Answering Objections to Presup

Ontology and Epistemology in Presuppositional Apologetics

In this video, I want to cover some common objections to presuppositionalism, and so I hope it is helpful to that end. One very popular response to the presuppositionalist methodology, the apologetic, is that presuppositionalists often confuse what we call ontology with epistemology.

Ontology deals with the nature of being. Epistemology deals with the nature of knowledge. The initial claim would be something along the lines that when the presuppositionalist claims that we must, for example, start with God in epistemology, he is confusing ontology and epistemology.

They will say, while it is fine to start with God with respect to ontology, we must start with ourselves in epistemology. For example, someone might say, when a presuppositionalist will say something along the lines that we need to start with God, they will say, well, wait a minute.

You have to use your senses to even read the Bible, and hence you must begin with yourself. So there is a confusion there. Another example, someone might say something along the lines, you must rely on your senses, logic, and induction, etc., in order to even read the Bible and learn about the Christian worldview.

Therefore, you cannot claim that the Christian worldview justifies those things, since they must be presupposed in order to learn the Christian worldview to begin with. So there it is. When the presuppositionalist says we need to start with God, folks who object to our methodology or our way of seeing things will say, you are confusing ontology with epistemology.

Yes, God is ontologically that context in which we engage in the thinking process, but we must begin with ourselves, we must begin with epistemology, not ontology. Well, there are a couple of things to point out there.

First, when we say we must start with God, we need to kind of begin explaining what we mean by the phrase, start with, because there is an equivocation that is often in play here. Start with is actually being used in two different senses.

And first, we need to make a distinction between the different senses of what one can mean when we use the phrase, we must start with God. When we speak of starting with, we can refer to what's called temporal and logical order, proximate and ultimate starting points, and we can start with something in practice and start with something in principle.

So when the presuppositionalist says that we begin with the entire Christian worldview, we're referring to logical order and not temporal order. So the equivocation here becomes really clear when the objector responds with something along the lines, you have to rely on your senses before you read the Bible.

In the objection, the word before is referring to temporal order and not the logical order to which presuppositionalists are referring to when we say, quote, start with. Our senses, reason, logic, etc. may come first temporally, but God and Revelation take preeminence over those other beliefs.

So we start with our faculties temporally, but we start with God logically. Our faculties are our proximate starting points, but God is the ultimate starting point. We start with our faculties in practice, but we start with God in principle.

Van Til said, you either predicate knowledge upon an ontology, speculatively, by humans, or you predicate knowledge upon the ontology revealed exegetically by the triune God. And again, Van Til says, on the nature of the epistemological question with respect to the ontological question, suppose it's true, for argument's sake, that such a being as we have described God to be does actually exist.

Would not such a God have the right to speak to us with authority? Are we not, by saying that the question of knowledge is independent of the question of being, excluding one possible answer to the question of knowledge itself?

If the being of God is what, on the basis of Scripture testimony, we have found it to be, it follows that our knowledge will be true knowledge only to the extent that it corresponds to His knowledge. To say that we do not need to ask about the nature of reality when we ask about the nature of knowledge is not to be neutral, but is in effect to exclude the Christian answer to the question of knowledge.

That's Cornelius Van Til from his book, The Defense of the Faith. In other words, knowledge, epistemology, and reality, metaphysics, or ontology, it's not an either or, we must start with one or start with the other.

Rather, we start with both. To say that you must start with either ontology or epistemology, I think, is a false dichotomy. We start with both. The ontology creates the metaphysical context out of which our epistemology is what it is.

Alright? Okay, so again, that answer presupposes some background knowledge with respect to this topic and so hopefully that's helpful for some people. What about the objection that presuppositionalism is circular?

Circular Reasoning and the Transcendental Argument

This is a common objection to the presuppositional form of argumentation. Well, first, when we're accused of circular reasoning, for example, we need to kind of, let's kind of explain this for a second.

Circular reasoning occurs when the claim in question is dependent upon the conclusion. So, for example, something along the lines, this is an example of circular reasoning. X is true because of Y. Y is true because of X.

