War of the Worldviews – Introduction to Presuppositionalism

Christian apologetics doesn’t come down to a war of arguing for the evidence from supposed “common ground.” That is fundamentally incorrect. The best method is to show the inconsistency of unbelief from the perspective of the Bible. I hold many proponents of other apologetic schools in high respect, but there is something deficient in each of their systems. They all hold that the existence of God can be proved. This is important and correct. We share their belief in using evidences. But we hold that believers and unbelievers do not share common ground in their ability to reason to truth from the facts. There comes a time in apologetic engagement when we must discuss the philosophy of the facts. Evidences are useful only once we have the same philosophy of the facts. The Reformed epistemologists are to be commended for not accepting the foundation of unbelieving thought. Gordon Clark is helpful in expsosing the the problems of unbelieving thought. But only Van Til’s presuppositionalism offers a consistent, biblical, effective Christian apologetic. It takes the biblical worldview for granted, and shows the irrationality of unbelief. (Acts 17:16-34 is a demonstration of the presuppositional system in action)

Ephesians 6:10-18; 2 Corinthians 10:3-5. We Christians are at war; we are at war with the world. God cursed the seed of the serpent and said that the woman’s seed of promise will be at war with those excluded from the covenant blessings of God. We don’t use physical violence; we are doing spiritual warfare. Our weapons are divinely powerful for the demolishing of systems of unbelief. Our equipment given in the Scripture is for warfare. Many churches have a deficient gospel message: you’re fine as you are, add Jesus to your midst.

According to Christianity, the unbeliever’s life is not merely incomplete. It is basically hostile to God. On the surface it appears there is a great deal of shared belief between unbelievers and Christians, so-called neutral ground. But the Bible doesn’t teach this. Ephesians 4:17-19 says unbelievers are separated from the life of God. In our natural state, we humans are very deficient; God must first enlighten us so we can know what God is like. The thoughts of the wicked are idolatrous. They are darkened in their understanding. Truth is light. But unbelievers are darkened in their understandings due to the hardening of their hearts. They are not stupid or deficient in education. But they are hardened in their hearts. The reason is that they are sinners; they have suppressed the truth; they are at war with God. Many apologists believe you can convince the unbeliever by good arguments. But the reason he won’t believe is not lack of education, it is because the unbeliever is avoiding God – he hates God and the claims God makes on his life.

Colossians 1:21: you were once enemies in your mind. Even the unbeliever’s thoughts are hostile to God. 1 Corinthians 2:13,14 “These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” Unbelievers cannot understand spiritual things. The truth of God is folly to them because of unbelief. Many unbelievers do understand propositionally the truth of God quite well. However, they may not understand in a saving way, because it doesn’t penetrate their hearts.

The unbeliever is not neutral. He is hostile to God. You cannot accept that the unbeliever as being able to reason to the truth. It is not lack of education. Unbelief is a heart problem. Proverbs 1:7 says the “fear of God brings wisdom.” Colossians 2:3,8: Paul is not saying don’t study philosophy. He is saying don’t be fooled into unbelief by it. The best way to avoid that is to diligently study the Word and to understand unbelieving philosophy.

We are not saying unbelievers don’t know anything. They have true knowledge but their knowledge is inconsistent with their claims of unbelief. Romans 1:18-20 describes suppression of truth. Fallen man seeks to be a law unto himself. But because of common grace, he does not rebel to the fullest degree. Because of this he is able to make a positive contribution to society. He lives his life in an inconsistent way; he borrows Christian epistemological capital. The unbeliever is standing on the truths of God’s word in order to reason against the truth of God. You cannot serve two masters. The attempt to be neutral is immoral. Loyalty, to Christ is all pervasive. We must not be neutral when reasoning with an unbeliever. Matt 28:18: all authority is given to Christ. If all authority is given to Christ, then everything including apologetics is under Christ. We must submit our epistemology to Christ. The problem with unbelievers is that they want to be their own authority. They won’t submit to a life of service to God. If you say “use your reason to test God” you are granting the unbeliever’s presupposition which is his basic problem. Unbelievers do not have the right to call God into question. The basic problem with man is that he has tried to be his own standard for good and evil.

The practice of weighing of evidence fairly is not possible in apologetics because the unbeliever is hostile to God and bent upon suppressing the truth. No one can be neutral. Both believer and unbeliever will reason over the facts from the point of view of his basic inclination toward God.

Even an unbeliever who believes in that Christ rose from the dead is not logically compelled to become a Christian. From a naturalistic viewpoint, this event may merely be a weird and so far unexplained fact. And as Van Til repeatedly asserted, facts do not speak for themselves.

One comes to the evidence with a worldview, a network of presuppositions which are understood and related. A presupposition is an elementary assumption in one’s reasoning. It is used to interpret the world around you. The presupposition itself is not tested by experience. It is a belief one holds to come what may. There is no evidence you could give a man which would overturn his presuppositions.

Since there are many worldviews, it is these that must be dealt with in apologietics and not mere arguments about facts. My belief in the Bible makes me interpret the world in the way I do. Worldviews cannot be falsified by appealing to facts, but they can be falsified by another means. More on this in a following lecture..

The unbeliever has a different set of presuppositions, but we Christians are to think God’s thoughts after him and not call his word question. Thus our apologetic method must begin with God’s self- revelation.

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We live in an age of unbelief. Our culture has abandoned its faith in God’s Word and has turned aside to idols. Humanism has replaced Christianity as the established religion. Our churches as well have ingested the toxin of humanism and no longer hold out a viable alternative to the unbelief of our age. This is why Christianity seems to be irrelevant.

There are many ways Christians are called to combat unbelief. Education and political activism are perhaps the most apparent. But the most effective way to combat unbelief is through apologetics. We must confute the gainsayer and establish the truth of Christianity if we expect to once again dominate the institutions and thought of our culture.

But we cannot effectively defend Christianity against unbelief unless we know something about the faith we endeavor to defend. To often, well-intentioned Christians pursue apologetics without considering the issue of methodology. Rather than reflecting upon how Christianity should be defended, they jump right into the fray and are happy to employ any argument that appears to offer some hope of success. This hope is futile. Because Christianity is a complete system of thought, the apologetic method that we use must be organic to it. The defense of the faith must be consistent with the Christian system of thought.

To develop a proper method of apologetics, therefore, we need to consider some basic philosophical and theological issues. After this is done, we will be in a position to develop an argument that will demonstrate the truth of the Christian religion.

Philosophical and Theological Considerations

Many people do not have an interest in philosophy. This is mainly due to a misconception of the subject. It is often thought to be unnecessarily abstract with little or no practical value. Philosophy is a systematic attempt to answer the questions that all of us occasionally ask, “how are claims to knowledge justified?” “What kind of a world do we reside in?” “Are there values and, if so, what are they?” These are not only practical questions, but are the most important questions we can ask. The way we answer them provides the basic perspective from which we lead our lives.

Let us start off by considering the first question, “how are claims to knowledge justified?” This question is perhaps the most fundamental question in the area of philosophy called epistemology. Implied in the question is a distinction between knowledge and belief or opinion. Not everything that is believed is known. Jones may, for example, believe that Cleveland is the capital of Ohio, but he could not know this since Columbus is, in fact, the capital. Knowledge thus requires truth. One cannot know something that is not true. But even if Jones believed that Columbus was the capital of Ohio, he still does not necessarily know this to be the case. Jones may have formed the belief that all state capitals, like his native state, North Carolina, are named after famous explorers. And since Columbus is the only city in Ohio that is named after a great explorer, he concludes that it must be the capital. If this were the only reason he believed Columbus to be the capital of Ohio, we would not say that he had knowledge, but that his erroneous theory just happened to lead him to truth in this instance. What Jones is missing is what philosophers call justification. He has a true belief, but lacks proper justification.

The question of what qualifiies as justification has vexed philosophers for many centuries. Some even maintain that something in addition to justification is necessary for knowledge, but there is no need to add complications here. Sufficient is to understand that when challenged about our claim to know something, one can challenge us on the veracity of our belief or on its justification (or, perhaps, both).

What, then, constitutes justification for a belief? This, of course, depends on the belief. Suppose Jones asks Smith (who recently returned from a trip to Germany) what the population of Saxony is. Smith replies that it is 4.3 million. Surprised at the precision of the answer, Jones asks how he knows this. Smith tells him that he read it in a paper while in Germany. This would likely be sufficient for Jones since, like most people, he believes newspaper are typically reliable when it comes to facts and statistics. But if he wanted, Jones could press the issue and ask Smith how he knows the paper got the figure right. Smith answers that the paper cited the latest census. Next Jones wants to know why Smith thinks the census is reliable. Smith replies that census-takers went through every neighborhood in Saxony and basically ended up counting every resident within a certain degree of accuracy. Undeterred, Jones wants to know why Smith believes they counted accurately. Smith tells him that they are trained to count the number of people residing in each house and, when not possible, to ask the neighbors how many people reside in a certain house. But Jones can press still further. Why, he asks, does Smith believe that counting this way is reliable. Smith answers that counting basically relies on sense perception. The censor asks how many people live in a residence, the housewife counts the members of the household, and the censor jots down the figure. When Jones asks Smith how he knows that sense experience is reliable, Smith may simply say that he just knows it is. If so, Smith has reached his final authority.

The point of this is to show that most of our beliefs are grounded in more basic beliefs. We justify our beliefs in terms of other beliefs. But this process cannot go on indefinitely. Sooner or later one will come to what he considers the bottom line. When this point has been reached, one is said to have reached his ultimate authority. This authority is such that it not only provides justification for beliefs, but also determines what will be counted as true. This entails that ultimate authorities are self-attesting; they do not go outside themselves for justification. The Word of God is, of course, the only true ultimate authority, but fallen man has turned to false surrogates. But whatever is chosen as the final authority, there is no questioning its supremacy. This is why the Christian cannot appeal to some other authority to justify the authority of the Bible. If he did so, then whatever he appealed to would be his actual final authority. The same holds for the unbeliever.

Ultimate authorities reside within a nexus of other beliefs. They are bound up with other fundamental beliefs which together provide a basic framework for understanding the world. This is called a worldview. Since everyone has an ultimate authority, if follows that everyone has a worldview.

For apologetics, it is crucial to realize the significance that ultimate authorities and worldviews play in a person’s belief structure. It is fruitless to reason with unbelievers without taking account of their worldview. Since they adhere to a different authority, there is little point in trying to argue for the truth of Christianity without first shattering their intellectual stronghold. Because they interpret everything, including our apologetic arguments, through their worldview, nothing we say will convince them of the truth of Christianity since their fundamental commitments are antithetical it.

At this point, it seems natural to note that there are different worldviews and move on to the issue of how this will inform our apologetic methodology. But it is important to first consider how these different worldviews arose. The reason for this will become clear in a moment.

When man was created he viewed the world through the perspective of God’s revelation. There were no competing worldviews because man lived in submission to God’s authority. But when the serpent came he asked, “yea, hath God said?” he introduced the possibility of there being another authority. Rather than answering as the second Adam (“it is written . .. “), man chose to reject God’s authority and become his own final authority. And with his new authority he introduced an alternative worldview to compete with the one he rejected.

Man’s choice to reject God’s authority and replace it with his own was not a mistake, but a conscious and deliberate decision. What we often fail to realize about the account is that Adam knew he was choosing a lie. As the children of Adam, we too, apart from grace, choose to believe this same lie. Arguments alone, therefore, will never convince the unbeliever of the truth of Christianity. As a rebellious son of Adam, he knows the truth, but despises it. He hates God and will not bend his knee to his Lord and Maker. If we fail to realize these basic truths of our Religion, our defense of the faith will lack both authority and power. The only effective argument is one that takes account of these biblical truths together with the gospel of Jesus Christ and presents them to the unbeliever in an uncompromising manner. The unbeliever does not need to be convinced of the truth of Christianity, he needs the Spirit of God, working through the proclamation of the gospel, to vivify his dead heart. And it is only presuppositional apologetics that does this.

Before turning to the presuppositional argument, it will be a helpful exercise to first consider two traditional arguments for God’s existence to illustrate the problem of defending the faith without taking account of either the issue of worldviews or the doctrine of sin.

Traditional Arguments

The Cosmological Argument

Perhaps the most famous of the arguments for God’s existence is the Cosmological Argument. While it comes in many forms, its general thrust is that a world that is constituted by contingent facts (such as there are caused things) must have a sufficient explanation for such facts. In perhaps its most common formulation, the argument contends that since there are caused things and since no caused thing is the cause of itself, any caused thing must be caused by something else. But since there cannot be an infinity of causes (otherwise the causal chain would have never commenced), there must be a first or uncaused cause. And this first cause is God. This is essentially Aquinas’s “Second Way.”

There are several problems with this argument. First, the claim that there cannot be an infinite series of causes is controversial; many philosophers have disputed this. They ask why a series of causes must terminate at some point? No doubt our intuition is that there can be no infinite causal sequence, but intuition often leads us astray. What, after all, forces us to maintain that an infinite series of causes is impossible? There seems to be no a priori reason to deem such a series impossible. Even Aquinas himself thought that an infinite series of temporal causes cannot be ruled out on philosophical grounds alone.

Modern proponents of the Cosmological Argument maintain that there cannot be an actual infinite set of anything including caused events. To hold the contrary seems to lead to absurdity. Bertrand Russell offers the example a man who writes an autobiography. The man is a slow writer and it takes him a year to write about any given day of his life. This, of course, means that he gets further away from completing his project every day that goes by. But given an infinite amount of time he will be able to complete his project. This is because of a paradoxical feature of infinite sets. Since there is an infinity of years as well as days, the two may be mapped out in a one-on-one correspondence. And if they can be so mapped out, they are equal. Hence, there is a year for every day, which gives the writer enough time to complete the book. So despite the fact that given a finite duration of time the writer falls one year behind for every day that goes by, in an infinite duration he would be able to finish. But this seems absurd. For this reason and others, some have maintained that there cannot be an actual infinite sequence of events. And if there are no actual infinites, then there must be a First Cause.

Whether this defense succeeds in the end is beyond the scope of this article. (One typical reply is that this judges infinite sets on the standards of finite ones, which is, of course, question- begging.) Assuming it does, the second objection to this version of the Cosmological Argument reveals a deeper flaw. Since the series of causes in the world are finite, it is not necessary to posit a first cause that is infinite. At best, all one needs is a cause that is a little less finite than the whole series or perhaps a little less finite than the first event in the sequence. In other words, if the series is finite, there is no reason to conclude that the First Cause of the series is itself infinite.

