Three sources have come to my attention in the last two days about the role of reason and presuppositions. One is an article by Keith Mathison about Cornelius VanTil found here. In it he says:
“The call to presuppose God and the call to presuppose Scripture both presuppose a “presupposer” with the ability and rational tools needed to presuppose something. In other words, both of Van Til’s calls presuppose the human being and his rational faculties as well as the laws of reason.”
The second is a book by Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley titled “Reformed Systematic Theology.” In it they say that the existence of God is rightly presupposed because of the testimony of creation and conscience (pg 261).
A third was a short video with John Lennox at an RZIM event. He was answering a question about whether science is a problem for Christianity. His reply was about God’s two books, and he said that we use reason to read the book of nature and we also use reason to read the book of scripture.
I am already thinking about this subject because of my sabbatical research, so I am predisposed to notice these topics. It is important that Mathison brings up the laws of reason. I use the phrase laws of thought. And it dovetails with Lennox in that we think about both general revelation and special revelation. It isn’t as if we leave reason and thinking behind when we open scripture.
But what about the claim that it is right to presuppose the existence of God because of the witness of general revelation? The word “presuppose” there could be problematic. It might be that God’s existence is presupposed in some contexts. But it cannot be the most basic presupposition if it is itself the outcome of arguments from general revelation. Knowledge of the existence of God presupposes these arguments. And arguments presuppose reason.
Surrendra Gangadean, in his book “Philosophical Foundation,” argues that thinking is presuppositional. This is to say that we think about more complex things in light of more basic things. We begin with the abc’s and move on to reading and literature. This is seen in any discipline. And if we encounter a disagreement we can trace it back presuppositionally to where it began.
Thinking itself presupposes reason. Reason in itself is the laws of thought. We use reason to form thoughts. To critically analyze for meaning. To interpret a text or experience. To construct a worldview. To say that reason is part of human nature is not to say that human reasoning is set up autonomously against God. This is a confusion of reason itself and the often fallacious human thought process. There are laws of thought, and these are used to understand God’s revelation.
So in the discussion about how to understand presuppositions it is necessary to first identify presuppositions as beliefs. And beliefs are formed by reason as the laws of thought. From there we can work to identify which beliefs about what is real are the most basic and which are less basic. Our belief about God as the only eternal being and creator of all else may indeed be basic to the rest of our thinking about reality. But even then we form this belief by using the laws of thought. Beliefs about God presuppose reason.
In this way we can agree with Gangadean and see the insight in saying that basic things about God and man and good and evil are clear to reason.