Have I merely been asserting, gratuitously, the Christian worldview, thereby inviting equally gratuitous denial? When I asked a friend for his opinion of the previous post, “Explanation Unexplained,” he replied:
If there is a weakness in your argument, I’d say that it doesn’t distinguish between ontology and epistemology. That is, suppose the Christian worldview, as you expound it, is correct. Suppose someone fails to accept this worldview. Why should this person accept the view that his refusal is a suppression of a view he really knows to be true, even if in fact this is the case? If the reply is that competing worldviews do not explain how truth and knowledge are possible, then perhaps a counter would be that the Christian worldview does not explain this either, but rather asserts its own exclusive rationality.
I will try to remedy this appearance of weakness by asking about the origin of the rational exigency (demand for reasons) behind the criticism. Where does that come from?
The Diagnosis
The answer to my friend’s question is that although the unbeliever may be psychologically unlikely to admits that he’s suppressing the truth, he must live with the logical consequences of the suppression I diagnose on the warrant of Romans 1:18-20 (ESV).
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress (κατεχόντων, katechonton, “hold down”) the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
The one who fails to accept this diagnosis is, according to the Apostle Paul, self-deceived. Despite that condition, however, the rejecter relies on principles of intelligible predication that he cannot account for (again, the laws of logic, the regularity of nature, and moral absolutes).
Unless something explains their mutual comportment, however, every utterance floats in a void, a cosmic theater of the absurd, rendering all predications (including “Christian theism is false” and “The Bible is not the word of God”) meaningless.
The explanation: the triune God of the Bible Who created, orders, and governs all things, Who created people in His image to glorify Him, Who is absolute good in Himself, is the reason why we can honor truth by reasoning on the basis of our grasp of the laws of logic, our observations of the created order’s regularity, and the attractiveness of the good (cognitive, moral, and esthetic). Let’s take the second of these.
The great atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell argued that we may not validly infer that the future will be like the past just because past futures have conformed to past pasts. In other words, one cannot justify induction (that is, solve David Hume’s problem) inductively![1] That would merely shift the site of the problem.[2] We may not argue to the reliability of experience from experience, at least not integrally.
If, however, God created the natural order so that it is regular for the purposes of His created image-bearers who have moral obligations to Him and to each other, then induction, which is technically a formal fallacy, is justified.
Is that not an explanation? Does it not intelligibly relate phenomena to causes? It may not be the explanation one likes, and perhaps one prefers being a prisoner of meaninglessness to the status of creature. It is, however, (a) an explanation (b) of something that needs one.
No advocate of a non-Christian worldview even bothers to try to account for harmony of those utterly diverse, incommensurable conditions of predication.
The question of worldview is not an epistemological, metaphysical, or ethical question. It is rather one that asks about what one necessarily presupposes when one pursues epistemology, ontology, or ethics.
What does it mean for intelligible predication to have “conditions”? How does the Christian worldview meet them? Why can no other worldview do so? Let’s bring this topic down to earth.
Pizza, Coke, and Kosmos
One Saturday afternoon you crave pizza and a soda and plan to satisfy that craving when you meet friends to go to see a movie. The snacks you want, the friends you have and who are eager to join you, and the movie house inhabit the same world. You extrapolate from your memory of pizza, soda, friends, and movies to an expectation of a fun night out.
Even if nothing goes according to plan, the expectations are reasonable. But why are they? Why are you within your epistemic rights to expect that, in all probability, you will have hours of food, fun, and fellowship? It is because the world is a certain way.
In the worldview where the meeting of expectations is normal, you take for granted personal identity over time (your own, your friends’), the reliability of human memory (your own, your friends’) of how pizza and soda taste (and what they do to your body), of what to expect (broadly speaking) from watching a movie in a room with friends and strangers. What kind of kosmos permits such takings-for-granted?
This is question-asking, not question-begging.[3] A worldview is like the vision of the ophthalmologist upon which he depends as he investigates and operates on the eye. He cannot suspend this trust while he studies. That trust is not a principle of ophthalmology. He brings that presupposition to his examinations and operations.
A deeper look into the evening’s background conditions would consider the leisure time and other resources allocated to it; their moral use (if there are competing demands on them); the level of economic productivity and recognition of property rights on which each of the evening’s participants depends.
