There is more I can say about the presentation I made three years ago at the Unversity of Delaware at Newark, but would save for a personal email exchange. If you are interested let me know.

No offense is taken. A couple of things could be said.

1. I wear hearing aids and they shorted out during my presentation so that really put a damper on interaction. In fact, there was little to none began of this.

2. I have no problem dealing with evidences. However one of the questioners wanted me to posit a standard outside the Bible by which to judge the Bible and there is no such standard.

A few of the critiques that I find compelling, and which lead me to not lean entirely on presuppositionalism are:

1: Most presuppositionalists seem to mistakenly assume that to have the argument first in the order of knowing is to tacitly deny that God is first in the order of being. It does not.

2: Most presuppositionalists seem to confuse knowing something truly and knowing something exhaustively.

3: In their classic debate, Bahnsen denies Sproul the ability to use logic antecedently, yet Bahnsen goes onto do so himself categorically. (Presuppositionalists deny that logic is a valid premise, but any debate or argument requires it).

4: Van Til and Bahnsen are assuming that a worldview and its contrary cannot both be false…”
What this amounts to epistemologically is 1) the transcendental necessity of logic and 2) a path to general theism (not Christian Trinitarian theism, which is no different than the goal of classical apologetics).

5: Most presuppositionalists neglect the much needed scientific and historical arguments for God and for Christ.

To make the point personal from #5, I’d like to say that I was fortunate enough to attend a presentation at my grad school a few years ago where Jeff Waddington gave a presentation using presuppositional apologetics. He was invited by Will Metzger who is a campus minister and I was very excited to attend the event. When Jeff finished, however, he opened up the floor for questions from the audience. Unfortunately, he decided not to answer most of their questions directly or perhaps wasn’t prepared. The questions had to do mostly with proofs for creation, evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, dating of the texts, historical proofs for particular Biblical accounts, and the like.

To me, this lack of evidential backing and/or unwillingness to discuss those topics put a huge damper on the presentation and the outcome of the event.

Let me address just one of the topics that was brought up for discussion – proof for the resurrection. While it is absolutely true that the synoptic Gospels in themselves are proof of the reliabilty of the accounts for the resurrection, I find the extra-biblical evidence even more compelling. especially when sharing with non-Christians.
Some of the authors and writings that have validated the work and life and resurrection of Christ, both inside and outside Christian-friendly circles are: Flavius Josephus, Corenelius Tacitus, Lucian of Samosata, Suetonius, Plinius Secundus, Tertullian, Thallus, the Letter of Mara Bar-Serapion, Justin Martyr, and the Jewish Talmuds — just to name a few. While these are only a small selection of the extra-biblical sources available that provide evidence (even from sources that were extremely hostile to Christianity) it shows the honest among us that only those completely ignorant of history or who willfully suppress the truth can continue to question the historicity of Jesus Christ. There were students in that audience who sincerely wanted an honest answer (and some who were bent on disbelief no matter what). The thing is, if I’m the speaker, I can’t tell the difference, and I should be ready to provide an answer, correct?

At the end of the day, I agree that presuppositionalism is a firm foundation that we must start with, but find that it is not sufficient enough for the work that I do — I simply need more tools in my wheelhouse.

Thank you for reading and I look forward to reading more on Reformed Forum.

In Christ,
Deb Welch