Because there is no such thing as neutrality what has come to be called “presuppositionalism” is an inescapable category. The Lord Christ himself gave us the “no neutrality” teaching when He said, “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad.” Personally, I doubt that there is any place that this truth is exhibited more than in apologetics. Because there is “no neutrality” one either gathers with Jesus in their apologetics by presupposing the God of the Bible and His Word or they presuppose man and his autonomous word and so scatter.
“Presuppositionalism” was a word first coined by the enemies of Biblical covenantal apologetics (BCA) and currently those enemies are in fine fiddle. Part of the reason for that, I believe, is the fault of many of those counted among the 2nd generation of Presuppositionalists. Many of these chaps have given Presuppositionalism a black eye because of their support of what is now being called “The Post-War Consensus.” The generation coming behind the first generation of BCA (guys like Andrew Sandlin, Joe Boot, James White, Doug Wilson, etc.) are giving BCA a bad name and making it much harder for those of us who are presuppositionalists to win over some of the younger chaps.
These chaps (45 and younger) are looking at BCA and seeing how its practitioners so often align with the now hated post war consensus (actually post-Enlightenment consensus but let’s not quibble now) and are saying to themselves, “there is no way in Hades that I am going to embrace BCA if that means I have to embrace the Post-War consensus.” As such many of these chaps have taken up a different version of Presuppositionalism called Thomism (or Natural Law theory) where man presupposes Himself as His own epistemological authority and then backfills with Natural Law and the Bible to prove their “Christian” conclusions that were autonomously arrived at and embraced.
I can’t say that I blame folks for rejecting BCA. If I thought that embracing Presuppositionalism meant that I also had to embrace the Post-War consensus with its full throated rejection of Kinism, with its refusal to understand the millennium long contest between Christianity and Jews, with its embrace of the Civil Rights movement, with its insistence that the that the World Wars of the 20th century found the West as the chaps in White hats I also would likely reject BCA and embrace a alternate epistemology (Thomism) if only because of the self-survival instinct.
I find myself in a odd position. You see, because I don’t agree with my generation on the Post-War consensus I find myself on the outside of their clubs. Because I don’t agree with the atrocious Thomism of many of the younger chaps I find myself on the outside of their clubbing. I am a flag with no country it seems — Anti-post-War consensus/ pro presuppositionalism.
Still, Thomism and it’s Natural Law philosophy has serious problems and is completely unbiblical. I hope to demonstrate some of those problems and the non-Biblical nature of Thomism. However, before doing so let me say again that Thomism does not escape being labeled as a presuppositional approach. As I suggested at the outset above the question is never “if presuppositionalism” but only “which presuppositionalism.” Will we have a presuppositionalism that presupposes God and His authoritative Word or will have a presuppositionalism that presupposes man and his autonomous word?
On this point much hinges on the truth of the sensus divinitatis. This Calvin affirmed against Aquinas.
“There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity (divinitatis sensum). This we take to be beyond controversy. To prevent anyone from taking refuge in the presence of ignorance, God Himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of His divine majesty. Ever renewing its memory, he repeatedly shed fresh drops.” (Institutes)
The sensus divinitatis teaches that all mankind knows God because man, being made in God’s image, cannot escape knowing God. This is true just as a fingerprint, if animated, could not deny knowing the existence of a finger. The fact that man knows God at a ontological level but suppresses that knowledge via the use of his fallen epistemology is taught in Romans 1:18f.
8 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who [d]suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of God is [e]manifest [f]in them, for God has shown it to them.20For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and [g]Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
The truth that man, in his ontological reality can’t escape knowing God when combined with the truth that man uses his epistemological tools/abilities to deny and suppress what he can’t escape knowing intuitively means that all fallen men are, at the core of their being, walking contradictions who spend their lives reinforcing and nursing their contradictions so as to not be dragged into the sunlight of God’s reality.
The sensus divinitatis simply defined embraced three over-lapping truths;
1.) All people know God truly and will be judged, at last, on the basis of that knowledge (Rmns. 1:18-20).
2.) Knowing the true God genuinely includes the fact that all people without exception know God’s righteous judgment (1:32)
3.) Because of the radical effects of sin all people, apart from Christ, suppress the knowledge of God and His requirements (1:21-32).
Aquinas rejected this sensus divinitatis arguing instead that while God is known in a generic sense to man He is not known in a specific sense and in order to be known in a specific sense the proposition ‘God exists’ “needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us, though less known in their nature — namely, by effects.”
Quoting Aquinas even more fully on the matter;
“Therefore, I say that this proposition, ‘God exists,’ of itself is self evident, for the predicate is the same as the subject; because God is His own existence as will be hereafter shown (Q. III., A. 4). Now because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition is not self evident to us“but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us, though less known in their nature — namely, by effects.”
