PoMo and Presup

Explaining their Relation

Van Til, Kuyper, and Organicism

Years ago, I encountered a critic of Van Tillian presuppositionalism who argued that presuppositionalism is more or less a Christianized form of postmodernism. I was never a Van Tillian, but I did appreciate the work of some of his acolytes, and so the claim bothered me. How could presuppositionalism be related to postmodernism at all, given that it is an apologetic methodology supported by many Reformed Christians, theologians who are, in many cases, deeply committed to the Reformed creeds and confessions?

I was bothered, if not outright offended, by the claim — that is, until I began looking into Van Tillian presuppositionalism’s roots in Abraham Kuyper. I had known that Kuyper was a source of inspiration for Van Til’s thinking, but I didn’t realize how deeply influenced Kuyper was by his philosophical milieu and not the Scriptures. This was primarily due to the many defenses of Van Til and Kuyper given by their supporters against claims that these thinkers were influenced by philosophical idealism a la G.W.F. Hegel. I initially thought these defenses were a sufficient reply to Kuyper and Van Til’s critics. However, upon reading Kuyper and seeking to understand him in his historical context, I began to see that he was not ushering in a return to the Biblical Worldview, but reacting against what he believed to be the key philosophical and, therefore, cultural problems of his day, and doing so by borrowing from the philosophers of his time.

Like other anti-Enlightenment thinkers, Kuyper viewed its fruit to be political upheaval (via individualism), the oppression of the poor (via “unfettered” capitalism), the devaluation of creation and human life (via metaphysical mechanicism), and the breakdown of traditions. The Enlightenment had taken the living organic whole of creation and broken it down into discrete parts that were only instrumentally connected, whereas reality was actually organically interrelated. In agreement with organicist and Romanticist philosophers like Herder, Schelling, and Hegel, and

…Anticipating a typically postmodern conviction, [Kuyper] concluded that “[the] estrangement from the object of our knowledge is the greatest obstacle in the way to our knowledge of it.”¹

Enlightenment thinking left reality in tattered fragments not only philosophically but, more importantly, religiously and, therefore, socio-politically.

Worldview Thinking as the Way Forward?

As I’ve noted, Kuyper was not alone in viewing the Enlightenment as the root cause of society’s fragmentation. Many thinkers saw this as a problem and sought to address the issue by proposing worldview thinking/analysis as superior alternative to the “mechanistic” and “atomistic” thinking of the enlightenment. Kuyper did the same, all the while attempting to set his thinking apart from the “modernists” of his time (i.e. his contemporaries who had begun to embrace various modern intellectual fads such as evolutionism, higher textual criticism, etc). Kuyper’s turn to worldview thinking, then, marked not a radical departure from the spirit of his times but a Christianization of what was already taking root in the popular culture. Kuyper sought to offer a corrective to the world’s way of engaging in worldview thinking because he believed, as Arie L. Molendijk explains, that “it is the longing for a deeper, more connected view of things that made modernism attractive.”²

Thus,

…Kuyper compares systems of thought (Weltanschauungen) and argues for the superiority of his own system, which in his view evidently is geared to reality, whereas modernism represents a foul compromise with the spirit of the times, based on a superficial understanding of reality.³

The worldview thinking turn is in concord with what one finds in other thinkers of Kuyper’s time who also opposed epistemological foundationalism, and denied the possibility of a truly neutral starting point for human reason. And it anticipates the kind of thinking that would later take place among the postmodernists.

This may be confusing to some, as it was to me, given that Kuyper’s emphasis on “Common Grace” sought to explain how it is that unbelievers can access, articulate, and further explore truths in common with Christians. However, it becomes a little easier to understand when one considers that the fragmentation brought about by postmodernists applies mainly to “metanarratives” (i.e. overarching systematically organized explanatory stories/models found in philosophy, science, and religion), which implicitly affirms a shared human experience of apprehending, analyzing, and theorizing about reality from one’s local, historically ensconced, value-laden position (i.e. humans naturally and universally create “micronarratives”).

In both cases, one’s worldview precedes and grounds one’s apprehension of reality. In both cases, it is one’s worldview that determines what does or does not count as a fact. In both cases, one’s worldview determines what constitutes evidence of one’s claims. And in both cases, one’s worldview determines the parameters of thought whereby one can adjudicate between truth claims.

Beyond Kuyper’s Modernism

Kuyper’s thinking has much in common with the anti-Enlightenment thinkers of his day, including his emphasis on history’s unfolding [or evolution] toward a grand eschatological conclusion. This places him, ironically enough, squarely within the very modernist tradition against which he sought to fight. It also means that Kuyper’s affinities with postmodern philosophy, as well those of his descendants, are not accidental but genealogical.

