My Sheep Hear My Voice: An Argument for the Bible as Necessary Basic Belief, Part 2

If someone asked you why you believe the Bible to be the Word of God, how would you answer? In our last post, we began formulating a response to that question by looking at the traditional and most typical method employed by evangelical Christians, that of classical apologetics. In this post, we will look at a different position, one I find to be more biblically cogent and epistemically satisfying.

The second of the two views is what many refer to as the presuppositional approach. According to Cornelius Van Til (the renowned apologist pictured to the right), “To argue by presupposition is to indicate what are the epistemological and metaphysical principles that underlie and control one’s method.”[1] In other words, this method seeks to discover a person’s ultimate authority, their starting point that makes knowledge possible.

For the presuppositionalist, the Bible is our starting point for knowledge since its area of authority includes that of epistemology (Prov 1:7; Col 2:3, 8). As we will examine later, the Bible makes the claim for its divine authority. This is what is known as self-authentication or self-attestation. John Calvin explained this concept to mean that Scripture “carries with itself its own credibility in order to be received without contradiction, and is not to be submitted to proofs or arguments.”[2]

When a person wishes to validate a testimony or claim, he or she will appeal to a higher authority. However, there is no higher authority than God, as it is written, “For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself” (Heb 6:13).[3] Therefore, the Bible must serve as its own witness.[4] To subject the Bible to external criteria would seem to imply that the criteria were somehow more authoritative or more reliable. Only God is fit to tell us what qualities we should expect in his Word, so a message given by God must serve as its own authority.[5]

The Christian in holding this position should not feel intellectually incompetent, trapped in a circle and forced to arbitrarily exercise faith. Eventually, all worldviews must refer to a self-attesting starting point, if for no other reason than to avoid an infinite regression in seeking validation. Subsequently, in making the case for the authority of the Bible, the Christian should argue the “impossibility of the contrary.” Greg L. Bahnsen explains:

Here the Christian apologist, defending his ultimate presuppositions, must be prepared to argue the impossibility of the contrary—that is, to argue that the philosophic perspective of the unbeliever destroys meaning, intelligence, and the very possibility of knowledge, while the Christian faith provides the only framework and conditions for intelligible experience and rational certainty. The apologist must contend that the true starting point of thought cannot be other than God and His revealed word, for no reasoning is possible apart from that ultimate authority.[6]

In other words, the biblical worldview is the only perspective that from a natural outworking can account for the intelligibility of the universe (i.e., the laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, and morality), something all non-Christian worldviews presuppose but take for granted.

The Christian’s mode of argumentation then takes a two-fold procedure. Proverbs 26:4-5 reads, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” First, the Christian should not answer the fool by attempting to prove the Bible on the unbeliever’s criteria. Otherwise, in accepting the unbeliever’s false presuppositions, the believer will become a fool in his efforts. The case for the Bible should instead be made on its own terms, the same as with testing any worldview. Second, the Christian should answer the fool by providing an internal critique of the unbeliever’s worldview (i.e., “according to his folly”). At this point, the Christian shows that the unbeliever’s assumptions about reality cannot even allow for the possibility of knowledge if followed through consistently.[7]

In later posts, we will look more thoroughly at what it means for the Bible to be considered necessary basic belief. In other words, only God's revelation given in Scripture can suffice as the ultimate presupposition for making sense out of the world. Before we get there, however, we must first establish that the Bible actually claims to be God's Word. Our next post will provide a survey of the Bible's own testimony about its divine authority and inspiration.

This article is the second in a series of posts modified from a research paper submitted by Joshua M. Hayes to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Spring 2009. Part one can be found here.
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Footnotes:

[1]Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2003), 128.

[2]Michael E. Wittmer, Don’t Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus Is Not Enough (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 145. In his footnotes, Wittmer indicates Calvin’s definition for self-authentication is provided only in French translations and not English editions of Institutes of the Christian Religion.

[3]Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), unless otherwise noted.

[4]Brian H. Edwards, Nothing but the Truth: The Inspiration, Authority and History of the Bible Explained (Darlington: Evangelical Press, 2006), 120.

[5]Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Reading and Analysis (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1998), 199.

[6]Greg L. Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith, ed. Robert R. Booth (Nacogdoches, TX: Covenant Media Press, 1996), 72-73.

[7]Ibid., 61-62.