Third, even granting that this argument proves that there must be an uncaused cause, it does not preclude the possibility that there are two or more uncaused causes. And since there seems to be quite divergent series of causes (physical interaction, thoughts, moral decisions, reproduction and so on), it is not unreasonable to conclude that different causal sequences have different uncaused causes. And more than one pagan religion have posited two ultimate causes of the world order: the good and the bad. Given this way of reasoning, there seems to be no adequate ground to reject this possibility.

To press this objection further, why can there not be as many first causes as there are effects? In other words, why is it not possible that every event has its own unique uncaused cause? There seems to be not good answer to this. This tells us that the only reason that this argument concludes with only one uncaused cause is that the rabbit is already in the hat. Christian philosophers believe that there is only one God and so they force belief into their conclusion.

Fourth, even if these objections were overcome, the argument does not necessitate that we identify the First Cause as the God of Christianity. Muslim philosophers, for instance, at one time used this argument to prove the existence of Allah. And even the non-religious philosopher Aristotle appealed to this kind of reasoning to prove his Unmoved Mover. Thus the god that is proved by this argument is compatible with pagan gods. And if it so compatible, this alone indicates that it is not compatible with the living and true God.

The Teleological Argument

The Teleological Argument, as the name indicates, is concerned with the design or purpose of the world. William Paley offered the classical statement of the argument in his famous analogy of the watch. He asks us to suppose we came across a watch on a deserted beach. Unlike finding a pebble or a sea shell which are natural objects that we would expect to see there, we would infer that there must have been a maker of the watch. For the watch, unlike the pebble, has parts such as gears and dials that exhibit planning or design. The parts of the watch function together to keep time. And such things do not come about by random chance. In the same way, Paley argues, when we observe the world, we see that there is design as well. Take the eye with its various parts (iris, cornea, lens, pupil, retina), all functioning together to produce vision. Or the oak tree with is root system, trunk, branches, leaves, and acorns. Like the watch, the parts of the oak all operate in perfect harmony with each other, producing a unified and purposeful organism. But even more than the watch, the eye and the oak tree reveal upon investigation a staggering complexity down to the microscopic level. Since we would infer the existence of a watchmaker if we found a watch, how much more should we infer the existence of a grand designer whose works far surpasses the skill and ingenuity of the greatest of watchmakers. Since nothing in the universe has such power, imagination and skill to make these and the vast number of equally complicated and ordered objects, the designer must transcend the universe. The designer, therefore, must be God.

Like the Cosmological Argument, there is something to be said for this. Creation does indeed display wonderful design. Kant himself (a critic of the traditional arguments) viewed this as the strongest of all the proofs for God’s existence. But as the argument stands several objections can be raised against it. First, the premise that there is design in the world is hotly disputed. Of course there appears to be design, but this does not mean that there really is design. Take the following analogy. It is possible for a toddler to scribble on a piece of paper what appears to be the sentence, the barn is red. Assuming the child is not precocious, we would not say he intended to write such a sentence. It would be accidental. In the same way, the appearance of order and design may be accidental.

But most modern scientist are willing to say that there is design in the world. At least design in the biological realm. The eye, for example, exhibits so much complex order that it could not have come about by random processes. Darwinians have an explanation for this, though. Vision has a great deal of survival value for predators and prey alike. Nature selects for this advantage and culls out those creatures without vision. What this appears to have been designed by an intelligent agent, turns out to be designed by a “blind watchmaker.”

I am not advocating an evolutionary approach to biology, of course. But this Darwinian account of design is enough to debunk the teleological argument as it stands. Of course, Darwinism can be refuted on philosophical grounds, but this requires a presuppositional argument. The teleological argument loses much of its force in the light of modern evolutionary theory.

Second, even if we assume that there is design, this argument gives little reason to conclude that there must be only one designer. This is the same basic objection raised against the previous argument. Perhaps there are two designers or more. To extend Paley’s original analogy, suppose that while walking along the beach I discovered two watches laying in the sand. I would no doubt conclude that they each had a designer, but I would not necessarily conclude that they had the same designer.

Third, the Teleological Argument can be used to prove any number of gods. Any number of religions view their god or gods as the designer of the cosmos. Plato, for example, taught that a god or demiurge fashioned the world by impressing forms upon pre-existent matter. There is not reason given in the argument that we should conclude that the Christian God as opposed to Plato’s God is the designer of the world.

Summary

Apart from the specific criticism of these arguments, the fundamental flaw in both is that they grant that the unbeliever can understand the world on his own terms. The concealed assumption is that man’s intellect is sufficient to stand in judgment over God. If man would simply follow his own reasoning to its logical conclusion, he would realize that God exists. But this autonomous way of reasoning only engenders further rebellion in man. Man’s problem is not that he has failed to consider the implications of the principles that underlie his approach to life. He has done this all too well. Rather, man’s problem is that he refuses to cast aside his man-centered principles and turn to God as his ultimate authority.

In essence these argument assume that one’s worldview plays little or no role in determining whether God exists or not. But as we have seen above, worldviews are the crux of the matter. If his worldview is not challenged at a fundamental level, the unbeliever has no reason to believe in the God of the Bible. This does not preclude the possibility that he will believe that some god may exist. But as long as his basic humanistic principles are left in tact, this will be a god made in his own image – whether it is a god of traditional man-made religion or something of his own devising.

Presuppositonal apologetics avoids the debilitating compromises of the traditional arguments. It does not offer man more of what he already believes, but challenges his view of the world at every single point, contending that without God man is not only lost spiritually, but in every way. Including intellectually.

The Presuppositional Argument

Unlike the traditional arguments for God’s existence, the Presuppositional argument starts where our Faith demands that it start: God’s revelation. It presupposes the truth of God’s word and presents the Christian worldview as a necessary precondition for all knowledge. It refuses to grant that the unbeliever has any knowledge apart from God. And it refuses to answer the skeptic by appealing to principles and philosophies that are congenial to him. Rather, it attacks these principles and demonstrates their failure to provide a foundation for knowledge.

Presuppositionalism maintains that questioning God’s existence is on par with the Satanic question posed to Eve. Eve succumbed to the Seducer because she failed to stand upon God’s Word as her final authority. Presuppositionalism endeavors to answer the Satanic question in the same way our Lord answered him – by appealing to the authority of Scripture.

The presuppositional argument takes any aspect of human experience and reasons that only the Christian worldview can account for or makes sense of such experience. This involves a two-step method. The first step is to answer the fool according to his folly. The fool (one who has denied God in his heart) believes he can understand the world on his own terms and by means of his own philosophy. And so we let him try. We ask him to take any experience and account for it on his own terms. We then proceed to offer an internal critique of his account, showing that his worldview is either contradictory or arbitrary and, thus, unable to account for the experience in question. This process is illustrated as some length below, but a brief example may be helpful at this point.

Empiricism serves as a good example. The empiricist claims that all knowledge is ultimately grounded in sense experience. Aside from the glaring problem that omniscience is necessary to establish this claim (how could one know that all knowledge comes through the senses without knowing all there is to know?), the fundamental error with empiricism is that it is self-contradictory. It claims x is the case, and then at another point denies x. It claims that all knowledge comes through experience. But the knowledge that empiricism is true itself does not come from sense experience. Empiricism is a philosophical theory. And theories cannot be felt, tasted, touched, heard or seen. Thus empiricism is contradictory. And if the empiricist tried to rescue his theory by claiming that all knowledge comes through sense experience except the knowledge that all knowledge comes through sense experience, he would be making an arbitrary and gratuitous claim.

Notice that this internal critique makes no appeal to the Christian worldview. Empiricism, as well as all other non-Christian philosophies, fails on its own terms. It is unable to provide a coherent system of thought.

Refuting a non-Christian worldview does not establish the Christian worldview, though. It may be that both his worldview and ours is false. So to prove the Christian worldview, we demonstrate that it and it alone can account for human experience. This leads to the second step. In this step we do not answer the fool according to his folly. Rather we invite the unbeliever to come inside our worldview in order to show him that Christianity makes sense of our experience. It provides the necessary preconditions for knowledge.

Let us illustrate this method in more detail by taking atheism as our example. In evaluating atheism we will look at his ability to make sense of science and ethics. In the end, we will see that it does not account for either, whereas the Christian worldview does.

Science

Science is the systematic attempt to understand the natural world. Through means of the scientific method it seeks to discover general laws that explain the diverse phenomena of our experience. The scientific method is that the scientist observes the world, notes patterns and formulates generalizations about some aspect of it. These generalizations or hypotheses are then tested by experiments and are either confirmed or disconfirmed. Those that are confirmed become theories or laws. These laws then provide a heuristic for forming new hypotheses and the process begins all over again.

Though overly simplified, both Christians and atheists agree with this conception of science. The atheist, though, often thinks that science and religion are incompatible. Science is rational, but religion is a matter of faith. And faith amounts to irrationality and superstition. Religion, moreover, is dogmatic and dogmatism has not place in science. Thus the atheist thinks we must choose one or the other. If we choose religion we cannot have science and if we choose science we cannot have religion.

As it turns out, science and religion (meaning, of course, the Christian religion) are not incompatible as the atheist claims. In fact, religion provides the necessary preconditions for science. Apart from Christianity, science lacks a foundation. And since the atheist rejects Christianity, he must reject science as well.

To prove this, we will look at the scientific method and ask how we are justified in believing that it leads us to truths about the world. Though we could choose any number of the components of the scientific method, the principle of induction is probably the easiest one to focus on. Induction is often said to be the pattern of reasoning that moves from particulars to generalities. (This is not quite how a logician would define it, but it is sufficient for our purposes.) Today the sun rose in the east, yesterday the sun rose in the east, and every day in recorded history prior to yesterday, the sun rose in the east. We conclude, that the sun (always) rises in the east.

Many philosophers, though, have questioned the propriety of inductive reasoning. Hume was the first, but others, including Karl Popper in the 20th century, have rejected it as a reliable form of argumentation. Why is it reasonable, they ask, to accept the conclusion of inductive arguments? This is called the problem of induction. If the atheist fails to offer a viable solution, he has no basis for his adherence to science.

The atheist typically justifies induction on the grounds that the universe operates in uniform and law-like ways. If nature is uniform – where the future will operate the same as the past – then the atheist does appear to have justification for induction. But this only pushes the problem to another level. How does the atheist know that nature is uniform? Why in a world that is not created by a sovereign Creator does he think that the world behaves in an orderly manner? In so far as the atheist attempts to answer this question (most just take the uniformity of the world as given) his answer is viciously circular.

The atheist typically says that our experience of the world gives us warrant to believe that nature is uniform. He argues that since all of our previous experience of the world has been that the world operates in regular and uniform ways, it is reasonable to conclude that the world has always operated in the same way and will continue to do so. But there are at least two problems with this argument. First, the premise may be called into question. Is it really the case that all of our experience has been that the world operates in a uniform manner? Perhaps most of our experience is like this, but all have experienced what appear to be incongruities. Bertrand Russell notes that the chicken who has been fed every morning expects that this morning is not different. But this morning the farmer comes to wring it neck and serve it up for supper.

Even if the atheist can provide an adequate defense to this objection, a more difficult objection for the atheist to answer is the second problem. His argument that all past futures have been like the past and therefore the future will probably be like the past as well is itself an inductive argument. But this begs the question. We began by asking to atheist to provide an account for induction. He argues that since the world is uniform he has an account. But when asked how he knows that nature is uniform, the atheist makes recourse to an inductive argument. This is no solution at all. The atheist, thus, can provide no account for induction; and without induction, he cannot account for science.

Where the atheist offers a viciously circular defense of induction, the Christian does not. The Christian worldview teaches that God is providentially in control of all events. God has revealed to us that we can count on regularities in the natural world. “He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down.” (Ps. 104:19) He providentially causes the harvest to come in due season. Nature is uniform because God makes it so. And since nature is uniform, the Christian can account for induction. And with induction, he can account for science as well. So while the atheist touts science as being on his side, the reality is that only the Christian worldview provides the precondition for science.

Ethics

Perhaps the easiest way to understand the presuppositional method is in terms of ethics. Ethics is the field of philosophy that is concerned with imperatives. Unlike science, which seeks to know what is the case, ethics seeks to know what ought to be the case. Ought we to give to charity? Should we always tell the truth? Is the taking of human life ever justified? These are ethical questions.

Most atheists believe in morality. They think there are some things that are right and some that are wrong. But our concern is not whether they believe that there are ethical values, but whether they have any justification for their belief. It turns out that like his belief in science, he has no foundation for this belief.

The atheist has developed a number of systems of ethics to justify his belief in goodness. For sake of brevity, only two will be considered. The two positions concern the nature of the ethical term goodness. What is goodness? What does it mean to say something is good? While a number of philosophers have argued that ethical language has no cognitive meaning, most believe that it does. And if it does have meaning, it must have it in one of two ways. Either ethical words such as good are simple and unanalyzable (much like the words red or hot) or their meanings are analyzable to other words (like bachelor which means an unmarried male over, say, 18 years of age). The former position is known as non-naturalism (ethical terms are not reducible to empirical experience) and the latter, naturalism.

If goodness is unanalyzable then the atheist faces several difficulties. The first is epistemological in nature. Even if good has meaning, how are we to apply the term? How do we know what the good is? What, if any, criteria do we have to distinguish the good from the bad. This typically leads non-naturalist to intuitionism. Intuitionism is the view that humans posses a faculty of intuition that gives them direct access to what is good. It operates much like the faculties of sense perception. When we see a fire truck we see that it is red in color. We do not infer its redness from anything else, but see the color immediately. Intuition works the same way, only it perceives goodness (or the lack of goodness). When we see boy scout help the old lady cross the busy street, we immediately perceive the goodness of the act. Or when we witness a bully stealing lunch money from smaller children, we immediately perceive that the action is wrong.

Intuitionism suffers from problems on many grounds. First, some claim that they have no intuitive sense of right or wrong, but come to ethical judgments on the basis of reflection. The intuitionist’s answer to this is unsatisfactory. Such people, says the intuitionist either are not correctly understanding what is going on inside them or that they lack the faculty altogether, much like the blind man lacks the faculty of vision. This type of reasoning, though, is thoroughly question-begging.

Second, the fact that people have different ethical intuitions provides some evidence against intuitionism. If we all have such a faculty, it would seem that our intuitions would almost always be the same. And even two people have different intuition about an action, how is it to be determined which intuition is the correct one?

Third, another difficulty is that there are some cases where we do not know how to evaluate a specific action. Someone performs a certain moral action and we have no intuition whether it is good or not. Some intuitionists say that in such cases we need to reflect upon the deed in order to judge its goodness. But this seems to place our judgment outside of our intuition and on to another faculty.

