Paul Copan's Questioning of Presuppositionalism

Paul Copan’s Critique of Presuppositionalism

On yesterday's Gospel Coalition blog, Dr. Paul Copan, who is the current president, I understand, of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, wrote an article called Questioning Presuppositionalism. Now, there are already some rather full responses on the web.

There's one at the Choosing Hats blog from Razor's Kiss that has already been published that he couldn't sleep last night, so he worked on that. What I really, what really concerned me is that I, you know, as much as I love R. C. Sproul and his way of teaching and what he's done for Reformed theology, everybody has their blind spots.

And it seems that when we come to presuppositionalism, there are a lot of people, even within the Reformed camp, though I would say they're much more minority in the Reformed camp, but certainly outside, who are just, they just really have some major blind spots as to what we are saying when we talk about the necessity, the biblical necessity, and I say it's a biblical necessity of recognizing that we cannot, we dare not pretend that there is such thing as moral neutrality in doing apologetics.

Because there isn't. We are denying the Lordship of Christ, we are denying a fundamental element of our belief when we say that there is a neutral ground upon which you and I as human beings can stand and then judge the existence of God.

I think that is, it's not only unbiblical, I think it is a denial of biblical truth. And when Dr. Copan here, and I realize it's a blog article, but even in a blog article you can be accurate in your representation of the position that you're denying.

He does not accurately represent presuppositionalism just as classical apologetics, which was co-authored by Sproul and Lindsay and others, likewise. It was just, it's just amazing if you've actually read Van Till, you've read Bonson, you've listened to the debates and you've maybe made some application and you've worked through utilizing a presuppositional approach and arguing with an atheist, and then you read fellow Christians trying to criticize the way you've done that and you go, but that's.

Not what I believe.

Wait a minute, no, I don't believe that.

Why did you come to that conclusion?

Where did we ever say that? Didn't Dr. Van Till say this? Didn't Greg Bonson say that? And it's like they're not even listening to what we ourselves are saying in defense of our own methodology, and let alone are they listening to how we're doing apologetics.

It's just, it's frustrating. It really is frustrating to read these things and, you know, I mean, to say, it's a very simplistic thing. I'm looking at the article here. It says, in his objections, he says, first, it engages in question begging, assuming what one wants to prove.

It begins with the assumption that God exists and then concludes that God exists, such reasoning would get you an F in any logic class worthy of the name. If you really think that that's all we're talking about, that we're just assuming the end to get to the end, then you don't have any idea why it is that we say that the entire Christian message is based upon the reality that we are creatures.

And if the biblical teaching is true, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and if the biblical teaching is true that we are creatures made in the image of God, which comes up in the second part, second objection, then that has particular impact.

It has to. You can't, you can't make that secondary. And he then goes on to talk about logical laws, and yet he never grounds them in anything. They just sort of exist, and we just all share them in common.

Well, why?

The Christian has an answer for that. The Christian has a grounding for why these laws of logic are binding and universal and are not just the consensus opinion of human beings and all the rest of this stuff.

And so it's just, it's just amazing that it could be said, well, it just begins with the assumption that God exists and then concludes that God, that is, wow, that's just not where we're coming from at all.

And even later on it says, indeed, the statements of Scripture themselves presuppose the validity of logical laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle. They also appeal to criteria beyond Scripture.

The court of appeals of historical evidence for Jesus' resurrection, things that were not done in a corner. Here's where I again think that first and foremost, the first skill that an apologist should seek to be developing is not that of a philosopher, but that of an exegete.

And to think that the Apostle Paul is actually grounding the divine authority of the proclamation of the gospel in something that is above Scripture, as if those historical criteria that are, as he puts here, criteria beyond Scripture have a validity that is either higher than Scripture or even equal to Scripture, is to really misunderstand what the Apostle Paul is saying.

And that is one of my biggest critiques of the leading evidentialist apologists, is that I'm sorry, by and large, they are lousy exegetes. And that also is reflected in the fact that the vast majority of them are not reformed in their soteriology, which likewise has exegetical issues.

But what I really wanted to look at was, second, Christians share common ground with unbelievers who are likewise made in God's image, which is not erased by the fall. And I just have to get so frustrated.

You have to be utilizing secondary sources to not recognize that your criticism is of.

A straw man.

I mean, have you not read Bantel? What is the common ground? The common ground is the fact that we're made in the image of God. It's not, it is not the idea that as a result, there is some kind of moral neutrality, because there is no morally neutral ground.

There is nothing that God has not created. There is nothing that is not what it is, because God intended it to be that way. There is nothing over which the Lordship of Christ does not reign supreme. And therefore, there is no morally neutral ground I can stand on to say, let's reason from this point to the existence of God, because the ground I stand on was made by God for the very purpose of me standing on it.

And so, what was then, what have we said over and over and over and over again as presuppositionalists? The point of contact is that you're dealing with a creature of God who is suppressing his own knowledge of God and his own creatureliness.

That's the point of contact. So, why is it an objection on the Gospel Coalition blog from the president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, second, Christians share a common ground with unbelievers who are likewise made in God's image, which is not erased by the fall.

Why does anyone think that Reformed people really do believe that the image of God is utterly eradicated? It's just like they keep repeating this to themselves, and we keep saying, no, no, we don't, no, we don't, no, we don't believe that.

