The
Transcendental Argument:
Adam Parker
Introduction
When an atheist makes the statement, “I do
not believe in God,” they are proving God’s existence. This is the essence of one of the only
arguments that Cornelius Van Til would ever use, and the only one he believed
to be an unstoppable, infallible, positive proof for God’s existence. He believed it was more powerful than any
traditional or classical arguments for God’s existence.
Perhaps the question will arise, “Why did Van
Til find this argument so powerful and compelling?” The simple answer is, because, for Van Til the Transcendental
argument is not subject to the criticisms that traditional arguments
faced. This concept will be tackled a
little later. First, however, we will
examine Van Til’s apologetic philosophy, as well as an example of how a
Transcendental apologetic works in action.
In the conclusion, we will ask what it is about the Transcendental
argument that was so airtight, from Van Til’s perspective, as well as what we
have to learn from it.
What is a Presupposition?
John Frame defined Van Til’s idea of a
presupposition as a “basic heart commitment” (Frame 136). This presupposition “determines our ultimate
criteria of truth and falsity, right and wrong” (136). For a Christian, his presupposition is to
God as revealed in Christ, and his worldview is shaped by this commitment. For a non-believer, this presupposition may
be material reality, wealth, sex, a false God such as Allah, or any number of
things that the world offers in place of the glorious God of the Bible. From these commitments, the nonbeliever also
shapes his worldview and interprets everything he approaches.
What is the Nature of Man?
In the garden of Eden, “man’s
self-consciousness depended…upon his being in contact with both supernatural
and natural revelation. God’s natural
revelation was within man as well as about him…And natural revelation is
incomplete. It needed from the outset
to be supplemented with supernatural revelation about man’s future” (DF
91). This is entirely a reference to
pre-fall man. Next, we see the Van
Tilian position on what happened to man after the fall. Though this quote is not extensive, it does
serve the purposes of the present writer:
“When man became a sinner he made of himself
instead of God the ultimate or final reference point. And it is precisely this presupposition, as it controls without
exception all forms of non-Christian philosophy, that must be brought into
question. If this presupposition is
left unquestioned in any field all the facts and arguments presented to the
unbeliever will be made over by him according to his pattern. The sinner has cemented colored glasses to
his eyes which he cannot remove. And
all is yellow to the jaundiced eye” (DF 77).
At one point, Van Til compared the unbeliever
as a buzz saw with very sharp blades, yet the buzz saw is set in the machine
backwards and never quite works as it was intended to. This view of the noetic effects of sin shows
a strong influence from Kuyper, who, along with B.B. Warfield, was a very
important teacher for Van Til. Because
of the noetic effects of sin, man has made himself, rather than God, the final
reference point. Furthermore, man does
not see the truth because he chooses not to (notice Van Til’s statement that
man has cemented these glasses to his face).
Consistent with his Calvinistic schema, Van Til believes that the man
himself is responsible for his own condition.
Even further in Van Til’s writings we find that the first temptation
that faced man was to make himself “the center of the universe,” as it
were. Satan tempted man with this, and
man fell directly into the one thing that God commanded man to not do.
After the Fall, man was given over to do
exactly what he wanted: to live an existence that is free from God. Van Til sees that this basic desire
determines not only the way a man acts, but also the way he thinks and
reasons. Even in this area, man behaves
in a way that tends towards autonomy and desires to be free from the binds of a
wholly sovereign God. Van Til sees this
in the apologetics of the Armenian and Romanist apologetics. These apologetics both assume a God who is
not in control of all things, including human thought. And thus, both the Romanist and the Armenian
worldview yield in some sense to the human desire for autonomy by assuming the
man to be, in some way, impervious to the decrees of God.
The god whose existence [the Romanist] proves
to himself in this way is always a god who is something other than the
self-contained ontological trinity of Scripture. The Roman Catholic apologete does not want to prove the existence
of this sort of God. He wants to prove
the existence of such a God as will leave intact the autonomy of man to at
least some extent. Rome’s theology does
not want a God whose counsel controls whatsoever comes to pass. It is natural then that Rome’s view of the
point of contact with the unbeliever is what it is (DF 77-78).
For Van Til, nothing less than a consistently
Reformed Protestant apologetic will do.
Apologetic Methodology
Van Til’s apologetic flows from his view of
the nature of man, and the noetic effects that sin has had upon the human
heart. It also flows from an
understanding of what Calvin called “the sense of God” that all human beings
have. Van Til points out that according
to Romans 1:20-25, all of humanity know that God exists, because the reality of
his existence is evident everywhere, even in the human heart when we use reason
and logic. Therefore, there are no true
atheists, but only professing atheists “who suppress the truth in
unrighteousness” as the great theologian Paul of Tarsus once wrote.