And, of course, X and Y would stand for, they're symbols for certain propositions. Okay? So, when we say X is true because of Y and Y is true because of X, we're kind of reasoning in a circle. Now, of course, regardless if folks don't like it when we say this, I'm convinced that this is true, not all forms of circular reasoning are fallacious.

If you think about it, presuppositionalism is a type of foundational claim, right? We're arguing that the God of Christianity and his revelation, these are our ultimate starting points, and so they are our presuppositions.

And so when we argue for them, we are not validating their truth by appealing to something more external than it, otherwise the thing that we are appealing to is more foundational than this ultimate presupposition we've already affirmed.

So when we deal with foundations, foundations are circular in a sense, and in that sense not always fallacious. All views are circular at the foundational level, even if we're told that's not the case by some other folks who hold to certain positions.

I'm not convinced of their explanations for that. You have folks in the classical foundationalist schools of thought and things like that. I don't agree with their criticisms, and so I'm going to kind of stick to my guns on this topic.

Now, what we're not saying is that because all foundations have circularity issues, that therefore it's fine that the presuppositionalist view is circular, right? We're not saying that, listen, all views at their foundation are circular, so it's okay that we're circular.

That's not what we're saying, okay? What we are saying is that if you do not begin with the Christian circle, you lose the only adequate foundation for intelligible experience. So the presuppositional argument is not fallaciously circular because no presuppositional argument proceeds with premises in which the conclusion is baked into the premises, okay?

So a couple of things, all right? We are arguing for the transcendental necessity of the Christian worldview, so we're not simply saying, hey, we all have circles at our foundation, and so it's okay for the Christian to have his circle.

Our argument is that we all have circles at our foundation, but it's the Christian circle, the Christian foundation that actually saves intelligible experience, knowledge, and so forth. Now again, this is the claim, and that would have to be argued out in more detail, but I'm just kind of addressing, kind of giving us an aerial view of how at least I understand these issues as a presuppositionalist, okay?

And notice what I said here, that the presuppositional argument is not fallaciously circular because no presuppositional argument proceeds with premises in which the conclusion is baked into the premise, okay?

This is important to differentiate between circular reasoning at that foundational level and circular argument, okay? Circular argument is the characteristic of a direct argument, an argument that goes something along the lines of having a premise, a premise, and a conclusion.

Presuppositional arguments, like the transcendental arguments, are typically presented in an indirect fashion, and hence its transcendental nature. So there is no presuppositional argument that's formulated in which the conclusion is in one of the premises.

So we're not arguing in that way because the presuppositional transcendental argument is not typically presented in what we call that direct argumentation. Now granted, you can present a transcendental argument in a direct fashion in which you have premise, premise, and conclusion.

So for example, you can provide a transcendental argument in a deductive form in which the deductive argument in which you have a premise, a premise, and a conclusion. One of the premises is a transcendental premise, and then you will defend the truth of that premise via a transcendental argument, okay?

For example, you could use something along the lines, and this is a perfectly logically valid argument, it's deductive, with a transcendental premise. We could argue something along the lines of, if knowledge is possible, the Christian worldview is true.

Knowledge is possible, therefore the Christian worldview is true. That's not a fallaciously circular argument. However, if the argument goes through, then it demonstrates that we had to be presupposing the truth of the Christian worldview in order to even make sense out of the argument itself since we're arguing that anything that is remotely considered knowledge requires the Christian worldview as its necessary precondition for its intelligibility, okay?

Fideism and the Impossibility of the Contrary

Another common objection against presupp is that presuppositionalism is fideistic, okay? What is fideism? Alvin Plantinga defines fideism as the following, fideism can be defined as an exclusive or basic reliance upon faith alone accompanied by a consequent disparagement of reason and utilized especially in the pursuit of philosophical or religious truth.

That's Alvin Plantinga as quoted in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He continues, fideism urges reliance upon faith rather than reason. The gist of the assertion is something along these lines.

