The Presuppositional worldview cannot justify its knowledge claims

I want to thank and welcome my opponent Hezekiah Ahaz to DDO and for his participation in what I think will be a spirited and intellectual debate.

In this debate, I will be supporting the contention that the Presuppositionalist worldview as expressed by Greg Bahnsen, and affirmed by my opponent, cannot know anything because of the fundamental presupposition that the noetic effect of sin has made mankind unable to trust their autonomous reasoning. Bahnsen states that:

“What the apologist must endeavor to do is to demonstrate that without Christian presuppositions there is no intelligible use of facts and logic – that human knowledge and interpretation fail instantly. Therefore, to be reasonable at all, men must submit to the ultimate standard of God’s self-attesting word; to refuse to insist upon intellectual foolishness and eternal damnation.” (1)

In order to do this, I will examine the two means that Bahnsen gives for affirming our ability to know things; the self-authentication of scripture and of the personal experience of the Holy Spirit. Before continuing, by autonomous reasoning I will be using a definition that Kelly James Clark uses:

“Let us define reason in terms of all human being’s truth-aimed cognitive faculties – reasoning , inductive, perceptual, aural, memory, and so on. ” (2)

Contention 1: Self-Authentication of Scripture is insufficient

At several places in Bahnsen’s written work, he appeals to what he calls the ‘self-attesting’ word of God. By this he means to place the written word of God above man’s own ability to autonomously reason (3). James Kelly Clark illustrates the biggest problem with this, when he states:

“Here is the problem; Each person must decide (tacitly or explicitly) that a purported revelation is revelation. Each person must decide that what is being said in some particular holy writ is the voice of God. Each person must decide what is being said and then what it means. And each person must decide what it means today that God said something a long time ago. At every level, human reason is operative.”(4)

Contra Bahnsen, who states that the Bible is both clear and self-attesting, Clark points out that we must first decide what IS scripture and then decide what that scripture means! In fact, recent discoveries have confirmed the existence of apocryphal scripture (5). If we cannot trust our ability to autonomously reason, then on what basis can we dismiss the Infancy Gospel of James or other apocryphal gospels? We cannot determine which books are authentic without first trusting our ability to reason. Further, even supposing that the books of the modern Bible are authentic, we must remember that documents we have are not the original documents. This is a problem since there are variants in scripture, as one example I turn to Bruce Metzger who states:

“Four endings of the Gospel according to Mark are current in the manuscripts. (1) The last twelve verses of the commonly received text of Mark are absent from the two oldest Greek manuscripts (א and B), from the Old Latin codex Bobiensis (it ^k), the Sinaitic Syriac manuscript, about one hundred Armenian manuscripts, and the two oldest Georgian manuscripts (written A.D. 897 and A.D. 913). Clement of Alexandria and Origen show no knowledge of the existence of these verses; furthermore Eusebius and Jerome attest that the passage was absent from almost all Greek copies of Mark known to them. The original form of the Eusebian sections (drawn up by Ammonius) makes no provision for numbering sections of the text after 16:8. Not a few manuscripts which contain the passage have scribal notes stating that older Greek copies lack it, and in other witnesses the passage is marked with asterisks or obeli, the conventional signs used by copyists to indicate a spurious addition to a document.” (7)

Further, as Michael Martin notes:

“Are there other reasons to suppose that a Christian based epistemology provides no objective foundation for epistemology? A cursory glance at the controversies within the Christian religion must surely banish any illusion of the objective nature of Christian belief. The many sectarian and denominational squabbles, the numerous heresies, the schisms within the major churches shows that any certainty associated with Christian belief is nonexistent….Furthermore, there seems to be no objective means of reconciling any of these differences. If this uncertainty and the lack of objective standards of reconciliation are found at the very heart of basic Christian doctrine, there seems to be small hope that the Christian religion can provide any objective foundation of epistemology in general.”(8)

Contention 2: Self-Authentication of the Holy Spirit is insufficient

What exactly the revelation from the Holy Spirit is supposed to be is never made clear. It seems to be some sort of inner personal experience that leads the presuppositionalist to epistemic certainty. Supposing that such a thing happens, we are immediately confronted with two issues:

Issue 1: Any such experience would require us to make a determination about the experience. What this means is that we have to first presuppose that we are able to trust our reasoning with regards to any sort of experience. If we cannot trust our own ability to reason then how can we trust any conclusions about the experience? What it was, what it means, or whether it is true or not are all activities that we have to engage our reasoning facilities with.

