Whitney, Donald S

A DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD The United States of America is an anti-Christian nation that claims to value “tolerance” above all else. Webster’s Dictionary defines “tolerance” as “a fair and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one’s own.”1 But, the cultural connotation has nothing to do with “fairness,” and everything to do with “permissiveness.” In fact, permissiveness is a rough synonym for the contemporary meaning of tolerance, but even that does not exhaust it since a “tolerant” person tolerates everyone except for the intolerant. Hence, anyone who believes and applies absolutes is ridiculed for his backwardness. Our culture of “tolerance” grows out of a modern and allegedly scientific world-view becoming increasingly consistent with itself. The intellectual elites realize that philosophical naturalism provides no ultimately authoritative basis for absolute laws of any kind. Thus, philosophical justification is available for abortion-on-demand, active euthanasia, cloning, homosexuality, divorce, serial marriage, and a host of other immoral practices. On top of it all, the Bible is laughed out of “serious” discussions, the doctrine of the Resurrection is believed to be a relic that should be rejected as a fairy tale from a “pre-scientific” era, and the gospel itself is dismissed as foolishness. How are Christians to confront this growing anti-Christian consensus of American culture? How are Christians to think about and respond to the world-view bombarding us every day through every medium? If we want to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively to this generation, then the idol of our culture, autonomous human thought, must be discredited. The 1 Robert B. Costello, ed., Webster’s College Dictionary (New York: Random House, 1991), s.v. “Tolerance.” 1 2 Bible is clear. Christians are to be “always ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence” (1 Pet 3:15).2 The Greek term translated “defense” in this verse is a)pologi/on, apologion, from which we get the term “apologetics.” It indicates a “speech of defense.”3 The word “referred to a defense made in the courtroom as part of the normal judicial procedure.”4 Almost all Christians agree that Scripture requires us to give a reasoned defense of the faith, but they often disagree about exactly how we should go about it. The transcendental argument for the existence of God should attract special attention in methodological discussions for two reasons. First, apologists who use it sometimes claim that the transcendental argument does a better job of proving God’s existence than other arguments. Second, this particular argument has never been widely studied or employed. Subsequent pages will defend the thesis that the transcendental argument for the existence of God is a valid argument, and criticisms leveled against it are not sufficient to refute it. It will not be argued that what has been called “Reformed Apologetics”5 is its only right expression. Furthermore, C.S. Lewis and Van Tilian apologists will be the primary sources of information about it. The goal is to describe and analyze the essence of the transcendental apologetic, which is not necessarily limited to any apologetic school. The Transcendental Argument For The Existence of God Before looking at the form and content of the argument, an historical survey will provide an important backdrop and help to highlight the causes of its development. 2 All quotations of the Bible are taken from the NASB translation. 3 Walter Baur, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, ed. And trans. Frederick W. Danker, Wiliam F. Arndt, and F. Wilber Gingrich [BDAG], 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. “a)pologi/a.” 4 Kenneth D Boa, and Robert M. Bowman Jr., Faith Has Its Reasons: An Integrative Approach to Defending Christianity (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 2001), 17. 5 Ibid., 57. 3 Historical Background In order to appreciate how the transcendental argument for the existence of God came about, a general understanding of the philosophies of David Hume and Immanuel Kant is necessary. These men were giants in the field of philosophy, and their thoughts have continuing impact upon the world. Hume was a “pure” empiricist; that is, he sought to formulate philosophy on the basis of sensory experience alone. In an attempt to avoid the implications of Hume’s philosophy, Kant introduced a corrective to Hume’s radical empiricism. David Hume (1711-1776) was primarily concerned with epistemology. That means his thought revolved around the question, “How is knowledge possible?” Hume denied the possibility of knowing the reality of rationally necessary beliefs such as causal relations, the external world, and the “self,” but he did not deny their actual existence. According to Ronald Nash, professor