Marred in the fall, all those things, yes, but eradicated? I mean, yet in some Reformed circles, the doctrine of total depravity seems to leave no trace of the Imago Dei, where? And if you're critiquing Van Til, why not quote Van Til saying that?

Because you can't, because it's the very thing he said was the point of contact for I'm crying out loud. It's just like, I just don't understand this. These people have all these degrees, and yet when it comes to something that has some element related to Reformed theology, I see the exact same attitude on their part toward us as I see from theological liberals and people like Bart Ehrman who come into a debate with me and they don't even Google my name because they don't think we have anything meaningful to say, and here it's happening as well.

And it just, you know, there's just so much that can be said about that, but I want to be actually brief on this and get into the William Lane Craig stuff, but I just wanted to point that out. You know, he says, as a cloud of apologetical witnesses can testify, God has used philosophical arguments for his existence, scientific support to the universe's beginning, big bang, and it's fine-tuning and historical evidences for the resurrection of Jesus to assist people in embracing Christ just as God uses the preaching of the gospel.

Now that, let me mention about that, just as, no sir, N-O sir, not just as. Don't you, please folks, listen to me, and I hope you hear, and I hope Paul Copan does not believe this.

Maybe he does.

But when you put just as in italics, it sounds like you are making these apologetical witnesses such as philosophical arguments, scientific supports, fine-tuning, and historical evidences, you're putting them on the same par as the preaching of the gospel.

And it is not in any way, shape, or form, and cannot be. We are born again by the proclamation of God's truth. We are not born again by philosophical argumentation, and in fact, the direct assertion of 1 Corinthians chapter 1 is that in God's good pleasure, men by their reasoning, by their wisdom, will not come to know him.

We come to know him not by our philosophy, but by the foolishness of preaching. And I don't get the feeling that 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 is one of the favorite texts of many people who are very caught up in this philosophical methodology today.

God uses the preaching of the gospel to save, period, full stop, end discussion. Now, can he use means of preparation? Well, first and foremost, without the work of regeneration, you're not going to get anywhere.

But God can use many other things. There are many things that in a subordinate way point to the truthfulness of Christianity. But when you replace the power of the gospel with the idea of the greater probability of the existence of a God, that is where you see the fundamental difference between the apologetic methodologies we're discussing today.

Because this methodology is, well, you know, you take this argument, you put this argument, you know, this argument has about a 70 chance, 70 -30, okay? And then this one's about a 60 -40, and you put them together, and you've got a little better probability, and this somehow becomes the greater probability of the existence of a God.

And once you've got to a God, then maybe we can... That's just not how it works at all. That is unbiblical. It is a clear evidence of someone starting with a methodology and creating a theology that matches it, rather than having a full-born biblical theology and then creating an apologetic methodology that accurately communicates that theological truth without compromise.

And I would submit to you that it also very much touches upon very pragmatic issues. That is, that methodology looks at what will work. And very often I hear coming from these folks, well, that's not going to work.

That's not going to work. All assuming that the real mechanism by which someone becomes convinced of the truth of Christianity is not the change of their heart and mind by the gospel of Jesus Christ, but it's something else.

It's the comprehensiveness and power of my argumentation. And I simply, I simply absolutely reject that. Now, it's interesting, he finishes with saying, fourth, it is important to distinguish between the confident ground of our knowledge of God and the highly probable public case for the Christian faith.

I don't think there's any difference. That's where, that's another major difference between us. We don't have in our little conclave confident ground of our knowledge of God, but that's just, that's just us.

That's not what we proclaim to others. We proclaim them something else, a highly probable public case for the Christian faith. He says, the witness of the spirit, not a host of intellectual arguments, is what ultimately gives us confident knowledge we belong to God.

Yet this does not exclude the spirits using highly probable or plausible public evidences for God's existence or for the resurrection of Jesus. To what end?

It doesn't say.

To what end does he use that? Knowledge in one area does not exclude knowledge in another. Having warrant for belief by the spirit is not the same as showing my belief is warranted using evidence and reason.

Really?

Well, what's, what's the final court of appeal here anyways? So you know, there's a, there's a sort of a tip of the hat to, well, you know, we need the witness of the spirit, but in this, in the same breath, it's in essence saying, but the witness of the spirit is insufficient without these other things.

Well, to accomplish what? Once again, your theology determines the answer to this question. The theology here is you can have a basically moral neutral person, a morally neutral person, and it's good to have the witness of the spirit to get them farther down the road of Christianity, but to get them started, the work of the spirit is not enough.

We need to have these other external things. And that person is in a proper position to make judgments about the God about whose knowledge he's already suppressing anyways. That's what, the, the criticism of presuppositionalism here, if you really listen to it, goes back to a fundamental starting point in your theology.

And I have, I know I have young apologists out there who are torn because they, they hear the one side and they hear the other side and, and look, one side gets to go to a whole lot more conferences than the other side.

And there's a whole lot more money supporting the evidentialist Armenian side. I understand that. I simply say to you that if you're going to call Muslims or Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses or atheists or Buddhists or Hindus or any of these people to consistency, then you must be consistent yourself.

And if you are in a context where you are recognizing that apologetics comes from, it comes out of theology, don't compromise. Your apologetics must reflect that.