There was a question asked of Presuppositionalists regarding Bahnsen’s argument. Jimmy Stephens gave his thoughts and certain conversation. Here were the results:
Matthew Flanagan:
So I have been reading Bahnsen’s critiques of people like Carnell, Clark and Schafer, and Bahnsen repeatedly objects to their method of “verification”. Where one attempts to verify presuppositions indirectly by showing that, if they were true, you would get a more coherent view of the world. Bahnsen objects that this is to treat Christianity as a hypothesis to be tested unlike the transcendental methods of Van Till.
Here is what I don’t get, isnt the transcendental argument essentially the same. If I say, unless you presuppose God you cannot account for the preconditions of intelligibility. I am making the claim “if you do not presuppose God’s existence, you cannot account for certain facts which are essential to coherent experience”. In fact, a reductio or “impossibility of the contrary” argument involves the very move Bahnsen seems to object to. It is to ask a person to ask, what would be the implications if you accept Theism as a presupposition and what would be the implications if you did not. How is this not proposing Theism as a ”hypothesis” to be “tested” in the exact same way?
Odyc Mboden, you only need to understand that the claim “God is a necessary and sufficent precondition for x” is equivalent to saying “If God then x” and also “if not God then not x”. As soon as you make that argument your treating Theism as a “hypothesis” for hypo-deductive testing.
Jimmy Stephens:
Here are some brief remarks.
For Bahnsen, any criterion of verification will reside or inhere within the broader epistemic context of worldview. The nature of transcendental “verification,” if so called, is that the unbeliever’s worldview is disproven in such a way that the disproof is on the one hand apodictic, but on the other unknowable except from the standpoint of the Christian worldview.
This means that Bahnsen is taking as an object of dispute some belief, set of beliefs, or paradigm of the unbeliever, conceding that the paradigm is epistemically necessary (i.e., it cannot fail to be known), and then arguing that the object of dispute entails Christianity since it would fail to be known otherwise.
There are three unique features here. 1.) The principle of verification is concrete, not abstract; it is worldview dependent. 2.) The verification achieved is transcendental, demonstrating epistemic necessity. 3.) The argument coincides with the strength of justification prior to it.
In Clark especially, contra (1), the principle of verification is an abstract notion of coherence adoptable by any worldview. This means the Gospel is treated as just the best option according to some Platonic value of thought rather than as the divine Wisdom founding that value of thought.
Contra (2), the verification only adds, prima facie, existential probability. That is, an individual can take an arbitrary list of worldviews and uphold Christianity as the best, but there may be countless worldviews lost to time and there is an infinite set of future competitors. Without going into ultimate skeptical considerations, this means the Gospel is at best a pragmatic preference.
Contra (3), the witness of the Holy Spirit – which is not, by the way, like Van Til’s Vosian account of revelatory knowledge – is absolute while Clark’s arguments are not. There is a conspicuous and dissatisfying asymmetry between God’s self-authentication and fallible appeals to it that doesn’t arise for vantilians.
There are two important differences. First, as I pointed out in my original comment, Clark (and others) hold to the infallible justification of the Spirit *in spite of* the fallible justification arrived at via coherence-falsification of competitors. Vantilians, a la Bahnsen, hold that the proof corresponds to and therefore matches the prior revelatory justification.
Second, it is the revelation of God that justifies universal knowledge of God, not the witness of the Holy Spirit. This is an all-too-common error in the church of mistaking the Scripture illuminating work of the Spirit for the Gospel-knowledge-inducing work of the Scripture itself.
Even if you disagree, at the very least, that is a crucial difference. For Van Til, Frame, Bahnsen, and others, the work of the Spirit and of the Word should not be confused. And on their view, the work of the Word is to reveal to all men the existence and nature of God, and to those who read the Bible, the Gospel of God. The Spirit’s work is only to clarify, strengthen, broaden, and apply what was already known.
What is controversial is that Van Til and his students claim the common ground is not neutral ground. That is, it is only in virtue of the metaphysically necessary reality of God’s revelation, and the entailed epistemically necessary knowledge of God, that unbelievers have things in common with believers.
Glenn Andrew Peoples:
Yes, they claim that it’s not neutral ground. And they use argument in the same way that evidentialists/classicalists do, while faulting evidentialists/classicalists for trying to meet nonbelievers on neutral ground. They openly say that what evidentialists do is inappropriate and that it amounts to meeting unbelievers on neutral ground, but they are doing the same thing.
(I realise that they deny doing the same thing.)
Jimmy Stephens:
Your comment is a bare assertion, friend. I could just as easily assert, and I believe, that evidentialists/classicalists are inadvertent Reformed Apologists (i.e. vantilians) whenever they reason like Christians. Their “evidentialism/classicalism” itself is just an inconsistent vestige of unbelief.
Matthew Flanagan:
” There are two important differences” First, as I pointed out in my original comment, Clark (and others) hold to the infallible justification of the Spirit *in spite of* the fallible justification arrived at via coherence-falsification of competitors. Vantilians, a la Bahnsen, hold that the proof corresponds to and therefore matches the prior revelatory justification.”
It is not clear to me at all why showing a presupposition is necessary for coherence is a fallible proof whereas saying it is necessary for coherent experience isn’t. Both actually trade in logical coherence.
But more significantly, I don’t think either of the differences you cite address my OP. I wasn’t after all asking if Clark and Bahnsen were the same, I was asking why, making the conditional claim: “if theism is presupposed you get a more coherent view of the world than otherwise” counts as treating God as a hypothesis to be tested and claiming “if you presuppose God you get what’s needed for coherent experience whereas without doing this you don’t”
Both involve seem to involve arguing for Theism by appealing to a conditional. Nothing you just stated addresses that.
In this case we aren’t comparing classicists/evidentialists with Van Tillians, we are comparing presuppositionalists like Clark and Carnell with Van Till.
What is the principled different between arguing (a) unless you presuppose Gods existence, we cannot account for the preconditions of coherent experience and (b) unless you presuppose God, you can’t have a coherent world view.
Why is the latter treating God as a hypothesis to be tested, and a violation of “neutral ground” while the former isn’t. That seems to be to be dubious.
The Council 