Presuppositionalism, the Transcendental Argument, and the Impossibility of the Contrary

Within Christian apologetics, there are various schools of methodologies. One such school is presuppositionalism, which argues that one must assume a conceptual framework or ultimate standard of truth in order to make any sense of reality. In other words, there are no "brute facts" that exist in the universe apart from an understanding of God. Because of this, we cannot attempt to persuade the unbeliever through an appeal to evidence. As Christians, it is vital that when we engage the lost world we do so knowing that there is no such thing as neutrality. Due to the Fall, sin has infiltrated man's mind, will, and emotions. The noetic effects of sin (sin's effect on our reasoning) prevents man from evaluating evidence objectively. Although man is depraved and altogether helpless, the image of God is not completely destroyed in him. He still has a sense of right and wrong and is capable of employing logic. Nonetheless, the unbeliever's rejection of God prevents him from understanding any fact truly. Like a Jenga game of sorts, when the unbeliever builds his worldview apart from God as the foundation, the rest of it falls apart.

What exactly is a worldview? A worldview is a network of presuppositions through which a person interprets reality. Everyone has one. We operate in it without even knowing we are doing so. The unbeliever, in an attempt to make sense of reality, must borrow from the believer's worldview. The objective of a presuppositional apologist then is to demonstrate to the unbeliever that he cannot account for such things as the laws of logic, ethics, the uniformity of nature, or beauty apart from belief in God. As such, the presuppositionalist employs the Transcendental Argument, which states that every fact in the universe is not meaningful apart from a preconditioning belief in God. To demonstrate the Transcendental Argument, I will examine the laws of logic.

The three most commonly known laws of logic are: 1) the law of identity, 2) the law of non-contradiction and 3) the law of the excluded middle. These laws of logic are general propositions that guide human thought. They are not laws of thought but are presuppositions of coherent thinking. Most recently, I have engaged in a discussion with an atheist concerning how he, in his worldview, accounts for the laws of logic. He has been unable to give me an answer for that. The reason the unbeliever cannot account for the laws of logic is because of his belief in Logical Positivism. Logical Positivism depends upon empiricism, or the belief that only knowledge that comes through the senses and is observable is true knowledge. The laws of logic cannot be tested or observed for they are universal, immaterial invariants. The unbeliever may try to resolve this predicament by claiming the laws of logic are not universal invariants but that they are conventions of thought. However, this only serves to put the unbeliever in a more difficult position as he cannot explain why not all men agree on the laws of logic.

The fact remains that for the unbeliever to engage in a meaningful way with the world, he must presuppose the laws of logic. And for the unbeliever to account for the laws of logic, he must presuppose the existence of God. The chance and randomness foundations of the universe in the unbeliever's worldview cannot account for the existence of universal, immaterial invariants. He may try to explain why the universe is founded on chance, which will mean he will have to employ the laws of logic demonstrating the contradiction in his worldview.

The Christian's foundation for the laws of logic rests in the fact that it is reflective of God's unchanging character. Logic exists because God exists and the coherency in our world if reflective of the coherency found in God. While critics may claim that this is circular reasoning, it is important to point out that worldview level examinations should be circular because this demonstrates internal cohesion. Greg Bahnsen gives two criteria for determining the internal cohesion of a worldview:

1) Internal Consistency: This is to say that the statements made by the worldview do not contradict one another or are not internally contradictory. Logical Positivism, which I alluded to earlier, fails this test because it says, "a belief is valid only if it is empirically verifiable." This belief itself is not empirically verifiable and as such fails the test of internal consistency. Moral relativism would fall into the same category.

2) Arbitrariness: This criteria means that a worldview statement must not be believed out of convenience. Many people claim to believe something because a warm, positive feeling that comes with it. This is fallacious because it is a statement that someone of any worldview could make.

With this in mind, it is important that we, as Christians, continue to be, in the words of Van Til, "epistemologically self-conscious" by reminding ourselves of our ultimate arbiter of truth: the Word of God. When we live with this standard in mind, we realize that impossiblity of the contrary, the fact that no other worldview coherently accounts for reality. May we continue to expose the absurdity of the unbelieving worldview then but with gentleness and reverence (cf. 1 Pet. 3:15). Soli deo gloria!