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The Evidence for God: Religious Knowledge Reexamined by Paul K. Moser: Book Review

December 13, 2011 By 2 Comments

The Evidence for God: Review by Mike Robinson

 
Paul K. Moser (Professor & Chairperson Dept. of Philosophy: Loyola University, Chicago) relates epistemic issues to the evidence for the existence of God with masterly skill in “The Evidence for God: Religious Knowledge Reexamined.” Moser, author of “The Elusive God,” paints a far more textured picture of epistemology’s crucial role in determining genuine evidence for the existence of the Christian God than the majority of contemporary apologists.Along the way Professor Moser attempts to deflate various arguments for theism that play down the ontic majesty of the true and living God. Additionally he cogently refutes naturalism with precision and care (pp. 46-84). His persuasive and inexpugnable contestations refuting sundry schools of naturalism alone make this volume worth purchasing. Professor Moser also convincingly discredits fideism as he provides the reader with a thoughtful case against blind faith.The book “develops volitional theism against the background that includes critical assessment of prominent competing positions” (Naturalism, Fideism, Traditional Proofs, Plantinga’s epistemology – p. 45). The book’s claims are launched with an erudite quote from H.H. Farmer: “Many questions are answered wrongly, not because the evidence is contradictory or inadequate, but because the mind through its fundamental dispositions and presuppositions is out of focus with the only kind of evidence which is really available” (p. 1).

Moser controverts numerous forms of Naturalism including:

•   Quine’s (p. 68-70)

•    Ontological Naturalism
a. Eliminative ontological naturalism
b. Noneliminative reductive ontological naturalism
c. Noneliminative nonreductive ontological naturalism

•   Methodological naturalism in three dominant forms.
All this within the context of a refutation of Scientism (pp. 76-87) while he opposes the empirical attempt to prove the existence of God (p. 87).

The author rejects classical proofs (pp. 142-182) along with historical and evidential methods as systems that prove too little (finite data V. an infinite ontology: the God of Christian Theism), yet he admits to their possible psychological or aesthetic apologetic value (p. 160). The apologist also denies that Behe’s irreducible complexity and ID science are epistemically satisfying approaches (p. 166-167).

The often astute professor alogically and unbiblically rejects God’s sovereignty in the salvation of souls and the enlightening of minds (pp. 131-142 and misc.). He builds a neurasthenic case for the divine call that results in “nonargument evidence of God’s reality” not as “volitionally static” forasmuch as we need to “avoid … a bias against evidence of the divine reality that comes from the volitional pressure of a transcendent call and the resulting transformation of a willing human recipient who thereby becomes a personifying evidence of God’s reality” (p. 150). Nonetheless Moser’s previous arguments against traditional proofs (finite, mutable, perishing material things lack the epistemic ability and ontic necessities to prove an infinite, immutable, imperishable God) cuts off the branch he’s resting his arguments on: Christians become the “evidence of God’s reality in receiving and reflecting God’s moral character to others” (p. ix); inasmuch as Christians are also mutable and finite, thus under Moser’s epistemic scrutiny, they fail to offer proof for the awesome infinite and immutable God revealed in scripture. The professor’s argument provides the grounds that confute his own position.

see E-book that contends for the sure Existence of God Here

The author claims that the evidence that has epistemically virtuous rights streams from the personal, perfectly loving God who alone deserves our worship and obedience. He maintains that this is the only justifiable evidence because God is elusive and all that is within the cosmos is epistemically diminutive. The seeker should open his heart and find salient evidence for the reality of God in the lives of believers who exhibit the love that they have received from the Lord. I personally haven’t met a fellow Christian who lived a life that is morally adequate enough to be proof for the existence of God; furthermore I have not observed the love of a believer that was so impressive as to compel one to believe in God. The only moral source of love that compels saving faith is found in Christ Jesus.

Moser offers a formidable case against fideism and mysticism (p. 88-125), but his central allegation against classical & evidential proofs implies that he’s one who rejects propositional and evidential proof, so he seems to slide into a type of moderate fideism himself, although he avouches “moderate evidentialism” (p. 135).