We might also ask about life’s meaning, how the desire for truth drives the person who desires pizza, coke, friends, and a flick, all occupying a “somatic” world, a mathematically describable universe of bodies in motion. Every exercise of will instrumentalizes bodies: in the first place the organisms under our immediate control, the organic or inorganic bodies we employ, or the bodies they causally affect. As we plan the use of scarce resources, we rely on the regularity of those bodily motions.
In short, embodied persons love (and hate) knowledge of the truth. They pursue short- and long-term projects, knowing that any (or all) of them can be suddenly cut short (along with their lives). They pursue adventure despite the possibility of tragedy. That is, as you pursue projects, you’re aware, sharply or dimly, that you’re going to die, even if when and how are still open questions.
You have other desires besides eating, socializing, and movie watching. One of them is the desire to know the truth. Without such knowledge, no mundane goal can be achieved. Even liars have to know the truth of what they’re lying about if they hope to satisfy their noncognitive desires.
Now, asking about a worldview is not like asking what topping to put on a pizza, what to wash it down with, what movie to see, what else one might (or should) be doing with one’s time and money, and so forth.
There is a worldview in which the mutual coherence of the aforementioned incommensurably disparate objects (logic, nature, absolutes) makes sense: the biblical worldview. It is ours if we affirm the epistemological primacy of the propositional content that God breathed (θεόπνευστος, theopneustos), into the writing of the Bible.[4]
These divinely inspired writings complete (ἄρτιος, artios) the man of God for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17). In the Scriptures we find the conditions of intelligible predication. The Christian who philosophizes after Christ (κατὰ Χριστόν, kata Christon, Colossians 2:8) asks what the non-Christian has to offer in its place.
The Creator-God of the Bible is the unity of exactly three divine persons who created human predicators in His image. He is their ultimate cause and end, the ground of the significance they seek. In Him unity and trinity are equally ultimate; His creation reflects that equal ultimacy. Reality is neither a pulverized plurality nor a difference-obliterating block.[5]
The Syllogism
Sometimes a syllogism is pedagogically called for. The major premise is an exclusive disjunction of contradictories. In the following, v means “or,” ∧ means “and,” ~ means “it is not the case that.”
P v ~P
That is, it is either the case that P or it is not the case that P (not both).
The truth of P excludes the truth of ~P (and vice versa: thus, the term “exclusive disjunction”). That is, (P ∧ ~P) is false; its conjuncts are contradictories: they logically exclude each other and render their conjunction inconsistent.
Therefore, if P is rule out, then P is ineluctable.
Let P stand for the “Christian worldview.” A worldview is a network of nonnegotiable beliefs that may be expressed in propositions, but is not itself a proposition.
Let ~P stand for any worldview that negates one or more distinctive belief of P.
If no version of ~P can be true, then P must true.
P v ~P
~~P
Therefore, P
The apologist’s burden is to rule out every version of ~P. He meets it by showing that no ~P can satisfy the conditions of intelligible predication. He needs to (a) identify worldview features that jointly ground intelligible predication and (b) locate them exclusively in the Christian worldview.
This yields a disproof of ~P without having to test every possible ~P serially.
This disproof of ~P is an indirect proof of P, a worldview, not a proposition.
Every proposition, just by being intelligible, vindicates P. P is not “tied down” to, not a function of, the truth-value of any proposition. The argument for P is called “transcendental” because it transcends the truth-value of any proposition, x. If x stands for “God exists” and ~x for “God does not exist,” then we not only have
God exists. Therefore, God exists.
but also,
God does not exist. Therefore, God exists.
The very intelligibility of the denial of God depends on God.[6]
Non-Christians may adduce a version of ~P (e.g., Marxism, Buddhism) to test the apologist’s claim. The apologist’s burden is to apply the disproof of ~P to any version.
Forms of ~P can be sorted into perhaps a half dozen bins, e.g., materialism, idealism, empiricism, rationalism, pluralism, monism, leaving open the possibility that another version might evolve or that two versions are properly regarded as one. What matters is not how many there are, but that they all suffer from the same defect, namely, the inability to account for intelligible predication and its conditions of logical law, nature’s observed regularity, and moral absolutes.[7]
Notes
[1] Bertrand Russell, Problems of Philosophy, Chapter 6. He believed it is only highly probable that the sun will rise tomorrow, on the grounds that similar causes produce similar effects. David Hume (1711-1776), Russell’s classic reference point, had held that the repetition of certain sequences of events produces in us the “habit” of imputing causality where there may be none—apparently forgetting that such a “production” would be a species of causation! But even a rough calculation of probability and that generalization about causality presuppose background conditions that one’s worldview either makes sense of or doesn’t.
