Brand Blanshard on wisdom

Brand Blanshard. Photo by Richard P. Lewis, published in “Man of Reason: In Memoriam Brand Blanshard.” “A memorial service in honor of Brand Blanshard was held December 16, 1987, in Dwight Memorial Chapel of Yale University. The memories and appreciations spoken that day and some from letters are printed in this booklet,” which Roberta Yerkes Blanshard, his widow, mailed me on May 5, 1992.—Anthony Flood

The wisdom that American philosopher Brand Blanshard (August 27, 1892-November 18, 1987) sought was not intelligible in terms of his rationalism and determinism. (Of course, wisdom is no more intelligible in terms of the empiricism and indeterminism Blanshard opposed.) In the perennial pendulum swing between the static block universe of Parmenides and the endless flux of Heraclitus, Blanshard unambiguously favored the Eleatic thinker over the Ephesian. As Van Til memorably put it, however, one chooses between these anti-theistic options as one chooses hats.[1]

His doctrines could not help him account for the epistemological (or metaphysical or ethical) “hat” he chose. He gave reasons for his choosing, but the deterministic worldview to which he was committed could not ground an account for reason-giving itself.

Nevertheless, it is ironic, pleasantly so, to note that Blanshard articulated precisely and elegantly almost everything one might want to say about wisdom. Today I want you to know, in his own words, what I think he got right.

In my opinion, what he got wrong (and in this he was not alone) was his presupposing, as all non-Christians do, that pursuing wisdom occurs in an impersonal context (rather than in a divinely personal creation). For Blanshard (again, not just for him) wisdom is a possible achievement of the human being. The human being, in turn, is regarded as the ultimate point of reference (or background or “atmosphere”) of that pursuit (or, indeed, of any predication whatsoever). This presupposition of autonomy leads only to one or another species of foolishness.[2]

As followers of this blog know, my work-in-progress is entitled “Philosophy after Christ”—after not only in the sense of temporally subsequent to Christ’s earthly ministry, but also in the sense of “according to” the Wisdom and Truth that Christ is. This post may be taken as another occasional progress report. Continue reading “Brand Blanshard on wisdom”

A Debate on the Existence of God: Greg Bahnsen vs. George Smith (1991)

A lively debate between Christian philosopher and apologist Greg L. Bahnsen (1948-1995) and libertarian atheist author George H. Smith (b. 1949) took place at Los Angeles radio station KKLA FM 99.5. It serves as a popular introduction to the approach to Christian apologetics promoted on this site. Long (10K+ words), but in my opinion smooth.

I spoke with Bahnsen by phone in 1991 not long afterward, but can’t further specify the date; I’d be grateful to hear from anyone who can. Bahnsen’s 1984 debate with Gordon Stein (1941-1996) is still the classic, but in some ways this one is more accessible: there’s more “back-and-forth” between Bahnsen and his opponent; John’s Stewart’s moderation is present, but more informal than the one held at the University of Southern California.

We owe this transcription to a “Jonah” (screenname) who posted it online “for whoever wants it” on January 7, 2011; unfortunately, that link is now “dead.” I made some editorial decisions: stylistic changes, mostly in punctuation. To conserve space, I deleted the repeated introductions and other announcements by the radio host and debate moderator.

I did not check the transcription against the audio broadcast, but as someone who has listened to it many times over the past thirty years, I can attest to its fidelity. No need to take my word for it, however: the audio recording of the debate, just under an hour in length, is available on YouTube.

My internal critique of Smith’s worldview, Atheism Analyzed: The Implosion of George Smith’s “Case against God” (2019) reflects the state of my understanding Bahnsen’s apologetic method in 1989, when I drafted it. A search of his name on this site will yield the record of the progress I hope I’ve made.

A Debate on the Existence of God: Greg Bahnsen vs. George Smith

Moderator: God. Well, the Bible begins with—“In the beginning God!” and the Bible says twice in the Psalms, “The fool has said in his heart there is no God!” But why are there so many agnostics and atheists if God’s existence is so evident? There may be many explanations, but there are certain arguments consistently raised by skeptics which call into question God’s existence. Coming up we’ll discuss atheism and the case against God with atheist George Smith and Christian apologist Greg Bahnsen. My guest, George Smith, has written two books. One is entitled Atheism: The Case Against God; the other, Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies. George first published Atheism: The Case Against God in 1974. The book is still in print published by Prometheus. For six years he was a general editor and scriptwriter for the Audio Classics audio tapes by Knowledge Products, currently senior research fellow for the Institute for Human Studies at George Mason University, and again his latest book Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies. George Smith, we welcome you to the program.

Smith: Thank you.