He advocates the amorphous view that “God’s reality is increasingly available and salient to me as I, myself, am increasingly willing to become such evidence–that is evidence of God’s reality.” This contention is his chief argument for Christian theism (p. 172). One reason Moser contends that God’s existence cannot be proved in propositional apologetic terms is: God is epistemically veiled so the lives of believers are the only sufficient evidence that is available, moreover we need to “let God be God” (p. 28). God is concealed since “the reality of the God is knowable firsthand by humans on the basis of salient and conclusive, if elusive, evidence.”

The author endeavors to rebut the Reformed view of soteriology in relation to apologetic pursuits as he asserts that some “people assume that God would have a magic cognitive bullet in divine self-revelation whereby God guarantees that the divinely offered evidence of God’s existence will actually be willingly received by humans. Sometimes this dubious assumption is clothed in talk of `divine sovereignty,’ but this approach, in any case, involves a serious mistake” (pp. 33-34). However Romans chapter one informs the world that all men know that God exists but they suppress the truth in unrighteousness; furthermore the totality of holy writ discloses the idea that God is the agent who opens the human heart and calls men to Himself by grace alone.

The professor states: “Conclusive firsthand evidence for divine reality is, I’ll contend, purposively available to humans, that is, available in a way, and only in a way, that accommodates the distinctive purposes of a perfectly loving God. The latter purposes, we’ll see, would aim non-coercively but authoritatively to transform human purposes to agree with divine purposes, despite human resistance.”

Moser’s work may not have compelling positive and direct proof for theism but he does present an extremely effective refutation of naturalism and fideism along with a moderate challenge to the traditional arguments for God’s existence. Even though I affirm a dissimilar apologetic method and epistemic approach, I enjoyed this volume immensely and gained additional insight in ways to defend the faith.

My method advocates a certain argument for the existence of God. Additionally in contrast to Moser I argue that God alone furnishes all the a priori essentials for the necessary epistemic equipment utilized in all science and research. God has the ontic attributes of omniscience, immutability, and omnipotence (universal reach) to be the ground for the immaterial universal and immutable rational and ethical necessities. Any position that rejects Christian theism ultimately fails; thus whatever evidence one discovers, one must discern and process that evidence with the rational tools noted above.
God Does Exist!: Defending the faith using presuppositional apologetics, evidence, and the impossibility of the contrary

 

Moser’s book here
Filed Under: Apologetics, Book Reviews, Classical Apologetics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Atheism Built upon Empiricism Cannot Supply the Foundation for Knowledge

September 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Empiricism Fails to Deliver the Ground for Knowledge
by Mike Robinson


Many people say that they cannot believe anything unless they can see it for themselves; this is one usage of empiricism. Many atheists (atheism as their metaphysical position) hold to empiricism as their epistemic base (position on knowledge) for their worldview. They declare that unless something can be tested empirically, using the five senses, it is not true. The main problem with such an assertion is that this assertion cannot itself be tested by any of the senses. Thus it is a self-conflagrating assertion.

Another problem is that our senses are not one-hundred-percent accurate. They are mostly reliable, but cannot be completely trusted. St. Augustine pointed out that a straight oar appears bent when it is in the water. Many of us, as we drive our cars during a hot day, see mirages on the road. If an elephant is a quarter mile up the road and I put my thumb in front of my eyes, the beast seems to be no larger than my thumb.

The Hand is Quicker than the Eye

In Las Vegas there are dozens of magicians who make a good living by fooling the empirical senses of their audiences; the hand is quicker than the eye. Our eyes and our other senses can deceive us. We cannot base our world and life view on these senses unaided; nobody can.

