Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith

The battle that rages for the souls of men is nothing less than a fight between worldviews. The Christian worldview is under attack from many angles and in "Always Ready: Directions for Defending The Faith," Dr. Greg Bahnsen demonstrates that all worldviews, even the attacks issued from them, presuppose and require the Christian worldview (for a recent and expanded application of presuppositional apologetics see: God Does Exist!). Competing philosophical paradigms must utilize the epistemic and moral pre-essentials that only Christianity can furnish (laws of logic, immutables, universals, moral law, mathematics, uniformity of nature, etc.). Bahnsen's essay in chapter six: "God's Self-Attesting Authority" is worth the price of the volume. Other chapters include: - The Robbery of Neutrality - The Nature of Unbelieving Thought - Revelation as The Foundation of Knowledge - A Two-Fold Apologetic - Answering a Fool - Ready to Reason. The intelligibility of human experience requires the God of the Bible. Christianity is the only worldview that provides human reason an unchanging foundation for knowledge. All non-Christian systems of thought fail to furnish a foundation for the law of non-contradiction. Thus they cannot provide the footing for knowledge. They can only offer a capricious and incongruous worldview. Unless one believes in God's revealed word, you cannot account for anything in the universe. God is the underlying and infinite ground for all knowledge, proof, evidence, and logic. It is impossible for God not to exist. He is the precondition for all knowledge because all human knowledge requires the use of the laws of logic. The omniscient, immaterial, and unchanging God alone provides the necessary preconditions for the use of immaterial, universal, and unchanging laws of logic. To argue at all, you must presuppose that the true God lives because you must use logic. Non-believing thought cannot supply the necessary preconditions for the laws of reason, thus they fall into futility because of the internal contradictions that entangle them. Therefore the contrary of Christianity is impossible since all non-Christian worldviews fall into absurdity. They are self-refuting. They lead to conclusions that contradict their own foundational assumptions. Without the triune God, there cannot be knowledge, and nothing can make sense. The author delivers a powerful answer to the problem of evil while integrating pastoral concerns for those personally touched by pain and suffering (pages 163-175). And Bahnsen powerfully and artfully defends the case for miracles as well as the problem of religious language. Bahnsen's refutation of Bertrand Russell is outstanding and compelling as he demonstrates the Russell fell into numerous logical fallacies and was refuted by his own errors (pages 153-160). Bahnsen argues that the "position of biblical presuppositionalism is an affirmation of the clarity and inescapability of ... revelation" (p. 38). Additionall

I read "Always Ready" for the first time a couple of years ago in seminary, I instantly knew that I whole heartedly agreed with the author's (Greg Bahnsen) premise and his conclusions. "Always Ready" is a book about Apologetics (the defense of the Christian faith). It approaches this discipline from a presuppositional standpoint. Admittedly, this is not a book for beginning theologians. White it is written in an easily understandable fashion, the concepts which Bahnsen introduces are somewhat advanced for the average Christian today. Bahnsen's basic argument is that apologetics must be conducted in a manner that brings the unbeliever's presuppositions into conflict with the biblical world view. He does so by means of the transcendental argument. This argument states that without a Christian Theistic worldview nothing is possible. In other words, all other world views eventually refute themselves and are even unable to account for themselves. The unbeliever must, in essence, borrow from the Christian Theistic worldview in order to make sense of morality, metaphysics, the laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, etc. This may sound very confusing, so let me see if I can briefly summarize. Bahnsen is saying that every person approaches life with a certain set of unargued beliefs. These unargued beliefs are what allows this person to interpret life. The believer comes already assuming the existence of God, the goodness of God, etc. The unbeliever comes assuming that God does not exist. Both the believer and the unbeliever have unargued beliefs. The job of the Christian apologist is to demonstrate to the unbeliever that his unargued belief cannot account for itself and are self-refuting. For example, the unbeliever may say that he does not believe in moral absolutes in order to justify having an affair, participating in illegal activities, etc. However, when asked about what happened on September 11th, he immediately decries that despicable act of terrorism in moral outrage. The problem is that he does not have a basis for this moral outrage. Having denied moral absolutes, there is no reason for him to be upset about another person's act of terrorism, or murder, or worse. He must borrow from the Christian theistic worldview, where absolute morality is determined by an absolute moral judge, in order to account for his sense of moral outrage at an act of terrorism. Bahnsen is saying that the job of the apologist is to demonstrate how the Christian Theistic worldview is the only one which is able to make sense of this moral outrage. What this means is that it's not enough for the Christian to present a series of isolated facts and hope to somehow convince the unbeliever of the reasonableness of Christianity, what is needed is an all out assault on the unbelievers worldview in order to bring them to acknowledge their need for God and to turn to Christ in repentance. This is just a small example of the ground Bahnsen covers, but I hope it gives a flavor

