Tag: circularity
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Lex Lutheran and Caleb Keith Discuss Presuppositional Apologetics
“He who wishes to philosophize by using Aristotle without danger to his soul must first become thoroughly foolish in Christ.” – Martin Luther (29th Thesis, 1518 Heidelberg Disputation)
Disclaimer: Ben Woodring made me promise to be nice in this post.
Inerrancy
On the most recent episode of the newly named Wittenberg Project podcast featuring Caleb Keith from 1517 Legacy and Thinking Fellows, the presuppositional apologetic method is described as making arguments from a presupposition that the Bible is the inerrant word of God.…
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It’s Circular Because It’s Circular
The charge that presuppositionalism is “circular” must be one of the dumbest objections I have ever heard.
No really. Think about it for just a moment.
You hear the accusation again and again that presuppositional apologetics are “circular.” The implication is that the charge of circularity in view here constitutes an objection against presuppositional apologetics. A fatal objection, even. So a logical point is being made. A fallacy is in view.
Presuppositional Apologetics Can’t Be Circular
But it should be noted right away that “presuppositional apologetics” can never be circular. Neither the label “presuppositional apologetics” nor the discipline the label …
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Questioning Copan
The Gospel Coalition is running a series on apologetics, and today’s entry was by Paul Copan, entitled “Questioning Presuppositionalism”. What struck me, while reading his take on the subject, was how superficial and inaccurate it was. He introduces Van Til, and then says that Gordon Clark supposedly “generally followed” his methodology, along with Bahnsen and Frame, and then called it “variegated”. Well, given that he’s simply wrong concerning Clark, and that Frame consciously departed from Van Til as well, I’d supposed that’s an assumption guaranteed to result in a certain conclusion, wouldn’t you? It is not the case that …
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Three Very Different Philosophers: Necessity of Epistemic Circularity
…“But don’t the doctrines of the imago dei (the image of God), and the purpose of human creation already presuppose that we can have substantive knowledge of God? They seem clearly to do this, and if so, then they cannot be appealed to in a noncircular argument for this theological optimism as a conclusion.
First, it must be pointed out that the possibility of any kind of basic knowledge cannot be demonstrated by means of noncircular, nonquestion-begging arguments, by arguments that do not in any way already presume to some extent that to which they intend to lend some support.