The Presuppositional worldview cannot justify its knowledge claims

The resolution of the debate was “The Presuppositional worldview cannot justify its knowledge claims” and although Hezekiah responded to my contentions he has not rebutted them adequately. Contention 1: In response to this contention, Hezekiah has written: “The Christian claim is that in Christ our reasoning has been restored. As long as we are thinking God's thoughts after him we can be assured that our conclusions are valid and sound. ” Unfortunately this response does not actually deal with the primary problem – if we cannot trust our own autonomous reasoning then we have no means of determining what God could be thinking, nor could we trust that we are measuring our reasoning in accord with God’s thoughts. Another problem with this response is that it’s entirely unclear. What does it mean to ‘think God’s thoughts after him’? Surely God does not think the way human beings think. God is timeless; there is no sequence of thoughts for us to ‘follow’. Another difficulty with this statement of Hezekiah’s is that it excludes one of the major methods of thought that mankind deploys – inferential knowledge. “Inferential knowledge is based on reasoning from facts or from other inferential knowledge such as a theory. Such knowledge may or may not be verifiable by observation or testing. For example, all knowledge of the atom is inferential knowledge. The distinction between factual knowledge and inferential knowledge has been explored by the discipline of general semantics” (1) Being omniscient, God does not derive knowledge from inference – but if our only means of true knowledge is knowledge that essentially mirrors God’s thoughts, then all inferential knowledge is absurd – if this is the case, then Hezekiah cannot appeal to it in order to argue that we can know what the Bible means hermeneutically. In response to Clark’s point that we must interpret scripture, Hezekiah writes: “The bible is clear and self-attesting. Scripture is what God says it is. We believe that over time the church recognized by the leading of God what would be included in the canon. The meaning of scripture can be known by proper biblical hermeunatics. Some questions for Clark are why does he trust his resoning? How does he know if he is reasoning correctly? ” This is hard to follow. On the one hand, Hezekiah asserts that the Bible is self-attesting, on the other he appeals to Biblical Hermeneutics. It cannot be both, since Hermeneutics is: “Biblical hermeneutics is the study of the principles of interpretation concerning the books of the Bible. ”(2) Clearly Hermeneutics then requires us to presuppose that we can trust our autonomous reasoning – otherwise, there would be no interpretation required! Further, Hezekiah merely asserts that the Church created a Canon with God’s help. What reason do we have to believe this though? If the Church fathers could not trust their autonomous reasoning, then how could they determine that it was God doing the leading as opposed to Satan or simple misunderstanding? As to the follow up questions, they are simply red herrings as any answer to them would not refute the proposition under debate. That said, Clark sys: “Every take on Scripture is interpretation - and interpretation is a function (at least partly) of "autonomous" human reason. We may damn reason in some of its restrictive forms, but it is the best (and only tool) that intellectually free human beings have to discover the truth. ”(3) Hezekiah compounds the problem by responding: “Are you familiar with textual criticism? If you are, you would know that not one variant invalidates any major doctrine of Christianity. Even the radical skeptic Bart Erhman admits this. See his debates with James white and Daniell Wallace. Regarding Michael Martins claims, The bible is clear that Christ was crucified, died, burried and raised. So, what specifically is he referring to? ” Since no links were provided, I cannot judge what Erhman’s position is. However, I will point out that Erhman has stated: “Jesus does rise from the dead in Mark’s Gospel. The women go to the tomb, the tomb is empty and there is a man there who tells them that Jesus has been raised from the dead and that they are to go tell the disciples that this has happened. But then the Gospel ends in Codex Sinaiticus and other manuscripts by saying the women fled from the tomb and didn’t say anything to anyone because they were afraid, period. “(4) The ending of Mark, with the resurrection appearances seems very significant to me, contra Hezekiah’s claims. Further, one of the very early schools of Christian thought did contest those "clear" Biblical claims, it was called Gnosticism. “Main Gnostic beliefs that differ from Biblical teachings include: the creator as a lower being [‘Demiurge’] and not a Supreme Deity; scripture having a deep, hidden meaning whose true message could only be understood through “secret wisdom”; and Jesus as a spirit that “seemed” to be human, leading to a belief in the incarnation (Docetism). ” (5) Contention 2: Hezekiah does not tell us what the revelation of the Holy Spirit is. Instead he responds to issue 1 by saying that we must rely on faith alone. This does not absolve Hezekiah since in order to have faith in X, you must be able to know something about X – but Hezekiah rejects this by rejecting autonomous reasoning. We have no way to discern what God’s promises are, what to have faith in, and what God says without being able to trust our own autonomous reasoning. Further, Hezekiah’s notion of faith seems at odds with Bahnsen’s, who writes: “The Christian notion of faith - unlike most other religions - is not an arbitrary leap of emotion, a blind stab of commitment, a placing of the intellect on hold. For the Christian, faith (or belief) is well-grounded. ”(6) In response to issue 2, Hezekiah writes: “No, I don't. God speaks through his word in the bible. I would like for Dena to provide scriptural support for her actions. Specifically, in the new testament. The claim is that God has last spoken to us by Christ. ” As we have seen, Hezekiah cannot appeal to scripture to get him around Dena’s revelation since appealing to scripture presupposes that we can trust our autonomous reason so that we can interpret what scripture says. So clearly this cannot be a method of discerning whether or not Dena’s revelation was false – but if not this then what? How can Hezekiah be certain that his interpretation of scripture is correct in light of Dena’s claim to have a direct revelation from God? Perhaps Hezekiah is being misled in his understanding of scripture in a similar way that the Gnostics were. What means does Hezekiah have outside of reason to support his reading of scripture? Conclusion Hezekiah has refuted my contentions. In his conclusion he affirms my position, that we must presuppose autonomous reasoning prior to anything else, when he says “That if you don't start with God's promises you cannot know anything”, since in order to know what God is promising you must first presuppose that you can trust your own ability to reason. Since I still have some space, I will end on some words by Gary Habermas: “What if, far from judging Scripture, this evidential method was actually taught in Scripture? …. . Over and over again, with the help of several checks and balances, we are told to test God's revelation to us. to be reminded of just a few of these, potential prophets are to be tested according to their own predictions (Deut. 18:21-22). More than once, God gives similar tests to other gods-let them predict the future and bring it to pass so that we may see and know that they are gods (Isa. 41:21 -24; 44:7). ”(7) References: . http://www.debate.org...