Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Van Til and Presuppositionalism

  • The Presuppositionalist Challenge to My Position

    Substack latest.   Do not comment unless you have carefully read the entire article.

  • Lonergan, Sproul, Bahnsen

    A tip of the hat to Tony Flood for supplying me with the following important documents: Bernard Lonergan, Religion: The Answer is the Question R. C. Sproul and Greg Bahnsen Debate (full transcript) I had asked Tony whether he had a copy of Lonergan's Method in Theology he was willing to part with.  Here is…

  • Notes on R. C. Sproul, Does God Exist?

    Trudy the Calvinist gave me a reading assignment. Herewith a first batch of comments for her and your delectation, discussion, and (presumably inevitable)  disagreement. In Chapter One, "The Case for God," Sproul distinguishes between four approaches in apologetics: fideism, evidentialism, presuppositionalism, and "the classical school" (4)  He comes out against the first three and nails…

  • Assuming that God exists, could the atheist’s denial of God be reasonable?

    I say Yes to the title question; Greg Bahnsen, glossing Cornelius Van Til, says No.  Yet it should be clear even to the atheist that if the Christian God exists, it is 'reasonable' to believe in him. (Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis, P & R Publishing, 1998, p. 124, fn. 108,…

  • Is Mariology a Part of the Presuppositionalist ‘Package Deal’? A Question for Flood

    Full disclosure: I am not a theologian. I am a philosopher of religion who, as part of his task, thinks about theologoumena which, on a broad interpretation of the term, are simply things said about God, a term which therefore includes not only official, dogmatic pronunciamenti of, say, the RCC's magisterium, but also includes conjectures,…

  • Is Atheism Intellectually Respectable?

    On Romans 1: 18-20. Substack latest.

  • A Clarkian-Barthian Argument for your Evaluation

    Gordon Clark in Religion, Reason, and Revelation ( The Trinity Foundation, 1986, pp. 37-38) discusses and agrees with Karl Barth (Church Dogmatics II, 1, pp. 79 ff.).  The following is my distillation of the Barthian argument to which Clark assents.  Barth is attacking the Roman Catholic viewpoint as expressed at the Vatican Council of 24…

  • God, Doubt, Denial, and Truth: A Note on Van Til

    Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., P&R Publishing, 2008, p. 294: "To doubt God is to deny him." I take that to mean that to doubt that God exists is to deny that God exists. The obvious objection to this is that doubt and denial are very different propositional attitudes. In…

  • James N. Anderson’s Presuppositional Arguments

    As you may have noticed, I am none too impressed with Cornelius Van Til and his presuppositionalist followers. Intellectual honesty being one of my epistemic virtues, however, I need to be sure that I really understand what they are saying. Now James N. Anderson strikes me as the sharpest presuppositionalist among the professional philosophers. (Among…

  • The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God: A First Response to Flood

    I thank Anthony G. Flood for his The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God Revisited: Toward a Response to Bill Vallicella.  Herewith, a first installment by way of rejoinder. Convergence upon agreement is not to be expected, but clarification of differences is an attainable goal. In any case, philosophy is a joy to its…

  • Van Til on Neutrality and the Foundations of Logic

    This is number 4 in the new series on presuppositionalism. Both the old series and the new are collected under the rubric Van Til and Presuppositionalism. The old series consists of five entries written between January 17th and February 9th, 2019.  Today's entry examines a passage from Cornelius Van Til's The Defense of the Faith,…

  • A Van Til Response to my Anti-Presuppositionalism

    This is the third in a new series on presuppositionalism. The first installment is here, and the second here.  I've been re-reading large chunks of Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, P & R Publishing, 2008. This fourth edition, edited by K. Scott Oliphint, includes the complete text of the original 1955 edition…

  • Argumentative Circles and their Diameters: More on Presuppositionalism

    The day before yesterday, re: presuppositionalism, I wrote: We need to bear in mind  that arguments have premises and that no argument can prove its own premises. An argument of the form p therefore p is an argument valid in point of logical form in which premise and conclusion are identical, but no one will take an argument…

  • The Presuppositionalist Challenge to My Position

    The presuppositionalism of Cornelius van Til, Greg L. Bahnsen, John M. Frame and others sets me a challenge given some long-held views of mine. I will here explain one of these views and then explain why it is incompatible with presuppositionalism. After that, I will begin to explain my reasons for rejecting presuppositionalism. This third…

  • Van Til on Divine Simplicity and the One and the Many

    (Edits added 2/10/19) Cornelius Van Til rightly distinguishes in God between the unity of singularity and the unity of simplicity.  The first refers to God's numerical oneness. "There is and can be only one God." (The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., p. 31) The second refers to God's absolute simplicity or lack of compositeness:…