Are you looking for a silver bullet to defend your faith? Searching for the one method that would destroy all arguments against Christianity and silence the critics once and for all?
You have come to the right place.
This guide to presuppositionalism will thoroughly introduce the most important concepts within presuppositional apologetics and answer the most common critique against the method.
Contents
What is presuppositional apologetics?
Presuppositional apologetics is an approach to Christian apologetics that seeks to provide rational justification for the beliefs of Christianity and defend them against objections.
The presuppositional approach highlights the fact that
- Every person on the planet has a worldview
- All worldviews are built on presuppositions
By studying the presuppositions of a given worldview, the approach tries to determine if the presuppositions lead to any arbitrariness, inconsistency, or ignorance when trying to find answers to intelligible human experience.
This approach to apologetics is most famously associated with the theologian Cornelius Van Til, though other theologians and thinkers have developed and refined it. From them, a protege of Van Til, Greg Bahnsen, is also closely associated with developing the approach.
The goal of presuppositional apologetics
According to the Bible (Romans 1:18-20), the non-believer has an inescapable knowledge of the God of Christianity, leaving no excuse for them. Therefore, presuppositional apologetics aims to:
- Strip the non-believer of the ability to defend their worldview.
- Demonstrate that in Jesus Christ, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden (Colossians 2:2-3).
- Lead non-believers to repentance and acceptance of Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
Presuppositionalism isn’t used to argue that the Christian worldview is better than other worldviews. It is used to argue that Christianity is the only worldview there is.
What is a worldview?
A person’s worldview consists primarily of metaphysics/ontology, epistemology, and ethics.
- Metaphysics addresses questions that concern how the world began, how humans came into existence, and what the purpose of humans is.
- Epistemology is the theory of knowledge and deals with questions about what knowledge is, how we know what we know, and the limits of human knowledge.
- Ethics addresses questions about good and evil and how a person should live.
Everyone has a worldview, and every worldview takes a stance on the existence of God.
Presuppositionalism does not argue piece by piece, proof against proof, but by juxtaposing comprehensive worldviews and examining which worldview leads to knowledge and which destroys knowledge.
What are presuppositions?
Worldviews comprise a wide array of interconnected assumptions, with presuppositions being the most fundamental among these assumptions. Other assumptions rely on presuppositions, defining a person’s beliefs and opinions. Everyone has presuppositions, although many may not be aware of them.
You can inquire about presuppositions by asking “how do you know” questions. How do you know that x is true? How do you know that your senses are reliable? And so on.
Everyone has an ultimate, highest authority upon which their worldview rests. For believing Christians, this authority is God and His Word. For materialists, it is man himself.
Highlighting presuppositions
Often, both non-believers and Christians may have yet to consider what their presuppositions are and what their highest authority is.
Presuppositions are brought to the forefront by asking questions that guide non-believers to answer what they ultimately appeal to when deciding on a particular information set.
Questions are often formulated as “How do you know that x is true?” or “What, according to your worldview, serves as the foundation for the laws of logic, objective morality, or uniformity of nature?”
Non-believers should be made aware of their presuppositions and the consequences of choosing them — that, from their worldview’s perspective, there is no inherent sense in the world.
There is no neutrality
Regarding God, there is no neutral worldview; a person is either for Jesus or against Him (Matthew 12:30).
A believer should not surrender their presuppositions when non-believers request that they examine data “neutrally” (Proverbs 26:4).
For the sake of argument, a believer may enter into the non-believer’s worldview to demonstrate how it leads to arbitrariness, inconsistency, or ignorance (Proverbs 26:5).
While believers and non-believers may share a common ground, it is not a “neutral” foundation where they don’t consider God in their arguments. The common ground is that they both exist in a world created by the Christian God as beings made in the image of God, which is why they both can know things. However, only believers can provide a rationale for their knowledge compared to non-believers.
Everyone argues in a circle, but whose circle is vicious
Presuppositionalists are often accused of circular reasoning. Critics claim that presuppositional apologists try to prove the existence of God by assuming God’s existence.
Everyone ultimately argues within a circle. The highest authority is always assumed because otherwise, it would not be the highest authority.
