Have you ever heard of the presuppositionalist apologetic method? What about the Transcendental Argument for the existence of God?

If you’re not into debating religion or the existence of gods, then you probably neither know nor care what they are. Some people, however, are quite taken with them. When people interact with me on social media about my non-belief, they can’t resist debating me even after I tell them I don’t really care much for it.

Sure, sometimes I can get into it for a little while because it’s almost like a sport. Sometimes it can be downright fun (once a theology nerd, always a theology nerd). But there are always those people who don’t see it as fun—they see it as a mission, a crusade, a conquest. These people are nowhere near as fun to play with. They take themselves far too seriously, and instead of being open to considering new perspectives on anything, they are simply out to win. In their minds it’s an epic battle.

“Natural” Theology

Some folks approach this process by debating science and natural processes, believing that if we simply look at the world around us it should convince us that whichever god they were brought up to believe in 1) exists and 2) is the only “right” one. They are using one of the oldest argument methods there is, and they are doing so because they haven’t yet figured out that this can’t really be done well anymore.

The apostle Paul once naively asserted that people should just know that the Abrahamic god was the right one—and the only one–by simply looking at nature. Rather presumptuously he argued that even polytheists are closet monotheists because deep down (in spite of what they were taught growing up) they somehow know that there is only one god, not many, and that of all of the options available, his god is the only one that is right. I wish he had taken the time to explain his reasoning a little more but alas, he did not. We are supposed to just know. Nature is supposed to teach us, but it doesn’t.

To be fair, it doesn’t really teach that there are not any gods, either. It just doesn’t make any assertions on the subject. Things just work the way they work and for most of human history we haven’t been able to understand how they work so we just said there must be a Giant Invisible Person (or persons) making them happen.

This isn’t a very good answer because it still doesn’t address how things work. So the last few thousand years have seen the human race in a relentless pursuit of an understanding of the world around us in order to have some measure of ability to predict or even control those natural processes which formerly were a mystery to us. We do this because we want to improve our living conditions. We want a better life, and science and technology have provided that for us in many ways.

But with each passing century, scientific discoveries are providing natural explanations for things formerly seen as supernatural. Thunder no longer makes us think the gods are clashing swords in an epic celestial duel. The movements of the planets no longer seem like magic to us (see, there’s this thing called gravity, although it is “just a theory”). Even the development of our own species has turned out to be significantly more complex and gradual than our ancient religions could have ever envisioned.

A “New” Way to Argue

The steady forward march of science has been slowly reducing the “god of the gaps” argument to what Neil deGrasse Tyson calls “an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance.” As far back as the 1930s, a Westminster Seminary professor named Cornelius Van Til saw this coming and pioneered a new strategy for the defense of the Christian faith. He called it the “presuppositionalist” method of apologetics (henceforth PA), and its line of reasoning basically goes like this:

IF it is true that a god does exist, and IF there is only one true god, and IF that god is the god of the Christian Bible, and IF the proper reading of that Bible is the Reformed Calvinistic view in which humankind is seen as totally depraved and warped by sin in all of our faculties, including even our minds, THEN there is no use appealing to our intellects through reason, logic, or empirical evidence.

This approach asserts that it is only through a supernatural work of the sovereign God of the Bible that saving faith or understanding can be born in the human soul. In fact, a consistently applied presuppositionalist epistemology goes on to assert that nothing can be properly known apart from divine revelation, not even basic mathematics (for an entertaining conversation, ask a thoroughgoing PA enthusiast about that topic).

In a sense, this circular line of reasoning dictates that you must simply accept the above series of presuppositions (assumptions) because, it is argued, those who reject them must do so by relying on alternative, competing presuppositions about the nature of reality and the reliability of our perception of it. It’s kind of like an elaborate tu quoque argument which says, “Hey! You atheists have faith in something, too! You’re no better than we are!”

To me, this strategy is a forfeiture, or at best a retreat.