Van Til’s apologetic methodology, therefore,
begins with the understanding that God is the “proximate starting-point” and
that man uses this starting-point consistently in his reasoning. Consider this quote from his Defense of the
Faith:
According to the principle of Protestantism,
man’s consciousness of self and of objects presuppose for their intelligibility
the self-consciousness of God…If then the human consciousness must, in the
nature of the case, always be the proximate starting-point, it remains true
that God is always the most basic and therefore the ultimate or final reference
point in human interpretation (DF 77).
In this quote, we not only see Van Til’s
argument that man unwittingly uses God’s existence in his arguments
consistently, but also that man’s self-consciousness depends on God’s own self-consciousness. For Van Til, all of existence should be (and
is, whether willing or not) interpreted in light of God and His existence.
Since, from a Biblical perspective, all men
believe in God, the duty of the Christian apologist should not be to entertain
the non-believer’s notions of autonomy, but instead to directly challenge his
idea that he can think apart from God’s existence, on his own. This person is only suppressing the truth
that all human beings already have a knowledge of.
The final point to be briefly touched on is
that Van Til believes, along with Scripture, that all men are enemies of God,
and that God is not obligated to save anyone, and that “the Son quickens whom
He wills” (John 5:21). This basic train
of thought says that it is necessary for God to draw anyone in order for them
to be saved. In John 6:44, Jesus tells
his disciples, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him;
and I will raise him up at the last day.”
To briefly enunciate the power of this verse, it is important to note
that, according to this verse, if God draws everyone as some evangelicals
believe, then everyone will be raised up.
We are not Universalists, and thus, to remain orthodox, we must conclude
that God does not draw all men to be saved, but that instead, as Jesus said,
“all that the Father gives to me will come to me” (John 6:37). Or, as God said to Moses in Exodus 33:19, “I
will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on
whomever I will have compassion.” It is
a shame that more time cannot be spent on this subject alone, but there are
more aspects of Van Til’s philosophy, which build upon these foundations.
This principle of Divine Sovereignty in
dispensing salvation is both a clear teaching of Scripture, and also a central
tenet of Van Tilian apologetics. For
Van Til, though our arguments against their autonomous presuppositions may in
fact, be used by God to convert the sinner, it is evident that God is the one who
is responsible to convert the sinner, and not, in the final analysis, the
apologist. Though the apologist knows
God’s role in the conversion process, he offers his apologetic because (a)
Christ commands it, as well as the Apostle Paul, and (b) since he himself was
converted by God’s Spirit through the foolish preaching and arguments of men,
he knows that preaching is not pointless because it does in fact, bring
results, thanks to God’s Spirit.
The Transcendental argument not only argues
that the Christian worldview is necessary in order to explain reality, but it
also argues that whenever we use our minds to interpret reality, we presuppose
the Christian worldview in order for it to make sense. By presuppose, Van Til means that the interpreter
of reality borrows every element of the Christian worldview essential to
rationality, logic, induction, contradiction, and intelligibility.
This argument has degrees of complexity, and
from a Van Tilian perspective, making such an argument will depend upon these
differing complex arguments in order to succeed. For example, the argument may be more simplistic versus a skeptic
like an atheist. However, if one were
to utilize Transcendental argumentation versus say, a Muslim, the apologist
would need to show how a plurality is necessary in order to make sense of
communication, rather than a Unitarian theism.
This type of argumentation, for Van Til, can be done, though it should
be done by those who are both philosophically and apologetically prepared (Frame
318).
The Van Tilian claim is that
the statement “I do not believe in God” is a self-contradictory statement. This is because though their words deny
God’s existence, they need the Christian God to exist in order for their
statement to be sensible. How does the
non-believer “need” the Christian worldview, in this example?[1] First, there are many presuppositions, which
go along with making the statement “I do not believe in God.” 1) “I do not believe…” presupposes the
individual’s own existence. 2) The
reliability of language is presupposed (English in this case). 3) The unbeliever is not at the same time
saying, “I believe in God.” Therefore,
the unbeliever assumes the law of contradiction, regardless of what he
prefers. Thus, the unbeliever assumes
the laws of logic. 4) “Believe” presupposes
some epistemic state of affairs. 5) The
individual presupposes when he writes or says this statement aloud that other
people besides himself exist. 6) He
then, by virtue of the last point, also presupposes some understanding of how
other minds think or reason. 7) He
presupposes distinctions in nature: namely that “God” is not the atheist. This presupposition is that there is a
plurality of things, i.e. more than one.