Moderator: Let me get you to get a little closer to the mic there, George.

Moderator: Also, we have Dr. Greg Bahnsen, presently scholar in residence at the [now defunct] Southern California Center for Christian Studies, an author of five books and nearly a hundred journal or periodical articles in Christian apologetics, ethics, and theology. His doctorate is in philosophy . . . from the University of Southern California, and he has degrees from Westminster Theological Seminary. Dr. Greg Bahnsen, we welcome you as well. Continue reading “A Debate on the Existence of God: Greg Bahnsen vs. George Smith (1991)”

Otis Q. Sellers’s Method of Interpretation: Notes

On the website of Otis Q. Sellers’s The Word of Truth Ministry one reads:

As a personal student of God’s written word, he came to his own conclusions after considering all the Biblical material available and any extraneous material that could shed light on the subject under consideration. He studied Hebrew and Greek words in order to bring forth their exact historical and grammatical meanings.

Sellers’s method of interpretation (hermeneutics) was that of the early 20th-century proto-fundamentalist movement in America, the movement that educated him in the Scriptures, but also from which he slowly but surely asserted his independence.[1] Although he rejected most of its doctrines, he retained its grammatico-historical hermeneutical method, which one scholar summed up as follows:

A fundamental principle in grammatico-historical exposition is that the words and sentences can have but one significance in one and the same connection. The moment we neglect this principle we drift out upon a sea of uncertainty and conjecture.[2]

Of course, that principle requires nuance, for a verse’s “one significance” may yield meanings that do not lie on the surface. Sellers gave an example:

As there is in all fields of study, there are principles in Bible interpretation that need to be scrupulously observed. Many of these need to be discovered and established by careful study and comparison, but there is one that is clearly enunciated by the Spirit of God. I, for one, would not want to grieve the Holy Spirit by ignoring a matter that He has distinctly affirmed. Failure to recognize, admit, and abide by this principle could lead to many erroneous interpretations and the misuse of many passages of Scripture.

The principle of interpretation to which I refer is affirmed by Paul in Romans 4:17 where he declares that God “calls those things which be not as though they were.” This is a divine statement concerning how God may act, and we can either be believers and admit that He does it, or be unbelievers and deny that He has ever so acted. It will be an act of faith upon our part if we accept the stated fact that He has spoken in His Word of those things that do not exist as though they existed.[3]

But generally, if one accepts that God spoke to Adam in the Garden of Eden, one rules out the possibility that he could doubt that fact. That is, the ideal of direct, clear, veridical, and successful communication was realized at least there.

Interpreting millennia-old Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, however, is not direct, but mediated. There is an effort to understand, coupled with a responsible awareness of how one might misunderstand, as there was none for Adam. But is it hopeless? Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers’s Method of Interpretation: Notes”

Discovering Otis Q. Sellers: an autobiographical vignette

March 22, 1978. A crisp 50-degree Wednesday in the Big Apple. Jimmy Carter was President. Saturday Night Fever was in the movie houses.

A New York University grad, I was studying for a doctorate in philosophy at the City University of New York’s graduate school. Still living at home in Bronx, I earned my keep by sorting and internally delivering mail at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson—“Sargent Shriver’s law firm,” I’d tell friends and family. (Never saw him: he was based in the Washington, DC offices.) Fried, Frank was then leasing several floors of the Equitable Building, 120 Broadway. In chapter 8 of Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution Antony Sutton devoted a chapter to the conspiracies that transpired in that storied edifice. I remember reading that book during my tenure in the law firm’s mail room. (See my post on this.)

During one lunch break I encountered Gabe Monheim, a semi-retired engineer from Red Hook, Brooklyn, then in his early 40s. The temperamental and cultural opposite of Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992), an elderly Los Angelino formerly of Wellston and Cincinnati, Ohio.

It was where Wall and Broad Streets intersect, a crossroads for me between philosophy and the Bible, a dividing line I’d crisscross many times. But for Gabe, I may never have heard of Sellers. And you wouldn’t be reading this. (I mention Gabe in a post that complements this one.)

I had been working in the financial district for three years, and Gabe had been preaching there (and further south at the Battery) for even longer (having once worked at the engineering firm Ford, Bacon & Davis), but I never noticed him. We pay attention to what we’re looking for, and I wasn’t yet looking for what he was offering. I wasn’t attuned to his message. At a distance, all street-corner preachers looked and sounded alike.

Until that day.