Fourth, on the atheistic worldview, how is possible for there to be non-reducible ethical facts? Of course the materialist atheist could not countenance such facts. But even the atheist who is not a materialist must provide some account of the existence of goodness. But no account has been given. For the atheist, the world just is. In an ultimately impersonal world, there is no space for goodness since personhood is the precondition for value.

Despite these failures, non-naturalism has some commendable features. It rightly refuses to reduce ethical terms to empirically verifiable ones. To analyze good down to non-ethical terms violates Bishop Butler’s unobjectionable principle that everything is what it is and not another thing. And it also rightly suggests that men know what is good not by means of abstract reasoning, but by something within us. But this something is not a faculty called intuition, but rather the law of God that he has impressed in all men.

Another answer the atheist may give is naturalism. Naturalism defines goodness in terms of something else. The most prevalent form of naturalism is hedonism. Hedonism reduces goodness to pleasure. To say something is good is to say that it tends to lead toward pleasure. Hedonism may be further broken down to egoism and utilitarianism. The egoistic hedonist asserts that something is good if it brings him pleasure. The utilitarian hedonist says that something is good if it tends to bring about the most pleasure to the most people.

There are epistemological problems with both versions of hedonism. How, for example, does one know that a given action will tend to bring about pleasure? And even if a reasonable answer is given, there is still the question of what pleasure consists in. Some hedonists such as Bentham maintain a relatively crass view of pleasure. The highest quantity of pleasure and least amount of pain constitutes the ultimate good. And with few qualifications, it matters not what kind of pleasure is enjoyed. Other hedonists such as the Epicureans commend the so-called higher pleasures such as good conversation, good food in moderation, leisure, and art as the most desirable. For them, the quality not quantity of the pleasure is most important. But which version of hedonism is correct? There appears to be no non-arbitrary way of adjudication between these two positions. And this being the case, ethics is reduced to a matter of taste.

Naturalism in both its utilitarian and hedonistic forms allows for what we would otherwise consider gross examples of evil in the name of goodness. The egoistic hedonist who finds pleasure in sadistic acts is behaving in an ethically upright manner. The stricture that it is illegitimate to unnecessarily inflict pain on others is incompatible to the theory. If goodness is pleasure then whatever pleases me is, by definition, good. The utilitarian hedonist faces a similar criticism. If inflicting pain on the innocent results in maximizing pleasure for the many, then such an action is morally acceptable.

But the insuperable problem with naturalism in whatever form it takes is that it reasons from what is the case to what ought to be the case. This has been labeled the naturalistic fallacy. As G.E. Moore observed, one can always ask the naturalist who claims a certain action tends toward happiness, “yes, but is it good?” But on the non-naturalist view, good means pleasure. And so the question would really be, “is pleasure pleasurable?” But this a trivial question. And Moore’s question is not trivial. It certainly makes sense to ask the man who is leading a life of debauchery whether he is leading a good life. And because it makes sense, non-naturalism cannot be true.

Summary

Though this is by no means a complete survey, it illustrates the problem that the atheist faces in the realm of ethics. The atheist wants ethics, but denies the only possible grounds for it. He believes he can have morality without God, but all he has is arbitrariness and confusion.

Whereas the unbeliever has no foundation for ethical judgments, the Christian worldview can account for goodness. God himself is the foundation of ethics. Because there is an infinite and personal God, there is absolute truth and goodness. And because man is created in his image and has been given access to God’s standards through revelation, the Christian has justification for his ethical beliefs.

But this does not mean that the unbeliever never behaves in an ethical manner. He often does what is right. He feeds and clothes his children, gives to charity and so on. Though the unbeliever may do what is right in some cases and in some sense of the word, he does not do so in all cases nor does he do so in the robust sense of the word. He never acts ethically in a way that brings glory to God since he has denied God in his heart. He lacks faith in God and so cannot please him (Heb. 11:6). And he does not follow the only standard of good which is, of course, God’s law. This is why the Bible tells us that even the plowing of the wicked is detestable in the Lord’s sight.

Presuppositionalism forces this point on the unbeliever. It not only demonstrates the futility of ethics without God, it demands that the unbeliever repent from his sin and rebellion. Only by turning away from his autonomy will the unbeliever be saved. In the process of defending the faith, it shows the unbeliever that he is destitute of both a theory of goodness and goodness itself. Only through faith in Christ can he find intellectual and spiritual salvation.

Conclusion

The presuppositional argument is not just one more argument to place in our apologetic arsenal. It is fundamentally different than the traditional arguments for God’s existence. Unlike them, it starts with God’s Word. It considers God to be true and all who deny him to be liars. It establishes not only the mere existence of God, but the truth of the entire Christian worldview as revealed in Scripture. It forces the unbeliever to acknowledge the impossibility of knowledge apart from God. And it drives him to repentance from his sin and to submit to the only hope he has for salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Contemporary Christianity is weak because it has abandoned its faith in the authoritative Word of God. The church cannot answer the gainsayers of the day because she has compromised her commitment to Scripture’s authority. If the church would rest upon God’s Word and not lean on its own understanding, she will once again vanquish all her foes.

“The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.” So said the Apostle Paul. If we wish to pull down strongholds, we must take every thought captive to Christ. When we rely upon his authority we are able to close the mouth of anyone who rails against our holy Religion.

In my opinion, the most important one is the so-called “uniqueness” claim. That is, the question arises, how does the presuppositional method prove Christianity in its concreteness, as opposed to merely showing that something like Christianity– say, affirming a Quadrinity rather than a Trinity– is a necessary precondition of thought?

This is reprinted from a chapter in The Standard Bearer.

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“Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation.  Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church; and afterwards for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which makes the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God’’s revealing His will unto His people being now ceased.”

While God reveals himself through his creation (general or natural revelation) and this revelation leaves men without excuse, the corruption of sin has made men unable to interpret this revelation correctly.  Consequently, God gave special revelation through many means to his people to declare to them the way of salvation. And though this revelation previously came by many means (theophanies, prophets, signs, miracles), it culminated in Jesus Christ.  With the accomplishment of redemption through Christ and the (speaking through his authoritative apostles) God reveals no more to mankind.  In order to ensure that he previous revelation would not be lost, God inscripturated it in the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments.  This now is our only source of special revelation.  This recognition of Scripture’s supreme authority was the battle cry of the Reformation.  The reformers taught and defended the view of sola scriptura; Scripture alone is the final authority for the church. The reformers contended that this view of Scripture is taught by Scripture itself.  And if they are correct, the debate between Protestantism and Rome (and so also Eastern Orthodoxy) is effectively over since each of these traditions recognizes Biblical authority.  That is, if this recognized authority teaches its own sole authority, all other purported authorities are thereby invalidated.

But proponents of Orthodoxy do not concede this point.  They dispute the Protestant interpretation of Scripture and insist that there are other ways God reveals himself.  The nature of this dispute is the very heart of the issue that divides Protestantism and Orthodoxy.

Authority and Tradition in Orthodoxy

Eastern Orthodoxy agrees with Basil of Caesarea in affirming that there is authoritative tradition outside of Scripture: “We do not content ourselves with what was reported in Acts and in the Epistles and the Gospels; but, both before and after reading them, we add other doctrines, received from oral teaching and carrying much weight in the mystery of the faith.”

This is confirmed by all Orthodox theologians.  Panagiotis Bratsiotis, professor of theology at Athens University, is representative.  “In Orthodoxy the sources of Christian doctrine are the Bible and Tradition.  Together they form the treasure-house of supernatural revelation.”

The problem with oral tradition, however, is that it is notoriously unreliable.  There is always the possibility, indeed likelihood, that such tradition will distorted in transmission.  The further one is from the source of the oral tradition, the less reliable that tradition is.  This problem of passing information on orally is well attested by our common experience.  How often have we heard a story or rumor that, when we track down its source, turns out to be completely different from the original?

Indeed, Scripture itself provides an example of the distortion of an oral tradition.  At the end of his Gospel, the Apostle John felt it necessary to clear up a misunderstanding regarding a statement Jesus made concerning him (John).  Speaking about John, Jesus said to Peter, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?” (John 21:22)  The other disciples misunderstood Jesus to mean that John would not die, but John takes the opportunity to correct this error (John 21:23).

In a similar vein, Paul praises the Corinthians for holding fast to the traditions (1 Corinthians 11:2), but then goes on to correct them for departing from tradition (see 11:3, 17; 12:1-3).  What is remarkable is that while Paul ministered in Corinth for over a year he still needed to send at least three letters to correct their errors.  Thus even in the apostolic age, oral tradition is shown to be unreliable.

Not only is oral tradition easily distorted because of human frailty, but men often have a motivation for misunderstanding what was said.  Parents know this very well.  When Mommy chastises little Johnny for not cleaning his room, Johnny’s excuse is predictable, “I thought you wanted me to clean it tomorrow.”  Johnny is motivated to intentionally distort the clear instructions of his parents in order to escape culpability.  How much more do wicked men (and the evil one) wish to corrupt and suppress God’’s clear revelation in order to escape divine judgment.

More sophisticated Orthodox theologians recognize this inherent problem of oral tradition (though not nearly to the extent that they should) and understand that there needs to be a way to test such tradition for authenticity.  Bishop Timothy Ware concedes: “Not everything received from the past is of equal value, nor is everything received from the past necessarily true… There is a difference between ‘‘Tradition’’ and ‘‘traditions’’. [The Orthodox Church has had to] distinguish more carefully between Tradition and traditions.  The task of discrimination is never easy.’’

To help in the task of discrimination, Ware asserts that the Orthodox Church recognizes a hierarchy of Traditions.  At the top is Scripture and the doctrinal definitions of the ecumenical councils.  These traditions are used to test lesser traditions for authenticity and value.  Let us concentrate on the authority of ecumenical councils for the moment.

The Authority of Church Councils

According to Bishop Ware, “The doctrinal definitions of an ecumenical council are infallible.” Recall that Orthodoxy recognizes seven councils as ecumenical. Rome, however, recognizes twenty-one.  Given this disagreement, there must be some criterion to distinguish ecumenical councils from other councils.  This criterion is typically said to be that the council is representative of all the church, having bishops from all, or at the least, the vast majority of patriarchates and dioceses.  The first six councils have relatively strong credentials in this regard since they were attended by bishops from all over Christendom.  Nevertheless, this criterion of ecumenicity and thus authority is shown to be faulty for at least two reasons.

First, since both Rome and Orthodoxy endorse this principle, and since they come up with a different number of councils, this criterion is in itself insufficient.  Because Rome and Orthodoxy each claim to be the true apostolic Church, their application of this criterion is quite different.  Rome, of course, deems a council ecumenical when it is represented by bishops from diocese under the Pope’s authority, for Orthodoxy, the bishops must be in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch.

Second, there have been church councils that satisfy the criterion of being ecumenical, but are rejected as such because their pronouncements were heretical.  The most notorious of these is the Council of Ephesus in 449, the so-called Robber Council.  At this council the monophysite heresy (Christ has only one nature) was endorsed.  Two years later at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 this heresy was repudiated.  Nevertheless, on the basis of the ecumenical criterion alone, the pronouncement of the former council should have just as much authority as the latter.  Indeed, five eastern churches (the Syrian Church of Antioch, the Syrian Church of India, the Coptic Church, the Armenian Church and the Ethiopian Church) sided with Ephesus over Chalcedon to accept the pronouncements of Ephesus and reject the Symbol of Chalcedon.

Another embarrassing example of this criterion of ecumenicity being met is the second reunion council of Florence between Rome and the East (1438-9).  At this council the East, in order to obtain aid in fending off vicious attacks from the Turks, acknowledged papal authority, the Double Procession of the Holy Spirit and the Roman doctrine of purgatory.  Dogmas which Orthodoxy has before and after rejected as heretical.

These examples clearly illustrate that the criterion of ecumenicity, by itself, is insufficient in establishing a council as authoritative.

Ultimate Authority of the Church

At this point the obvious recourse is to fall back on another criterion to establish a council as authoritative.  Protestants, of course, maintain that the authority of a council’s pronouncement must be based upon the superior authority of Scripture.  Orthodoxy offers a different defense of conciliar authority.  According to the Eastern Church, the authority of a council is established when its ecumenicity is recognized by the Church itself.  Thus the ecumenicity of a council can only be established by the Church. Indeed, not only councils, but Scripture itself derives its authority from the Church’s

According to the Orthodox theologian George Florovsky, “The church is ecclesia, an assembly which is never adjourned. In other words, the ultimate authority –– and the ability to discern the truth in faith –– is vested in the church …… The teaching authority of the ecumenical councils is grounded in the infallibility of the church. The ultimate authority is vested in the church, which is forever the pillar and the foundation of truth.”  Thus, the domain of the Church’s authority does not range merely over the councils and other traditions, but over Scripture as well.  According to Ware, “It is from the Church that the Bible ultimately derives its authority.”

Putting the remarkable nature of its claim that it is the church that establishes Scripture rather than vice versa aside, how does Orthodoxy defend this contention that it, and it alone, is the one true catholic and apostolic church?

The Orthodox Church as the one true church

The initial problem with its assertion that it alone is the true church is that many other churches make the same claim.  The Churches of the East, Rome, and many cults say the same thing.  And so the question is not whether Eastern Orthodoxy views itself as the apostolic church, the question is whether it is the apostolic church.  What proof does it offer?  While the Protestant church appeals to Scripture at this point, Orthodoxy cannot make such defense since it is the church that is the basis of Scripture’s authority.  Thus the Orthodox Church must appeal to itself, the mystical body of Christ, as establishing its own claim to supreme authority.

Thus, we have come at last to Orthodoxy’s ultimate self-attesting authority.  And in order to analyze this claim we must engage in transcendental reasoning.  We must offer an internal critique in order to discover whether its ultimate authority avoids inconsistency and arbitrariness and whether it provides the necessary preconditions of human experience.  In my next (and final) installment on this study of Eastern Orthodoxy, I shall offer such a critique and try to demonstrate that it fails, on its own terms, to make good its claim to be the one true church.

TAG asserts that only the Christian worldview provides the necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of human experience. That is, only the Christian view of God, creation, providence, revelation, and human nature can make sense of the world in which we live. So, for example, only the Christian worldview can make sense out of morality since it alone provides the necessary presuppositions for making ethical evaluations, namely, an absolute and personal Law Giver who reveals His moral will to mankind. It does not make sense, however, for the atheist/materialist to denounce any action as wrong since, according to his worldview, all that exists is matter in motion. And matter in motion is inherently non-moral. That is, since the world according to the materialist is totally explicable in terms of physical processes, and since physical processes are categorically non-moral, moral considerations have no place in his worldview. Thus for the materialist to say that stealing is morally wrong makes as much sense as saying that the secretion of insufficient amounts of insulin from the pancreas is morally wrong.²

With this thumbnail sketch of TAG in mind, we can now turn to Dr. Martin’s counter-argument, TANG. TANG concludes that, “logic, science and morality presuppose the falsehood of the Christian world view.” Martin notes that ” If TANG is a sound argument, then obviously TAG is not.” He then adds that even if TANG is a failure this does not mean TAG is successful-both could be unsound. He is correct on both counts, of course.

