Confessor
Puritan Board Senior
God was not brought only at the end. He was there from the beginning. At the beginning He was known as "whom fit certain qualifications and concepts." At the end, we are able to say, "He is whom we were looking for all along". If we had started out autonomously, we could never come to such a conclusion.
That is exactly what the autonomous method entails. We cannot try to start with a blank, see what we have, and then decide that Christianity is the best option -- if we do so, we will never get to Christianity. If we do not follow our sense of deity and affirm Christ before we even try to argue, then we could not possibly make such an argument.
We can show him a criteria for God that is imprinted (sense of the divine) and that he cannot fill it, therefore autonomy is nonesense.
No, this is still an autonomous methodology, where we try to "neutrally" weigh the evidence and see what we have. Rather than bringing Christianity to the forefront at the beginning, we are trying to feign neutrality and say, "Okay, we've got a sense of deity. Let's see what that leads us to..." which is an inherently autonomous methodology.
Also one problem with making the sense of deity the proof, is that you then have to make an argument that it is proof for x as opposed to y.
The whole point of the sense of deity argument is that I introspectively know that Christianity is true, by witness of the Holy Spirit. I don't have to know that I know that it is true, or know that I know that I know, ad infinitum; God's witness is sufficient.
This is what it means to be self-attesting. If we had to prove that the sense of deity was of the Holy Spirit, then reason would be the ultimate, self-attesting authority.
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I was not arguing against presuppositionalism as presuppositionalism, but only a certain variety of presuppositionalism which is anti-natural theology (e.g. classical arguments for God’s existence).
I honestly don't think there is a variety of presup which is not against natural theology, at least those made in the Thomistic fashion.
I was trying to flesh out what exactly was meant by ‘autonomous’, and then arguing that it either applied to armourbearer’s position, or was irrelevant and mere pious sounding words.
Just to let you know, I had this exact same problem: I could not see a meaningful difference between the two schools of apologetics; I could not see how to avoid autonomoy, and therefore it either applied negatively to presup (making both schools "trapped" in the mindset) or it was irrelevant (making both schools competent with that mindset).
Obviously arguments such as the design argument in and of themselves aren’t bad to use, for they could be used to bolster the faith of another Christian. So it must be that they are only “autonomous” when used against the unbeliever.
Well, I would follow Van Til in affirming that they are useless when used in a non-confirmatory sense; that is, if we say, "We know that God exists, and look at this confirming evidence," they are alright, but if we say, "We know there is design in this universe, let's see if it points to a deity," then we are being autonomous.
In trying to find out just what is meant by “autonomous”, I said,
“Anyway, when we ask someone to use their reasoning ability when it comes to some text that allegedly shows that Reformed claims are true, does that mean "man is the master of rationality"? In other words, when we have exegetical debates, are we saying "man is the ultimate reference point"? If not, why not? What is the relevant difference?
"Suppose an unbeliever has a mental block holding him back from professing faith due to his belief that the bible teaches he has libertarian free will and that nature is therefore indeterminate. Suppose his thinks this irrational and says he can't believe the Bible. Couldn't I go to the Bible and show him that the Bible does not teach libertarianism & indeterminism? And since he's an unbeliever at the time, he's not granting authority. So, would I be "assuming he's the master?""
In regards to the first, it would simply not be a matter of who is the reference point -- both believers are agreed that God's Word is ultimate, and then they are discerning what exactly God's Word entails. The discussion of an ultimate reference point is irrelevant.
The second question has the same answer. The discussion is simply that the unbeliever does not know what God's Word entails. It'd be similar to a situation where an unbeliever said, "No, I won't become a Christian. The Qur'an has so many contradictions!" He has a false idea of what God's Word is. The question is not whether or not he should accept God's Word, but what God's Word is. The question of autonomy is irrelevant.
See, ‘autonomous’ and ‘master of the facts’ sounds bad and all, but we really need to flesh out what this means to see if it really has any grip. Of course it can’t just mean “not arguing at the presuppositional level”, because that is what is under discussion. We need to know *why* arguments that aren’t at the ‘meta’ level are ‘autonomous’, and what ‘autonomous’ really means.
Autonomous reasoning would be reasoning that accepts man's reason as ultimately authoritative, over against God's Word. Basically, I am affirming that God's Word must be accepted as authoritative prior to any kind of reasoning which would yield God's Word as authoritative. Even the AFR, under this category, is autonomous.
Depends on what you mean by “prove”. I think traditional arguments for God’s existence make God’s existence highly probable. I don’t think one needs to have epistemic certainty to have a proof.
Van Til disliked this because it made probability more ultimate than God, giving some credence to the pagan's ultimacy of "chance" rather than providence.
Regardless, I doubt that using consistent reasoning you could even demonstrate with probability that Christianity is true using an evidential approach. Only by inconsistently applying the method could you demonstrate the probability of God's existence. This is not a problem in you, of course; it is a problem with the system.
TAG doesn’t even prove God’s existence certain in ‘rationalistic’ terms.
That's actually what it tries to do. Van Til and Bahnsen both claimed that we can prove with absolute, complete certainty via rational argument that God exists, and I think they both went wrong there.
Actually we can. My point was that the unbeliever isn’t going to grant it *temporally* at the beginning of the argument.
If we, using your approach, attempted to prove God's existence from the AFR, then we could not assume He existed at the beginning. Using your approach, that would be question-begging.
Can’t say I agree with that.
You don't?! I'm not even saying you have to agree with my pre-rational approach; I was making a statement regarding what presup would have to cover: if we ought to accept God's authority prior to reasoning, then we ought to accept His authority for some reason other than a reasonable argument. You don't have to agree that we ought to accept God's authority prior to reasoning, but if you do then my conclusion certainly follows.
Why can’t traditional theistic arguments also be the ‘persuasion’?
Because if they were consistent they would not be persuasive. The unbeliever could always interpret things in light of his presupposition (e.g. design is the result of natural causes, known or unknown). You only find the design argument persuasive because you're being faithful to God, but we can't accept the unbeliever to do that -- that is what we're trying to get him to do!
I agree that even if we failed in our arguments, Romans 1 would not cease to be truthful
Then by what reason do unbelievers stand condemned and suppress the truth? Is it because every person on Earth has understood the teleological argument (with all its subtleties that have evolved over the years), understood that the Christian God is the most likely answer, and then suppressed that? Or is it rather that they have a sensus divinitatus?
The former is ridiculous; the latter is the only acceptable doctrine from that chapter. The truth being suppressed must be non-inferential for unbelievers to truly stand "without excuse."
Thanks for the link btw.
Ben