Kuyper’s philosophy of antithesis between how the non-Christian sees and understands the world, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, how the Christian sees and understands the world avoids relativism by the postulation of “common grace,” and an emphasis on the unfolding of God’s will via his ordinances over every aspect of life. Yet if some manner of foundationalism is denied, then his doctrines reduce to mere assertions that cannot be justified by an appeal to sound arguments (i.e. logically valid arguments employing objectively verifiable true propositions as premises), for reason itself — and, therefore, what one accepts as a fact, what one counts as objective, and what one believes to be the parameters within which the adjudication of truth claims can and must take place — would fall under the jurisdiction of one’s worldview. In such a case, one is not truly avoiding relativism, only postponing it.

Kuyper was inconsistent. The same is not true of his successors, however, whose thinking developed in ways paralleling postmodern philosophy. For instance, in Cornelius Van Til’s book An Introduction To Systematic Theology, the famed philosopher-theologian writes the following —

…Christianity holds that God existed alone before any time existence was brought forth. He existed as the self-conscious and self-consistent being. The law of contradiction, therefore, as we know it, is but the expression on a created level of the internal coherence of God’s nature. Christians should therefore never appeal to the law of contradiction as something that, as such, determines what can or cannot be true.

Ironically, while attempting to make an absolute distinction between the unbelieving worldview and the Christian worldview, a distinction that is derived from idealist philosophy through the writing of Kuyper, Van Til treats logic as a tool subject to worldview, which implies that it is essentially neutral. And as neutral, i.e. flexible and adaptable to one’s worldview as opposed to eternally fixed and representative of reality, the laws of logic do not lead to objective truth but, instead, function in the service of whichever worldview is utilizing them. Thus, later in the same book he claims that —

The more consistently the non-Christian applies the law of contradiction, on his assumptions the more certainly will he reject the doctrine of creation.

Van Til’s successor Greg Bahnsen fleshes this out some more in his book Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended —

The naturalist would consider a supernatural revelation incoherent to a rational system, but the supernaturalist would consider the absence of such revelation incoherent. Yet in all these cases the disputants can agree to the formal law of non-contradiction as a guiding principle. This does not point to any inconsequential nature in logical consistency, nor does it amount to a recommendation of irrationality; but it does demonstrate why [Gordon H.] Clark’s emphasis on the apologetical value of coherence is misplaced. The law of contradiction does not preclude the possibility of many logics!

Bahnsen’s view of logic as subordinate to worldview contradicts reason and Scripture, as well as the entire Christian tradition rooted in Scripture, and has more in common with the godless Continental philosophers against whom he positioned himself.

Thus, although he may not have thought this to be the case, Van Til’s thinking reduces all truth claims — including his own — to skepticism. And given that his truth claims include truth claims about Christianity, as well as his claims about what theology teaches us about truth claims, it reduces these claims to skepticism as well. Van Til makes positive claims about logic being reflective of the nature of God, and he is correct in so doing. However, by subordinating logic to one’s worldview, and unintentionally ironically treating it as inherently neutral, he undermines his own views about logic.

In the end, one is left with systems of thought built upon beliefs that cannot be subjected to logical scrutiny because logical scrutiny always functions in the service of one’s worldview. And this is precisely what postmodernist philosophers claimed of logic. The laws of logic were merely tools used by individuals and groups in the service of their pre-rationally obtained worldviews. For the postmodernist, logic does not and cannot lead one to an understanding of the world as it really is because any such understanding is already loaded with culturally derived presuppositions. One culture may seek to uphold the laws of logic, in accordance with their pre-rationally obtained worldview, while another may seek to deny one or two or all of them.

This is clearly stated by another successor of Van Til, Vern Poythress, who argues the belief that “the laws of logic are common to everyone, whatever his religion” is a “myth.” Following the thinking of Van Til and Bahnsen, he writes —

A Christian knows that the law has its foundation in God’s character and his consistency with himself. God does not contradict himself. By contrast, a non-Christian tends to treat himself as if he were the final standard for what is contradictory.⁴

The idea expressed here is that logic is subordinate to worldview. This is not only logically incoherent, but flies in the face of Scripture. For if the first and greatest commandment is written on the hearts of all men (and it is),⁵ and that commandment entails the proper use of our minds (and it does),⁶ then it follows that all men are onto-logically geared toward this end (and we are).⁷ If one denies that the laws of logic are common to everyone, then one contradicts the Scripture’s teaching on the constitution of man by way of contradicting Scripture’s teaching regarding the chief end of all men — loving God with all of one’s mind and being.

Being vs. Becoming: Is A, A?

For Van Til, the unbeliever’s suppression of the truth in unrighteousness leads him to view God and man as belonging to the same ontological order. The unbeliever does not properly acknowledge the Creator/creature distinction and, consequently, treats God as a creature, and creatures as God. Van Til believed that one of the ways this is evidenced is in Aristotle’s treatment of the law of identity, A is A. Given that God alone is immutable, it should be the case that the law of identity can only properly be used in relation to him. For Van Til, therefore, to assert that the law of identity applies to all things equally, Creator and creature alike, is to implicitly deny the Creator/creature distinction by predicating immutability of that which is mutable.