Presuppositionalists can and
have added many more presuppositions to this list. These are just a few that I have been privy to explore and read
about amongst other presuppositional apologists. So the question arises: what is the significance of these presuppositions? The answer is that the materialist cannot
account properly for these presuppositions.
But since he assumes that they are true, then they are utilizing the
Christian worldview, which most adequately and perfectly does account
for these facts.
For example: The materialist
cannot account for the laws of logic.
Why? “the characteristics of
logic are not the characteristics of material entities. If he is a posteriori in his
epistemology could he account for the universality of the laws of logic? No, because no one has universal
experience.”[2] The Christian, however, can account
for the laws of logic, because the Christian, first of all, can account for the
existence of nonmaterial entities.
Second, the Christian can also account for the laws of logic, because
the Christian believes that the laws of logic are the way that God thinks! God “thinks logically and is the standard
for logic. Indeed, the law of
noncontradiction can be found as an attribute of God in that God does not lie. When we have sound arguments we say that the
premises are true. Well, who is
the truth? God. Third, the Christian can account for the
universality of the laws of logic, because God is universal and “upholds all
things by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3).
In his book Cornelius Van
Til: An Analysis of his Thought, John M. Frame summarizes Van Til’s
Transcendental argument in a syllogistic form.
First, he presents the argument in a negative form:
Premise 1: If God does not exist, the world is
unintelligible.
Premise 2: God does not exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, the world is unintelligible.
Since even the atheist rejects the conclusion
of this argument, then at least one of the premises are false. Thus, positively stated, the Transcendental
argument could be stated thus:
Premise 1: If the world is intelligible, God exists.
Premise 2: The world is intelligible.
Conclusion: Therefore, God exists (Frame 318).
The charge may immediately
be raised that the Van Tilian argument for God’s existence is circular, because
it assumes God in the beginning of the argument and is thus circular. First of all, the argument is not circular
in the formal sense. Perhaps, given
more investigation and examination one could conclude that the argument does in
fact, utilize the conclusion in one of the premises. However, we must remember that for Van Til, “the starting-point,
the method, and the conclusion are always involved in one another” (DF
101). Why? Because when the atheist argues against God’s existence, he also
does the same thing as the theist, by assuming God’s non-existence. Consider this massively simplified (and
possibly uncharitable) summary formulation of the argument from evil:
Premise 1: If
an all-good and all-powerful God exists, He will prevent the occurrences of
evil and suffering.
Premise 2: Evil and suffering exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, an
all-good and all-powerful God does not exist.
The circularity may not be immediately
evident. Even if the atheist formulates
his argument differently, he presupposes God’s non-existence before he has even
finished his first premise. In this case,
as the atheist writes premise one, he knows that evil and suffering exist. Therefore, the atheist assumes God’s
nonexistence before he has finished his first premise. Thus, both parties utilize circularity in
some way.
Once again, the argument hinges
on this question: Does the Christian worldview account for every presupposition
necessary in order for reality to properly understood? For Van Til, the answer was an affirmative
“yes,” but Van Til also did not intend for this argument to be syllogistic in
nature. Rather, he envisioned it as a
format or blueprint for apologetic arguments that his predecessors and those
that followed to utilize. Part of our
duty as apologists is, in my mind, to defend premise one of Van Til’s argument,
namely that without the existence of the Christian God, reality is
unintelligible. If we can adequately
defend that premise, and our opponent assumes the intelligibility of reality,
then we have succeeded in defending God’s existence via Van Til’s
Transcendental argument.
Perhaps this analysis does
not do Van Til’s argument justice, yet we can perhaps catch a glimpse of why he
was so bold in promoting the Transcendental form of argumentation. Van Til believed that this argument was the
“end-all” argument which sealed the case for Christianity’s truth. When it comes to fundamental epistemological
questions, Christianity separates itself from all other religions. It is singled out as the only worldview that
can truly answer the questions of how rational thought is possible, how laws of
logic can be universally true, or how communication is either reliable or
possible.
Works Cited
Aquinas, Thomas On the Truth of the Catholic Faith (Suma Contra Gentiles) tr. By Anton C. Pegis, Vol. I (Garden City: Hanover House, 1955).
Van Til, Cornelius A Christian Theory of Knowledge. (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1977).
Van Til, Cornelius The Defense of the Faith. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1967).
Frame, John M. Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1995).
A
Puritan’s Mind: Message Board. http://www.puritanboard.com. Accessed April 1, 2004; 11:00 a.m.
[1] I am indebted to Paul Manta on the Puritan Mind message board for this formulation of the Transcendental argument, which to date is the simplest and most concise formulation I have yet encountered (http://www.puritanboard.com).
[2] I am once again indebted to Paul Manta’s formulation of the Transcendental argument where he offers this example with so much cogency and clarity.