The goal is to distinguish between
- reasoning that leads to knowledge – spiral reasoning
- and arbitrary circular reasoning
Spiral reasoning demonstrates the truth of what is being proved by showing the impossibility of the contrary. In other words, what you’re trying to establish is true if the opposite can’t be true.
Here’s an example of spiral reasoning:
All argumentation assumes the functioning of the laws of logic. You can’t argue without the law of non-contradiction because that would be self-defeating.
Let’s assume you say that the law of non-contradiction doesn’t exist. Your opponent can use this against you by saying that, according to you, the law of non-contradiction does exist. In other words, the laws of logic are valid because engaging in any form of argumentation without assuming their validity is impossible.
Presuppositional apologetics suggests that Christianity is true because the opposite is impossible. Only Christianity provides the foundation for intelligibility in this world. All other worldviews undermine intelligibility.
And because Christianity is true, it is also the only possible worldview. More about this later in the article.
THE KEY: epistemology and ontology are taken simultaneously
The key to understanding presuppositional apologetics is to know how the method treats ontology and epistemology.
Typically, either ontology, “God exists,” or epistemology, “our mental faculties give us certain truths and through them, we can arrive at a knowledge of the existence of God,” is assumed first, and then we get the other one.
Critics of presuppositionalism often say that we cannot take ontology, “God exists,” first since that is what we are trying to prove. Instead, epistemology has to come first; we conclude that God exists through our minds and senses.
By claiming this, the critics have set the human mental faculties as the highest authority capable of judging truths about human experience. They assume that the faculties, because they come within us, can give us certain truths about the world. One example of this kind of truth is to know that a person exists and, therefore, his/her mind can arrive at certain truths. This assumption is their ultimate presupposition.
By claiming that epistemology has to come first, the critics (often Christians) forget that we all have the knowledge of God within us (Rom. 1:18-20). Because of this, we can use a different approach.
According to Van Til and Bahnsen, alongside the options of “God first” or “man first,” a third option simultaneously incorporates epistemology and ontology.
The Bible states that everyone knows God exists. Therefore, everyone knows both their existence and God’s existence simultaneously because the knowledge of God is inherently present within each person.
Therefore, the act of God’s creation (the universe and humans as described in the Bible) and how humans acquire knowledge about the creation can be taken simultaneously as the highest authority.
A person who uses presuppositional apologetics assumes that God exists and that people can know certain truths about the world.
Assuming ontology and epistemology simultaneously is nothing different than the critic assuming that epistemology has to come first. It is only the critic’s opinion when he/she is claiming so. No rule book says that this is the only way of proving God’s existence. Especially when the Bible itself says that all people know that God exists so that they are without excuse.
For the critic, because his/her mind’s capability of recognizing truths comes from within us, he/she can trust it and assume that it can bring us to the truth.
For the presuppositional apologist, because his/her mind’s capability of recognizing truths AND the existence of God of the Bible come from within us, we can trust in it and assume that it can bring us to the truth.
Therefore, a person who uses presuppositional apologetics sets God and His Word as the highest authority. This is his/her ultimate presupposition.
We need to test the ultimate presupposition of the Christian believer, the worldview in the Bible, if it leads to intelligible human experience.
Therefore, we now look at the methods of internal critique (pushing the antithesis) and transcendental argument.
Internal critique or pushing the antithesis
Everyone has a worldview based on their presuppositions about the world. Every worldview takes a stance on the existence of God. Therefore, no worldview is neutral concerning God.
The purpose of internal critique of a worldview is to examine whether that particular worldview provides a basis for understandable human experience in this world.
Examples of how to conduct an internal critique
When looking at our universe from a purely materialistic (atheistic) worldview, everything is based on randomness. The world came out of nothing randomly, and because of luck, life originated on Earth and, through random mutations, developed human beings. If our existence is based on randomness, how can you know that the laws of physics have always been the same and will be the same tomorrow as they are today?
The above problem is called the problem of induction, which we will study later. The problem of induction questions our reasons for believing that the future will resemble the past. More broadly, it questions predictions about unobserved things based on previous observations, which is the basis of the modern scientific method.