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I q.2 a.1 resp.
And Again,
“On the contrary, no one can mentally admit the opposite of what is self-evident; as the Philosopher … states concerning the first principles of demonstration. But the opposite of the proposition “God is” can be mentally admitted: The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God (Ps. Lii. 1). Therefore that God exists is not self-evident.”
Summa Theologica, Volume 1, Question 2, Article 1
The demonstrations that Aquinas speaks of above are necessary because Aquinas denies the sensus divinitatis taught in Romans 1:18-32. Per Aquinas, there is no divinely implanted knowledge of the specific God of the Bible in fallen man and so fallen man isn’t suppressing the truth in unrighteousness because that specific God and His specific invisible attributes are not clearly seen and so there is the need for a demonstration, via appeal to Natural law with its arguments for God’s existence (Efficient Cause, Gradation, Necessary being, Design, Motion) in order for fallen man with his not so fallen mind to conclude that God is.
That this conclusion is not unique to me is seen by quoting Gordon Haddon Clark;
Thomas faced two other contrasting views. One is that the existence of God is self-evident and neither needs nor is susceptible of proof from prior first principles. Those who hold this view argue that God has implanted in all men an elemental knowledge of himself. The idea of God is innate. On this showing any argument or so-called proof could be nothing more than a clarification of already present ideas; and such in effect was the nature of Augustine’s, Anselm’s and Bonaventura’s attempts. Now, in one sense Thomas is willing to admit that God’s existence is self-evident: it is self-evident in itself, it is self-evident to God; but it is not self-evident to us. God has not implanted ideas in the human mind, and all knowledge must be based on sensory experience.”
Gordon H. Clark
Thales to Dewey, 272-273.
All of this reveals Aquinas’ weak view of sin and its devastating effects on man while at the same time revealing high views of man’s noetic abilities post-fall. Something that is anathema to the principles of the Reformed, even if many of the Reformed were not as consistent on this point as we might have hoped.
We must interject here that even though we are quoting from a long dead theologian (1225 – 1274) Aquinas lives through his disciples…. disciples today and disciples throughout Reformed Church history. There can be little doubt that the views of Aquinas were embraced by much of the Reformed Church through the centuries. That should not surprise us since nobody has ever claimed that there isn’t yet more light to shine forth from Scripture. The weakness of the position of Aquinas took some centuries to reveal but with the advent of the 19th and 20th century Aquinas came to be incrementally challenged. Men like Bavinck, Kuyper, Dooyeweerd, Vollenhoven, Zuidema, Van Til, Gordon H. Clark, Schaeffer, Bahnsen, were raised up by God to bring a consistency to the Reformation that heretofore had been missing when it came to the subject of epistemology. That is not to say that all these men were in agreement, nor that they were all as consistent as they might have been but it is to say that they were all reaching for a consistency with Scripture that Thomism or Scottish Common Sense Realism were missing.
Interesting in all this, Biblical Covenantal Apologists may well use the arguments for God’s existence that have been relied upon by the Thomists. However, the presuppositionalists argue that those arguments only work if one first presupposes the God of the Bible and that they will fail every time if used without presupposing God. This is due to the fact that for presuppositionalists God is the precondition of all intelligibility and if God is not presupposed then the only precondition for intelligibility that is left is the mind of fallen man and the presuppositionalists argue that any god that is reasoned to as starting with the epistemological authority of man as the basis, by definition cannot be the God of the Bible, since any god arrived at sitting upon the foundation of fallen man’s naked epistemological ability is naught but “man said loudly.” We see then that while both BCA and Thomists might use Natural Law arguments to argue for God’s existence Thomists use these argument with man as the precondition for all intelligibility while presuppositionalists make these argument with God as the precondition for all intelligibility. They are therefore the same arguments in form but not in substance. Likewise they are both presuppositional arguments with the difference only being which God is being presupposed — the God of the Bible or fallen man as God.
Now, what are the implications of this so far.
1.) Thomism denies the noetic effects of the fall
For Thomism the mind of man retains the ability to reason its way to God in light of Natural Law type arguments that presuppose the ultimacy of man’s fallen mind.
2.) Thomism denies the Reformed doctrine of total depravity
Here, what Thomists do in order to justify themselves, is that they try to insist that the BCA is advancing a doctrine of utter depravity vs. total depravity. This is smoke to hide their denial that fallen man knows the specific God of the Bible. The very fact that those who hold to total depravity embrace the sensus divinitatis vis-a-vis the Thomist “theology” substantiates the BCA abhorrence of the miscreant doctrine of utter depravity. It is precisely because man is not utterly depraved that explains why he is responsible for his rebellion against and suppression of what he ontologically intuitively knows but epistemologically rationally suppresses.
