“It’s (presuppositionalism) epistemological brain rot. They (Presuppositionalists) assume a coherence theory of knowledge, which redefines and subjectivizes knowledge, grounding it in your own “worldview” consistency rather than the objective world.
I once asked a staunch presup guy if an unregenerate person can understand the number 4. The response I got: “The unbeliever can’t A C C O U N T for the number four or understand why it is meaningful”. And it does quickly turn into arrogance on the popular level, spraying genetic fallacies in every direction.”
Natural Law Fanboy
1.) Inasmuch as one’s worldview is consistent with and reflective of the objective world I don’t see how this is a problem. Is it the case that our Natural Law Fanboy (NLF) believes that an objective world can be arrived at by beginning with the subjective categories of the fallen self as the epistemological legislating authority?
2.) It is only the Christian presuppositionalist who can have an objective world since the Christian presuppositionalist presupposes that an objective God has created an objective world and made it knowable by an objective revelatory word. The objectiveness of the world can only be obtained as in a presuppositionalist world and life view since only the presuppositionalist is beginning the reasoning process by presupposing an objective God who created an objective world that can be known by objective revelation.
3.) If our unregenerate person in question is a materialist he certainly can’t understand the number 4 since the number 4 is not a material reality. Now, he may well use fourness in any number of ways but his avowed worldview of materialism means that he indeed can’t account for the number 4 that he uses with regularity. If our unregenerate person in question is a spiritualist (believing that all reality is spiritual) then the number 4 is a spiritual reality but then so are the numbers 5 – 9 and every other number and as all is spiritual then any distinctions between any of the numbers is completely arbitrary on the part of our New Age friend.
So, “no,” the unregenerate person cannot “understand the number 4,” though we are glad to concede that the unregenerate person seldom acts consistently with his unregenerate Natural Law world and life view. Because the unbeliever acts inconsistently with his self-avowed world and life view you can find him everywhere fouring and fiving all over the place.
Of course it is Greg Bahnsen himself who said that the unregenerate can indeed count but he cannot account for his ability to count. Bahnsen was correct and I should think that folks dealing with Bahnsen seldom got away with accusing Bahnsen of “spraying genetic fallacies in every direction.”
Of course it is the view of the presuppositionalist that it is the Natural Law types who are the arrogant ones. Here we find folks who are championing the idea that starting from their subjective selves and their fallen minds they can arrive at the objective. But fallen man is like a zero in a multiplication problem. No matter how many other numbers one puts in the equation that 0 is going to make the answer 0.
The fact that fallen man gets right whatever it is he gets right is not explained by fallen man’s native epistemological ability. No, fallen man gets right what he gets right because he surreptitiously borrows from the Christian world and life view in order to get his Christ denying world and life view off the ground and operating.
It reminds us of the old joke Van Til used to enjoy telling.
One day a bunch of scientists came to God and said; “God, we have decided we don’t need you anymore. We have arrived to the point where we can create life and we are now quite done with any need of your services.”
God looked upon them amusingly and said … “Very well then, let us have a contest. You create life and then I’ll create life.”
This was amenable to the Natural Law scientists and so they agreed.
At that point they grabbed some dirt in order to create life whereupon God objected saying… “Oh no you don’t. That is my dirt. You get your own dirt.”
Natural Law fallen man may indeed get things “right” but they only do so by using borrowed capital from a Christian world and life view.
Whose brain is rotting now I wonder?
Are there not more than one ‘Natural Law’ approaches to understanding and explaining the world? I understand Thomas Aquinas used (invented?) a natural law approach to theology and apologetics, which surely included God, and an affirmation of Romans 1:19-20, even if strict materialists could object to it.
Yes…. there is more than one approach to Natural Law and some are less worse than others but none of them should be embraced by a Biblical Christian. The kind of Natural Law that one finds, for example, in Blackstone, is far less bad than one finds in the ancient Stoics. But Thomism and Natural Law was still an attempt to mix fire and ice and is something that the Reformed Church should have ever embraced.
The fact that Natural Law advocates affirm certain things we would agree w/ doesn’t mean they are not involved in contradiction at other points.
“The kind of Natural Law that one finds, for example, in Blackstone, is far less bad than one finds in the ancient Stoics.”
For example, most pagan Stoics could not find reasons to consider sodomy to be “against nature” – and no wonder, since their own founders were said to have had such leanings. And even though the Stoics got reputation as “manly” thinkers, their actual philosophical theory actually made sex or gender seem like a matter of indifference:
https://books.google.fi/books?id=JDtNDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PR2&hl=fi&pg=PA9#v=onepage&q&f=false
“Through a detailed discussion of a wide range of relevant passages in Chap. 4, The Metaphysical Insignificance of Gender, I show that Stoic metaphysics considers gender to be insignificant (adiaphoron). On the level of rationality, which for the Stoics is the most essential human feature, there is no difference between men and women. Furthermore, I scrutinize the position of gender in the categories of Stoic metaphysics, and posit that genderedness should be understood as a “common quality” (koinos poion), in other words, something that all human beings have, but whether one is of a specific gender, for example, a woman, is to be understood as an individual quality (idios poion). According to the Stoics, the reproductive capacity is one of the rational capacities of the human soul, which makes gender appear as comparable to the senses. Thus, one’s gender is as irrelevant for human rationality as, say, eye color is for the sight.”
https://books.google.fi/books?id=JDtNDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PR2&hl=fi&pg=PA203#v=onepage&q&f=false
“I agree with Inwood’s conclusion, since, as I see it, it follows from the doctrine of adiaphora that the gender of the sexual partner is a matter of indifference. Indeed, the sources do not give any clear indication that the Stoic arguments could not apply similarly to both men and women. The general principle of Stoic ethics is that the moral evaluation is directed toward the person’s character, not toward the act itself. A good erotic subject would be able to do the right choices, behave in the right way, and build the right kind of a relationship with his or her partner. This is what matters, not one’s gender, or the gender of the beloved one. ”
The Stoics would agree with MLK Jr.’s slogan that the person’s “content of character” was the ONLY thing that mattered, and unlike Christians, they would not admit that right kind of sexual orientation would be part of proper “character.”
As a matter of fact, the Stoic philosophers (whom Apostle Paul had met on the Mars Hill) provided an almost perfect example of those fallen men described in Romans 1, who “professing to be wise, became fools.” They were men highly admired for their exceptional wisdom and virtue, these Stoic teachers of natural law, and yet they had been unable to recognize a “crime against nature” when it stared them in the face, in the form of pederasty.
https://biblehub.com/commentaries/romans/1-26.htm
“How just the apostle’s reflections are, and how pertinently he has placed this most abominable abuse of human nature at the head of the vices into which the heathen world were fallen, will be seen, if we observe that Cicero, the greatest philosopher in Rome, a little before the gospel was preached, in his book concerning the nature of the gods, (where may be found a thousand idle sentiments upon that subject,) introduces, without any mark of disapprobation, Cotta, a man of the first rank and genius, freely and familiarly owning, to other Romans of the same quality, this worse than beastly vice, as practised by himself; and quoting the authority of ancient philosophers in vindication of it”