There are two basic ways to respond to TANG. One is to simply attempt to refute it by showing that atheism is not the precondition of human experience.³ The limitation with this response is that even if successful the soundness of TAG is left unanswered. The other approach is to defend the soundness of TAG and in so doing, show the unsoundness of TANG. In what follows I will attempt to show that not only is TANG unsound, but that TAG is sound.

Logic

Dr. Martin begins with logic. I quote the heart of his argument. “[1]. . . if something . . . is dependent on God, it is not necessary – it is contingent on God. [2] And if principles of logic are contingent on God, they are not logically necessary. Moreover, [3] if principles of logic are contingent on God, God could change them. [4] Thus, God could make the law of non-contradiction false.” Let us take each point in turn.

Is [1] true? Is it true that if something is dependent upon God (presumably he means ontologically dependent) it is not necessary? Martin assures us that it is, but fails to give any argument for this general principle. Perhaps he thinks it is definitional. If this is so then we may grant him the point. Note, however, that all he would be asserting is that if logic is dependent on God, then it is not independent of God (‘not independent’ is used as a synonym for ‘not necessary’). But this is a mere truism, much like the statement, “water is water.” While true, it is of little philosophical interest.

In [2] Dr. Martin contends that if the principles of logic are contingent (read: dependent) on God they are not logically necessary. How does this follow from [1] though? It follows only if Dr. Martin means ‘not logically necessary’ by ‘contingent.’ But if this is the case then we have to go back to [1] and reinterpret it to mean “if something is dependent on God it is not logically necessary.’ And this surely is not definitional. Where then is the proof for it? How does it follow that because something is ontologically dependent upon God that it is not logically necessary? As it stands it is a mere assertion; an assertion that merely contradicts the Christian claim that all things, logic included, are dependent upon God, and yet logic is logically necessary.

Thus Martin’s move from [1] to [2] trades on the ambiguity of the word ‘contingent.’ In equivocating on the two senses of the word he erroneously moves from the statement “the principles of logic are contingent on God” to the statement “the principles of logic are not logically necessary.”

Turning to [3] and [4], it is clear that Dr. Martin means these to be a reductio ad absurdum. But note that [3] is not true at all. Just because the principles of logic are ontologically dependent upon God does not mean that God could change them. According to Christian theology, there are some things that God cannot do. God, for instance, cannot deny Himself (2 Tim. 2:13) or lie (Titus 1:2). In saying this nothing is taken away from God’s omnipotence. The doctrine of omnipotence does not teach that God can do anything, but that nothing outside God can limit his power. In other words, God can do anything that is in accordance with His nature. Since God is essentially rational and rationality presupposes the principles of logic, it would go against His nature to change the principles of logic. Hence God cannot change them since God himself is immutible. God, therefore, cannot make the law of non-contradiction false.⁴

Since [3] is not true then obviously [4] is not either. And since [4] is false, Dr. Martin’s reductio fails. Logic does not presuppose the falsehood of the Christian worldview. But as Dr. Martin reminds us, even if logic does not presuppose the falsehood of Christianity this does not mean it presupposes the truth of Christianity. Perhaps logic comports with both Christian and non-Christian worldviews.

Let us now turn the tables on Dr. Martin and make a defense of TAG. Recall that the contention of TAG is that principles of logic presuppose the Christian worldview. How on an atheist worldview can the laws of logic be justified? Given a world that is constituted solely of material things how does the atheist account for non-material logical laws? They are not reducible to matter for laws are not subject to direct empirical experience. Moreover, since the principles of logic are universal in nature they are not reducible to any particular physical object or objects. But if they are not reducible matter what are they?

It does no good to say they are mental abstractions since neither abstractions nor minds do not exist in an material universe. Nor can the laws of logic be mere conventions since that would imply that they could be changed. From changeable conventional “laws” absurdities follow – the statement that George Bush is President of the United States would be both true and false.

Finally, because the principles of logic are abstract and universal, they cannot be experienced to be true. Thus such things as the law of non-contradiction cannot be highly confirmed inductions. Not only are there some laws of logic that are too complex to be observed, but this view would make logic contingent because there is always the possibility of a future observation disconfirming that law. But if logic is contingent then, as Dr. Martin has pointed out, absurdities become possible. To borrow his example, New Zealand could be both south of China and not south of China.⁵

Thus the atheistic worldview does not comport with the principles of logic. If atheists were consistent with their worldview, they would give up on logic and rationality altogether. But since they do behave rationally (at least some of the time) this shows that they are borrowing capital from another worldview.

That the Christian worldview can account for the principles of logic is readily demonstrable. Christianity allows for abstract and universal laws. Abstract because the Christian worldview teaches that more things exist than material objects. Thus it makes sense for there to be abstractions. Moreover, the universality of logic is possible because it is grounded in the character of God. God is by nature logical. And this all-powerful, all-knowing God orders all things in accordance with them.

Science

Martin asserts that science and Christianity are incompatible. He argues that since science presupposes the uniformity of nature and since Christian theology teaches that God can and does perform miracles (which Dr. Martin defines as violations of the uniformity of nature) science is inconsistent with Christianity. But why is this so? Even granting his definition of a miracle, why does it follow that science becomes impossible if there is no absolute uniformity of nature? Martin does not tell us.

I would guess that he would contend that scientists would have an insurmountable epistemological problem. Scientists would never know whether to fix the cause of an event to natural laws or to divine intervention. But this is not true. How does it follow that there is no way to distinguish between a miracle and a event that is in accordance to natural laws?

Martin’s definition of miracles, moreover, is defective. Christian theology teaches that God providentially is in charge of all events. All events are under his direct control. There are thus noimpersonal natural laws.

Under Martin’s definition, all events are miraculous. The Christian view of miracles is that they are events God causes to come about in a different way from His regular pattern for directing events. Thus when humans die they usually stay dead. But in the case of Jesus, God raised Him up. In doing so God did not violate a natural law, but rather departed from His regular pattern of action.

Martin then states, “science assumes that insofar as an event has an explanation at all, it has a scientific explanation – one that does not presuppose God.” All Dr. Martin is telling us here is his view of science. But this begs the question. Of course atheistic scientists assume this, but Christian scientists do not. This does nothing to advance Dr. Martin’s argument that miracles are incompatible with science.

Martin also begs the question regarding miracles. But as Bahnsen has written: “[unbelievers] often think that they are treating the miracle-claims of the Bible as independent evidence that the Christian worldview is irrationally unacceptable. Their reasoning is something like this: we already know miracles do not occur (‘How could anybody believe…’), and since Christianity claims that such impossible things did occur (e.g., virgin birth, resurrection), we can draw the conclusion that Christianity must be false. But that conclusion is not so much “drawn” as it is taken for granted from the very outset. The denial of the very posibility of miracles is not a piece of evidence for rejecting the Christian worldview, but simply a specific manifestation of that very rejection.”

Only if the Christian worldview happens to be false could the possibility of miracles be cogently precluded. According to the Bible, God is the transcendent and almighty Creator of heaven and earth. Everything owes its very existence and character to His creative power and definition (Gen. 1; Neh. 9:6; Col. 1:16-17). He makes things the way they are and determines that they function as they do. “His understanding is infinite” (Ps. 147:5). Moreover, God sovereignly governs every event that transpires, determining what, when, where, and how anything takes place-from the movement of the planets to the decrees of kings to the very hairs of our heads (Eph. 1:11). According to the Bible, God is omnipotent and in total control of the universe. Isaiah 40 celebrates in famous phraseology the creation, delineating, directing, providence, and power of Jehovah (vv. 12, 22-28). He has the freedom and control over the created order that the potter has over the clay (Rom. 9:21). As the Psalmist affirms, ‘Our God is in the heavens; He has done whatsoever He pleased’ (115:3).”⁶

It is on the atheist’s worldview that there is no basis to assume the uniformity of nature. The philosopher David Hume has taught us that to say the future will be like the past is to beg the question.⁷ Since the uniformity of nature is an unjustified assumption on the atheist’s worldview, he has no basis upon which to engage in scientific activities.

That the uniformity of nature is compatible with the Christian worldview is easily proved (remember that this unity is not an absolute one). God, who is providentially in control of all events, has revealed to us that we can count on regularities in the natural world. The Bible teaches that God providentially causes the harvest to come in due season, for example. Because of this regularity, we can be assured that scientific endeavors will be fruitful. Thus, far from presupposing the falsity of Christianity, science would be impossible without the truth of the Christian worldview.

Ethics

Martin last turns to morality. He contends that “objective morality” is incompatible with Christian theology since morality is dependent upon the will of God. And since God can will whatever he wishes (he could will that killing other people for pleasure is good), morality is arbitrary.
This contention only has teeth to those theologians who hold a voluntaristic view of God.⁸ Again, this is not what the Bible teaches. Scripture teaches that God cannot deny Himself (2 Tim. 2:13) and that He is immutable. Thus God cannot call good evil nor evil good. Martin will then press the issue by saying that it is arbitrary to say that God’s immutable character is good. But this is to completely miss the point. Because God is absolute and personal His character defines good. The notion that there could be an impersonal ethical standard is absurd. Ethics are necessarily personal. Thus they must either be grounded in an absolute and personal God or grounded in non-absolute persons. The latter is what atheism teaches. But this leads to ethical relativism. Without an absolute person, which non-absolute person should we listen to? There is no non-arbitrary way of deciding. Thus to say that it is arbitrary to ground goodness in the character of God is simply to disagree with the Christian worldview.

It is the atheist’s worldview that cannot account for ethics. As I stated above, material processes are non-moral in nature. It makes no sense to say that the orbit of the moon is morally commendable or reprehensible and neither does it make sense to say that human actions are commendable or reprehensible since humans are merely material.

Bahnsen writes:

“What philosophy of value or morality can the unbeliever offer which will render it meaningful to condemn some atrocity as objectively evil? The moral indignation which is expressed by unbelievers when they encounter the wicked things which transpire in this world does not comport with the theories of ethics which unbelievers espouse, theories which prove to be arbitrary or subjective or merely utilitarian or relativistic in character. In the unbeliever’s worldview, there is no good reason for saying that anything is evil in nature, but only by personal choice or feeling.”⁹

Atheists often contend that we derive ethical norms from the way people typically behave. Even on the assumption that people typically behave in a decent manner does not allow the atheist conclude that this provides a foundation for ethical behavior. This is called the naturalistic fallacy. Asserting that because the men typically behave a certain way does not imply that they ought to be this way. Just because Cretans are liars does not mean that Cretans ought to be liars.

The atheist has no way out. If he wishes to uphold morality he must give up his atheism. If he wants to keep his atheism he must give up on morality. So for an atheist to accuse a Christian of bad behavior, he must presuppose the Christian worldview. But since he claims not to presuppose the truth of Christianity he should be consistent and not be concerned over moral matters.

Conclusion

Since TANG fails in all three areas its failure is total. Logic, science, and morality do not presuppose the non-existence of God. Indeed the very opposite is true. In order to make sense of any of these activities and subjects, we must presuppose the God of the Bible. Hence by the very logic that Martin uses to try to refute Christianity, he must presuppose the truth of Christianity.

Notes

1. Found in the Autumn 1996 issue of The New Zealand Rationalist & Humanist and at Infidels.org.

2. This is not to say, however, that atheists never act morally. Atheists feed their children, give money to charity and often make good neighbors. But atheists cannot give a justification for their actions. In the words of Cornelius Van Til, they are living on “borrowed capital” from the Christian worldview. Thus they profess one thing, but their actions belie this profession.

3. This is the approach John Frame has taken in his exchanges with Martin.

4. Note the absurdity of [4] which asserts that God can make the law of non-contradiction false. Since for something to be false it must be not true, which assumes there is a distinction between falsity and truth. This distinction is precisely what the law of non-contradiction implies. Thus to say the law of non-contradiction is false is to presuppose the truth of the law of non-contradiction.

5. The view that logic is based upon observation is thoroughly refuted by Gottlob Frege in The Foundations of Arithmetic (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1980).

6. Greg L. Bahnsen, “The Problem of Miracles: Part 1,” Biblical Worldview, Vol. IX:7 (July 1993).

7. Hume’s discussion of this problem (often called the traditional problem of induction) is found in his An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section IV.

8. Voluntarism is the view that God’s will is His primary attribute. Accordingly, God can will whatever He wants and can even change His mind. Thus God can one day assert the goodness of preserving life and the next assert the goodness of murder. The medieval theologians Duns Scotus and William Occam were advocates of this view.

9. Greg L. Bahnsen, “Does the Unbeliever Take Evil Seriously? The Problem of Evil: Part 2″ Biblical Worldview, Vol. VII:12 (Dec. 1991).

1. The first it what I shall call the Antiquity Fallacy. This is the fallacy that appeals to the antiquity of a position to prove its truth – the older the position, the better. This type of argument is fallacious because the age of an idea or position is irrelevant to the truth of it. There are innumerable positions that are at the same time ancient and false just as there are many discoveries that are recent and true. And so to assert that one’s theological perspective is true on the basis that it has been around longer than any other view (assuming that it can be factually established) is to use flawed reasoning. Thus even if Eastern Orthodoxy has antecedents that pre-date any other tradition – and this is something that is runs counter to the historical evidence – it does not follow that Eastern Orthodoxy is true.

2. The second is the Consensus Fallacy. This type of argument fallaciously appeals to a consensus of people. This fallacy may take a crass form of appealing simply to the number of people who adhere to a particular position or, in a more sophisticated form, to a consensus of reputed experts or those who are in a privileged position. But is a position really proved to be the case just because the majority of people or even experts believe it to be the case? Take the example of Darwinism. Most “experts” believe Darwinism is true. Does this mere fact prove that Darwinism is true?

These first two fallacies often appear together in Orthodox literature. I call this the Ancient Consensus Fallacy. I will deal with arguments that combine fallacies below.

3. The third is the Mormon Fallacy. This is a fallacious appeal to personal experience, whether an individual’s experience or a group’s. Many have spoken with Mormon missionaries at their door and have discovered that they (Mormons) ultimately assert the truth of their religion on the basis of personal experience. When asked how they know their view is true they often respond that God has personally revealed it to them or that they had a burning in the bosom. But personal experience is not determinative in establishing the truth of one’s position or to even give warrant for another to belief in that position. Every cultist and religious practitioner has a testimony. The point is not whether one feels something to be true, the point is whether something is true.

