's part, it seems?
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- It seems that he thinks that when the presuppositionalist argues in this fashion, that it's simply a bare assertion that is unable to be backed up.
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- We're just asserting this, and that's it. Well, of course, that's not the case, nor is that even ever suggested in any of the literature, okay?
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- Bonson didn't argue that way. Van Til didn't argue that way. There's much more meat. If you look at the methodology in a charitable way, there's more meat to the situation.
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- As a matter of fact, in Bonson's lectures that can be found at, I think it's
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- RTS, the app, Reformed Theological Seminary, I think there's a section where Bonson gives four lectures.
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- And there is, I think it's the end of the first lecture, the beginning of the second lecture. He addresses this question exactly.
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- He says, for example, many people think, and I'm not quoting here. I'm kind of doing this from my memory here. Many people think that the transcendental argument for God's existence works all well and good for the atheist because the atheist who holds to kind of a bare materialism can't account for the necessary preconditions of knowledge and intelligibility.
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- But what happens when you have a theistic perspective like Islam, right? Then you're kind of stuck. And then
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- Bonson, of course, responds, no, we are not. There is obviously this application of a presuppositional approach is not merely the
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- Christian theistic position set aside against this kind of bare atheistic naturalistic position. This form of argumentation works with any non -Christian perspective.
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- We would argue not only is atheism unable to account for the necessary preconditions for knowledge, but we would say any non -Christian worldview lacks the capacity.
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- And again, it's more than just an assertion. So let's take a look at the objection that Dr. Howe kind of states.
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- Howe states, and I quote, he says, I began to argue as a presuppositionalist Muslim. Okay. And so what
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- Dr. Howe is doing is he is replacing the Christian worldview within the transcendental argument and trying to argue transcendentally as a
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- Muslim to try and show the presuppositionalist that the argumentation is not is not valid, doesn't work.
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- Okay. So he says, Dr. Howe says, I began to argue as a presuppositionalist Muslim. And everything this Christian said to me, he was in conversation with a
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- Christian. I said, well, the problem is you're not presupposing the self -authenticating infallible word of the
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- Quran. That's your problem. There's no way to adjudicate between different religions using the same presuppositional claim.
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- Okay. Now, first, there is a huge problem with thinking that the presuppositional argument is just easily replaced with, you know, with any religious perspective.
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- Okay. If a religious perspective is going to provide the preconditions for intelligibility, then it needs to do so on its own capital.
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- All right. So, for example, we have to say, you know, does the Quran claim to be the sort of necessary precondition in the same way that the
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- Christian worldview does? I don't I don't think that's the case at all. And even if it does claim that, then we have to grant hypothetically its truth and then show where the absurd where where that line of reasoning leads to.
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- The principle of the Book of Proverbs is true. When we define the presuppositional methodology and argumentation as a two -step approach based on the
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- Book of Proverbs, where we say, you know, answer not the fool according to his folly, lest you be a fool like unto him.
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- And then the next verse says, answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit. We would engage in that.
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- It's not merely the Christian worldviews, the necessary precondition. You got to take my word for it. And that's it. Let's assume you want
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- Islam to be the case in point. Assume the truth of Islam and see where it leads to.
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- And you engage in an internal critique at that point. We could very well bring up some of the internal problems that even the classicalists would bring up to show that there are issues with the
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- Muslim position being the necessary preconditions and things like that. OK, so I also think that the criticism that he brings up here is very much connected to the other misunderstanding with regards to presuppositionalism, which people often equate presuppositionalism with fideism.
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- OK, we just make this bare assertion on just this blind faith commitment. But then anybody can do that.
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- Right. But again, if we're not allowed to arbitrarily pick a worldview and argue in a circular fashion to defend it, then there's no knowledge to be had after all.
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- Right. OK, think about this. Well, if we're going to make the Quran, you know, kind of replaced with the
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- Quran, we ask the question, you know, where does the Quran teach that it is the self -authenticating and self -attesting word of God?
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- Where does it say that in the Quran? Such a claim is not itself a claim made by the Quran. And so it's therefore not part of their own system.
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- And so if they're arguing along those lines, they need to argue in a way that's consistent with their system. But again, the
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- Bible, on the other hand, does make this claim. The Bible does claim to be self -authenticating and self -attesting.
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- In Exodus 3, 14, God attests to his own authority. OK, and his word, we see that God, God's word is inspired, breathed out by God.
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- And so it comes with the very self -attesting authority of the God who, when he swears to Abraham of his promise, he says,
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- I cannot swear. And, you know, nothing higher can God can appeal to nothing higher.
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- So he swears by himself. Right. So he is he is the ultimate authority in that sense. And so when he inspires the word of God and inspires the scriptures, it comes with that self same self -attesting authority.
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- And all scripture is breathed out by God, which implies the self -attesting and authenticating nature of all aspects of the scripture.
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- OK, now, very, very important. Now, if we we could go a little further and say, OK, well, if the if the
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- Muslim wants to utilize the kind of a presuppositional argument, let's engage in the internal critique.
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- This internal critique is part of the issue. So if we were going to say, you know, well, I can just replace the transcendental argument with any religion.
