Presuppositionalism – Anthony G. Flood

Christianity and intelligibility: Part II

When we ask a question—historical, cultural, scientific, ethical, political, whatever—we tactily imply that a prior question has been “settled”: on what ground is our asking “standing,” figuratively speaking? That is, what do we presuppose about reality, knowledge, and goodness? In Philosophy after Christ I essay a biblical answer; the need to elaborate upon it motivates this initial response to William F. (“Bill”) Vallicella, Ph.D., a long-time correspondent and friend, who occasionally critiques my efforts on Maverick Philosopher.[1] Some of what follows might prove too “in the weeds” for some visitors, but I’m writing for the record, which transcends our sublunary sojourns. Bill knows what I mean.

Also, since I neither write nor receive anything in the spirit of “So there!,” I’m under no illusion that this post or any of its sequels has a prayer of “concluding the matter.” And that’s all right: not only la lucha but also la dialéctica continúa. I may post a thousand words only to learn that in response to some of them, Bill has rather quickly generated several thousand of his own. Further installments will appear while I, who did not earn the leisure that Bill deservedly enjoys, am still working on my rebuttal. So, a thought occurs: “Whom am I kidding?” As I will catch up in time, there’s no reason to postpone publishing something today on the status questionis. But any rebuttal that Bill may publish may have to go without a surrebuttal for a while. Continue reading “Christianity and intelligibility: Part II”

Evidence I wasn’t always a “Van Tillian”

Listening this morning to an old (well, 2022) podcast[1] by the great Calvinist apologist James R. White, I was startled by his reference to Thom Notaro’s 1980 Van Til and the Use of Evidence. (White says he paid $3.75 for his copy back in the day, but a used copy on Amazon will set you back forty-five bucks.) Startled, I say, because over forty years ago, the Roman Catholic periodical New Oxford Review published, in its November 1981 issue, pages 29-30, my cluelessly negative review of Notaro’s book.

Consistent with my habit of airing my political and philosophical dirty laundry (which exercise works against one’s intellectual pride), I hereunder post that review’s text (and its prefatory note), which I took the liberty of posting in 2013 on my old site (whose anniversary I noted the other day).

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On a “cringe-ometer” scale from 1 to 10, with 10 inducing a coma from embarrassment, this rates a 9. I pontificated about Van Til’s thought, about which I knew little first-hand, instead of actually reviewing a book about the role of evidence in an apologetic often mischaracterized as anti-evidence (even “fideistic”). In less than 600 words, I managed to beg every apologetical question, rendering myself a poster boy for the epistemological un-self-consciousness that, Van Til argued, renders every anti-Christian theistic worldview impotent.

In slight mitigation of my offense, I recall that as a New Yorker, who was not long before writing this a student in a doctoral program in philosophy, could not interact regularly with Van Til’s protégé, California-based Gregory L. Bahnsen, a Ph. D. in philosophy (USC, 1978). Had I been able to, my confusions would have been exposed and rectified much sooner. As it happened, I had to wait for the day I could carry around dozens of mp3s of his recorded lecture series and read many articles that are now freely available online. Even the very best of Bahnsen, his Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis, was not available until after his passing.

I am posting this only to memorialize the flawed inception of my investigation into Van Til’s thought. I also observe that I did not give up.

Anthony Flood

January 16, 2013 (Slightly amended January 21, 2019) Continue reading “Evidence I wasn’t always a “Van Tillian””

The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God Revisited: Toward a Response to Bill Vallicella

The length of this post might suggest otherwise, but I’m not going to reproduce my book, Philosophy after Christ, here but Maverick Philosopher and friend William “Bill” Vallicella (the subject of several posts, e.g., here, here, and here) recently posted essays on theistic argumentation, and I thought it deserved a response.

Preamble: if the God of the Bible, who created human beings in his image to know and love him and to know, value, and rule the rest of creation under him (hereafter, “God”), exists, then we know one way that the conditions of intelligible predication (IP) can be met. The preceding sentence includes key aspects of the Christian worldview (CW)—the Theos-anthropos-kosmos relationship—expressed on the pages of the Bible.

If no alternative explanation for IP is possible, then Biblical theism is necessarily true (which is what the CW predicts).

Knowing whether IP has conditions and that they’re met is a “big deal.” It underlies everything one does, not something one can take for granted. And yet virtually every thinker, yea, every philosopher, takes the satisfaction of those conditions, which must obtain, for granted. This taking is arbitrary, and being arbitrary does not comport with philosophizing.

If no worldview other than the Christian (CW) can account for IP, if (as I now hold) an alternative to the CW when it comes to accounting for IP cannot even be conceived, then to hold out for an alternative, as though doing so were an expression of rational exigency (“demandingness”)—that to reserve judgment somehow accords with epistemic duty—models only dogmatic stubbornness, not tolerant liberality.

Referring to the transcendental argument (TA) laid out in Chapter 13 of my book, I will call Bill’s bluff. After reading it, he may still say, “Well, Tony, I remain unconvinced”; if my argument goes through, however, then I will interpret such a response as an expression of his commitment to what he calls his “characteristic thesis” (CT). To paraphrase Brand Blanshard, it wrong to leap to a conclusion that argument’s premises don’t entail, but it is no less wrong to fail to draw an inference that they do entail.

Continue reading “The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God Revisited: Toward a Response to Bill Vallicella”

“Presuppositionalism”: a reply to an implicit criticism

In “Christ on the Possibility of Social Order without Christ (Matt. 12:24-6)”, an anonymous blogger led into his polemic against “political presuppositionalism” with a swipe at unnamed advocates of generic “presuppositionalism.”

Presuppositionalism, at least in some of its articulations, is the Christian epistemological and apologetical philosophy according to which knowledge is only possible on the condition of a self-conscious presupposition of the existence of God and the truth of his revealed word. One of the problems with presuppositionalism, at least insofar as it represents a distinct theory, is that it confuses the metaphysical conditions for the possibility of knowledge with the epistemological conditions for the possibility of knowledge. God’s existence and role as first cause may be metaphysically necessary for there to be knowledge, but it doesn’t follow from this that God has therefore made it the case that the presupposition of these truths is necessary to have knowledge. (The Natural Law Libertarian, June 19, 2023)

No, presupposing the worldview is necessary, not to have truth, but in order to give an account of how one has it. Accounting for knowledge is an epistemological task.

Continue reading ““Presuppositionalism”: a reply to an implicit criticism”