Skeptics who claim that they only believe in what they see do not and cannot follow that philosophy consistently. Their use of logic, induction, and mathematics is not intelligible by the senses alone; these are immaterial entities that the materialist uses every day. To understand this world, God must be presupposed—whether the materialist realizes it or not. The notion that truth may be ascertained merely through the senses cannot even justify that two plus two will always be four in all places or that all animals will die; for the reason that no human can be simultaneously in all places where two plus two occur, nor can any human witness the death of all animals. The believer can trust the basic reliability of the senses only because an infallible God, who knows all things, has revealed that we can. The reason that scientists often repeat their tests and experiments hundreds of times is because the senses are occasionally unreliable. Men of science and industry have built instruments as well as machines to help bypass the inconsistency and unreliability of the senses. The five senses are not always reliable because human beings are not infallible and absent the divine ability to possess universal knowledge. Definite knowledge requires a man to depend on a God who is perfect, infallible, and omniscient.

Can One Really See an Object?

The five senses can provide awareness of and information about only some attributes of an object. This truth, conjoined with the practicality that numerous people claim that they only believe in what they can see, makes for an interesting discovery. Considering that in a way, under their non-Christian worldview, men cannot see any object. Human eyesight cannot give direct and immediate awareness and understanding of any object. Eyesight can provide information on some aspects and attributes of a given object. But only God can see all atoms, and only He can fully understand all protons and electrons. He has exact and exhaustive knowledge of the color, texture, size, weight, density, and complete physical makeup of all objects in the universe from a perfect perspective. No human can have exhaustive and perfect knowledge of even one of the attributes of a material article; hitherto some want to trust their eyesight and senses above the God who understands all things.

The senses are generally reliable; however we have justified knowledge because of God’s revelation. We must have a transcendent source that “sees” everything and reveals to us that the senses are basically reliable. The problem comes when people reject God’s word and construct a worldview based on their senses alone. Senses can routinely deceive. Professional illusionists get paid large salaries to fool our eyesight. Conversations between husbands and wives can quickly reveal how unreliable the sense of hearing can be. Many taste-test studies have demonstrated that the sense of taste is not always reliable. The Associated Press reported that surgical teams leave clamps, sponges, and other tools inside 1,500 patients nationwide each year (http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/archive/index.php/t-1969.html). These are highly trained teams with large potential lawsuits looming over them, and yet their senses fail them at times. One cannot construct a reliable worldview based exclusively on the senses, as many scientists attempt to do. It is epistemically unmanageable for them to avoid the truth of God in view of the fact that all their theories, notes, and scientific conclusions utilize the laws of logic. Logic is immaterial, universal, and invariant; it presupposes God.

Empiricism Flops

Empiricism fails as a worldview every time you stub your toe or trip over a rock since this helps demonstrate the sometimes unreliability of our sight; our senses are normally reliable, but we cannot build a worldview on their untrustworthiness. God alone is the necessary truth condition for an intelligible worldview which includes the basic trustworthiness of our five senses.

Atheists can be rational because they borrow rational essentials from the Christian Worldview (CWV); the atheistic WV fails to account for the laws of logic that the CWV underwrites all the while borrowing them out of necessity.

Analysis of anti-theistic materialism demonstrates that it is self-nullifying inasmuch as it fails to give what it does not possess. The material cosmos, as a particular thing, is devoid of a foundation for eternal invariant universals; one cannot hang one’s house on one’s paintings, but one hangs one’s paintings on one’s house. God is the immovable truth required to hang knowledge claims, including atheistic claims.

The Rational Pre-essentials for Knowledge

I will employ a transcendental analysis by determining what the rational pre-essentials are for knowledge and understanding human experience; what must be true to be able to account for intelligibility. The triune God is the transcendental necessity who provides the preconditions for knowledge of reality. Mere men, devoid of immutability and universal rational attainment, cannot supply the transcendental conditions that are needed for the Law of Non-contradiction (LNC), love, and knowledge.

To rightly understand reality one must have universals to generalize the particulars. This implies that the sheer anthropology of atheism cannot supply the general and universal realities that must be present for the necessary and unavoidable transcendental conditions listed beforehand.

