Visionaries,
I appreciate Andy’s use of our sources because I honestly think he is trying to understand what we are saying before critiquing it. And I would just like to add one additional note to his summary of our presuppositional approach, which was generally quite fair.
All finite creatures must have an axiomatic starting point from which to begin their reasoning. That starting point must be assumed or “presupposed” — hence the name “presuppositionalism” for the view that this is what we do in our reasoning. Note that a presuppositionalist is not someone who presupposes a starting point before he reasons; a presuppositionalist is someone who maintains that everyone does this whether they admit that they do or not. Thus, Andy and I both begin our reasoning from an axiomatic starting point.
But does that mean that everything is up for grabs? What then, is the task of Christian apologetics if everyone, Christian and non-Christian, starts from different axioms? I just want to summarize here, and not go into great detail. Those hunting for more on this in presuppositional literature can look for the phrase, “the impossibility of the contrary.”
Suppose Smith presupposes A, and Murphy presupposes G. The impossibility of the contrary would be shown by Smith (for example) concerning Murphy, if Smith demonstrated that all who presuppose G must necessarily affirm
“not G” at some point. This excludes G as a legitimate axiom to start from. And if Smith does this to all the other worldviews around him, but his A cannot be made to reduce to “not A,” then he has shown the impossibility of the contrary.
Put into plain English, C.S. Lewis said it this way in his book Miracles. “You can argue with a man who says , ‘Rice is unwholesome’: but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, ‘Rice is unwholesome, but I’m not saying this is true.'”
Cordially,
Douglas Wilson
Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing these posts (lightly) with intelligibility in mind.