Thus, the way to answer a Mormon is to say, “I have a burning in my bosom which testifies that your position is wrong.” What is he to say at that point? You can see how the debate has degenerated: “I testify that you are wrong” “I testify that you are wrong” and so on. We are left with mere name-calling – fool, fool; heretic, heretic.

Many apologists for Orthodoxy make this same appeal to personal experience. Though their presentations are usually not as obviously fatuous as that of the Mormon’s, since Orthodox apologists more often appeal to the experience of a group of people rather than the experience of an individual, it is fallacious nonetheless.

4. The fourth fallacy is the Continuity Fallacy. The fallacy is committed when one asserts the truth of his position on the basis of historical continuity.

Many religions can, of course, claim historical continuity. Muslims, for example, claim their religion has not altered since the time of Mohammed and has had continuity in its adherence to the prophet’s teaching. Does this thereby prove the truth of Islam?

This fallacy is seen in the argument that since church x has apostolic succession – Peter laid hands on x, x laid hands on y, y laid hands on z and so on – it must be the true church. Ignoring for the moment the factual controversy surrounding this claim – Rome claims to have apostolic succession in this sense as do the national churches that came out of the Reformation – continuity by itself cannot establish which is the true church.¹ The question can always be asked: “Yes, but is that what Jesus and the apostles taught?”

5. The fifth is the Appeal to Unity Fallacy. This fallacy appeals to the unity, whether personal or doctrinal, of a position’s adherents in order to establish the truth of the position. All things being equal, unity is a good thing, but unity is not relevant in determining the truth of a position.

This appeal to unity is often used as a dig on Protestantism for its lack of unity. Orthodox polemicists never tire of asserting that there are thousands of Protestant denominations. This, they imply, shows the fraudulent nature of Protestantism.

It must acknowledged that this fragmentation of it is a great tragedy that is the result of human sin and no excuse can or should be offered to attenuate the sin much less exonerate it. Nevertheless, this lack of unity in Protestantism and supposed unity in Orthodoxy does not lend support to the falsity of the former and truth of the latter.

First, the unity of Eastern Orthodoxy is greatly exaggerated. Space constraints prohibit me from going into details, but there are many disputes within Eastern Orthodoxy – disputes over authority, jurisdiction, theology, attitudes toward the ecumenical movement, monasticism, ritual (there is, for example, a split in the Russian Orthodox Church over whether to make the sign of the cross with two fingers or three fingers) and even over the religious calendar. It is just not true to assert that Orthodoxy exhibits a conspicuous unity of faith.

Second, claims to unity are more or less vacuous. Definitionally, the unity of Eastern Orthodoxy consists in its constituent churches having communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. If any ecclesiastical body rejects the authority of this Patriarchate, they are not a part of Orthodoxy. It is, thus, not difficult to maintain unity on this basis. Every church, religious body or even social club has unity in this sense. It merely means that a group’s adherents have fundamental agreements with one another. If unity is to be considered a test for truth, then the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is the one true church because it is unified. This criterion obviously proves too much.

Third, this argument proves too much in the other direction. If unity is determinative in establishing the truth of a position then Christianity is false. Christianity has had three major schisms: the Oriental Orthodox Churches (including the Church of the East and the Coptic and Armenian Churches) broke off from the main body of Christians in the 5^th and 6^th centuries; the Byzantine Church and the Western Church split in the 11^th century; the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant Church divided in the 16^th century. Muslims can give a much better account of themselves in this regard. Does this entail the truth of Islam? This is a simpleton’s argument.

6. The sixth fallacy is that of Circular Reasoning. This elementary fallacy occurs when one asserts one thing on the basis of another and then asserts the other on the basis of the first. For example, one may argue that Marxism is true and its truth is seen in the outworking of the historical dialectic. He may then argue that history should be viewed as dialectically working itself in a certain way because Marxism says it does. Each argument is dependent upon the other for support.

This type of fallacy is prevalent, albeit implicit, in Orthodox thinking. Question: How do you know Eastern Orthodoxy is true? Answer: Because it comports with Tradition. Question: How do you know what Tradition teaches? Answer: It is preserved in the living and true Orthodox Church. But now we are back to square one.

7. The last fallacy is what I shall call the Cuisinart Fallacy. This is the fallacy of combining fallacious arguments in order to come up with a supposed stronger argument to prove one’s conclusion. Some Orthodox polemicists recognize that any given argument previously discussed is not sufficient to establish the truth of Orthodoxy. So rather than abandoning them, they combine them with other fallacious arguments to prove their position. The problem is that combining many bad arguments does not produce a good argument any more than combining spoiled or rotten food in a Cuisinart results in good and nutritious beverage.

When an apologist for Eastern Orthodoxy presents his case, it has been my experience that he inevitably commits one or more of these fallacies in reasoning. And this being so, his case is left unproved. And without proof, there is no reason to accept the claim the Orthodox Church is indeed the true apostolic church.

But just because the positive case for Orthodoxy is not proved, it does not follow that Orthodoxy is false. To declare so would be to commit the converse of the appeal to ignorance fallacy. The appeal to ignorance fallacy is committed when one asserts the truth of something on the sole basis that its falsity has not been proven. Thus, just because it has not been disproved that there is a colony of gnomes living in the center of the earth, does not entail that we should believe that there is such a colony. Conversely, just because the case for Orthodoxy has not be proved does not entail that Orthodoxy is false. All it means is that Orthodox polemicists have given no reason to believe that Orthodoxy is true. Nevertheless this is a fatal observation. If Orthodoxy does not give us any cogent reason to believe it is true, we are fully justified, indeed we are rationally compelled, to reject it out of hand.

In a future article, I will examine the Eastern Orthodox view of authority and show that it is internally inconsistent.

Note

1. Though apostolic succession is not a sufficient condition for a church’s legitimacy, it is a necessary one. Many of the independent Protestant churches of our era lack this requisite credential.

- Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic

Throughout the history of the church, apologists and theologians have adopted (sometimes consciously, but often unconsciously) epistemological views from pagan and secular sources in an attempt to defend the truth of Christianity. But as Greg Bahnsen has warned us, these epistemologies need to be investigated in order to discover whether they comport with Christianity. Sadly, this has rarely been attempted and thus Christian apologists have rarely had a completely biblical epistemology with which to defend the faith.

Though many examples could be cited, I will illustrate the problem of employing non-Christian epistemologies in apologetics by examining the traditional Roman Catholic approach as represented by Thomas Aquinas and a compromised Reformed approach as represented by Charles Hodge.

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) was perhaps the greatest philosopher of the Middle Ages. As a defender of the Christian faith he borrowed much from the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Like Aristotle, Aquinas believed that knowledge (scientia) comes through demonstrative syllogisms (basically deductive arguments with true premises). The premises to these syllogisms, in turn, must be inferred from other demonstrative syllogisms. To avoid an infinite regress of syllogisms, Aquinas argued that some premises are not conclusions of other syllogisms. Rather, there are some premises (some knowledge) that form the foundation of all demonstrations.

How then do we come to know these foundational propositions? Without getting bogged down into the details of his theory, Aquinas, who held to a form of empiricism, tells us that we can know these propositions only through sense experience. We perceive an object (say a man) and then, through our cognitive faculty known as the active intellect, abstract the essence or universal from it (in this case, rational animal). Leaving aside the question of how our minds can abstract universals from particulars, Aquinas is faced with the problem of how men can come to know God. If all knowledge is acquired through sense perception and since God is not sensible, how can we even form a conception of God through our active intellect, let alone prove his existence?

The answer that Aquinas’s gives is unconvincing. He asserts that while we cannot know God directly, we can know him (both form the concept of God and know he exists) by analogy. Sensible objects, in that they are finite and contingent are said to reveal God’s infinity and necessity.

As it stands this is a mere assertion. Assuming Aquinas’s epistemology for the moment, why does it follow that because the objects of our experience are finite and contingent there must be a God behind them who is infinite and necessary? It is at this point that Aquinas resorts to his famous proofs for God’s existence.¹ These proofs run as follows. Since all objects of our senses are contingent, it is possible for all these objects not to exist. Aquinas then adds, “But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence.”² He then infers that if this were true, nothing would exist now since if all things were contingent and at one time nothing existed, then contingent things would not have come into existence. Next he argues that since something does exist, there must be something that is necessary. This necessary thing must have its necessity in itself and not from anything else, since this would entail an infinite number of necessary things. He concludes by identifying this necessary thing with God. Hence we can have knowledge of God’s existence even though this knowledge of him is indirect.

Many things can be said about this type of argument. (1) Even if we grant that something necessarily exists, why does this have to be God. Could not the universe be necessary? (2) Just because each particular part could possibly not exist does not mean the whole could not exist.³ (3) Furthermore, just because it is possible for all contingent things not to exist does not mean that at one time they did not exist. (4) Why is an infinite number of necessary things deriving their necessity from other things impossible? In a debate with Jesuit Frederick Copleston on the existence of God, Bertrand Russell said he could imagine an infinite chain of contingent things causing one another. Whether he could or not is beyond the point. What should be noted is that it is not, prima facie, clear that there could not be an infinite number of necessary things. (5) Even if this argument proved the existence of a god, it does not prove the existence of the Christian God.

What we can conclude from this brief discussion of Aquinas is that the epistemology he adopts from Aristotle controls his apologetical argument. However, the conclusion that Aquinas wishes to reach, that the Christian God exists, does not follow from this epistemology. The irony is that the very epistemology by which Aquinas tries to explain knowledge precludes him from having knowledge of God.

Charles Hodge

Though far apart theologically, Charles Hodge (1797-1878), the great Princeton scholar, fell into the same epistemological pitfall as Aquinas. An ardent Calvinist, Hodge was arguably the most powerful advocate for the Reformed faith in America during the 19th century. Proponents of rival theological outlooks and heretical doctrines were sure to be challenged by his trenchant biblical arguments. In settling theological disputes, Hodge referred to the Bible and the Bible alone as the final judge.

Hodge’s apologetic approach, however, differed greatly from his theological methodology. When dealing with unbelieving opponents, Hodge put down his Bible and defended the faith with a compromised epistemology. Rather than allowing Scripture to provide its own epistemological foundation, Hodge adopted the position known as Scottish Common Sense Realism.

Common Sense Realism claims that common sense is the basis for all human knowledge. The mind of man is, by nature, constituted in such a way that it will lead him into the truth about the world and morality; metaphysical speculation is to be avoided. Rather, humans should go out into the world to collect objective (neutral) facts from which, by use of inductive reasoning, general laws are to be inferred. Hodge summarizes this view by stating, “The Bible is to the theologian what nature is to the man of science. It is his store-house of facts; and his method of ascertaining what the Bible teaches, is the same as that which the natural philosopher adopts to ascertain what nature teaches.”⁴Nature is viewed as a teacher and its lessons are the bare facts. By use of the principles of induction mankind can take the teachings of nature and agree upon how the natural world operates.

On this epistemological stance, Hodge attempted to prove the existence of God by the traditional arguments. Hodge, like most adherents to Common Sense Realism, took it for granted that unaided human reason would lead to the establishment of the truth of Christianity.⁵ Science, after all, showed that the world was wonderfully designed. The only way to explain the fact of this design was to infer (through induction) that there is a Designer. Speaking in confident terms, Hodge asserts: “On this ground we are not only authorized, but compelled to apply the argument from design far beyond the limits of experience, and to say: It is just as evident that the world had an intelligent creator, as that a book had an author . . . “⁶

The problem with this epistemological outlook became apparent with the publication of Darwin’sOrigin of Species in 1859. Darwin, looking at the same “objective” facts and using the same “neutral” logic, concluded that there was only the appearance of design in the natural world. This appearance is accounted for by the process of evolution by means of natural selection. No longer was a god necessary to explain the orderliness of the world, because nature itself could account for this.

To Hodge’s credit he did publish a critique of Darwin’s theory.⁷ However, given his epistemology, he was in no position to offer a cogent refutation of evolutionary theory since he, like Darwin, appealed to the same facts and to the same type of reasoning. The trouble is that the facts said one thing to Darwin and another thing to Hodge. Who was observing the facts correctly? Who was using induction correctly? Under the principles of Common Sense Realism, there is no way to decide.

Hodge’s teleological argument, and the epistemological foundation on which it stood, could not withstand the pressure that Darwin and others brought to bear upon it. Like Aquinas’s Aristotelianism, Hodge’s Common Sense Realism proved to be ineffective and indeed contrary to the faith he was so adamant to defend.

Reformed Epistemology

Aquinas and Hodge represent two different and rival traditions of Christian theology. The whole of Aquinas’s theology is polluted with pagan categories. Essentially it is Aristotelianism with a Christian veneer. Hodge, on the other hand, presents us with a truly biblical theology. Speculation about God and man are not countenanced. Scripture alone defines God and man, as well as creation, the fall and redemption. When it comes to defending the faith, however, the two have more commonality than differences. Both take their epistemologies from autonomous philosophy and not the Bible. And both, ultimately, undermine the faith that they seek to defend.

Against both Aquinas and Hodge, the Bible alone is the source from which Christians are called to draw their epistemology. Scripture is adequate for every good work, including defending the faith (2 Tim. 3:16-17). In Christ are all the treasures of wisdom stored (Col. 2:3). The Christian is called to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:3-5). The only biblically acceptable apologetic is therefore one which is drawn from the Bible and acknowledges the epistemic lordship of Christ. Any position other than this is merely knowledge falsely so called (1 Tim. 6:20).

Not only are epistemologies derived from sources other than Scripture dishonoring to Christ, but they lead to an abortive defense of the faith. Whether one’s theory of knowledge is grounded in demonstrative reasoning, common sense or something else, this, and not Scripture becomes the ultimate authority of the one who adheres to it. It becomes surer than the sure word of God. But Scripture teaches us that Scripture itself is to be our final authority (2 Pet. 1:19, 21; 2 Tim. 3:16, 17; 1 John 5:9; 1 Thess. 2:13). If Scripture is the final authority, and if one proves the authority of Scripture on the basis of something else other than Scripture, then one proves that Scripture is not the final authority. In other words, to prove the authority of Scripture on something other than Scripture is to disprove Scripture.

Christian apologists are morally and logically compelled to defend the faith with an epistemological outlook that accords with the faith. Not only is it wrong to defend the faith with an autonomous epistemology–Christianity must be understood on its own terms–but, in the nature of the case, blending Christian theology with non-Christian epistemology always serves to undermine the Christian’s ability to defend the faith. As Christians we need to be much more epistemologically self-conscious; we need to develop a truly Reformed epistemology.