In other words, a purely materialistic worldview undermines the results we get from science.
Moreover, a purely materialistic worldview is based on determinism as follows. The Big Bang has started a chain of events that are causally linked together from the beginning to your very thoughts at this very moment. You didn’t come up with the idea you have in your mind right now, but it came to your mind because of something that happened a moment ago, which occurred because of something else that happened before. And so it goes all the way to the Big Bang. You don’t have thoughts of your own, but everything is determined by the molecules interacting with each other.
This worldview can not justify that your thoughts have any truth value because the laws of nature determine how molecules interact, and they decide your thoughts. This worldview suggests that laws of nature are born randomly by pure luck. In other words, the laws of nature and your thoughts exist because of randomness and chance.
The two arguments above are examples of an internal critique of a worldview that uses presuppositional apologetics.
If a given worldview can answer a condition studied by the internal critique, we can move on to study another condition for understandable human experience.
Transcendental argument
A transcendental argument is a philosophical and logical method of argumentation that seeks to establish the necessary conditions for the possibility of a particular belief, experience, or aspect of human cognition.
Transcendental arguments typically take the form of inference from some undeniable feature of human experience, like the laws of logic, to the conclusion that certain conditions or presuppositions must be valid for that experience to be possible. They aim to demonstrate that some concepts, beliefs, or experiences depend on certain underlying presuppositions.
The term “transcendental” in philosophy is derived from the Latin “transcendens,” which means “going beyond” or “transcending.” Transcendental arguments are often associated with the works of philosophers like Immanuel Kant.
An example of a transcendental argument
Premise: We have absolute moral knowledge and make absolute moral judgments.
Conclusion: Some objective moral framework or principles must underlie our ethical knowledge.
In other words, if we have a moral law that is shared by all the people in the world, for example, it is evil to torture innocent babies for fun, then we have to have a lawgiver.
In the Christian worldview, God is the lawgiver, revealing His divine law in our hearts and the Bible. Now, let’s see what the Bible says about the Christian worldview.
The things that guarantee understandable human experience
The transcendental argument asserts that only a biblical worldview can justify understandable human experience in this world. Below is a list of things needed to construct a worldview that gives the basis for understanding human experience.
All things below must be justified through one worldview to demonstrate the foundations for understandability.
- Truth
- Justification of knowledge
- Reliability of the senses
- Laws of logic
- Objective morality
- Principle of induction
- Reliability of reason/mind
- How particulars relate to universal and vice versa – The problem of the one and the many
- Randomness vs. orderliness
- Humanity
- Beauty
- Love
- History
- Reliability of memory
- Understanding of language
In the links below, you will find articles demonstrating how Christianity answers the above requirements.
How Christianity answers to the problem of induction
How Christianity offers an absolute moral law
Biblical worldview
The biblical worldview includes the following:
- The God of Christianity exists.
- God has revealed Himself to humans in both natural (creation, human conscience, the knowledge of God within a person) and special revelation (the Bible).
- The Bible is the Word of God.
- God is personal, infinite, eternal, self-existent, uncreated, independent, all-knowing, all-powerful (in relation to His being), absolute, omnipresent (universal), infinitely good, and perfectly just.
- There is only one God. God has three persons: Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
- God is thus triune, meaning the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.
- God created the universe and sustains it by the power of His Word.
- Though God is everywhere, God is not one with His creation; the Creator and the created are distinct.
- Man is created in the image of God.
- Man is conscious (of himself) and capable of making moral decisions.
- God has prepared a plan of salvation and offers salvation, forgiveness of sins, and eternal life to all who believe in Him.
- Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah, who is 100% human and 100% God.
- God thus entered history and died on the cross for human sins.
As mentioned earlier, a worldview is defended as a holistic package. For this reason, events like the birth, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus are included in the list. They are not presented as evidence of Jesus as a historical person or that Jesus has all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Him. Jesus’ life defines and establishes Christianity, but it also defines many other aspects, such as
- God’s plan of salvation
- God’s promises
- Our relation to Creation
- Christian moral law, and so on
These must be known and understood because they can come up in internal criticism of Christianity even though they are not the core of the transcendental argument. Again, it underscores the importance of understanding and studying the Bible.