3.) Thomism is a return to Aristotle’s prioritizing of sensory or empirical evidence over the earlier Augustinian emphasis on innate ideas.
Thomism cannot exist apart from a robust empiricism. The Thomist theory of knowledge depends upon a-posteriori categories and reasoning and as such fits well into Enlightenment era thinking that dominated the West from the late 17th century through the early 19th century. Now there is a push to resurrect this Enlightenment era thinking.
For example, in 1984 influential Reformed men R. C. Sproul Sr., John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley could write;
“We suggest that classic Reformed orthodoxy saw the noetic influence of sin not as direct through a totally depraved mind, but as indirect through a totally depraved heart.”
Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics — p. 243
The problems with this are stunning as coming from putatively Reformed men. First of all there is a problem of suggesting that in Scripture the heart and mind refer to different organizational points in a man. More often than not in Scripture heart and mind are synonyms (i.e. — “As a man thinketh in his heart so he is.”) Second of all we find a outright denial here that fallen man’s mind is totally depraved, instead preferring to find the real noetic villain being a indirectly arrived at totally depraved heart (whatever that could possibly mean).
The influence of Aquinas on Sproul, Lindsley and Gerstner (hereafter SLuG) is manifest. Elsewhere in the same book they write;
“In Romans 1:20, Paul is affirming that humans can in fact move from the phenomenal realm to the noumenal realm…. the method of knowing is mediate, or inferential, indicating the rational power to deduce the necessary existence of the invisible from the perception of the visible.”
However, that is decidedly not what St. Paul is affirming in Romans 1:20. In point of fact SLuG here has put Roman 1:2o on its head to make it say the exact opposite of what it does say. The point of Romans 1 is not to teach fallen man what he can accomplish in moving from the phenomenal realm to the noumenal realm via a mediate/inferential knowing. The point of Romans 1 is that what we can’t help knowing because we are God’s fingerprint we deny/suppress knowing because we are fallen and hate God with all our minds. The sensus divinitatis is present but we tear ourselves apart in order to deny it.
(Inserting a slight rabbit trail here — this explains the whole sodomy/trannie movement as our sexuality is closely bound up with man as God’s Image. The work of the pervert class of people in denying/suppressing their sexuality are living out the inherent contradiction between what they ontologically know to be true [maleness or femaleness] but epistemologically will not consent to be true.)
SLuG offers what they think is their coup de grâce to Van Til and presuppositionalism by writing;
“But people do not necessarily consider themselves in opposition to God, whose existence they do not even know at the outset. They do not necessarily deny the divine being as Van Til insists they do. People do not assert their autonomy against an initially known God as Van Til insist that they do. They simply operate according to human nature.”
This is pure Thomism and in this denial of the Reformed doctrine of total depravity these men and those more recent polemicists against presuppositionalism (Fesko, Mathison, Mueller, Stephen Wolfe, etc.) what we find (politely speaking) is an abandoning of the whole structure of the Reformed faith in favor of a Arminian / Roman Catholic anthropology and theology. We hasten to add that we do not doubt for a second that there is in these men and those who have embraced this “theology” a felicitous inconsistency that finds them as being “Reformed” and “Biblical” at other points in the Reformed theological constellation but at this point the serious student and practitioner of Reformed theology scratches their head and asks, “How can you chaps say you’re Reformed while building, at the very beginning, a foundation that is so anti-Reformed — a foundation that contradicts everything you will now proceed to build upon it?”
We are currently is a time of great instability in Christ’s Church in the West. Many are those who see the problems but seeing the problems and offering a way out are not the same. Right now, Stephen Wolfe (a man who has gone out of his way to emphasize that he is not a theologian) is decidedly Thomist in all of his reasoning and though Wolfe can arrive at conclusions I agree with his methodology for arriving at those conclusions insure that whatever is built on that methodology will suffer from the non-Biblical methodology that it is built upon. After all, it is not as if Natural Law and Thomism hasn’t been tried. In point of fact it has been weighed in the balance of history and found wanting. It collapsed because the inconsistencies of it was seen. Do we really believe that a Protestant Christendom will be built with the Thomistic building material of Roman Catholicism?
On the other hand presuppositionalists (Sandlin, Boot, White, Wilson, etc.) need to realize that many of the post-war consensus conclusions that they are supporting with their alleged Christian presuppositionalism and Christian Worldview suck big time. If the Thomists are suckling off the teat of Natural Law theory the current crop of presuppositionalists are suckling off the teat of classical liberalism (Libertarianism) as massaged and manipulated by Cultural Marxism. The foundational presuppositions of both of these schools leave me feeling nauseated.
If I live to be 90 I have 25 years left. Maybe we will get out of this morass before then.