[2] The suggestion makes for a nice joke: “Induction has always worked in the past; why think it won’t in the future?”
[3] See “Christian Worldview Apologists Don’t Beg Questions. We Ask Them.”
[4] Some atheists understand the epistemological supremacy of a word from God. “Working from the premise that an omniscient, infallible being exists and that this being has revealed a proposition to man, it is a short, logical—and uncontroversial—step to conclude that this proposition is worthy of belief. . . . If the proposition comes from an infallible, nondeceitful God, it cannot be false; therefore, it must be true. George Smith, Atheism: The Case against God, Prometheus Books, 1979, 172. See my Atheism Analyzed: The Implosion of George Smith’s “Case against God,” 2019.
[5] For more on the uniqueness of Christian Trinitarian theism, see Brant Bosserman’s The Trinity and the Vindication of Christian Paradox: An Interpretation and Refinement of the Theological Apologetic of Cornelius Van Til in “Christian Worldview Apologists Don’t Beg Questions. We Ask Them. Part 2.”
[6] “Atheism presupposes theism.” Cornelius Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology, p. xii. Cited in James N. Anderson, “Antitheism Presupposes Theism (And So Does Every Other ‘Ism’),” Analogical Thoughts, December 24, 2011. In this blog post he cites and links to James N. Anderson and Greg Welty, “The Lord of Non-Contradiction,” Philosophia Christi 13 (2):321-338 (2011); a preprint version has been freely available here. (Taking that link will download a pdf.)
[7] The non-Christian is not likely to adduce more than one. If you knock out his favorite, you’ve probably ruined his day. But that knockout will not be enough to convince him of the truth of P. Only the Spirit of God can effect that.
For development on another occasion: Bahnsen’s comments on Christian “irrationalism” covered by the Square of Religious Opposition, Quadrant III. See “The Square of Religious Opposition: A Van Tillian insight, diagrammed by Frame, taught by Bahnsen, paraphrased by me,” on this site January 26, 2021. (The foregoing should be read as a note to Michael Volpe’s last comment, to which thread I could not append this note.)
How does the dogma of the Trinity establishes the laws of identity (a=a, a or not a, but not both) which is inescapable for all predication? Or, what is the identity and even the difference between the Persons of the Godhead that makes for Him to be a rational object (in accordance with logic) but also the origin of the one and many in all other things? If the law of non-contradiction is more certain and rational than the idea of the Trinity, would not then the unbeliever be justified in using it to reject the idea of such even though he can’t explain why logic is inescapable? Would he not then be justified in taking solace in mystery and being in general? Just to assert the Trinity is the basis for logic and predication does not demonstrate it. And a failure to do so, can turn the argument against the Trinity as being the ultimate presupposition to establish all knowledge and existence. Interested to hear a response. Peace.
I’d like to give a response, Mike, but you’ve asked four questions which I’d have to translate into four implicit arguments. It took but a moment for you to ask them, but maybe requires of me four posts to answer them. The few sentences below will therefore almost certainly disappoint you.
The post you’re responding to concerns the epistemological primacy of what God breathed (θεόπνευστος, theopneustos). It is, in other words, about the authority of God, not of the unbeliever’s mind and its excuses. His problem is ethical and therefore epistemological. What were you standing on when you asked your questions?
I never said the dogma of the Trinity establishes the laws of identity. I argued that the basis of the value of intelligible, non-contradictory predication, including moral and ethical predication, is the God Who cannot change (Mal 3:6), Who cannot lie (Tit 1:2), Who demands that our Yes be Yes and our No, No (Matt 5:37), and Who is the Truth (John 14:6) and the Logos (John 1:1) and Wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24), a triune society of coinhering divine persons, not a jumble of impersonal human traits.
The Father is greater than, and therefore different from, the Son (John 14:28); yet the Father and the Son are One (John 10:30). I don’t see where else to root the unity and diversity we find in created objects. The unbeliever tends either to collapse every diversity or shatter every unity. Why? Because his absolute authority is his mind. He thinks it has to be one way or the other. Since he “knows” it can’t be God, it has to be Parmenides or Heraclitus or . . . He’s doomed to trying to string hole-less beads onto infinite strings.