Since the presuppositionalist appeals, and this is not Plantinga now, since the presuppositionalist appeals to their axiom or their fundamental starting point or their ultimate presupposition, they must accept it without demonstration since to seek demonstration is to forego the axiom or the presupposition as ultimate.

So let's take a look at this a little bit closer. A presupposition is kind of an ultimate starting point and presuppositions are not justified by appeals to something more fundamental than it. You know, philosophically speaking, when we refer to something like axioms or presupposition generally speaking, you are referring to a foundational belief that is not justified in the normal ways we justify things.

That does not mean that a presupposition or an axiom, depending on how you're using that, cannot be justified. They can be justified, they're just not justified in the normal way things are justified because we're dealing with things at that foundational level.

So how does a presuppositionalist justify his presupposition? Well here's how he doesn't do it. He does not do it by appealing to something more foundational to that presupposition. Rather he appeals to the transcendental nature of that presupposition and that's why we argue along the lines of, you hear presuppositionalists often say that the Christian worldview is true by the impossibility of the contrary and that's that transcendental presentation of the argument there.

And of course, again, more needs to be worked out in the discussion. Obviously we need to dig into the details as to how that looks in the course of actually engaging in argumentation, but that's the nature of the claim.

So when someone says that presuppositional apologetics kind of reduces to fideism, the claim is something along the lines of, since the believer starts with an ultimate unprovable starting point and the unbeliever supposedly starts with an ultimate unprovable starting point, then there is no way to find common ground between them.

No point of contact, no way to get beyond the horizons of our worldview framework. And so in that case, you have the unbeliever with an ultimate starting point, the believer with an ultimate starting point.

The ultimate starting point is not demonstrated by appeals external to itself to demonstrate its validity and so you have one's assertion of their ultimate starting point upon which their worldview is based.

The other worldview is asserting its truth and upon which everything else that worldview contains is based on that and that's it. You have people talking past each other because they have completely different starting points, but these starting points are indemonstrable.

So there's really no way to get around it. So you have your circle, he has his circle, that's it. There's nowhere else you can go from there and so you are just asserting fideistically that your starting point is true.

Well, with respect to presuppositionalism, this is false. The presuppositional transcendental argument is the furthest thing from fideism in that it posits the complete opposite of fideism. Christianity, according to presuppositionalists, is objectively provable and can be demonstrated by the impossibility of the contrary.

There's that transcendental emphasis. It doesn't stop with opposing ultimate starting points at war with each other or as Bonson has said, we are not relegated to standing in our isolated intellectual towers loathing each other, right?

We're not stuck in these separate kind of worldview bubbles, rather the presuppositionalist argues that the Christian worldview is objectively provable because presuppositionalists are asserting that contrary to popular opinion that presuppositions can't be justified, we are arguing our presupposition can be justified transcendentally.

Now regardless if you agree with presuppositionalism, maybe you think it's kind of good or it's completely garbage, it's important to understand the nature of the claim that we are making. If the transcendental argument and the presuppositional way of kind of looking at things is true or even if it's false, what we're not asserting is simply an arbitrary starting point.

At least understand this, that we are claiming that our presupposition can be justified and therefore if that's what we're claiming, then our position really is not really fideism. We're not recoiling against reason or anything like that.

We're arguing that Christianity is required for all those things and here's why, right? So it's not a fideistic authority assertion, rather it is an authority assertion to be sure because we're resting upon the authority of God, but we believe that that can be demonstrated via the transcendental argument as presuppositionalists tend to present it.

Alright? Well, hope this is helpful and clarifies some things. Maybe it confused you even more, but if you like the content here, tell me what you think in the comments below. Share the video. Talk about it.

Argue about it. But remember, if you're a Christian and you are engaging these issues with other Christians, be sure to follow the mandate of 1 Peter 3, verse 15, that we are set apart Christ as Lord in our heart, always being ready to give a reason for the hope that's within us, yet doing so with gentleness and respect.

Until next time, peace.