I recently got into an exchange with a classical apologist named Spencer Hawkins. Credit to him for initiating a worthwhile discussion. Here’s how it went.

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1. The Burden of Proof and Possibility

Spencer:

“Your first move is to shift the burden of proof. You make the claim that ALL non-Christian worldviews are logically impossible…”

My response:

i) That objection begs the question. Simply asserting a worldview is possible does not make it so. From a Christian perspective, God defines what is and is not possible. You later claim, “I can imagine the Christian God not existing without running into a logical contradiction.” That may satisfy your own intuitions, but I do not exalt human imagination to the level of epistemic authority. We routinely imagine things that are incoherent. For example, I can imagine a man traveling back in time to kill his younger self—but such a world is logically impossible. The man both exists and doesn’t exist in the same timeline. Conceivability is not the same as possibility.

ii) The challenge I’m presenting is a transcendental one. Both the Christian and non-Christian must provide a worldview that accounts for the preconditions of intelligibility. This is not me shifting the burden—this is the burden we all share.

iii) It’s irrational to appeal to some vague “unknown” worldview as an escape hatch. That’s just special pleading. You are defending your worldview by retreating into the possibility of something else doing a better job. That’s not argumentation. That’s evasion.

Spencer:

“You ‘act as though you don’t need to prove it… [which] makes conversation nearly unbearable and completely useless.’”

Unlike Dr. Flowers, I’ve actually met the burden of proof. I’ve written extensively on this issue and offered arguments. And it’s false to equate my claims with Flowers’. Our methods and epistemological frameworks are entirely different.

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2. Disjunctive Worldviews and the Nature of TAG

Spencer:

“Of all non-Christian worldviews, you claim: ‘these “possible” alternative worldviews… will never be sufficient but will at one point or another be arbitrary, inconsistent, and incoherent.’ OK, prove it!”

I have reformulated the disjunct to strengthen the argument. The assumption that I must inductively refute every possible worldview is false. You cannot ground a transcendental conclusion on an inductive foundation.

At the root level, all non-Christian worldviews are united in rejecting the Christian one. That’s not an arbitrary division—it’s a principled one. Also, you seem to confuse TAG with internal critique. While TAG includes internal critique, it ultimately transcends it by evaluating whether the worldview as a whole can account for the necessary conditions of intelligibility.

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3. Is This Just Burden-Shifting?

Spencer:

“Your third response is burden shifting, again.”

It’s not burden-shifting if the burden is universal. That’s the entire point of Bahnsen’s critique of neutrality. Presuppositionalism refuses to grant any philosophical “freebies.” It demands that every worldview justify its core commitments—logic, morality, reason, and so forth.

If a worldview cannot account for the very tools it uses to argue, then it collapses. If you’re okay making incoherent appeals to save non-Christianity, then Presuppositionalism has done its job: it has reduced your position to absurdity. That’s the goal.

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4. Self-Attesting Revelation and Logical Necessity

Spencer:

“You claimed revelation from the triune God is ‘self-attesting.’ In what sense? I can imagine the Christian God not existing without contradiction. So Christianity can’t be logically necessary…”

i) When I say Scripture is self-attesting, I mean it is the epistemological ultimate. Its authority is not grounded in something higher, but in itself—because there is no higher authority.

ii) I think you’re misreading Paul. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul is not offering a modal logic proposition. He is saying that if Christ didn’t rise, then life is ultimately meaningless. It’s an existential point, not a modal one. Paul is rejecting nihilism, not undermining the necessity of Christianity.

iii) Hebrews 6:13 makes this point powerfully:

“For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself.”
This is epistemic finality. God and His word are the supreme authority, not our autonomous reasoning.

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5. The Starting Point of TAG

Spencer:

“Presuppositionalism starts with things we already know and use (like logic), and deduces their preconditions…”

Presuppositionalism doesn’t start with knowledge per se—it starts with beliefs people take for granted. It asks: “What must be true for this experience or belief to make sense?” The transcendental method doesn’t assume we know the preconditions; it seeks to uncover them.

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6. Do I Have to Refute Infinite Worldviews?

Spencer:

“If I need to refute an infinite amount of worldviews, then you do as well.”
“An internally coherent worldview could ‘fit’ the evidence but still be false.”

i) I never claimed that coherence equals truth. I reject coherence theories of truth. I recommend reading John Frame and Vern Poythress on this. I’ve responded to this elsewhere.

ii) Kant’s failure was due to his reduction to subjectivity. His synthetic a priori categories failed because they weren’t tied to metaphysical reality—only to human perception. I am making a deeper claim: the Christian worldview is not just conceptually satisfying, it is ontologically necessary.

iii) Your objection creates a problem for Classical Apologetics, not Presuppositionalism. If there are infinite worldviews that could account for the data, how do you know your classical argument points to the true worldview? Classical apologetics is still relying on the impossibility of the contrary—it just refuses to admit it. Presuppositionalism embraces it and shows why the Christian worldview alone meets the necessary conditions for intelligibility.