TAG and the Triune God: Brant Bosserman

Revealed Apologetics

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play in the transcendental argument and do you think the transcendental argument is a silver bullet argument that successfully demonstrates the

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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?

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Okay, so I suspect the question kind of wants one to refine down the transcendental argument to the absolutely necessary components and to distill out of it the unnecessary components.

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I mean it's a remarkably classical apologetical sort of way of asking the question.

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What role does it play? Well, if I'm talking to a Muslim it plays a profoundly important role.

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If I'm talking to Joe Unbeliever, whether I, you know, delve into the point that the presupposition and the

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God who we must presuppose is the beginning of the fear and the knowledge and wisdom and understanding, whether I need to delve into Trinity right then and there with that guy,

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I don't know that I do, but let me explain the sense in which the Trinity is relevant every time

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I'm talking about the transcendental argument. See, the transcendental argument isn't just that without the

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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.

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That's not the end of the transcendental argument to get to that point and then say and now you need to presuppose our

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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.

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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.

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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.

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They're guilty in a way that merits eternal death, eternal suffering.

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That's the position they're in. Therefore, the God they need isn't just a profoundly useful presupposition.

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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.

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And he died the death in our stead that we so deserve. And furthermore, not only did he do that, but he sent his

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Holy Spirit to open the hearts of people who are his mortal enemies otherwise so that they can receive him and believe on him.

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And so without that God at the end of your transcendental argument, the one

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I just talked about, your transcendental argument is useless and it's no good to anyone without the trinity in the economic trinity who is the savior of mankind.

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Now, if I'm talking to someone who I sense can take in something of the depths of the one in many, many problem, and I have found people like this impromptu many times,

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I might have brought to bear the importance of the trinity to our epistemology at the front end.

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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.

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Sure. What good would it be if we're not people, we're not salesmen peddling presuppositions that make your puzzle work or apologists bringing people to Christ?

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And we've really gone off the rails and missed what this whole thing is about if we don't understand the absolute relevance of the trinity to our transcendental argument.

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And honestly, I do fear that unfortunately, that's kind of what transcendental argumentation has been treated as, is some premise that lets me have all my beliefs, plus a few more.

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It's not that, something that drives you to the cross. And if presuppositionalism has not been that for you traditionally in how you're using it and reasoning with people, you're not doing what