Vern Poythress fleshes this out some in his book Logic: A God Centered Approach to The Foundation of Western Thought. Like Van Til, he argues that the logician

…attempts to view God and God’s creatures “from above,” from a superior point of view that can capture everything in one grand viewpoint. He hopes to make reasoning work in a uniform way over the whole field. He will have high-level labels that apply equally and uniformly to both Creator and creature.

To do so, he tacitly makes himself superior to God. He has to be superior, in principle, if he is to control precisely the expressions that he will employ in order to determine what can be the case both with the Creator and with the creature. He denies his creaturely status. He also denies the fundamental character of the Creator-creature distinction.⁸

The problem with Poythress’ thinking should be evident to the reader — the only way in which the Creator/creature distinction can be maintained is by utilizing the law of identity in the same way for both the Creator and the creature. Poythress’ view is self-defeating.

Ironically, while Van Til thought he was refuting the Idealism of his day — e.g. the philosophy of Hegel and his successors — he unwittingly gave their view support. If the law of identity only properly applies to God, seeing as God is immutable and self-identical, this implies that creation, as it is mutable, is always in a state of becoming. Now, if creation is always in a state of becoming, then all identity claims made about creation/creatures are inherently unstable. It might be the case that x is y today, but not tomorrow. This position is not only irrational, it contradicts everything in Scripture.

Additionally, it is also self-refuting. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, the postulation of any logical subject presupposes the law of identity, which, in turn, implies metaphysical essentialism.⁹ In identifying x as a creature, one has already principally committed oneself to essentialism, which means that one is affirming that creatures are immutably what they are. Van Til fails to differentiate between God’s immutability — which is underived, uncreated, and necessary — and the immutability of creatures — which is derived, created, and contingent. As a result of this, he winds up affirming a metaphysics of becoming on par with the Idealists he sought to refute, a metaphysics in which identities are in flux and, therefore, are incapable of being properly identified and categorized by logic and language.

Some Concluding Remarks

What is particularly problematic about Van Til’s presuppositionalism is not merely that it is self-defeating, but that it takes precedence over the explicit and implicit teaching of Scripture. God teaches us that he created all things to be what they are; therefore, the law of identity properly applies to all things. The Scriptures teach us that man is not in a state of becoming, but possesses contingent/creaturely being, and this is true even when we consider the glorification of the saints. Yes, we will be changed in the twinkling of an eye, and the mortal shall put on immortality, but this does not change the human into the more than human. Because God created us to be humans, we were, are, and forever will be humans.

God, moreover, does not tell us that logic does not apply to him in the same way that it applies to the created order. Rather, he commands us to reason with him, to consider his ways, to seek him in order to know him. And this is part of the very promise of the New Covenant — Knowledge of God. As Jesus Christ, the Logic of God, states to the Father in John 17:3:

“…this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

If logic does not apply to God in the same manner that it applies to creation, then even the concept of analogical reasoning is rendered meaningless, for analogies rest upon a point of identity between two or more objects.

How does analogical thinking, a la Van Til, apply to the Incarnation? Is Christ the exact image of the Father? The Incarnation demonstrates with remarkable clarity that the Creator and creature are ontologically worlds apart, but can be comprehended by human reason. Van Til’s further comments about the laws of logic, as comprehended by pagan philosophers, being impersonal rules of thought does not lend his case support, moreover, as it betrays his own misunderstanding of logic. The laws of logic are propositions which pre-exist our discovery of them. Propositions are the possessions of minds, persons. The laws of logic, therefore, are immutably personal and cannot be impersonal. The phrase “impersonal laws of logic” is inherently self-contradictory.

Van Til’s thinking, while helpful in some regards (e.g. his emphasis on the aseity of God), does not bear a superficial similitude to postmodern thinking, but echoes many of its same points. Logic is subordinate to worldview. Worldviews are the productions of pre-rational group identities. And in the final analysis, knowledge only properly counts as knowledge if it is received by direct authority, authority that escapes criticism by way of negation, given that language and logic are forever reaching out to grasp an ever-receding horizon of truth.

Brothers, this ought not be.

—h.

1. Oosterhoff, Frederika G. “Postmodernism and the Question of Truth,” Christian Library, https://www.christianstudylibrary.org/article/postmodernism-and-question-truth.

2. “‘A Squeezed Out Lemon Peel.’ Abraham Kuyper on Modernism”, in Church History and Religious Culture, 91.3-4 (2011), 402. (emphasis added)

3. ibid., 411.

4. Poythress, Vern. “5 Myths about Human Reasoning”, The Works of John Frame & Vern Poythress, May 3, 2023, https://frame-poythress.org/5-myths-about-human-reasoning/.

5. cf. Rom 2:14-15.

6. cf. Matt 22:36-38.

7. cf. Gen 1:26-28; Ps 8:4-8; John 17:3.

8

138. (emphasis added)

9. See “Postmodernism is MT Thinking”,