Some people claim that knowledge is impossible. Nonetheless if knowledge is impossible, one could not know that knowledge is impossible because that is a knowledge claim. The intelligibility of human experience requires God. Christianity is a WV that provides human reason an unchanging foundation for knowledge. Atheism, naturalism, and skepticism all fail to furnish a foundation for the LNC; thus they cannot provide the permanent footing for knowledge. They can only offer an irrational and incongruous WV.

Unless one believes in God, one cannot account for anything in the universe. God is the underlying and infinite ground for all knowledge, proof, evidence, and logic. It is impossible for God not to exist. He is the truth condition for all knowledge because all human knowledge requires the use of unchanging universals. The omniscient, immaterial, and unchanging God alone provides the a priori essentials for the use of nonphysical, universal, and unchanging universals. Non-believing thought cannot supply the necessary pre-environment for knowledge, thus they fall into futility.

“Of all the offspring of time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder’s welcome” (Charles Mackay).

The Christian worldview is true because of the impossibility of the contrary. The contrary of the CWV implies a contradiction inasmuch as the denial of the CWV leaves one without the ontic (ontic: relating to ontology; relating to existence, being) foundation to ground immutable universals such as the laws of thought and moral laws, which are required for knowledge. The denial of knowledge (or its ground) is a self-contradicting endeavor.
For More see my Innovative book that refutes Atheism: Truth, Knowledge, and the Reason for God

Filed Under: Covenantal Apologetics, Presuppositional Epistemology, Reformed Philosophy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Greg Bahnsen on Islam and Judaism

February 11, 2011 By 1 Comment

Greg Bahnsen on the Claims of Islam and Judaism

“Neither Judaism nor Islam have an anointed one or Messiah who fulfills the anticipation of the Old Testament scriptures, even though they acknowledge them to be God’s inspired self-revelation. For this reason the theologies of Judaism and Islam lack material adequacy: they do not do justice to the message of God’s revealed word. That is why we look upon them as heretical versions of the Biblical faith, versions which do not deliver good news to mankind.

Following upon their failure to affirm the promised Messiah, Judaism and Islam cannot proclaim an assured word of salvation to those who know that they stand guilty before a holy and just God. Christianity is uniquely the religion of salvation by grace through faith in the finished work of the Christ.

 

Paul puts it in these words: “For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Christianity teaches that Christ paid the price of sin, and that through faith in Him and His saving work, men may be forgiven by God. They cannot earn this forgiveness by good works, nor can they take any credit before God. Salvation comes as a gift, appropriated by faith, rather than meritorious good deeds.

 

Judaism and Islam cannot and do not teach such good news about grace and salvation. By not trusting in the work of God’s Messianic Son for redemption, both Judaism and Islam are in their own distinctive ways committed to some form of works-righteousness or legalism. They are left to seek a right standing before God through imperfectly good works performed in human wisdom and strength.

 

The Apostle Paul knew the burden and bondage of such a futile approach unto God. Those who attempt such do not properly comprehend the high demands of God’s personal holiness, as set forth in His perfect law. Paul says that before the law of God “every mouth may be stopped” (Romans 3:19), for all are condemned by it. God does not judge on a curve or by moral averages. He judges according to His own flawless character, and as the prophet Habakkuk declared, His eyes are too pure than to look upon iniquity (1:13) – whether it be the iniquity of idolatry and murder, or the iniquity of selfishness, lust or gossip. Thus, as Paul wrote in Romans, “by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight” (3:20). As the Psalmist said, “If you Yahweh should mark iniquities, who could stand?” (130:3).

 

We flatter ourselves if we believe that our moral goodness somehow outweighs the many ways in which we sin and fall short of God’s glory. But even worse, we insult the unchanging and holy character of God if we believe that anything good done by ourselves could take away the offense and offensiveness of our unrighteous attitudes and actions which we have admittedly done before God. God cannot deny Himself and simply pretend that we have not sinned, even if we wish to add to the balances a few kind deeds or decent attitudes (as humans might judge them).

