In one of Bill Vallicella’s recent posts on his journey through philosophical theology, he engaged the effort of Reformed apologist R. C. Sproul (1939-2017). Sproul preferred “classical apologetics” to the “presuppositional” approach of Cornelius Van Til against which he co-authored a book.[1] Questioning Sproul’s putative theistic proof and reviewing four possibilities, Bill the theist writes (as an atheist might):
Sproul needs to explain why the cosmos, physical world, nature cannot just exist. Why must it have an efficient cause or a reason/purpose (final cause)? Why can’t its existence be a brute fact? That is a (fifth) epistemic possibility he does not, as far as I can see, consider.[2]
What follows is essentially the comment I posted on his blog in answer to his question, except I’ve converted my address to Bill in the second person to the third.
As Bill may know, I first encountered the notion of “brute fact” in Bernard
Lonergan’s 1957 Insight. There couldn’t be a brute fact, he held, because being is completely intelligible . . . and therefore, God exists! (Okay, there are about two dozen steps in between.[3])
I’ve argued elsewhere (here and here) that Lonergan had it backwards: there are no brute facts (for God or anyone else) because God exists. “There are no brute facts” is another way of saying “Being is completely intelligible.”
Unless one presupposes God—that is, Yahweh, who “wired” people to presuppose him, whether or not they unrighteously suppress that gift of knowledge—one doesn’t have a context in which anything makes sense—and that includes inquiring into God’s existence and the rational exigency informing one’s critical questioning of Sproul or any other philosophical theologian.
I would tell Lonergan (I figured this out long after he died in 1984, the year after I met him) that he would have no grounds for affirming that “being is completely intelligible” unless he were God or is in receipt of knowledge from God. There are no brute facts for us because there are none for God.
We can’t purchase that truth—that premise—without acknowledging God as the first truth. The inquiry called philosophical theology doesn’t sensibly get started on the “presumption (however defeasible) of atheism.”[4]
Notes
[1] John H. Gerstner, Arthur W. Lindsley, and R. C. Sproul, Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics. Zondervan, 1984.
[2] William F. Vallicella, “Notes on R. C. Sproul, Does God Exist? Part II,” Maverick Philosopher, March 15, 2025.
[3] Anthony Flood, “General Transcendent Knowledge: An Outline of Bernard Lonergan’s Proof of the Existence of God,” Insight, Chapter XIX, Section 1-10. (This is my old, but extant, site.)
[4] Anthony G. Flood, “How I philosophized when I put philosophy before Christ,” October 21, 2024; Anthony G. Flood, “On dogma and dogmatism,” February 22, 2025.