When the Giant Invisible Person Hypothesis first showed up (originally it was multiple beings, not merely one), it was the only convincing explanation for everything from mountains and rainbows to why snakes slither on the ground. But much better explanations have come along since then (not for everything, but science is young) so this line of reasoning is significantly less convincing today. It’s been called the “God of the Gaps” argument because it is essentially an appeal to ignorance: “I don’t know how such-and-such works, therefore a giant invisible spirit is doing it.” It carries much less weight in an Information Age.

For this reason, many of the defenders of Christianity have given up what they call “evidentialist” approaches and have changed strategies, adopting the PA approach instead. They have essentially quit trying to “prove” that their God exists and have shifted the burden to the non-theist to “prove” how his worldview makes sense of things without one. Presuppositionalists suggest that the apologist should begin negatively, arguing that non-theists lack the sufficient “preconditions of knowledge” to argue against the claims of Christianity. By that they mean to suggest that logic and argumentation require a transcendent intelligent Being to validate the process—to ground it in something other than the logic of the arguer.

I suppose they have a point. There is a certain subjectivity to logic and argumentation which limits it, philosophically speaking. You have to assume certain things (like the law of non-contradiction) for the enterprise to even work. These are assumptions without which rational discussion cannot even commence. You have to start somewhere, right? But how do you demonstrate the validity of your starting point? All subsequent discussion will be an analysis of the arguments that you construct on top of your foundational assumptions; but how do you analyze the foundation itself?

The PA approach seeks to capitalize on this inherent limitation of argumentation by simply saying,”You guys start with logic and reason, but what are those based on, huh? Tell me that!” Their game plan is to cast a shadow of doubt on empiricism, naturalism, and/or rationalism just long enough to turn around and suggest that the Bible and Christian monotheism are superior starting points (they’re not). They assert that the laws of logic necessitate a transcendent Lawmaker.

Imagine believing that the law of non-contradiction, which states that a thing cannot be both “A” and “not A,” is predicated on a Being who is both one and yet three, who speaks of those things which are not as if the were, and who loves everyone but will torture most of them for eternity. Quite the contrary to what they insist, contradiction seems foundational to their entire belief system.

The Foolishness of the Cross

Instead of demonstrating the validity of each of the planks of their own platform (notice all the “if” statements bolded in the argument above), they assume that any weakness in your argument means you must now accept theirs in its totality, as if that were your only other option. This, by the way, is a fallacy called a false dilemma.

Their worldview is based on dozens of assertions, each of which need its own rational validation but never gets it. They open a small crack in your own reasoning in hopes of driving a bus load of assumptions into it, hoping you won’t notice what they just did. This approach relies on more logical fallacies than I care to enumerate. Someone with more patience and time than I have could easily spell them out for you if you care to dig deeper (here’s a start). But I honestly think that’s lost on most of them, and here’s why:

This apologetic method is the first one to finally recognize that faith and reason don’t really get along as well as some would like to believe. Paul made it abundantly clear that the faith he was spreading is not predicated on persuasive logic or reasoning (see 1 Corinthians 2). This is a faith which celebrates “the foolishness of a cross” and should make no claims to rational respectability just to avoid looking silly.

A Reformed Seminary student once wrote an article for Relevant Magazine which articulated this message quite well. Toward the end he said, “we have been exhorted to consider these persecutions as blessings instead of reasoning them away with how good we are in philosophy.” After spending 20 years as a practitioner of the Christian faith, I have to say that he makes an excellent point. As Paul once said, “If Christ has not been raised…we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:14-19).

Rather than claiming rational superiority to non-belief, it seems to me that the most Christian approach to this matter is to simply acknowledge that faith is a completely different approach to the world than what skeptics are employing. Yes, I know you believe skepticism requires some kind of faith as well. I disagree, and I’ve explained before why that doesn’t make sense. My response is to suggest that maybe you should take some time to consider if you’re really willing to embrace the foolishness of the cross. That is what your faith demands.