In a personal correspondence on Sye Ten Bruggencate Facebook wall Sye, a person that Hezekiah has expressed support for, says the following with to the question “How can you be epistemically certain that God has revealed himself to you?”:

“Because He Has revealed Himself in such a way that we are certain of it”(9)

Aside from the explanation of how the presuppositionalist can be certain that it was God who gave him this revelation OR what this revelation actually is, the problem remains, whatever revelation that Sye (or Hezekiah) has experienced will have to be interpreted by his cognitive facilities.

Issue 2: Even accepting that divine revelations occur, there can be no doubt that false revelations happen as well. Take the case of Dena Schlosser (10), a lady who chopped off her child’s arm because she believed that God told her to do so. Does Hezekiah believe that Dena’s experience was genuine? If the revelation experience is supposed to transmit certainty, then it would appear that there can be no method to distinguish between a false revelation and a true revelation because the only method available would rely on us trusting our cognitive faculties. Make no mistake; Dena is not an isolated case (11).

Conclusion:

The two methods that aid in our efforts at trusting our reasoning that Bahnsen gives us are deficient to provide us knowledge apart from autonomous reasoning. Both of the methods presuppose that we can reason autonomously since both of Bahnsen’s methods require us to interpret what constitutes scripture and what a revelation from the Holy Spirit is. What this means is that in presupposing that we cannot trust our autonomous reasoning we have given up any chance at knowledge. Who else but us? As Clark says: “But surely I am the one who decides what is true or false. Who else could do that for me? Of course, our deciding does not make something true or false; that is not my point. My point is that each of us must make decisions using our best judgment about what is true and false.” (12)

References: http://www.debate.org...

I want to thank Hezekiah for a good exchange of ideas. The resolution of the debate was “The Presuppositional worldview cannot justify its knowledge claims” and although Hezekiah responded to my contentions he has not rebutted them adequately.

Contention 1:

In response to this contention, Hezekiah has written:

“The Christian claim is that in Christ our reasoning has been restored. As long as we are thinking God's thoughts after him we can be assured that our conclusions are valid and sound.”

Unfortunately this response does not actually deal with the primary problem – if we cannot trust our own autonomous reasoning then we have no means of determining what God could be thinking, nor could we trust that we are measuring our reasoning in accord with God’s thoughts.

Another problem with this response is that it’s entirely unclear. What does it mean to ‘think God’s thoughts after him’? Surely God does not think the way human beings think. God is timeless; there is no sequence of thoughts for us to ‘follow’. Another difficulty with this statement of Hezekiah’s is that it excludes one of the major methods of thought that mankind deploys – inferential knowledge.

“Inferential knowledge is based on reasoning from facts or from other inferential knowledge such as a theory. Such knowledge may or may not be verifiable by observation or testing. For example, all knowledge of the atom is inferential knowledge. The distinction between factual knowledge and inferential knowledge has been explored by the discipline of general semantics” (1)

Being omniscient, God does not derive knowledge from inference – but if our only means of true knowledge is knowledge that essentially mirrors God’s thoughts, then all inferential knowledge is absurd – if this is the case, then Hezekiah cannot appeal to it in order to argue that we can know what the Bible means hermeneutically.

In response to Clark’s point that we must interpret scripture, Hezekiah writes:

“The bible is clear and self-attesting. Scripture is what God says it is. We believe that over time the church recognized by the leading of God what would be included in the canon. The meaning of scripture can be known by proper biblical hermeunatics. Some questions for Clark are why does he trust his resoning? How does he know if he is reasoning correctly?”