Continue reading “Discovering Otis Q. Sellers: an autobiographical vignette”

“The Godless Delusion”: my truth-in-advertising concern

Image result for Patrick Madrid and Kenneth Hensley A Catholic Challenge to Modern Atheism is the subtitle of Patrick Madrid and Kenneth Hensley‘s 2010 The Godless Delusion. I applaud their popular presentation of the presuppositional approach to Christian apologetics in the course of taking down contemporary atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and many others. They rack these naturalistic bowling pins and knock them down, with strike after strike. Readers can cull a rich bibliography from the reference notes.

But what is distinctively Catholic about their challenge to atheism?

Granted, Madrid and Hensley are Catholics. So are some (but not all) of the authors they cite in illustration of their arguments. Paragraphs of The Catechism of the Catholic Church are cited on many of the book’s pages. But, unlike virtually every other book by Madrid, it’s not a primer of Catholic apologetics, that is, a case for joining the Roman Catholic communion.

Image result for kenneth hensley — Kenneth Hensley

They argue that the Christian worldview alone makes sense of our sense-making. But that approach to apologetics has been a Protestant, largely Reformed (Calvinist), enterprise for more than a century. Madrid and Hensley do not make that clear. Continue reading ““The Godless Delusion”: my truth-in-advertising concern”

Christ, our philosophical GPS

Image result for christ the wisdom of god The Apostle Paul speaks of “gnosis falsely so called” (1 Timothy 6:20). Why not also “philosophy falsely so called”? How would that differ from philosophy according to the elements of this world? (Colossians 2:8)

And what should stop a Christian who accepts Paul’s line of reasoning from suggesting “misosophy” as le mot juste for the false gnosis, the foolishness, the vain babblings?

Taking Christ’s words seriously, we conclude that neutrality toward Him and his claims is not possible. It is a self-deceptive feint. “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters” (Matthew 12:30). One is either in Christ or at enmity with Him (Ephesians 2:16), a hostility only He can overcome.

Therefore, a discourse rooted in the fatal conceit, namely, that the term “unaided reason” has real reference, is not open to the claims of Christ. Its proponent hates Christ and does so “without reason” (John 15:25, alluding to Psalm 35:19).

The fatal conceit of “unaided reason” is incapable of taking Christ’s self-identification seriously. It not only bakes no bread, but it is a vine that bears no edible or press-worthy grapes. Continue reading “Christ, our philosophical GPS”

Brand Blanshard: rationalism’s “working hypothesis” and the Van Tilian verdict

In the discourse we call philosophy, noncognitive interests are in play, interests that compete with, threaten to interfere with if not overwhelm the interest in knowing the truth. Brand Blanshard—the one member of my pantheon of former philosophical heroes whom I could have met, but now regret never having exerted myself to do so—acknowledged their efficacy:

What our intelligence wants is, of course, the truth. What the rest of our nature asks from our intelligence is not what is true but what will satisfy. By that we mean what will appease our impulsive and emotional nature, our longing to be liked, our desire to see our future secure, our character respected, our faith vindicated, our party shown to be the party of sober sense, or nation triumphant. When one considers how hidden and barricaded the truth commonly is, how definite it is, allowing no alternative, how feeble is our passion for it, and how overwhelming the tendencies in us to look for it through distorting prisms, the wonder is not that most of us are irrational but that some of us are as rational as we are.[1]

He denied, however, that non-cognitive interests smothered the interest in truth. He thought it worthwhile to cultivate the latter to see (almost experimentally, ironically enough) how far one could go if one gave reason its head.

Unlike Blanshard’s empiricist and pragmatist critics, however, I affirm an irreducibly distinct love of truth. But that’s because I presuppose that the One who is Truth (John 14:6) created the context within which human truth-seeking takes place and makes sense. Continue reading “Brand Blanshard: rationalism’s “working hypothesis” and the Van Tilian verdict”

Bill Vallicella on Cornelius Van Til: An open mind and heart

Image result for bill vallicella Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, is currently reading Cornelius Van Til’s The Defense of the Faith, and that delights me no end. Bill was the first philosopher to welcome my old site (now 15 years old) and greet the launching of this one (which occasioned his republishing a generous and stimulating critique of one of my efforts).

I thank Dave Lull (the “Omnipresent Wisconsin Librarian,” now retired) for alerting me not only to Bill’s “Van Til and Romans 1:18-20,” but also to “God, the Cosmos, Other Minds: In the Same Epistemological Boat? The latter is Bill’s response to my “God: “behind the scenes” (or “under the floorboards”) of every argument.” (I’m grateful to Dave for many other unsolicited yet invaluable leads he has sent my way over the years.) Image result for dave lull

After reading the second post, though, I wonder whether after a few chapters Bill’s thrown Defense against the wall in exasperation—one of my reactions, decades ago—figuratively speaking, of course.

In a blog post I can address only some of the issues Bill raise. That is, what follows does not answer Bill point for point. I’ll only suggest the lines of a fuller response.

