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Featured Presuppositional apologetics

Discussion in 'Baptist Theology & Bible Study' started by Greektim, Feb 23, 2015.

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  1. Greektim

    Greektim Well-Known Member

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    Since Evangelist6589 likes to keep talking about apologetics, I was wondering how people felt about this method. You should check it out, Evan. Here is a street level version from Sye Ten Bruggencate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM1AWO92Crc

    Here is theopedia's take on it.

    FWIW, I recently read Van Til's Defense of the Faith and wrote a review of it here. He is the father of this approach. He argues that it is the only consistent approach to reformed theology. So all you calvies out there need to check it out.
     
    #1 Greektim, Feb 23, 2015
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 23, 2015
  2. evangelist6589

    evangelist6589 Well-Known Member
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    That is my method of apologetics in general. However I have learned some from Geisler, Ravi, McDowell, RC Sproul, and the Truth Project. I am also familiar with Van Til's and that book as it was in the Bob Jones bookstore when I was in seminary. We talked of Van Til in systematic theology or another class can't remember. Hey GreekTim I have the book five views on apologetics and Frame wrote the defense of this method. Have you read this book? I will watch your video.
     
    #2 evangelist6589, Feb 23, 2015
  3. Greektim

    Greektim Well-Known Member

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    I'm just at the beginning of studying the presupp approach. Bahnsen's debate w/ Stein was a good listen (check it out on youtube). I need to read more. But in my circuit of reading, I'm in theological method not apologetics. So I may come back to it in a bit.
     
    #3 Greektim, Feb 23, 2015
  4. evangelist6589

    evangelist6589 Well-Known Member
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    The truth I have not read the book that I have Five Views on Apologetics but I plan too soon. Presently am reading the following books.

    The Gospel According to Jesus
    Strange Fire
    Agents of the Apocalypse
    The exemplary Husband
    Defending Inerrancy

    I have a TON of books I want to read and I am gonna get back to my reading after this post.
     
    #4 evangelist6589, Feb 23, 2015
  5. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

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    Does this view of apologetics fall into an informal fallacy (begging the question)? Presupposing a christian worldview to prove a christian worlview?

    But then again, doesn't most reason within the realm of the metaphysical fall into this?

    Lost in the weeds a bit here.....but it does seem like a worthy criticism.
     
    #5 quantumfaith, Feb 23, 2015
  6. Reformed

    Reformed Well-Known Member
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    I studied Van Til's presuppositional approach a number of years ago, and I agree with it.
     
    #6 Reformed, Feb 23, 2015
  7. Reformed

    Reformed Well-Known Member
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    Not quite. The Christian worldview is derived from a Jewish covenantal worldview. The Christian worldview did not start with new truth, but rather old truth with further revelation (The New is in the Old concealed, and the Old is the New revealed).
     
    #7 Reformed, Feb 23, 2015
  8. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

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    OK, simply for the purpose of "sharpening"....change "christian worldview" to "theistic worldview".

    Is your thought still the same?

    Reductionism
     
    #8 quantumfaith, Feb 23, 2015
  9. Reformed

    Reformed Well-Known Member
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    It is...because of my presupposition.
     
    #9 Reformed, Feb 23, 2015
  10. OldRegular

    OldRegular Well-Known Member

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    Found this reading about Van Til. Sounds screwy to me!

     
    #10 OldRegular, Feb 23, 2015
  11. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

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    Great (clever) answer. :)
     
    #11 quantumfaith, Feb 24, 2015
  12. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

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    That sounds "screwy" to you?? Honestly?
     
    #12 quantumfaith, Feb 24, 2015
  13. Greektim

    Greektim Well-Known Member

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    Well... VT certainly leaned heavily on the ontological trinity rather than the economical trinity. I think his language on matters gets confusing, especially when you realize that English is not his first. He has to clarify himself often b/c how he uses a word can be held to mean various things. But I didn't read anything un-Trinitarian. And he taught at Westminster, so I don't think he could make it there being un-Trinitarian.

    And that review of Frame's assessment of VT does what so many people do... misunderstand and misappropriate VT's view. For instance, the analogical knowledge paragraphs are demonstration that he has not grasped what Frame was saying about VT. Believers and non-believers can know something to be true. It is only that the believers can account for their knowledge. The un-believer is borrowing from our presupposition when they know anything. This is their sensus divinitatis at work. Thus their knowledge is an analogical knowledge.
     
    #13 Greektim, Feb 24, 2015
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 24, 2015
  14. OldRegular

    OldRegular Well-Known Member

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    I have a vague recollection of reading some years back that Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til were at great odds over the question of apologetics. Yet I read in the following:

    Turns out my memory was correct:

    ****************************************************************

    I skimmed the article hurriedly and it appears that a lot of politics were involved. Gordon Clark apparently believed the following about the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man:

    It seems to me that the the logical end of Clark's reasoning is a god much like the Greco-Roman gods, a super human! And then there is Clarks assertion that God is "logic"!
    And it does.

    ******************************************************************

    Whereas Van Til held the following view about the knowledge of God:

    Scripture tells us:

    Isaiah 40:28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.

    Therefore, Van Til is correct about the nature, the incomprehensibility of God, regardless of, what seems to me, his screwy views on the Triune Nature of God.

    ******************************************************************
    Notwithstanding all the above, I am not a student of apologetics so the presuppositional apologetics of either Van Til or Clark mean little to me!

    ******************************************************************
     
    #14 OldRegular, Feb 24, 2015
  15. OldRegular

    OldRegular Well-Known Member

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    Reminds me of some of the "proofs" of theorems in partial differential equations. You started out at a certain place, chased your tail in a certain direction, and if you wound up where you started the theorem was proven!:thumbs::confused:

    *******************************
     
    #15 OldRegular, Feb 24, 2015
  16. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

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    Proofs by induction.....always challenging to me. I think I would have been a much better engineer or applied mathematician.....had I taken that road. Theoretical mathematics is just not in my DNA. Although I can often follow the work of others....being original just not a talent I am gifted with.

    You should try (if you haven't) proofs in Modern Algebra and or Non-Euclidean Geometries, Topology.....ugh.
     
    #16 quantumfaith, Feb 24, 2015
  17. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
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    Sinners/natural people though cannot "know" anything that is of a real spiritual nature, as to have that knowledge requires one to have the Holy Spirit now residing in you, and bringing illumination unto you...

    So this goes back to the truth then that one is never argued into the Kingdom, but that the Lord honors his word to bring that sinner in!
     
    #17 Yeshua1, Feb 24, 2015
  18. Greektim

    Greektim Well-Known Member

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    This isn't really what is at stake in terms of knowledge in this debate.
     
    #18 Greektim, Feb 24, 2015
  19. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
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    We are agreeing here then that both saved and lost have the same capacity for knowing and having knowledge, as long as its not spiritual in nature?
     
    #19 Yeshua1, Feb 24, 2015
  20. OldRegular

    OldRegular Well-Known Member

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    My problem was in convincing myself I had proven anything. Never could!

    *******************
     
    #20 OldRegular, Feb 24, 2015
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