Editing Presuppositional apologetics (section)

==Varieties==

=== Van Tillian presuppositionalism ===
[[File:Cornelius Van Til.jpg|thumbnail|Cornelius Van Til]]
Apologists who follow Van Til earned the label "presuppositional" because of their central tenet that the Christian must at all times presuppose the supernatural revelation of the Bible as the ultimate arbiter of truth and error in order to know anything. Christians, they say, can assume nothing less because all human thought presupposes the existence of the God of the Bible.{{Sfn | van Til | 1967 | pp = 351–56}}  They claim that by accepting the assumptions of non-Christians, which fundamentally deny the [[Trinity|Trinitarian]] God of the Bible, one could not even formulate an intelligible argument. Though Van Tillians do, at one point, "put themselves in the shoes" of the opponent, "for the sake of argument", to demonstrate where that position would lead, they claim that they can only do so because this is actually God's world, and man is actually God's creature, made in God's own image, and as such can never completely shut God out (in living or thinking)—hence there is always a common basis for dialogue, even though it is, in the presuppositionalist's view, a basis which the opponent is not usually willing to acknowledge and which is decidedly biased rather than neutral.

According to Frame, "[Van Til's] major complaints against competing apologetic methods are theological complaints, that is, that they compromise the incomprehensibility of God, [[total depravity]], the clarity of natural revelation, God's comprehensive control over [[creation myth|creation]], and so on."{{Sfn | Frame | 1976}}{{Page needed | date = October 2013}}  Within their presuppositionalist framework, Van Tillians do often use foundational concepts for Thomistic and Evidentialist arguments (belief in the uniformity of natural causes, for example), but they are unwilling to grant that such beliefs are justifiable on "natural" (neutral) grounds.  Rather, Van Tillians employ these beliefs, which they justify on Biblical grounds, in the service of ''[[transcendental arguments]]'', which are a sort of meta-argument about foundational principles, necessary preconditions, in which the non-Christian's worldview is shown to be incoherent in and of itself and intelligible only because it borrows capital from the Christian worldview. For example, where evidentialists would take the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system as a neutral common starting point and construct a [[cosmological argument]] for an [[unmoved mover]], Van Tillian presuppositionalists would ask for a justification for the belief in the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, given the worldview of the opponent, attempting to show that such a belief presupposes the Christian worldview and is ultimately incompatible with the opposing worldview.{{Efn | Bahnsen argued that [[inductive reasoning]] cannot be justified on an atheistic worldview.{{Sfn | Bahnsen | Stein | 1985 | page= 27-28}}}}  Van Til summarized the main drive of his apologetic by saying: "the only proof for the existence of God is that without God you couldn't prove anything."

Van Tillians also stress the importance of reckoning with "the noetic effects of sin" (that is, the effects of sin on the mind), which, they maintain, corrupt man's ability to understand God, the world, and himself aright.  In their view, as a fallen creature, man does know the truth in each of these areas, but he seeks to find a different interpretation—one in which, as [[C. S. Lewis]] said, he is "on the bench" and God is "in the dock."{{Sfn | Lewis | 1970 | page= 244}}  The primary job of the apologist is, therefore, simply to confront the unbeliever with the fact that, while he is verbally denying the truth, he is nonetheless practically behaving in accord with it.  Van Til illustrated this alleged inconsistency as a child, elevated on the father's knee, reaching up to slap his face, and Bahnsen used the analogy of a man breathing out air to make the argument that air doesn't exist.{{Sfn | Schwertley}}{{Sfn | Harrison}}

Another important aspect of the Van Tillian apologetical program is the distinction between ''proof'' and ''persuasion''. According to the first chapter of the [[Epistle to the Romans]], man has ample proof in all of creation of God's existence and attributes but chooses to suppress it.{{Sfn | Bahnsen | 2002 | pp = 37–40}}  Van Til likewise claimed that there are valid arguments to prove that the God of the Bible exists but that the unbeliever would not necessarily be persuaded by them because of his suppression of the truth, and therefore the apologist, he said, must present the truth regardless of whether anyone is actually persuaded by it (Frame notes that the apologist is here akin to the psychiatrist who presents the truth about the paranoid's delusions, trusting that his patient knows the truth at some level and can accept it—though Frame, as a [[Calvinist]], would say the special intervention of God in the [[Holy Spirit]] is also required for the unbeliever to accept ultimate truths.{{Sfn | Frame | 1995 | pp = 413–15}}{{Sfn | Frame | 1994 | pp = 62–3}}) An implication of this position is that all arguments are "person relative" in the sense that one non-Christian might be persuaded by a particular argument and another might not be, depending on their background and experiences; even if the argument constitutes logically valid proof.