 

Good works simply do not eliminate the fact of our past sins or atone for them. And as long as those sins stand in our record before God, we have no hope of forgiveness and communion with Him. This is clearly the message of the Torah, as well as the rest of God’s inspired word. The penalty of sin must be paid by another, if we would personally hope to escape that penalty ourselves.

 

Christianity uniquely proclaims the coming of the Messiah, in accordance with God’s inscripturated promises, to pay the price of sin and make atonement. Through faith in Him, God’s people may be justified before the Lord without sacrificing His unchanging justice. This is at the heart of the Christian message. Without this heart of the gospel, neither Judaism nor Islam present an alternative which is both formally and materially adequate to the nature of God, the human condition, or the truths of God’s word in Scripture.”

see Robinson’s Presuppositional eBook that refutes Islam HERE

Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen had heart valve implant surgery on December 5, 1995. After the completion of the operation, serious complications developed within twenty-four hours. He then became comatose for several days and died on December 11, 1995 at the age of forty-seven.

—— See the New Book that contends for the existence of God using a Presuppositional Apologetic view:

Truth, Knowledge and the Reason for God: The Defense of the Rational Assurance of Christianity

or additionally see the new Presuppositional Apologetics book on World Religions: One Way to God: Christian Philosophy and Presuppositional Apologetics Examine World Religions Here

 

Filed Under: Apologetics, Christian Philosophy, Presuppositional Apologetics Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Book Review: The Defense of the Faith by Cornelius Van Til

April 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The Defense of the Faith (Paperback) Cornelius Van Til was born in 1895, in the Netherlands and at the age of ten his family moved to Indiana. Later Van Til earned a Th.M. and a Ph.D. “The Defense of the Faith” is part of Van Til’s groundbreaking presuppositional apologetic method. This volume is essential for any Christian philosopher and apologist. In this treatise, the author aims to press the most scripturally faithful and effectual apologetic method to defend the Faith and present the Triune God to the lost. Van Til distinguishes his system from that of RCC, neo-orthodoxy of Barth, and others.

Van Til writes: “The whole problem of knowledge has constantly been that of bringing the one and the many together. When man looks about him and within him, he sees that there is a great variety of facts. The question that comes up at once is whether there is any unity in this variety, whether there is one principle in accordance with which all these many things appear and occur. All non-Christian thought, if it has utilized the idea of a supra-mundane existence at all, has used this supra-mundane existence as furnishing only the unity or the a priori aspect of knowledge, while it has maintained that the a posteriori aspect of knowledge is something that is furnished by the universe.” He adds for one to have any knowledge that “… there must be in God an absolute system of knowledge” (p 61). Furthermore he presses the necessity of scripture: “But I do, of course, confess that what Scripture teaches may properly be spoken of as a system of truth. God identifies the Scriptures as his Word. And he himself, as he tells us, exists as an internally self-coherent being. His revelation of himself to man cannot be anything but internally coherent” (p. 205).

Many have enthusiastically embraced his forceful apologetic as he advocates: “The natural man must be blasted out of his hideouts… the Reformed apologist throws down the gauntlet and challenges his opponent to a duel of life and death from the start.” Van Til defines some important terms: “Philosophy, as usually defined, deals with a theory of reality, with a theory of knowledge, and with a theory of ethics. That is to say philosophies usually undertake to present a life and world view. They deal not only with that which man can directly experience by means of his senses but also, and ofttimes especially, with the presuppositions of experience. In short, they deal with that which Christian theology speaks of as God. On the other hand Christian theology deals not only with God; it deals also with the world…. Philosophy and science deal more especially with man in his relation to the cosmos and theology deals more especially with man in his relation to God. But this is only a matter of degree.”