Bill is ambivalent about Van Til: his “presuppositionalism is intriguing even if in places preposterous.” Bill doesn’t specify what merits that assessment. In any case Van Til’s distinctive charge was that all non-Christian thought—including much that is professedly Christian but infected with non-Christian presuppositions—is preposterous at its roots.

Continue reading “Bill Vallicella on Cornelius Van Til: An open mind and heart”

Evidence that demands a worldview: or how apologetics requires a metapologetics

Image result for evidence that demands a verdict The new edition Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Life-Changing Truth for a Skeptical World, edited with his son Sean, recently caught my eye on Amazon. The first edition did that over 40 years in Christian Publications’s bookstore in Manhattan (8th Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Streets).

Gabriel Monheim (1936-2015: this pic is circa 1979-80), who preached on Wall Street, recommended it to me in 1978. The occasion was my asking questions that someone (certainly an ex-Marxist graduate philosophy student) might have about the Bible.

The McDowells’ 700+-page tome is a compendium of orthodox Christian answers to (mainly) historical and archaeological objections to belief in the Bible as the Word of God written and to the many propositions that this belief logically commits the believer. That is, it’s a contribution to apologetics.

Mainly, but not exclusively. To address new versions of perennial philosophical objections the McDowells have added six chapters: “The Nature of Truth,” “The Knowability of Truth,” “Answering Postmodernism,” “Answer Skepticism,” “Are Miracles Possible?,” and “Is History Knowable?”

Complementing this approach to apologetics for me are the works of Norman Geisler (PhD, Loyola, 1970; b. 1932), whom I met at the 1982 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. Geisler starts with defending theism, grounding his premises in principles that one cannot coherently deny. He then defends the historical reliability of the Bible. On its basis he argues for the deity of Jesus. Whatever Jesus teaches is true, and He taught the divine inspiration of the Old Testament and promised an inspired New Testament. Image result for norman geisler

Geisler’s apologetical method is commonly labeled. “evidentialist.” It’s also categorized as “classical” as distinct from the “presuppositional” approaches of Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) and Gordon H. Clark. (1902-1985).

Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) preaching on the steps of Federal Hall, Wall Street off Broad Street, NYC, 1978; in front of him, stands a former student and my friend, Eric Sigward (1946-2021).

But facts bear an evidential relationship to each other only if certain background conditions obtain. They connect (a) facts to each other causally and (b) each of them to our evidence-weighing minds (c) within a world created by God. That’s the worldview that grounds the premises of sound classical apologetical arguments. It would take me years to accept that from Van Til (above left: on the steps of Federal Hall, Wall & Broad, NE corner, 1978, the year I began hearing Monheim preach just across Broad on my lunch hour; the man resting his chin on his left fist is my old friend Eric Sigward. ). My reading and interacting with Greg L. Bahnsen (1948-1995) made the decisive pedagogical difference.

God has (as it were) encoded these conditions into every human mind (Genesis 1:27; John 1:6; Romans 1:18-20), even minds that reject the Bible. The worldview expressed in the Bible, and only that one, explicates them. The Bible confirms as divine revelation what every human knower tacitly and spontaneously works with, but can justify (when justification is called for) only on the basis of the Bible.

When apologists argue with an unbeliever about, say, the authorship of Isaiah, they should be prepared, at a moment’s notice, to foreground the conditions of intelligible discourse.

Continue reading “Evidence that demands a worldview: or how apologetics requires a metapologetics”

God: “behind the scenes” (or “under the floorboards”) of every argument

My lifelong interest in arguments for and against the existence of God was never the same once it dawned on me that unless the God of the Bible exists, there wouldn’t be any such thing as argumentation (and therefore no theistic argumentation).

A study of Cornelius Van Til and his interpreter Greg L. Bahnsen occasioned that dawning.

Not even “God does not exist” is intelligible unless God exists.

Rare is the philosopher who, inferring God’s existence from the existence or character of the world, asks whether inference itself would be possible in a non-theistic world. If it isn’t, then theistic inference is redundant. Our ability to investigate is itself a divine intention.

Professions of atheism are spiritually insincere because they result from the affirmers’ suppression of their basic awareness of God’s existence. (Romans 1:18-20) We all know the latter as incorrigibly as we know that the world has existed for millennia independently of any of us, a world that has included billions of human selves.

Further, one knows the existence of God, the world, and other selves “primordially,” that is, neither by deduction nor by induction, but prior to any deduction or induction one performs. (See my discussion of Augustus Hopkins Strong’s notion of “first truths” here.)

Continue reading “God: “behind the scenes” (or “under the floorboards”) of every argument”