This is hard to follow. On the one hand, Hezekiah asserts that the Bible is self-attesting, on the other he appeals to Biblical Hermeneutics. It cannot be both, since Hermeneutics is:

“Biblical hermeneutics is the study of the principles of interpretation concerning the books of the Bible.”(2)

Clearly Hermeneutics then requires us to presuppose that we can trust our autonomous reasoning – otherwise, there would be no interpretation required! Further, Hezekiah merely asserts that the Church created a Canon with God’s help. What reason do we have to believe this though? If the Church fathers could not trust their autonomous reasoning, then how could they determine that it was God doing the leading as opposed to Satan or simple misunderstanding? As to the follow up questions, they are simply red herrings as any answer to them would not refute the proposition under debate. That said, Clark sys:

“Every take on Scripture is interpretation - and interpretation is a function (at least partly) of "autonomous" human reason. We may damn reason in some of its restrictive forms, but it is the best (and only tool) that intellectually free human beings have to discover the truth.”(3)

Hezekiah compounds the problem by responding:

“Are you familiar with textual criticism? If you are, you would know that not one variant invalidates any major doctrine of Christianity. Even the radical skeptic Bart Erhman admits this. See his debates with James white and Daniell Wallace.

Regarding Michael Martins claims, The bible is clear that Christ was crucified, died, burried and raised.
So, what specifically is he referring to?”

Since no links were provided, I cannot judge what Erhman’s position is. However, I will point out that Erhman has stated:

“Jesus does rise from the dead in Mark’s Gospel. The women go to the tomb, the tomb is empty and there is a man there who tells them that Jesus has been raised from the dead and that they are to go tell the disciples that this has happened. But then the Gospel ends in Codex Sinaiticus and other manuscripts by saying the women fled from the tomb and didn’t say anything to anyone because they were afraid, period. “(4)

The ending of Mark, with the resurrection appearances seems very significant to me, contra Hezekiah’s claims. Further, one of the very early schools of Christian thought did contest those "clear" Biblical claims, it was called Gnosticism.

“Main Gnostic beliefs that differ from Biblical teachings include: the creator as a lower being [‘Demiurge’] and not a Supreme Deity; scripture having a deep, hidden meaning whose true message could only be understood through “secret wisdom”; and Jesus as a spirit that “seemed” to be human, leading to a belief in the incarnation (Docetism).” (5)

Contention 2:

Hezekiah does not tell us what the revelation of the Holy Spirit is. Instead he responds to issue 1 by saying that we must rely on faith alone. This does not absolve Hezekiah since in order to have faith in X, you must be able to know something about X – but Hezekiah rejects this by rejecting autonomous reasoning. We have no way to discern what God’s promises are, what to have faith in, and what God says without being able to trust our own autonomous reasoning.

Further, Hezekiah’s notion of faith seems at odds with Bahnsen’s, who writes:

“The Christian notion of faith - unlike most other religions - is not an arbitrary leap of emotion, a blind stab of commitment, a placing of the intellect on hold. For the Christian, faith (or belief) is well-grounded.”(6)

In response to issue 2, Hezekiah writes:

“No, I don't. God speaks through his word in the bible. I would like for Dena to provide scriptural support for her actions. Specifically, in the new testament. The claim is that God has last spoken to us by Christ.”

As we have seen, Hezekiah cannot appeal to scripture to get him around Dena’s revelation since appealing to scripture presupposes that we can trust our autonomous reason so that we can interpret what scripture says. So clearly this cannot be a method of discerning whether or not Dena’s revelation was false – but if not this then what? How can Hezekiah be certain that his interpretation of scripture is correct in light of Dena’s claim to have a direct revelation from God? Perhaps Hezekiah is being misled in his understanding of scripture in a similar way that the Gnostics were. What means does Hezekiah have outside of reason to support his reading of scripture?

Conclusion

Hezekiah has refuted my contentions. In his conclusion he affirms my position, that we must presuppose autonomous reasoning prior to anything else, when he says “That if you don't start with God's promises you cannot know anything”, since in order to know what God is promising you must first presuppose that you can trust your own ability to reason.

Since I still have some space, I will end on some words by Gary Habermas:

“What if, far from judging Scripture, this evidential method was actually taught in Scripture?….. Over and over again, with the help of several checks and balances, we are told to test God's revelation to us. to be reminded of just a few of these, potential prophets are to be tested according to their own predictions (Deut. 18:21-22). More than once, God gives similar tests to other gods-let them predict the future and bring it to pass so that we may see and know that they are gods (Isa. 41:21 -24; 44:7).”(7)