Quoting again from Greg Bahnsen again:
Our Christian epistemology (or theory of knowledge) should thus be elaborated and worked out in a way which is consistent with its own fundamental principles (or presuppositions), lest it be incoherent and ineffective. Our “method” of knowing is determined by our “message” as a whole–thus being influenced by, even as it influences, our convictions about reality . . . We ought not to espouse one thing theologically, then practice something else in our scholarship. One way to say this is to say that Christian scholars and apologists must be thoroughly “self-conscious” about the character of their own epistemological position, letting its standards regiment and regulate every detail of their system of beliefs and its application. They need always to form opinions and develop reasoning in light of their fundamental Christian commitments.

NOTES

1. I am speaking of logical order, not Aquinas’s actual order of presentation in his works. In Summa Theologica, for instance, Aquinas give his proofs for God’s existence at the very beginning (Ia, 2) and reserves his general epistemological discussion for later sections (Ia 79, 84-86).

2. ST, 1a, 3.

3. In informal logic, this is called the fallacy of composition. Just because the parts of a whole possess a certain property, does not mean the whole possesses that same property. Each part of my car weighs less than 20 lbs., but it would be fallacious to conclude from this that my car weighs less than 20 lbs.

4. Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), vol. 1, p. 10. [Emphasis mine.]

5. For further elaboration on this form of Realism, see S. A. Grave, The Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960)

6. Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p. 217.

7. What is Darwinism? (New York: Scribners, Armstrong, and Company, 1874).

Peter Gillquist and other former Campus Crusade for Christ staff members led a group of people into Orthodoxy during the 70’s and 80’s.¹ Charles Bell led most of his Vineyard Christian Fellowship congregation into the Eastern church in 1993.² Perhaps the most high-profile conversion was that of Franky Schaeffer, son of the late Francis Schaeffer, who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 1990.³ The trend East hit home in 1995 when a minister of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the denomination of Machen, Van Til, Murray and Bahnsen, demitted the ministry and converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. Even the thought of such apostasy would not have occurred twenty-five years ago.

Though I do not want to overstate this movement toward the East (it is more of trickle than a flood), it is nevertheless disconcerting to see such a movement emerge. Although it is the provenance of the sociologist to explain the reasons for this trend, one gathers from the testimonial literature of recent converts that prominent is the desire for an older Christian tradition and greater unity of faith. Many, for example, reason that there must be something wrong with Protestantism since it has proliferated to some 23,000 denominations. But perhaps the most cited reason is disgust over the growth-oriented, pop theology that goes on in the name of evangelicalism.⁴ This shallowness, in turn, results in a feeling of spiritual frustration, leading many to ask themselves, “Isn’t Christianity something more than this?” The question is a good one and their disgust is appreciated. It is their answer that disappoints.

The question is ultimately not one of heritage or personal fulfillment. Neither is it one of how the church influences culture. The Byzantine⁵ polemic often points to the materialism of the west as a direct result of its overly intellectual theology. Protestants, in turn, can point out that the emphasis on the mystical and other-worldliness in Byzantine theology has retarded technological advances in countries it dominates and has also paved the way for oppressive political rule. While I believe the latter is true, debate cannot remain at this level. Though ideas have consequences, ideas cannot ultimately be judged by consequences. Some people (and even cultures) are better than the ideas they espouse. Some are worse. The truth of an idea must be judged on its own merits. The real question is “Is Byzantine theology true?” Before answering this question, though, it is first necessary to give a brief historical and theological introduction to Orthodoxy since most Protestants know little about it.

Historical Background

Orthodoxy’s history goes back to the patristic period and it considers these ancient credentials proof that it is the one true apostolic church. Of course its selection of church fathers is selective and favors, obviously enough, Greek theologians over their Latin counterparts. Augustine, for example, is seen as the source of much aberrant dogma.

Its most revered theologians include Clement of Alexandria, Origen, the three Cappadocian Fathers, Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329-c. 390), Basil the Great (c. 330-379) and his younger brother, Gregory of Nyssa (c. 330-395), the pseudo-Dionysius (c. 500), Maximus the Confessor (c. 580-662), John of Damascus, (c. 675-c. 749), Photius (c. 810-c. 895), Symeon The New Theologian (949-1022), and Gregory of Palamas (1296-1359). All were influenced to various degrees by Platonism in one of its many forms. The most obvious example of this tendency is the pseudo-Dionysius who attempted to reconcile Christianity and Neoplatonism much like Thomas Aquinas tried to bring together Christianity and Aristotelianism.

The most decisive event in Byzantine history occurred when the emperor Constantine, a convert to Christianity, determined in 324 to move the imperial capital from Rome to Byzantium, changing its name to Constantinople. This move marked the beginnings of a rift between the Greek east and the Latin west which eventually culminated in an official separation in 1054. The history of the Eastern Orthodox Church was integrally tied to the eastern empire for over one thousand years.

There were several reasons for the gradual separation including the different languages spoken, cultural differences and an often unstable political environment which made communication between east and west difficult. The major cause of the rift, however, were two theological issues. The first was over the authority of the bishop of Rome, the pope and the second over the doctrine of the Trinity.

During the period in question, the pope’s prestige and influence grew. From the time of the Council of Nicaea (325) the bishop of Rome was given the place of honor among the other bishops since Peter was believed to be the first bishop of Rome and because it was the capital of the empire. As time wore on and the Roman government in the west weakened, the pope become increasingly involved in matters of state and eventually came to dominate both sacred and secular affairs. To go along with this power, popes began to make grandiose claims about their supremacy culminating with the declaration that the Bishop of Rome was the head of all the church (east and west) and spoke with absolute authority.

While eastern churches recognized the bishop of Rome as holding a preeminent place among the other bishops, they viewed him as possessing no more authority than any of the other patriarchs. It is important to understand the precise nature of the east’s quarrel with Rome at this point. The eastern churches did not dispute Rome’s prerogative to exercise absolute power in the west, they merely contended that its authority did not extend beyond the border. There other another bishop exercised absolute authority.

The second issue was of the so-called Filioque controversy. This controversy had to do with an interpolation in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. The original version reads “[I believe] in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceedeth from the Father…” The interpolated version adds, “and the Son” (Latin, Filioque) after ‘Father.’⁶ The difference over the procession of the Spirit did not become an issue until the Photian Schism in the 9^th century when Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, declared the doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son to be heretical. The church of Rome, at first indifferent, eventually elevated it to a test of orthodoxy. From this point on, reconciliation was never seriously attempted.

An official split between east and west occurred in 1054 when a papal legate nailed a Bull of Excommunication against the Ecumenical Patriarch on the altar of the Hagia Sophia. The Patriarch returned the favor and excommunicated the legate. Any hope that the rift between Rome and Byzantium would eventually be healed was dashed in 1204 when western crusaders, originally bound for Egypt, became embroiled in the local politics of Constantinople and ended up sacking the city and the Hagia Sophia. Byzantium has never forgotten this act of treachery.

Two other events are crucial in understanding the history of Byzantium. First, the rise of Islam in the 6^th and 7^th centuries. Muslim militancy spread the religion of the crescent moon over vast regions ranging from Persia, through Arabia and over north Africa. In the 680’s the Muslims began their relentless attack on Constantinople. The capital of the eastern empire held out for hundreds of years, but eventually fell to the Turks in 1453. Many practitioners of Orthodoxy have since been under the political yoke of Muslims.

The other event that proceeded the Islamic military conquest of Constantinople was the conversion of the Slavic peoples beginning in the 9^th century. Soon thereafter most of the Slavs, including those in Russia, became Orthodox. With the fall of Constantinople, Moscow became the main seat of Orthodoxy and was dubbed by some as the third (and last) Rome. It remained so until the Communist Revolution in 1917 when the victorious Bolsheviks implemented an officially atheist regime. After this, Moscow could no longer claim this appellation with any credibility, at least until 1991.

With the collapse of Communism, the Eastern Orthodox Church is once again flourishing in Eastern Europe. It is not, however, restricted to that part of the world. Almost every country claims at least some adherents to Orthodoxy. Indeed Orthodoxy claims around 185 million adherents worldwide and, as mentioned, six million in the United States alone.⁷

Doctrinal Distinctives

Evangelicals often confuse Eastern Orthodoxy with Roman Catholicism. Because of their similar practices and rituals this is understandable. Byzantine theologians, however, take umbrage at this, viewing Rome as radically different from itself. Indeed, Orthodox theologians go so far as to say that Protestantism is actually closer to Rome than the Orthodox Church.⁸While this claim can be demonstrated to be false, Rome and Byzantium do differ in many respects and so rather than entering into the debate over who is closer to whom, I will proceed to outline the doctrinal distinctives of Orthodoxy.

Perhaps the best place to begin is with Byzantium’s view of the church. The eastern Church is governed by an oligarchy of Patriarchs. There are five Patriarchates including, in order of importance, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. The head of the Patriarchate of Constantinople is called the Ecumenical Patriarch, in recognition of his prominence. Rome is the fifth and highest, but since it and the east are not in communion, its primacy is effectively negated.

Besides the four Patriarchates there are several “autocephalous” (lit. ’self-head’) churches which are administratively independent. These include Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Cyprus, Greece, Poland and Albania. The heads of these different churches are called Patriarch, Metropolitan or Archbishop depending upon the region. The Eastern Orthodox Church in America is trying to become self-governing, but has not been recognized by a majority of Churches.

Unlike Rome, there is no single person who is the head of the Byzantine Church, nor is there a central government. And while the Ecumenical Patriarch has a special place of honor among the other heads (the fundamental way of determining whether a church is Orthodox is whether it is in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople), he does not rule the churches outside his Patriarchate. However, within his jurisdiction, a Patriarch’s rule is absolute.

Orthodox worship is quite different than Protestant worship. Candles and icons are pervasive, pews are often absent (Orthodox stand while worshipping), repetitive prayers are sung without instrumental accompaniment, incense is burned and the sign of the cross is made. Like Rome, the Eucharist constitutes the center of Orthodox worship.

Orthodoxy recognizes seven sacraments or “mysteries” (Baptism, Chrismation, the Eucharist, Repentance, Holy Orders, Marriage and Anointing of the Sick). It differs slightly with Rome in its understanding of the Eucharist. Where Rome teaches transubstantiation (the bread and wine becomes the actual body and blood of Christ), Byzantium is reticent to say exactly what occurs, preferring instead to view it as a mystery.

Mary is venerated as the Theotokos or Mother of God, but her immaculate conception has not been dogmatized. Orthodoxy believes in the use and veneration of icons, particularly those that represent Christ, Mary and the saints. It, like Rome, draws a distinction between veneration and worship. This theological nicety is duly ignored by the Orthodox faithful.

Theologically it adheres to Tradition which includes both Scripture and revelation passed on orally, the Nicene Creed, the declarations of the seven Ecumenical Councils (presumably councils which are attended by bishops from all regions, Rome counts twenty-one), patristic writings, service books and even icons. The pronouncements of the Ecumenical Councils hold a special place in Orthodox theology and are considered to be infallible.⁹

Orthodoxy considers God to be unknowable in his essence. Theology therefore must be negative (apophatic) in character, stating what God is not rather than what he is. Knowledge of what God is not is viewed as preparatory for knowing what God is. This knowledge comes through direct experience of the Divine Light, the same light that the disciples experienced when Jesus was transfigured. This mystical knowledge is not knowledge of God’s essence, but of his energies. These energies are “God Himself in His action and revelation to the world.”¹⁰

As mentioned above, Orthodoxy rejects the interpolation of ‘Filioque’ in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, believing that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone. It teaches that God is Creator, but is not totally sovereign, deeming this to be incompatible with human freedom.

Orthodox anthropology teaches that man is made up of three parts, body, soul and spirit.¹¹ This doctrine has serious implications for Orthodox soteriology as will be seen in my critique below. Adam was created in the image of God possessing free will and reason, but needed to attain to, by his own effort, God’s likeness. This likeness is an assimilation to God through virtue. “To acquire the likeness,” writes Bishop Timothy Ware, “is to be deified, it is to become a ’second god’, a ‘god by grace’.”¹² I will return to the idea of deification presently, but note here the implication that Adam was created only potentially perfect. He was not created virtuous or upright as the Reformed symbols teach.

Adam’s fall was not total and his guilt not passed on to his progeny. Sin is viewed as an impediment to participation in God’s likeness rather than a state that renders man guilty before God. Indeed, the notion of forensic guilt and forensic justification are neglected if not wholly rejected by Orthodox theologians.

The Incarnation is viewed as making deification possible (“God became man so man can become God”). Merely possible because Christ’s work alone is not enough. Rather, man cooperating with God’s grace is the recipe for salvation. This salvation, moreover, is viewed primarily in metaphysical not moral categories. Man is pulled down by sin, but is lifted up to deity through Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection. It is a higher level of being rather than the state a perfect holiness that is the goal. To be sure, holiness (virtue) is necessary in order to attain this higher state of being, but it is not the end itself.

Pervading Orthodox theology is the notion of mystery. It views western Christianity as being overly rational and takes the Medieval scholastics to be the primary example of this tendency. Though the accuracy of this charge depends upon what is meant by ‘rational’ and what western tradition is under consideration, it does underscore the Orthodox attitude regarding truth and knowledge. At every crucial point in its theology, mystery is not only appealed to, but is celebrated. How can the wine be Christ’s blood? How are we assured that the Church speaks for Christ? What is the nature of deified man? These are all mysteries. Precisely at the points where Orthodoxy gets most controversial and its claims become most vague or in need of demonstration, it falls back to mystery. If the west has a tendency to be overly rational, the east with even greater warrant can be judged to be irrational or at best, a-rational.

With its emphasis on mystery it is little wonder there are no detailed systematic theologies written in the eastern tradition.¹³ Truth ultimately is experienced, particularly in the sacrament of Communion. In this regard it has a good of affinity with contemporary existential theologians.

This is not to deny the place of mystery in theology. Reformed theology has its mysteries too – predestination and freewill, God is all-glorious yet God receives glory from his creation. The difference is that Reformed theology prefers to place the mysteries where Scripture places them. Where it does not, it strives for detail and precision. Mystery yes, mysticism, no.

Before turning to critically review Orthodox theology I will, heeding the advice of Johnny Mercer, first accentuate the positive.