=== Clarkian presuppositionalism ===
[[Gordon Clark]] and his followers treat the truth of the Scriptures as the [[axiom]] of their system.  Like all axioms, this axiom is considered to be self-evident truth, not to be proven, but used for proof.  Theologians and philosophers strongly influenced by Dr. Clark include [[Francis Schaeffer]], [[Carl F. H. Henry]], [[Ronald H. Nash|Ronald Nash]], Fuller Theological Seminary President [[Edward John Carnell|Edward J. Carnell]] and John Robbins of the Trinity Foundation. Clark's system has been described by Gary Crampton as, "The 66 books of the Old and New Testaments are self-attesting and self-authenticating. Scripture stands in judgment over all books and ideas, and it is to be judged by no person or thing. The Bible alone is the Word of God. This is the Protestant principle of [[sola scriptura]]."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=276|title=The Trinity Foundation - Scripturalism: A Christian Worldview}}</ref> However, the worldview that results from the axiom may be tested for consistency and comprehensiveness.<ref>{{Citation | url = http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=192 | title = The Trinity foundation}}.</ref>  Testing for internal contradiction exemplifies Clark's strict reliance on the [[classical logic|laws of logic]] (he famously translates the first verse of the Gospel of John as "In the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic was with God, and the Logic was God."){{Sfn | Clark | 1998 | pp = 115–22}}  Thus, in order to invalidate non-Christian worldviews, one must simply show how a different presupposition results in necessary logical contradictions, while showing that presupposing the Bible leads to no logical contradiction. By contrast, some Van Tillians have suggested that God as He has revealed Himself in Scripture reveals apparent paradoxes.<ref>{{Citation | url = http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=208 | title = The Trinity foundation}}.</ref>

However, Clark allowed that presupposing axioms (or "first principles") themselves do not make a philosophical system true, including his own; the fact that all worldviews he examined other than Christianity had internal contradictions only made Christianity highly more probable as truth, but not necessarily so.{{Citation needed | date = August 2009}}  Nonetheless, he believed that this method was effective in many practical cases (when arguing against, for instance, [[secular humanism]] or [[dialectical materialism]]) and that, in the end, each of us must simply choose (that is, make an informed selection) from among seemingly consistent worldviews the one that most adequately answers life's questions and seems the most internally coherent.  Some Van Tillian critics suggest that the concept of coherence itself must be defined in terms of Christian presuppositions but is instead being used by Clark as a "neutral" principle for discerning the truth of any proposition.{{Citation needed | date=March 2007}}

Using this approach, Clark labored to expose the contradictions of many worldviews that were in vogue in his day and to defend the Christian worldview by proving its consistency over and against those who attacked it. His unflagging use of logic sometimes led him to what most Reformed theologians consider rather unorthodox ideas on such topics as the [[problem of evil]]—topics which are most often treated by theologians as paradoxes or apparent contradictions not resolvable by human logic.  But Clark famously rejected the idea that Scripture teaches paradoxes and notion of "apparent contradiction", asking "apparent to whom?". He described an alleged biblical paradox as nothing more than "a charley-horse between the ears that can be eliminated by rational massage."{{Sfn | Crampton | 1990}}

With regard to other schools of apologetics, Clark suggested that the [[cosmological argument]] was not just unpersuasive but also logically invalid (because it [[begging the question|begged the question]]), and he similarly dismissed the other [[Thomistic]] arguments.{{Sfn | Clark | 1995 | pp = 35–39}}  As a staunch critic of all varieties of [[empiricism]], he did not tend to make much use of evidential arguments, which yield likelihoods and probabilities rather than logical certainties (that is, either coherence or incoherence).