Answers to most popular criticism of presuppositionalism
Circular reasoning
Presuppositionalism is often criticized for circular reasoning, a logical fallacy in which the reasoner begins with what they are trying to end with.
In simpler terms, someone uses a statement or proposition to support itself, which doesn’t lead to a valid or sound argument. Circular reasoning is unconvincing because it doesn’t provide any new information or evidence to support the claim; it repeatedly restates the same idea.
The critics claim that presuppositionalism uses the following kind of circular reasoning:
“The God of the Bible must exist because we assume He exists.”
Answering this type of criticism:
All reasoning is circular. For example, how do words have meaning? How do we know that the laws of logic exist? We need to presuppose that words have meaning and that the laws of logic exist to use them in an argument.
If someone denies that words don’t have meaning, he/she has conceited the argument because the words you use don’t mean anything.
If someone denies the existence of the laws of logic, they again conceit the argument because then A can be B and vice versa. So, if someone says, “God doesn’t exist,” we can say, “Because you have admitted that it is okay to violate the laws of logic, namely the law of non-contradiction, then what you mean is that God exists.”
The same critic says we can assume that our mind gives us certain truths about the world. His circular reasoning goes as follows: “We know that our mind gives us certain truths about the world because our senses give us the correct information, and we know that the senses give correct information because our mind tells us so.”
As said above, all argumentation is circular. We need to establish whose presuppositions will enhance intelligibility and whose destroy it.
In the above example, as a Christian believer, you can justify that your senses give accurate data to your mind. We assume that the God of the Bible exists, and He reveals that
- The Bible is the Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
- God doesn’t lie (Proverbs 30:5)
- People are capable of understanding the world through their senses (Job 38:36, Proverbs 20:12)
We use the above kind of argumentation with all of the conditions for understandable human experience, showing that Christianity, as revealed in the Bible, can justify every one of the conditions. Therefore, we show that if Christianity is not true, the world as we perceive it doesn’t make sense. We have demonstrated the truth of Christianity by the impossibility of the contrary.
People with other worldviews can create more meaningful things than Christians
Answer:
People with non-Christian worldviews can indeed know things and create things on the highest levels, but it’s true only because they live in a world that the God of Christianity creates. They can’t, however, justify their knowledge from their worldview. There is a difference between knowing things and being able to justify that knowledge.
Other worldviews can justify knowledge
Non-believers who criticize presuppositionalism point out that philosophical trend X can justify one condition of the understandable human experience. When the philosophical trend X can not justify intelligibility in some other way, they offer an answer from philosophical trend Z for this problem, and so on.
Answer:
The biblical worldview is defended as a complete package, not piece by piece. Likewise, the worldview of a non-believer is studied as a complete package.
By cherry-picking answers from multiple worldviews, these worldviews conflict in some ontological, epistemological, or ethical aspects. Therefore, the worldviews must be examined as complete packages, one package at a time.
The above also means that defending the Christian worldview using presuppositional apologetics (or any apologetic method) requires a broad understanding of the Bible.
Final words on presuppositionalism
Presuppositionalism asserts that every worldview is built on presuppositions and aims to demonstrate Christianity’s rational justification while challenging opposing worldviews.
Presuppositional apologetics emphasizes the inherent knowledge of God within humanity. It seeks to lead non-believers to repentance and acceptance of Jesus Christ. The approach critiques worldviews by conducting internal critiques. It employs transcendental arguments to establish Christianity’s foundational role in providing understandable human experience.
Critics often challenge presuppositionalism for circular reasoning. However, proponents argue that all reasoning is inherently circular and that Christianity alone offers a coherent worldview that justifies knowledge and intelligibility.
By addressing common criticisms and emphasizing the holistic nature of defending the Christian worldview, presuppositional apologetics provides a robust framework for engaging with diverse perspectives and defending the truth claims of Christianity.
Books and further reading
Cornelius Van Til
The Defense of the Faith
Christian Apologetics
Greg Bahnsen
Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis
Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith
Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended
Against All Opposition: Defending the Christian Worldview
The Impossibility of the Contrary
Pushing the Antithesis