Commendations

Three commendations of Orthodoxy come immediately to mind. First, Byzantium has not succumbed to liberalism nearly to the extend that Rome or Protestantism has. Whereas Rome and perhaps most Protestant denominations fail to suppress heretics (Presbyterians need only to think of the liberal takeover during the modernist controversy) Byzantium has vigorously, effectively and persistently flushed heretics from out of its midst. The statement by John of Damascus epitomizes Byzantium’s conservatism, “we do not change the everlasting boundaries which our fathers have set, but we keep the traditions just as we received them.” We can learn a lesson from this.

Second, Byzantium stands opposed to much of the political agenda of secularist ideologues. Particularly its resistance to the feminist movement and strong stand against abortion is to be commended.

Finally, it resists the unity-at-any-price mentality of the modern-day ecumenical movement.

Byzantium is not coy about its claims that it is the true church. Bishop Ware’s candor is typical of Orthodox writers: “Orthodoxy, believing that the Church on earth has remained and must remain visibly one, naturally also believes itself to be that one visible Church… Orthodox are in all humility convinced that they have received a precious and unique gift from God; and if they pretended to others that they did not possess this gift, they would be guilty of an act of betrayal in the sight of heaven… Orthodoxy also teaches that outside the Church there is no salvation.¹⁴

If their theological position is correct, other positions that differ from it are wrong. In an age of compromise, relativism and confusion, a bold statement such as Byzantium makes should be appreciated.

Of course theological conservatism is only a relative good. The ultimate question is not one of conservatism versus liberalism, but rather the status of the view that is being conserved. One can be a conservative Marxist or a conservative Darwinian, but that is hardly a commendation of those who espouse such views.

In future articles I shall take up the less pleasant task of showing where Orthodoxy departs from biblical Christianity.

To be continued.

Notes

1. Peter E. Gillquist, Becoming Orthodox (Ben Lomond, California: Conciliar Press, 1989).

2. Charles Bell, Discovering the Rich Heritage of Orthodoxy (Minneapolis: Light and Life Publishing Co., 1994).

3. Frank Schaeffer, Dancing Alone: The Quest for Orthodox Faith in the Age of False Religion (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994). Despite his Reformed upbringing, Schaeffer repeatedly misstates, distorts and maligns Reformed theology. At one point, after a particularly egregious exposition of the five points of Calvinism, Schaeffer comments: “With God portrayed as a fatalistic, cruel force of nature, with the Incarnation reduced to nothing more than play acting, since “The Elect” were already chosen before Christ came to earth, with Christ’s death reduced to a sacrifice to an angry, vengeful “God,” with man reduced to a creature without free will, Calvinist Reformed theology logically, if unintentionally, opened the door to the Enlightenment’s demotion of humanity and religion” (88-9). At the beginning of the book Schaeffer warns his readers, “I am not a scholar.” This warning should be taken seriously.

4. Some evangelicals have recently attempted to rouse their fellow evangelicals out of their collective cultural, intellectual and theological slumber. Note especially recent jeremiads by David F. Wells, No Place for Truth: or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993) and Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).

5. Loosely following the usage of John Meyendorff, I use ‘Byzantine theology,’ ‘Byzantium’ or simply ‘Orthodoxy’ as synonyms for ‘Eastern Orthodoxy.’ Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes, 2^nd ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1983).

6. It is unknown when the Filioque first appeared, but the first known use of it was at the third Council of Toledo in 589.

7. Daniel B. Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity: A Western Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994), 17. These numbers are probably exaggerated since Orthodoxy counts all baptized by the church and not active members.

8. According to Timothy Ware, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are “two sides of the same coin.” Ware, The Orthodox Church, new edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), 2.

9. The seven Ecumenical Councils were Nicaea 325 (rejection of Arianism), Constantinople I 381 (Holy Spirit decreed to be God, equal with Father and Son, proceeds from Father), Ephesus 431 (condemned Nestorian heresy), Chalcedon 451 (condemned Monophysite heresy and establishment of “pentarchy,” or five archates [Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem]), Constantinople II 553 (elaboration on views of Ephesus and Chalcedon), Constantinople III 680-1 (condemned Monothelites who claimed that since Christ had two natures in one person he must also of had only one will), Nicaea II 787 (Iconoclast controversy; iconodule position upheld).

10. Ware, 68.

11. This view, often called trichotomy, is definitively refuted by John Murray, “Trichotomy,” in Collected Writings of John Murray, vol. 2 (Carlisle Penn: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1977), 23-33.

12. Ware, 219.

13. Russian Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky appropriately titled his book on doctrine, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church.

14. Ware, 246-47.

Introduction

The title ”The Fossils Don’t Speak!” is intended to evoke curiosity from those familiar with creationist literature. It is, of course, a reversal of the title of a book written by Dr. Duane Gish. However, the contradiction may or may not actually be a corrective to the work of Dr. Gish or his creation-science colleagues, as we will see.

The thesis I will argue for is that the debate between Christianity and Darwinism is conducted at the wrong level. The level that it is commonly carried out on is what we can call the evidential or factual level. One side puts forth evidence in support of Darwinian evolution while the other proffers evidence against it. The debate, then, is to be resolved by judging which side possesses the preponderance of the evidence. Obviously the Darwinists think the weight of evidence leans on the side of evolutionary theory while creationists think the scale is tipped in the other direction.

I do not maintain that scientific evidence is irrelevant to the creation-evolution debate – such a claim would be patently absurd. Nevertheless, scientific evidence in itself is insufficient to decide the issue either way. By this I do not mean that I think the evidence is ambiguous. I firmly believe that the scientific research that has been done clearly indicates that every living (and non-living) thing in the universe is the result of direct act of creation by God and not the product of an evolutionary process.
However, I also believe that a debate of this issue on purely scientific evidence will get nowhere. The debate must take place on a different level before any resolution is possible. Thus my present objective is not to refute Darwinism and vindicate creationism. Instead I will endeavor to realign the terms of the debate between these two rival positions. Before I begin my argument for realignment, however, a few preliminary remarks are necessary.

Definitions

During the course of this lecture I will be using a few terms that I will define in a particular way.

First, by the term ‘creationism’ I shall mean the view that world was created by the God of the Bible, that the world is relatively young and that the life on earth today is basically the same as life on earth at the time of creation. Of course there are others who call themselves creationists whose views do not fit within this definition (Muslims, for example). I will thus not defend a generic view of creation that is compatible with various religious outlooks.

Second, I define the term ‘Darwinism’ as the theory of evolution by means of naturalistic processes. This definition is intentionally broad enough to cover classical Darwinism, neo-Darwinism and even such theories as punctuated equilibrium. The purpose of this definition is to cover all theories of evolution that are naturalistic in nature.

This brings us to the third term, ‘naturalism.’ For purposes that shall become obvious later, I break down ‘naturalism’ into two species or kinds (I use ’species’ for the Darwinian readers and ‘kinds’ for creationists). ‘Methodological naturalism’ is the view that the only way to obtain knowledge of the world is to study natural processes. The corollary of this is that knowledge of the world is not obtainable by means of divine revelation. ‘Metaphysical naturalism’ is the view that only nature exists. Thus it stands against supernaturalism.

A final preliminary remark is necessary at this point. In what follows I will discussing the debate between Darwinism and creationism. I realize that these two views do not exhaust the field. It is not uncommon for a man to embrace both a traditional religious outlook and evolution. Perhaps the most familiar position of this type is what has come to be known as theistic evolution – a hybrid of Christianity and evolutionary theory. Others have already demonstrated that this position is untenable for the Christian on biblical grounds. The Bible’s consistent and unambiguous teaching is that God created the world in the space of six days and all very good. The world is fundamentally the same today as it was at the time of creation – the plants, animals and man are not the result of process that has been guided by that hand of God. 

A Brief History of the Debate

The debate over Darwin’s theory of evolution has been going on since the publication of Origin of Species in 1859. There have been many facets to the debate.

For instance, the ethical implications of the theory has been a point of much controversy. Creationists have argued that Darwinism necessarily leads to relativism – there are no moral absolutes except perhaps survival and reproduction. Given that the world is red in tooth in claw, the only legitimate ethical theory – if one could call it an ethical theory – is one that promotes an individual’s and its offspring’s survival. Many Darwinians counter that ethics and biology are distinct areas of study and so evolutionary theory has no implications for ethical theory one way or the other. In his book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins takes this line.

I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things have evolved. I am not saying how we humans morally ought to behave. I stress this, because I know I am in danger of being misunderstood by those people, all too numerous, who cannot distinguish a statement of belief in what is the case from an advocacy of what ought to be the case.

The irony of this statement is that creationists contend the precise opposite. If Darwinism is the case, then there could be no ought.

Darwinists often counter-punch by arguing that religion in general and Christianity in particular with its rigid moral code is an offense to the sensibilities of modern man and should be dismissed as nothing more than a crude and primitive compilation of early man’s myths and taboos. From this point on the debate often degenerates into name-calling. This is the verbal equivalent to the bumper-sticker wars that are waged on our freeways. First there was the fish, then the fish will legs, then a big fish eating the fish with legs and so on.

A closely related debate is that of the cultural and political implications of Darwinism. Opponents have argued that it logically entails either anarchy and the disintegration of society or to a totalitarian state. The individual is strictly out for himself and his offspring caring nothing for such an inconsequential abstraction as “society.” With altruism ruled out, any ethical justification for coercive power by the state becomes a mere pretext for some individuals to dominate others – totalitarianism. Darwinians counter that the theory of evolution need not rule out democratic or republican forms of government. Either the theory is neutral on cultural and political matters or cooperation may be grounded along contractarian lines.

Darwinians typically then go on the offensive by pointed out the political and cultural suppression that has gone on under the banner of religion. It is at this point that the tired examples of political suppression of science by organized religion is brought in. The Roman Catholic Church’s persecution of Galileo is the favorite.

Though obviously important, the debates over ethics and society and other areas are mere sideshows to what has become the predominate issue – the scientific status of evolution. The initial debate was whether Darwin’s theory of natural selection was scientifically justified. When, for example, T. H. Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce squared off for their famous disputation on Darwin’s recently publicized theory during a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1860 it was the scientific merits of the theory that was at issue. Much intense debate followed. But as time passed it became obvious that the Darwinians were the winners – they controlled the scientific journals, they held the university appointments, they had access to the vast resources of the state. After the initial controversy Darwinism became the scientific view, while creationism was merely a religious dogma. Given this development, the debate degenerated into one of science (evolution) versus religion (creationism).

In America, the creationists faired little better. Gradually, it became apparent that the Darwinians had the better arguments. The nadir of the debate for creationists was reached at the Scopes trial in 1925. From that point forward, creationism was associated with backwards, uneducated country folk – or as H. L. Mencken referred to them, the simian faithful of Appalachia.

In the seventies, however, creationists began to change their strategy. No longer were the willing to debate the issue in terms of science versus religion. The new strategy was to play down the theological origin of creationism and stick to strictly scientific issue. Thus the advent of creation-science.

This was primarily Darwinian tactical move on the part of the creationists. Because the courts had ruled that the teaching of religion in public schools violates the establishment clause of the first amendment, creationism based on religious dogma would not be allowed in the classroom. Creationists reasoned that if creationism were divorced from religion it could be put forth as a scientific theory. And being a scientific theory, it had just a much right to be taught in public schools as the theory of evolution. Thus the inception of creation science and along with it the attempt to establish a “two-model” approach to biology in America’s schoolrooms.

This new tactic proved to be effective. Legislatures in Arkansas and Louisiana passed laws prescribing that a two-model approach of creation science and evolution science be taught in the classroom. These laws, however, were quickly challenged on constitutional grounds by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union. The Arkansas act, which mandated equal treatment of creation science and evolution science, was the first one to make it to the federal courts. At the heart of the plaintiffs’ case was the charge that creation science was simply religion masquerading as science and thus in violation of the establishment clause.

The court agreed. The religious nature of creationism was one of three reasons that Federal District Court Judge, William R. Overton, cited in ruling the 1981 “Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act” unconstitutional. “[The Act] was simply and purely an effort to introduce the Biblical version of creation into the public school curricula. The only inference which can be drawn from these circumstances is that the Act was passed with the specific purpose by the General Assembly of advancing religion.”

This argument is often repeated in Darwinian literature. Philip Kitcher is representative: “Is there any evidence that might lead Creationists to amend their ’scientific’ claims, so that they no longer consist simply of a censored version of a literal reading of the Genesis account? … If there is not, then Creation ’science’ is, at bottom, a religious doctrine. In the pursuit of real science, no part of current theory is beyond question. Anything is potentially revisable. To demand that certain parts of ’scientific’ Creationism must be kept fixed, whatever the evidence, is to drop even the pretense of doing science.”

According to the Darwinian, then, not only does the evidence repudiate creationism, but those engaged in attempting to bring forth evidence for creation are not even doing science. The oft-heard assertion is that creation science is really pseudo-science. It is religion, in this case Christian fundamentalism, parading under the banner of science. Indeed, the very term “creation science” is said to be an oxymoron.

Although extravagant, there is an important truth underlying the Darwinian’s rhetoric. He knows very well what is going on with the creationists. The creationists do not start out with objective, dispassionate mind-sets, ready to follow the evidence wherever it leads. The Darwinian understands that creationists already have the rabbit in the hat. They start with the conclusion that creationism is true and go on to find evidence to support this conclusion. This is the scientific equivalent to rationalization, the process whereby one starts by assuming the correctness of his view and concluding from this that there must thus be a good reason out there to support it. In a word, Darwinians see creation-science for what it is, religion.

What never occurs to the Darwinian is that he too has bees in his bonnet. The Darwinian views himself as objective and dispassionate. He views himself as scientific. He is willing to follow the facts wherever they go. He is tolerant, open-minded and has no ax to grind. Whereas the creation-scientist is religous and subjective, he is scientific and objective.

The Darwinian Faith

While this is the Darwinian’s view of himself, it does not reflect what actually is the case. As will be demonstrated, Darwinism is just as religious in nature as creationism. The religion of the Darwinian is not that of prayers, incense, and ritual; it is not what we would call a traditional religion. Yet it is religious nonetheless. What I mean by religion is a worldview or philosophy of life based not on science but on faith. In this sense a religion is an extra-scientific theory that is used to interpret physical facts and events but which itself is not testable by physical facts and events. That this is the case is easily shown in the literature of Darwinism by its anti-Christian bias, its dogmatism, its intolerance of opposing views and its philosophical assumptions.

First, Darwinism’s religious nature is shown in its anti-Christian nature. Below are just a few representative quotes. Professor J. Tyndall wrote in 1874: “. . . the basis of the doctrine of evolution consists, not in an experimental demonstration – for the subject is hardly accessible to this mode of proof – but in its general harmony with scientific thought … We claim and we shall wrest from theology, the entire domain of cosmological theory.”