Van Til taught, inspired, and mentored many erudite scholars. Quotes from some of the brightest:
William Edgar states: “Van Til showed the necessity of knowing God as a basis for knowing anything at all.”
John Frame opines: “Van Til’s apologetics is essentially simple, however complicated its elaborations. It makes two basic assertions: (1) that human beings are obligated to presuppose God in all of their thinking, and (2) that unbelievers resist this obligation in every aspect of thought and life.” (Westminster Theological Journal Vol. 47, 1985).
K. Scott Oliphint asserts: “Van Til, though speaking in another context, approves of all kinds of reasoning based on the priority of revelation.”
Greg Bahnsen, a popular Van Tilian scholar and the man “atheists feared the most,” stated that “For Van Til, like Augustine, reason is not the platform (precondition) for faith, but vice versa” (Greg L Bahnsen, “Van Til’s Apologetic,” p. 54). Bahnsen adjoins: “It could be said that Van Til has labored to rid our thinking about apologetics, theology, philosophy, and evangelism of misleading dichotomies between them – polarizations that serve to overlook the ethically qualified character of man’s every intellectual ability and effort. There are to be no other gods before the face of the Lord (according to the first commandment, Ex. 20:3), no other authorities over our thinking that detract from submission to the revealed word of God. The Lord’s claim upon us, even upon our thinking and reasoning, is absolute and unchallengeable – just because He is the Lord (Rom. 3:4; 9:20; 11:33-34). Therefore, “take heed lest there shall be anyone who robs you by means of his philosophy, even vain deceit, which is after the tradition of men, after the rudimentary principles of the world, and not after Christ” (Col. 2:8). In that light, we must not artificially separate positive statement (theology) from its defense (apologetics), or separate the appeal for mental change (evangelism) from the intellectual reason for such change (apologetics), or separate general reflection upon conceptual foundations, (philosophy) from the particular content of Christian concepts (theology, apologetics). Van Til rejects each of these dichotomies in order that our thinking and scholarship will not be divided into two phases, the first being autonomous and religiously neutral, and the second being submissive to Christ and biblically faithful. For Van Til, like Augustine, reason is not the platform (precondition) for faith, but vice versa” (“Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis,” p. 54)
—

But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases (Psalms 115:3).

As a PA I also would add: A certain and simple argument for the existence of God is: Without God one cannot account for anything. God is the ground and source for the laws of logic, moral law, mathematics, and everything else in the cosmos. This is an argument that is absolutely true. The truth is simple and it is powerful. One must employ changeless universal truths when one assesses, ponders, and communicates things and their meaning in our world. Only God, who is all-knowing and all-powerful, can ground immutable universals. The great thing about employing this argument is that it grows in power when the unbeliever attacks it. The argument grows in force because the unbeliever must use the laws of logic to make his intellectual challenge. These laws of thought require God. For God alone supplies the pre-essential environment for the laws of logic. Thus every time an unbeliever rationally attacks theism he is actually demonstrating that God lives. Without God (He alone can ground the laws of logic) he cannot make any rational assertion. The old science-fiction movie that has a huge electric monster on the loose illustrates this point. The monster in this thriller grows larger and stronger every time someone uses a weapon in attempting to kill it. The monster is ready to take over America, and the President orders the army to hit it with an atomic bomb. The troops launch the bomb and as the mushroom cloud slowly starts to dissipate, when the smoke clears, they are stunned by the horror of horrors: the energy monster survived. Not only does the monster survive, he now is ten times larger. The energy monster absorbed the massive energy from the bomb. It did not get weaker, but grew in size and strength. Similarly, the unbeliever will attempt to fire intellectual weapons at this “argument from the impossibility of the contrary”(Bahnsen). Nevertheless, all their attacks will only be consumed by the truth, while the defense of the truth grows stronger and larger. There is nothing a skeptic can assert without ultimately relying on theism, since God alone provides the pre-essential environment for the laws of logic that must be utilized in their attacks. Therefore the unbeliever’s argument will always presuppose God because the unbeliever cannot supply the preconditions for the non-physical, unchanging, universal and atemporal laws of logic (God is non-physical, unchanging, universal in power and reach, and atemporal).

