TAG and the Triune God: Brant Bosserman

The Transcendental Argument and the Question of the Trinity

Play in the transcendental argument and do you think transcendental argument is a silver bullet argument that successfully demonstrates the Christian worldview is true by the impossibility of the contrary and if so how does the argument demonstrate the triunity of God without further argumentation?

Okay so I suspect the question kind of wants one to to refine down the transcendental argument to the absolutely necessary components and to distill out of it the unnecessary components. I mean it's it's a remarkably classical apologetical sort of way of asking the question and what role does it play?

Well if I'm talking to a Muslim it plays a profoundly important role. If I'm talking to Joe Unbeliever whether I you know delve into the point that the presupposition and the God who we must presuppose is the beginning of fear of the fear and the knowledge and wisdom and understanding whether I need to delve into Trinity right then and there with that guy I don't know that I do but let me explain the sense in which the Trinity is relevant every time I'm talking about the transcendental argument.

See the transcendental argument isn't just that without the God of Scripture your worldview is vacuous and all of your beliefs are not only without justification but they can't even bear the status of being true.

The Goal of the Transcendental Argument: Guilt Before God

That's not the end of the transcendental argument to get to that point and then say and now you need to presuppose our God. The end of the transcendental argument is that once we brought someone to the point that the worldview that they outwardly espouse is empty and vacuous is to bring them to the next step of realizing they've never really lived in that world that they've created for themselves is kind of a house of cards.

They've always actually known the God of Scripture who speaks with authority both in natural revelation and in his word and they have trampled on him. They breathed his air without ever praising him and therefore the end of the transcendental argument is that the person with whom we are speaking is profoundly guilty.

They're guilty in a way that merits you know eternal death, eternal suffering. That's the position they're in. Therefore the God they need isn't just a profoundly useful presupposition. They need the God who has an eternal son whom he sent into the world to assume human flesh and to live the life that we have deprived our Creator of and deprived him of the obedience that he so deserves and he died the death in our stead that we so deserve and furthermore not only did he do that but he sent his Holy Spirit to open the hearts of people who are his mortal enemies otherwise so that they receive him and believe on him and so without that God at the end of your transcendental argument, the one I just talked about, your transcendental argument is useless.

The Trinity, the Cross, and the Limits of Presuppositionalism

It's no good to anyone without the Trinity in the economic trinity who is the Savior of mankind. Now if I'm talking to someone who I you know I sense can you know take in something of the depths of the one who many many problem and I have you know found people like this impromptu many times I might have brought to bear the importance of the Trinity to our epistemology at the front end but at the back end of your transcendental argument after we've reduced an unbeliever's worldview to Nessians we always have to talk about the Trinity.

What good would it be we're not people we're not salesmen peddling you know presuppositions that make your puzzle work or apologists bringing people to Christ and we've really gone off the rails and missed what this whole thing is about if we don't understand you know the absolute relevance of the Trinity to our transcendental argument and honestly I do fear that unfortunately that's kind of what transcendental you know argumentation has been treated as is you know some some premise that you know lets me have all my beliefs plus a few it's not that something that drives you to the cross and if if presuppositionalism has not been that for you traditionally and how you're using it and reasoning with people you're not doing what Van Til prescribed you're doing something else yeah yeah very very good.