Stephen J. Gould, a scientist who often claims that evolution is not hostile to religion, writes, “Before Darwin, we thought a benevolent God had created us.” But this is now not intellectually tenable: “No intervening spirit watches lovingly over the affairs of nature. No vital forces propel evolutionary change. And whatever we think of God, his existence is not manifest in the products of nature.”

William Provine, a historian of science at Cornell, says that anybody who accepts evolutionary biology and yet holds to traditional Christian beliefs, “have to check [their] brains at the church-house door. . . [They] are either obtuse or compartmentalized in their thinking, or are effective atheists without realizing it.”

Julian Huxley makes similar remarks: “In the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer either need or room for supernaturalism. The earth was not created, it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did religion … Finally, the evolutionary vision is enabling us to discern, however incompletely, the lineaments of the new religion that we can be sure will arise to serve the needs of the coming era. “  In another place he writes: “We wanted not to pin our faith to that or any other speculation, but to get hold of clear and definite conceptions. The Origin provided us with the working hypothesis we sought. Moreover, it did us the immense service of freeing us forever from the dilemma: Refuse to accept the Christian hypothesis and what have you to propose that can be accepted by any cautious reasoner?”

These quotes in themselves do not prove that Darwinism is a religion. But they do show that there is a bias against the teaching of religion in general and Christianity in particular.

Second, and more incriminating is the fact that the theory of evolution is held, despite protests to the contrary, dogmatically. Most will recall from high school that one of the virtues of science is that theories and hypotheses are held tentatively. Dogmatism is the hallmark of an unscientific attitude. Yet representative statements by the Darwinians express a dogmatism equaled only by religious devotees.

In a famous article claiming that evolution is a fact not a theory, Stephen J. Gould writes: “Facts are the world’s data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein’s theory of gravitation replaced Newton’s, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome. And human beings evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin’s proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be identified.”

In 1959 Julian Huxley stated: “The first point to make about Darwin’s theory is that is that it is no longer a theory but a fact … Darwinianism has come of age so to speak. We are no longer having to bother about establishing the fact of evolution …” Richard Dawkins, Oxford zoologist, in his typical pithy manner, declares: “The theory [of evolution] is about as much in doubt as the earth goes round the sun.” And in his book, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time, Jonathan Weiner pontificates that: “debating the reality of the process [evolution] seems as absurd as debating the existence of gravity.”

The dogmatic and religious nature of Darwinism is not a recent phenomenon. From the outset, Darwinians were dogmatic and used all means at their disposal to suppress creationist heretics. An illuminating example of this is recorded by historian Peter Bowler. Bowler explains T. H. Huxley’s role in the relatively quick acceptance of Darwinism with the British scientific community.  “Huxley was typical of a new generation of scientists determined to wrest intellectual authority away from its traditional sources. Evolutionism was useful to them precisely because it demonstrated that science could now determine the truth in areas once claimed by theology. Huxley went on to become a leading public figure, serving as a scientific expert on numerous governmental commissions. He was also a member of the “X-club,” an informal but extremely influential group of men whose behind-the-scenes activity shaped much of late Victorian science. It was by exploiting their position within this network that Huxley and his fellow converts ensured that Darwinism had come to stay. They avoided open conflict in scientific journals but used their editorial influence to ensure that Darwinian values were incorporated gradually into the literature. The journal Nature was founded at least in part as a vehicle for promoting Darwinism. Academic appointments were also manipulated to favor younger scientists with Darwinian sympathies, who would ensure that the next generation was educated to take the theory for granted. So successful was this takeover of the British scientific community that by the 1880s, its remaining opponents were claiming that Darwinism had become a blindly accepted dogma carefully shielded from any serious challenge.”

This unabashed dogmatism is indicative of something deeper that a belief in the process of evolution based upon an analysis of the evidence. Even the secular philosopher W. T. Jones recognizes the type of commitment that Darwinians maintain. “The scientists have elevated Darwinism to the level of a religious dogma.”

Third, the religious nature of Darwinism comes out even more when their intolerance for any theory of origins is observed. Phillip Johnson relates the story that in 1981, the British Museum of Natural History celebrated its centennial with an exhibition on Darwin’s theory of evolution. A sign at the entrance read: “Have you ever wondered why there are so many different kinds of living things? One idea is that all the living things we see today have evolved from a distant ancestor by a process of gradual change. How could evolution have occurred? How could one species change into another? The exhibition in this hall looks at one possible explanation – the explanation of Charles Darwin.”

An adjacent sign read: “Another view is that God created all living things perfect and unchanging.” An accompanying brochure admitted, “the concept of evolution by natural selection is not, strictly speaking, scientific.”

The response from the scientific community was outrage. An editorial in the journal, Nature, asked rhetorically: “Can it be that the managers of the museum which is the nearest thing to a citadel of Darwinism have lost their nerve, not to mention their good sense? … Nobody disputes that, in the public presentation of science, it is proper whenever appropriate to say that disputed matters are in doubt. But is the theory of evolution still an open question among serious biologists? And if not, what purpose, except general confusion, can be served by these weasel words?”

Atheist philosopher Anthony Flew denounced the Museum’s scientists, whom he called “civil servants,” for their “abuse of the resources of a state institution to try to put [their pet theory] across to all the innocent and predominantly youthful laypersons who throng these public galleries, as if it were already part of the established consensus among all those best qualified to judge.”

The end result of the pressure is that the Museum capitulated and removed the “offensive” statements. Darwinians do not tolerate any dissent from evolutionary fundamentalism.

Evolution and Naturalism

It is not enough to leave the issue here. Yes, Darwinism is anti-Christian, yes it is held dogmatically, yes it is intolerant of any opposing view. But what is behind all of this? This is the question and the answer to this is the key to the whole creation-evolution controversy.

The Darwinian, like the creationist, brings into his scientific investigations a set of background assumptions. Where the creationists brings the Bible as an unquestioned authority, the Darwinism brings in his own unquestioned authority. He presupposes at the outset the truth of naturalism.

Recall, that I said at the outset, there are at least two types of naturalism – epistemological or methodological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism. It is the contention of Darwinians (as well as most other scientists) that science must operate on the basis of the former, methodological naturalism.

The Darwinian, however (at least a sophisticated Darwinist, most Darwinian scientists would probably fail to make this distinction), says that this assumption is an innocent one. Science must assume this otherwise science would involve itself in all kinds of superstitions. They content that only metaphysical naturalism is an unwarranted assumption.

It is on the basis of this distinction that the claim is made by Darwinians that evolution does not disallow religious faith. Methodological naturalism is not a theory of ultimate reality; it does not rule out the possibility of the supernatural. Because of this it is an innocuous presupposition.

But is it? Is it the case that methodological naturalism is innocuous? A negative answer to this question will become readily apparent. The scientist who conducts his research with such a presupposition is going to interpret the facts of the world in light of them. Everything he studies will be observed through the spectacles of naturalism. Thus from the outset, the range of what he will discover has already been pre-determined. For the naturalist, there could not be anything that would count as evidence for creations since creation is not a natural process. Thus any alleged evidence for creation could not be, by definition, scientific evidence. This is why Darwinians consider evolution to be a fact not a mere theory. Some account must be given for the diversity of life. But since creation is not an option, it must be explained naturalistically. In as much as evolution seems to be the only credible naturalistic candidate, evolution must therefore be true. And so it is held to be true, come what may. It is, in the words of a contemporary philosopher, immune from revision.

This is not to say that natural selection must be the engine that drives evolutionary machine. Evolutionists are not committed to any particular mechanism. It may be that another mechanism (say random genetic drift) is the main driving force behind the evolutionary process. These theories of how evolution has taken place are debatable. What is not debatable is evolution itself.

So as it turns out, methodological naturalism is not at all innocuous. It is not innocuous for at least the following reasons.

First, proving evolution while presupposing naturalism begs the question. It determines beforehand the type of answer that will be acceptable.

Second, the view that all knowledge of the world comes through observing natural phenomena is a presupposition not a conclusion. In order to establish its truth or even its likeliness, arguments must be presented. But far from providing arguments, Darwinians are not usually even aware that they are committed to a controversial epistemological theory. This being the case, modern scientists reveal that they posses just as much faith as the most ardent fundamentalist.

Third, methodological naturalism leads to metaphysical naturalism. If all that will be accepted as knowledge is that which comes from an inquiry that assumes methodological naturalism, there could be no possible ground for anything but metaphysical naturalism. Fourth, naturalism, in either form, cannot be demonstrated by scientific investigation. One cannot prove the truth of naturalism by doing empirical research.

The Debate Realigned

At this point it must be noted that the same objections may be directed against creation-science, mutatis mutandis. Both of these positions, Darwinism and creationism, are worldviews, and as such determine in advance what will and what will not count for evidence. Thus, no amount of evidence can confirm or disprove either position.

The point of all this is not to show that Darwinism is religious – that it presupposes certain things about the world – and is therefore false. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the nature of the case, all outlooks are ultimately religious in nature.

The point is rather that the debate between Darwinism and creationism has been fundamentally misconceived. Darwinians have couched the debate in terms of science versus religion. Creationists have taken the bait and tried to argue that creationism is not based on religion but is itself scientific. What need to be realized is that the debate cannot fruitfully be engaged at either of these levels.

Creationists should concede the point made by the Darwinian that his view is fundamentally religious. After all, the position that the earth was created by God less than 10,000 years ago is based upon the teachings of the Bible. After this concession creationists should then turn around and point out that Darwinism is also religious. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for that gander. And being religious, the debate cannot continue on the level of scientific inquiry.

Ultimately, the debate between creationism and Darwinism is not over scientific evidence, but over mutually exclusive world views. No side wins the debate because no can win the debate at this level. Thus to merely debate the evidence or the “facts” is futile.

This is not an agnostic conclusion, however. Just because there is no way to resolve this matter at the scientific level does not imply that there is no way to resolve it at any level. I am not suggesting that we are left with a relativism that says both sides are correct, given their differing perspectives. Nor am I suggesting that there is no way to determine which perspective (if either) is the correct one. The philosopher Wittgenstein said that when it comes to basic perspectives or world views (he used the term ‘indubitables’) there is no way to determine which is correct. Thus he said that proponents of opposing world views ultimately resort to name-calling, trading off the invectives “fool” and “heretic.” But Wittgenstein was too hasty.

Facts may not determine the fact of the matter. This is why the debate must take place at the worldview level. By means of transcendental reasoning, the answers to the following questions regarding world views should be sought: Is naturalism philosophically coherent? Can it account for human experience? What about Christianity? Is it coherent? Does it provide the necessary preconditions for human experience? Only at this level can the creation-evolution controversy proceed fruitfully.

Cornelius Van Til sums it up this way: “There is oftentimes the need for detailed apologetics, but detailed apologetics must always be fully conscious of its subordinate position. In the argument for and against organic evolution this is sometimes forgotten. The fight on this sector of the front is sometimes waged in such a manner as though the issue could be settled at this place alone and once for all. So also men sometimes fight about the trustworthiness of the Scripture as though the next move of someone’s spade in Palestine could determine everything. Facts, to be sure, are stubborn things, but facts must be interpreted. The philosophy assumed by evolutionists is a far more dangerous thing than the evidence that they bring. Now all facts are interpreted in either of two ways. Men are either Theists or Anti-theists. The whole battle about facts is a mad scramble between these two kinds of philosophies.”

In a future post, I will set out to do two ambitious things. First, I will try to show that the philosophical underpinning of Darwinism, naturalism (in both its methodological and metaphysical forms), is not merely implausible, but demonstrably false. Second, I shall further argue that Christianity provides the necessary preconditions for scientific inquiry. That is, only Christianity can account for physical laws, the uniformity of nature, the reliability of sense experience and other things that are assumed by science.

Before I conclude, one final qualification is in order. That the debate between creation and Darwinism is ultimately over world views and not over this or that piece of evidence does not mean that evidence is unimportant. The fossils don’t speak outside the context of a worldview. But since, as I will argue, the Christian worldview is the only worldview that can account for science, we must interpret the fossils and every other fact from a Christian perspective. This being the case, the fossils turn out to speak after all. What then do they say? At least this much: Evolution – the fossils say no.

Here is a just a brief sampler of some of the topics.

Abortion

Eco is “pro-life” but “doesn’t want to impose” etc. Sees Creationism (as opposed to Traducianism) as allowing for flexibility as to when the human soul is present. Martini appeals to meaning of life as participation in divinity, rather than divine fiat by covenant. Refers to “mother earth” “with all her tremors, fecundity, and breath.” (p. 47).

That intellectual popery must appeal to pantheism to ground a key social position of the church says all that needs to be said there. On the other side, Eco’s appeal to Creationism (thus, ironically, showing more theological acumen as an agnostic than his churchman opponent) is however very weak indeed. At best, Creationism plus a “but who knows when” converts the problem of abortion from “this is homicide” to “this might be homicide.” But this is hardly a solution to one desiring a clear conscience before God.

Role of women

Eco sees scriptural evidence as culture-determined. Can’t understand why women can’t be ordained.

Martini says…Tradition! Earlier justifications have fallen by the wayside, but they were merely culture-bound attempts to explain something that must be profound and divine to have lasted this long in both west and east.

Again, though both parties are confused, at least agnostic Eco is dealing in a theologically coherent category.

Martini’s appeal to tradition as pointing to something “profound and divine” is too convenient. At one time, any given practice that we now, with centuries of hindsight, refer to as tradition was not tradition. The question every traditionalist needs to ask is what the justification of the practice at that earlier point would be.

The hidden premise seems to be that any incorrect practice or belief will eventually die out; consequently, hindsight can be appealed to under the rubric of “tradition” to argue, by modus tolens, that a surviving practice “must be” good, divine, beneficial, or whatever.

Oddly enough, this viewpoint is a kind of conceptual Darwinism. Or we think of Marx, with his prediction that capitalism would die out due to its own contradictions.

There is some truth to the model. However, that it proves divine warrant is a category confusion. A surviving practice might show a propensity to survive certain hostile conditions in a brute way; and that might be all.

Foundation of ethics without God

At length, Martini springs the ethical “nuclear” argument: without God, how do you get to first base with an ethical “ought”?

Eco sees the answer in an ego-other dialectic that is rooted in the ego. The other defines and validates the ego; thus, an other-oriented ethic is inescapable.

However, this confuses “is” with “ought.”  Mix together “this is” and “I prefer” and shake as hard as you like; you will never get an “ought,” as C. S. Lewis and others have pointed out.

The weakness of both men’s arguments on various issues should serve as a confidence-booster to reformed ethicists of presuppositional orientation.