The triune God is the preexisting foundation for all debate, even a debate over the existence of God. Whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it… Therefore let all the house of Israel know ASSUREDLY that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:24 & 36).
God Does Exist!: Defending the faith using presuppositional apologetics, evidence, and the impossibility of the contrary

Presuppositional Apologetics Examines Mormonism: How Van Til’s Apologetic Refutes Mormon Theology

One Way to God: Christian Philosophy and Presuppositional Apologetics Examine World Religions

There Are Moral Absolutes: How to Be Absolutely Sure That Christianity Alone Supplies
Also see work by James Anderson, Michael Butler, Don Collect.

Prove the existence of God.
Filed Under: Apologetics, Book Reviews Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Book Review of Greg Bahnsen’s Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended

April 23, 2010 By 3 Comments

 

greg bahnsen stated defended reviewThe publishers bequeath eager Van Tilians a new and superb offering from the late Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen. Bahnsen, as a formal debater, was regarded as the “man atheists feared the most.” This new book, “Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended,” demonstrates some of the reasons for such an assessment. The author has been deeply missed and this volume of systematic apologetics is a blessing to all who sought a fresh resource that would be compatible with his earlier books. This precise and orderly defense of the faith was not available because it was lost. It was only recently discovered and brought to press. Bahnsen’s philosophical labor is clear, succinct, and commanding. The editors supply the brilliance of Bahnsen’s apologetic in a methodical and lucid manner (Joel McDurmon put in a lot of hard toil as Editor). This is a brand new publication that helps make Van Til’s remarkable thought accessible to ordinary believers as well as the most widely read scholars.

In this volume we have apologetic clarity and a philosophical depth illuminating issues surrounding a faithful defense of Christian theism. I encourage all to purchase this stupendous edition of Bahnsen’s scholarly toil to help equip the church to proclaim and defend the truth of the ontological Trinity.

 

Bahnsen offers many unique gems in this never-before-published volume including powerful and lengthy critiques of the apologetic systems of:

- Gordon H. Clark
- Edward Carnell
- Francis Schaeffer
- Ronald Nash (this one is brief but convincing).

Additionally he provides a plethora of Vantilian type quotes from Clark (2 ½ pages), Carnell, and Schaeffer. This alone makes “PASD” worth much more than the cost. This is an absolutely necessary apologetic resource for the active apologist.

Greg Bahnsen wrote that the unbeliever “has no intelligible place to stand, no consistent epistemology, no justification for meaningful discourse, predication, or argumentation.” Other than that, you’re fine! Bahnsen goes on to lay bare anti-theism: he writes that “the Christian worldview is true because of the impossibility of the contrary. When the perspective of God’s revelation is rejected, then the unbeliever is left in foolish ignorance because his philosophy does not provide the preconditions for knowledge and meaningful experience.” Only Christian theism can supply the pre-essentials needed for debate, evidence, and knowledge. Bahnsen asserts that “the proof that Christianity is true is that if it were not, we could not be able to prove anything.”

Bahnsen was once described as “the man atheists fear most” because of the controversy surrounding the Bahnsen-Martin debate, which was cancelled by Michael Martin.

Some quotes: “In various forms, the fundamental argument advanced by the Christian apologist is that the Christian worldview is true because of the impossibility of the contrary. When the perspective of God’s revelation is rejected, then the unbeliever is left in foolish ignorance because his philosophy does not provide the preconditions of knowledge and meaningful experience. To put it another way: the proof that Christianity is true is that if it were not, we would not be able to prove anything.” “An unbeliever is not simply an unbeliever at separate points; his antagonism is rooted in an overall philosophy (Col. 2.8) which is according to the world’s tradition; thus is an enemy of God in his mind (Col. 1.21; Jam. 4.4) and uses his mind to nullify or obviate God’s word (Mk. 7.8-13).”

“In what way does knowledge go beyond belief? Knowledge includes having justification or good reason to support whatever it is you believe. Imagine that I believe there are thirty-seven square miles in a particular city, and imagine also that it just so happens that this claim is accurate – but imagine as well that I simply got this answer by guessing (rather than doing measurements, mathematics or checking an almanac, etc.). I believed something which happened to be true, but we would not say that I had ‘knowledge’ in this case because I had no justification for what I believed. When we claim to know that something is true, we are thereby claiming to have adequate evidence, proof or good reason for it.”

