Apologetics to the Glory of God

Tag: presuppositionalism

  • Should we argue for “general theism”?

     

     

    In my experience the presuppositionalist program of setting out to defend specifically Christian theism generally produces scoffing rather than interaction. At the beginning of his debate with Gordon Stein, Greg Bahnsen states his position on this matter. He says, “I want to specify that I’m arguing particularly in favor of Christian theism, and for it as a unit or system of thought and not for anything like theism in general, and there are reasons for that.”

    There are at least two senses in which Bahnsen explains he will not be arguing for or defending theism in general. Bahnsen …

  • A Fristian Strikes Out

    As I was browsing the Internet today I came across the following from a “John Calvin”:

    “All right. So all the Fristian needs to do is to say that ‘Fristianity’ is whatever subset of Christian claims the TAGster thinks we need for preconditions of intelligibility, *except that* the Trinity is a Quadrinity.”

    How does someone disprove a worldview that has the same propositions as Christianity except for the additional proposition that there is a fourth person in God?

    In my view, thinking of the “preconditions of intelligibility” as a “subset of Christian claims” may be a rather substantial error, but …

  • Proving the Bible

    Jamin Hubner at Real Apologetics has written another very fine article which may be found here.…

  • Some of Nocterro’s Presuppositions

    Someone commenting on the site by the name Nocterro recently posted the following:

    I just have one final point to make regarding presuppositions.

    Presuppose: To believe or suppose in advance. (American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition).

    You said earlier in this discussion: “You presuppose autonomy in that you reject the Lordship of Christ and the interpretation of the resurrection provided by Scripture which states that it was a supernatural event and assume that a naturalistic interpretation is possible for any given evidence.”

    This is wrong. In fact, you could say that I started with similar presuppositions to the ones that you

    …

  • An Objection That Does Not Count

    Non-Christians can and do engage in activities using logic, science, and morality. Christians do as well. Presuppositionalists claim that these two groups can do so only because the world is what God says it is.

    The argument advanced for this claim begins with one of the accepted activities mentioned above (logic, science, or morality) and illustrates how this activity is possible if the world is what God says it is. Then the accepted activity is shown to be inconsistent with what anyone else other than God says the world is.

    While it might be said that the non-Christian cannot and …

  • Bravo Nocterro

    Kudos to Nocterro (who sometimes comments here) for writing a pretty clear explanation of what presuppositionalists have been saying for some time now.

    Showing that the Bible is correct in its historical claims does not show it is correct in its theological claims…

    Imagine for the sake of argument that someone showed that Jesus did indeed resurrect…All it would show is that a man resurrected, not that Yahweh exists and that such a being was the cause of such an event. It could have been that it was the doing of some other sort of god, or even something else

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  • Ryft Braeloch’s Response To Mitch LeBlanc Regarding TAG

    Ryft Braeloch at The Aristophrenium has written Part 1 of a response to Mitch LeBlanc’s article “The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God” which is certainly worth a read.…

  • A Brief Word On The Transcendental Argument For The Existence Of God

    Immanuel Kant is known for having coined a term and utilized an argument which is now referred to as transcendental, though it may be traced back even further, having been used in some sense by Aristotle (as one example). Cornelius Van Til, writing from the Continental Tradition in Philosophy, wrote extensively concerning a transcendental argument which is utilized to prove Christianity. Greg L. Bahnsen, a student of Van Til, is best known for having brought the argument, or at least something very much like the argument, into the realm of public debate and for having attempted to clarify it …

  • Lost In A Sea Of Subjectivism

    Mitch LeBlanc has posted the draft for his journal submission on The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God. In the Abstract for the article, he writes, “I present a couple of objections formulated by Sean Choi and Michael Martin and develop three of my own”. It has been pointed out already that whatever Mitch is arguing against, it is not Bahnsen’s TAG. Given that even I, though not very well read on TAG, had encountered the objections from Choi and Martin no later than 2007 and given the recent interaction found here and here with some of the …

  • No Place To Stand Part II

    In response to my previous post Mitch has written this post.

    Unfortunately the tendency Mitch has to advance irrelevant arguments continues in this post as well. Presuppositionalism is immune to the criticisms Mitch raises against it because, among other things, the majority position in presuppositionalism which I also adhere to does not involve the claim that logic is contingent as Mitch has stated in several of his arguments but rather that logic is necessary. Thus Mitch has allegedly advanced arguments against presuppositionalism that fall prey to the Straw Man Fallacy and may be submitting an entry to a philosophical …