of philosophy, “Hume showed that neither reason nor experience is sufficient to ground a knowledge of these matters.”6 Hume thought that the “pure” reason of the Enlightenment is fundamentally unable to prove any these things, but he affirmed that they should be accepted anyway. So, on the one hand, Hume affirmed the appropriateness of believing in causal relations, the external world, and the “self” apart from “proof,” but on the other hand, he denied that “proof” of these things is possible. This disconnection between beliefs that are necessary for reason and the beliefs reason itself can prove is called, “Hume’s Gap.”7 Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was deeply influenced by the philosophy of David Hume, but he rejected Hume’s conclusion that rationally necessary beliefs are not provable. So, he asked himself the question, “What would be a sufficient grounding precondition of these rationally necessary beliefs?” Kant believed he could reason “backwards” from “meaning” to the 6 Ronald H. Nash, Life’s Ultimate Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 255. 7 Ibid., 256. 4 preconditions of meaning. He called this the “transcendental method.”8 Kant’s answer to the “transcendental question” was that the mind must contain a priori categories of its own to make sense of the world. Without abstract structures (categories, laws) by which to filter all sensory experience, nothing can be intelligible.9 So, Kant reasoned that the human mind must possess these structures in and of itself. The human mind must be its own “law.” John Frame says: Kant saw, of course, that none of this could be proved in the usual sense of proof. He adopted what he called the “transcendental method,” which seeks to determine the necessary preconditions or presuppositions of rationality. He reached his conclusions concerning human autonomy not by proving them by the usual philosophical methods, but by showing our need to presuppose them. Kant’s philosophy; therefore, does not merely assert or assume human autonomy, as did many previous philosophies; it explicitly presupposes human autonomy. It adopts human autonomy as the root idea to which every other idea must conform. That is what makes Kant unique and vastly important: he taught secular man where his epistemology must begin, his inescapable starting point for all possible reflection.10 The hard consequence of Kant’s theology is that nothing is knowable as it is but only as the mind perceives it. Nash says, “Hume had his gap; Kant had his wall. Kant’s system had the effect of erecting a wall between the world as it appears to us and the world as it is.”11 In other words, “Knowledge of any reality beyond the wall, which includes the world of things in themselves, is forever unattainable.”12 In this way, true knowledge of reality becomes impossible. Therefore, Kant’s solution via the “transcendental method,” did not succeed in grounding knowledge of reality. It merely offered an explanation as to how and why the mind perceives things as it does. Various Christian apologists picked up on Kant’s transcendental method and turned it into an argument for the existence of God. The transcendental argument purports to give an answer to Hume’s “gap” by means of Kant’s “transcendental method,” while avoiding his “wall.” 8 John Frame, Van Til’s Apologetic: An Analysis of His Thought (Philipsburg: P&R, 1995), 45. 9 Nash, Life’s Ultimate Questions, 260-261. 10 Frame, Van Til’s Apologetic, 45. 11 Nash, Life’s Ultimate Questions, 265. 12 Ibid., 265. 5 Transcendental apologists affirm that Hume was right about the limitations of human reason, and argue that without God, both knowledge and ethics are impossible. The Nature, Form, and Content of the Transcendental Argument for God’s Existence The transcendental argument for God’s existence is both negative and positive. Negatively, it rebukes human autonomy by declaring that the human mind alone is unable to justify or ground fundamentally necessary beliefs. Positively, the transcendental argument says that knowledge is only possible if one accepts that God exists and that He is the absolute authority. In this way, transcendental apologetics sees the apologetic task as a battle over the nature of ultimate authority. Van Til said, “Either one thinks in terms of the authority of Scripture, making reason and all its activities subject to this authority, or else one acts and thinks on one’s own ultimate authority.”13 The transcendental argument both attacks the human autonomy established by Kant and asserts the authority of God. Often, the argument is misunderstood to insist that because unbelievers do not have a “God belief,” they cannot know anything. But, what the argument actually says is that there is no way for an unbeliever to ground his thinking and knowledge, given his worldview.

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