“Imagine a person who comes in here tonight and argues ‘no air exists’ but continues to breathe air while he argues. Now intellectually, atheists continue to breathe – they continue to use reason and draw scientific conclusions [which assumes an orderly universe], to make moral judgments [which assumes absolute values] – but the atheistic view of things would in theory make such ‘breathing’ impossible. They are breathing God’s air all the time they are arguing against him.”
———

I would add: Suppose my wife took my i-pod off our dinning table and put it on an obscure shelf before she ate lunch. When I returned home and found it missing on the table, I phoned my wife. She said that she needed space to eat and so she put my iPod away. I asked her how I could find my iPod now that she moved it to an unknown location. She told me that she had put a post-it note on the iPod. That, of course, would not have done me, her befuddled husband any good. The portable stereo would have been hidden, and a note on a hidden stereo was lost to me until my wife informed me where she put it. Such is the problem of an unsaved person. He is lost, and cannot use his own reason or experience to find his way to truth. He is lost, and his autonomous reason is lost with him. The only way he can find the truth is through an objective, unchanging source. The God of the Bible is the unchanging rational bedrock and fountainhead.

The biblical God is the pre-necessity for self-knowledge and the intelligibility of the world. Without God, man is lost, holding his own note of a man-made holy book. Only through Yahweh and His revelation can a man be found and have an objective basis for truth. God is the absolute and transcendental necessity for the intelligibility of all human apprehension. He is the precondition for the grounding and understanding of knowledge. Buddhism, Hinduism, and atheism cannot justify knowledge or truth. If you do not presuppose the truth of God in Christ, you cannot make sense out of the cosmos and all of reality. Christianity is true not because it makes better sense, but because it alone supplies the foundation for logic; it is true because without it you cannot make sense of anything.

All other religions, philosophies, and worldviews lack the transcendentally required precondition (Yahweh) for predication, intelligibility, logic, ethics, and truth. Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). Only the transcendent, aphysical, invariant, and multi-personal-unified God can provide the necessary preconditions for the transcendent, aphysical, invariant, and multi-unified laws of logic. I argue from the shoulders of giants as I press the truth that there is “absolutely certain proof for the existence of God and the truth of Christian theism.

Even non-Christians presuppose its truth while they verbally reject it.” We ask the nonbeliever “what are the conditions that make thought possible?” Only the Triune God can furnish those preconditions to establish the rational flooring for intelligibility. Van Til called this truth “the method of implication into the truth of God a transcendental method. That is, we must seek to determine what presuppositions are necessary to any object of knowledge in order that it may be intelligible to us.” Transcendental scrutiny of anti-theism demonstrates that it is self-destructive inasmuch as it fails to give what it does not possess. Man is devoid of eternal omniscience, aseity, sovereignty, and omnipotence.

Bahnsen set forth transcendental analysis as that “which asks what the preconditions are for the intelligibility of human experience. Under what conditions is it possible, or what would also need to be true in order for it to be possible, to make sense of one’s experience of the world? To seek the transcendental conditions for knowing is to ask what is presupposed by any intelligent experience whatsoever.” Humankind does not need to exist for the intelligibility of the universe. Mere men cannot supply the transcendental conditions that are needed for the laws of logic, love, and morality.

Van Til contended that “the general precedes the particular” in our reality. This implies that the anthropology of atheism cannot supply the general and universal realities that must be present, for the necessary and unavoidable transcendental conditions listed above.

Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen had heart valve implant surgery on December 5, 1995. After the completion of the operation, serious complications developed within twenty-four hours. He then became comatose for several days and died on December 11, 1995 at the age of forty-seven.

One Way to God: Christian Philosophy and Presuppositional Apologetics Examine World Religions

see my new Presuppositional eBook Reality and the Folly of Atheism HERE
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