The worldview expressed in the Bible shows how there can be objects of human cognition. You shouldn’t abstract from that worldview when challenging a post about it.
I never said or implied that the law of non-contradiction is more certain and rational than the idea of the Trinity. I argued that the worldview expressed in the Bible is the framework for asking about any transcendental condition of predication and especially about how they comport with each other in our thinking.
The unbeliever’s problem is not just that he can’t explain why logic is inescapable; it’s also that he can’t account for the value of truth to which his use of logic is ordered, or for the temporal world, our remembered images of which we subject to reasoning. His problem (among other things) is the harmony of utterly diverse, incommensurable conditions of predication (logic, nature, absolutes). The unbeliever is not epistemically justified. Period.
If you’re going to charge the author of “No Mere Assertion” with merely asserting, you might show you understand the transcendental argument he adduced. You might also reflect on an earlier post on the square of religious opposition (01/25/2021). See Quadrant III. Paraphrasing Bahnsen, I wrote:
“Christian philosophy has elements that seem ‘irrational,’ that is, not based ultimately on the authority of man and his thinking. The Christian’s profession of dependence on an authority beyond himself is a renunciation of rationalism, which will seem ‘irrational” to the unbeliever.’ In the Christian view, man never becomes the ultimate authority. To those who do so exalt man’s mind, our transcendent commitments will seem irrational. But that’s not something we need to be afraid or ashamed of. Our ‘irrationality’ gives us a foundation for rationality, science, morality, logic, and human dignity.”
The above is but a further, not a last word, brother. Thanks for occasioning it.
Tony
Thank you for trying to unpack and answer my not too coherent question (s). So, I’ll try to whittle it down. Are the laws of identity and logic based upon such applicable to the reality and idea of the Trinity? If yes, how? If not, how can it be the ultimate presupposition which alone explains the possibility of all predication? It would seem then the Christian position would be no better than the unbelievers One and Many dialectic.
Overlooking the ARGUMENT [P v ~P ; ~~P; therefore, P] generates questions not germane to the worldview thesis I’ve been promoting, including your “how” questions.
The professed atheist evades the evidence of creation all around and inside him (Romans 1:18-20) with the excuse that he doesn’t understand “how” God created. We don’t understand either, but presupposing it makes sense of everything else. Not presupposing it makes making sense impossible.
The major is an exclusive disjunction of alternatives, P v ~P, and the logic that informs that disjunction is rooted in one of the disjuncts.
The minor ~P is affirmed because no ~P can account for that TRIO of incommensurable conditions of predication (logic, nature, absolutes). Adduce one that can, and it’s all over. P EXPLAINS the ultimate source of those conditions.
If ~~P, then P. At the heart and ground of P is, of course, the triune God Who holds unity and plurality in equipoise. The pull of gravity for every ~P is in two polar opposite, predication-destroying directions: to regard plurality as an illusion, “not really real” or to pulverize any asserted unity into “atoms” (today, quantum particles), rendering the unity suspect. That’s the unbeliever’s fate, not the Christian’s.
We have an argument for grounding not only what we abstract as the laws of logic, but also the dynamic orientation of our minds toward the good of truth (as well as its corruption as bias against truth) which those logical laws subserve, as well as the regularity of nature which provides the material of the propositions that form premises of our reasoning.
Mike, that’s the best I can do for now within the ambit of a combox. Stay tuned for more installments and, eventually, “Philosophy after Christ.” Thanks for the exchange.
The success of the transcendental argument depends on the sufficiency of its ultimate presupposition to explain all things. But if that ultimate presupposition is itself irrational it cannot account for “rationality, science, morality, logic, and human dignity” any better than the unbelievers ultimate starting point because the distance between truth and falsity is infinite even if they seem ever so close. God is truth and truth must be rational if He is to be known universally and not just a private interpretation of certain groups or individuals who proclaim “thus says the Lord”. An example of this kind of inadequate presupposition is given by Van Til. With his transcendental argument he goes on to state: 1. We cannot form a concept of a self-contained God (which we are told to presuppose anyway) 2. God’s knowledge and man’s knowledge do not coincide at any given point. 3. The Godhead is both one person and three persons. 4. God sincerely desires and offers Christ to those He does not choose. I appreciate your calling and gifts. Look forward in reading your next article. Peace.