Confessor
Puritan Board Senior
Dear Ben,
Is evidential apologetics easier for the average person to understand and so more useful in many cases? Given that the Holy Spirit uses imperfect arguments, sermons and evangelism, surely it's important in a good argument that the individual you are talking to understands it.
First off, if there's a method that we know is wrong, then using it for pragmatic reasons is wrong too. The Spirit uses imperfect arguments, sermons, and evangelism, to be sure; but it doesn't follow that someone who intentionally uses what he thinks is a false school of apologetics is thereby justified. The imperfection of those three things arises from human finitude and unintended sinfulness, not from an intentional use of a falsity.
Also, regarding clarity, I would say presuppositionalism can very easily be stated in a clearer way. (Certainly Van Til did not help with that.) I don't think a presuppositionalist apologetic is by definition less clear than an evidentialist one, especially when one considers arguments such as William Lane Craig's three-point resurrection argument. Both presup and evidentialism can go in-depth, and both can be clear and simple, depending on the audience.
What is your view of the use of evidences alongside presuppositional arguments?
What about arguments that compare Scripture with Scripture e.g. unfulfilled prophecy with fulfilled prophecy? They are appealing to nothing higher than Scripture. I suppose they'd have to be backed up by a presuppositional argument if they were rejected, to show the individual that human reason can't sit in judgment on God's Word.
Is there a hierarchy of evidentialist arguments from more sound to less sound, depending on how close they stay to Scripture?
Typical arguments from prophecy and from the resurrection are used in the offensive sense and generally assume, "If the Bible is correct on prophecy, then the Bible is authoritative." And this failure to have the Bible be authoritative on its own authority is what is destructive in such an apologetic. That is, arguments from fulfilled prophecy to support Biblical authority are not appealing to "nothing higher than Scripture."
However, this does not make such arguments worthless, for (1) they can strengthen the faith of believers who understand prophecies and the resurrection in the context of a presupposed Christian worldview, and more importantly (2) they can be used defensively to counter claims against the Christian worldview; e.g. if a critic were to say that the prophecy "Out of Egypt I called my son" was never fulfilled, an apologist could defensively show how this prophecy is interpreted Biblically and fulfilled in Jesus. In other words, the second function of evidential apologetics is to show how specific evidences are interpreted within the Christian worldview as a defensive apologetic.
I see this error regarding the apologetic use of evidences as analogous to the error I saw when I discussed baptism with Campbellites (who generally believe that baptism by immersion is necessary unto salvation). After I told them that I did not believe baptism was salvifically necessary, they thought I was being insane and asked, "Well then, what can it be for?" -- implying that baptism must be what they thought it was, simply because that's always how they have viewed it. Essentially these Campbellites were begging the question and making a false dichotomy: either baptism is useful and salvifically necessary, or it is useless. Likewise, some people can think the same of prophecy: according to them, either prophecy is useful and utilized in offensive, constructive apologetics to prove Biblical authority, or it is useless.
And lastly, no, I would not say there is a hierarchy or continuum of evidentialist arguments. They either take the presupposition of theonomy or they don't. And if they're evidentialist, then they don't, and they should therefore be rejected.
-----Added 6/20/2009 at 06:46:46 EST-----
Things in this paragraph are not entirely clear to me, so I will respond with the disclaimer that it is possible I missed the point or misunderstood you.
Sorry about that. I'll try to be clear in addressing this last paragraph you wrote:
The presuppositionalist's claim is that Christianity is true because its denial entails absurdity, and so it is necessary. If the denial of Christianity does not entail absurdity, if it is possible, then Christianity is not necessarily true.
Realize that the presuppositionalist does not just start autonomously and say, "Okay, here are the conditions; let's see what worldview meets them." If he were to do that and then argue that non-Christian worldviews necessarily entail skepticism, then he would have to inductively disprove all possible ones, which is impossible. (He would also have to deal with the problem of presupposing autonomy in the first place.)
But the presupper does not start "neutrally" and ask for various worldviews to be presented to see if they match the real world. That is an autonomous approach, and it assumes man stands as ultimate judge. Rather, the presupper starts with the self-evident authority of Scripture and sees that he now has a non-contradictory basis for intelligibly speaking about "possibility." Otherwise he cannot even ask the question in the first place.
In other words, the presupper realizes that even possibility as a concept relies on God, and therefore God is necessary. To speak abstractly about possibility, as if some non-Christian worldview could possibly be true, is to posit that man autonomously interprets the world. And when that is posited, it follows that the universe is generally "open" to unlimited possibilities (a metaphysics of Chance). That is the basis from which you ask your question. Your objection therefore begs the question.