- 28:48
- Well, you can replace it. But whether you're going to successfully defend it along those lines is another issue.
- 28:54
- You need to survive the internal critique, which I think the option for the Christian and internally critiquing the
- 29:00
- Muslim worldview is there. There are a lot of options. Right. Let's let's let's engage what the what
- 29:07
- Islam teaches. Right. According to Islamic theology, the doctrine of Tanzi states that Allah is so transcendent that he's not affected by our actions and attitudes.
- 29:15
- But then again, we get asked the question internally, how is it possible to know about this sort of God when he's so far removed transcendentally in the first place?
- 29:23
- Right now, this is made worse when we learn of another doctrine. I can't pronounce it correctly.
- 29:30
- I think it's called a pardon if a Muslim watches this and making fun of my Arabic. Right. This states that Allah is so different from his creatures and the created order.
- 29:39
- They can't be properly described by human categories. Yet. What is the Quran? The Quran is one big book describing this
- 29:46
- God in terms of human categories. So so you could you could push on on the on the
- 29:53
- Muslim worldview internally such that it would not survive the internal critique. And so that worldview would not be able to provide those preconditions.
- 30:01
- And of course, we invite the Muslim or we invite the Buddhist or we invite the Hindu to push on the Christian worldview.
- 30:07
- And at that point, we we will have to explain how the Christian worldview does, in fact, provide those preconditions.
- 30:13
- And that's where you have that apologetic encounter where we're going back and forth and examining worldview perspectives.
- 30:19
- We could also push Dr. Howe on on Islam's supposed ability to use this argument.
- 30:25
- We can ask the question, how in your worldview, for example, in the Muslim worldview, how does the Muslim make sense out of the issue of unity and plurality?
- 30:33
- What about the whole the one in the many issue in philosophy? Right. Where where, you know, if Allah, for example, is one
- 30:41
- God and one person, then how can can you justify one universal and yet many particulars, given that he's the creator?
- 30:47
- How can you justify there being unity and yet diversity simultaneously in the universe? You see, the
- 30:53
- Christian worldview and God gives an exhaustive answer to the problem of the one in the many by simply laying out the doctrine of the
- 30:59
- Trinity, in which both unity and plurality are equally ultimate. And so the ontological triune context of oneness and manyness give an adequate answer to the huge philosophical problem of the one in the many.
- 31:11
- Because how do we account for oneness and manyness? We account for it by saying that God is triune, that oneness and manyness are equally ultimate within him.
- 31:20
- One is not derived from the other. And so that again, there's going to have to be more argumentation there.
- 31:26
- Those who aren't familiar with the one in the many problem should look into it. But this is relevant to an internal critique.
- 31:32
- You're going to have to add to be a coherent world. You're going to have to account for these these issues because they relate to knowledge and metaphysics and epistemology and intelligibility.
- 31:41
- They're all related, even though as I'm talking, you might not understand what the issues are. OK, but we could push how a
- 31:49
- Unitarian God can ground the oneness and the manyness issue, which is a huge issue in the history of philosophy.
- 31:57
- And if it can't ground that, then again, that, amongst other problems within the context of Islam, is not going to allow
- 32:03
- Islam to be the proper necessary preconditions for intelligible experience.
- 32:08
- OK, so to address both of these issues that Dr.
- 32:15
- Howe brought up, the confusion of ontology and epistemology, we see that there isn't a problem once you understand the issues correctly.
- 32:21
- And with regards to using any worldview as being the necessary precondition for intelligibility, there are issues with that as well.
- 32:28
- OK, well, that is a mouthful. But I hope that this adequately and respectfully engages with what
- 32:36
- Dr. Howe has said. Again, I greatly respect Dr. Howe and I encourage people to to check out some of his lectures and his talks on YouTube.
- 32:45
- He is a profound thinker. I greatly respect him. However, in this video, I just wanted to share some disagreements
- 32:52
- I had with his criticism of the presuppositional methodology. All right. Well, I hope this is helpful.
- 33:00
- I hope I have clarified things. And if I have if I presented things in a way that does not adequately describe the issue.
- 33:08
- So many presuppositionalist buddies of mine who watch this and say, well, you know, you didn't make that distinction, this, that or the other thing.
- 33:14
- Try my best. Right. For those of you who understand what I'm saying, but you still disagree. As long as that's fine.
- 33:20
- As long as you better understand the position and see that the criticisms that were brought forth are not actually criticisms that refute the presuppositional methodology.
- 33:30
- All right. Well, I hope you guys found this somewhat helpful and it was a lot.
- 33:36
- But I hope you found it helpful. And that's all I got for today. Take care and God bless. Oh, oh, and I almost forgot.
- 33:42
- If you are enjoying the content of this channel, please do me a solid and push the subscribe button.
- 33:49
- I'm looking to get more of this sort of stuff out there, more of the interviews and things like that. I'm getting a lot of positive feedback with regards to those.
- 33:56
- And yeah. So subscribe. And I also have a YouTube, not YouTube, a podcast on iTunes.
- 34:04
- You want to subscribe to that as well. All right. Well, that's it for today. Take care and God bless.