Greg Bahnsen was scholar in residence at the Southern California Center for Christian Studies. He earned his M.Div and ThM simultaneously from Westminster Theological Seminary and did his PhD on epistemology (the theory of knowledge) from USC under Dallas Willard. Bahnsen's mind is razor sharp. He is the foremost representative of Van Tillian presuppositionalism. Sadly, the Lord took him at age 47, due to a heart condition. Always Ready (274 pp) is an excellent introduction to apologetics. Bahnsen spends a lot of time on epistemology and the need for a truly Christian theory of knowledge. He writes, "One must be presuppositionally committed to Christ in the world of thought (rather than neutral) and firmly tied down to the faith which he has been taught, or else the persuasive argumentation of secular thought will delude him. Hence the Christian is obligated to presuppose the word of Christ in every area of knowledge; the alternative is delusion" (5)....God's Word (in Scripture) has absolute authority for us and is the final criterion for truth" (24). The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This fact is important for believers today as postmodern epistemology can be detrimental to the gospel. Bahnsen argues persuasively throughout the book, showing the only biblically faithful apologetic is presuppositional. God's authoritative, self-attesting Word must be the starting point for all apologetics. Neutrality is impossible, and immoral. The book also has several very practical (and theoretical) examples of how to show the unbeliever the foolishness of unbelief. Following Van Til, Bahnsen argues transcendentally for the Christian faith, showing the impossibility of the contrary. Christian theism is the precondition for intelligibility. Anti-theism presupposes theism. Quotes: "In answering the fool a Christian apologist must aim to demonstrate that unbelief is, in the final analysis, destructive of all knowledge" 57 "Effective apologetics necessarily leads us to challenge and debate the unbeliever at the level of his most basic commitments or assumptions about reality, knowledge, and ethics. Our approach to defending the faith is shallow and ineffective if we think that the unbeliever simply lacks information or needs to be given observational evidence." 120 "The proof that Christianity is true is that if it were not, we would not be able to prove anything." 122

As an advocate of presupposionalism and fan of the late Dr. Greg Bahsnen, I greatly appreciate this book, and must also admit that this school of apologetics is widely misrepresented. And one should not be surprised to find an atheist disagreeing with this method. After reading the book and the most recent review below, apparently Paul Doland has failed to evaluate this work as "best as possible." This book is an excellent example of defending the faith in a presuppositional manner. And Dr. Bahsnen is the guy to turn to if one is looking for a man with explanatory skills, and a faithful student of Van Til. In the book he uses this skill and his Vantilian training to do what Donald said he doesn't. Doland says he just asserts that non-Christian worldviews are self-contradictory, but does not offer proof. But Bahsnen does demonstrate that all other worldviews cannot make sense of ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology; they suffer from arbitrariness and/or inconsistency. The things that Bahnsen suggests are to be received as "self-evident" (though I don't think he used that phrase) are final authorities. Bahnsen says that one's final authority is self-authenticating, or self-attesting, in the nature of the case. One can't go behind his final authority (A) to authorize it with B: in that case B would be the final authority. So this is a misreading and misunderstanding of Bahnsen's claims. And, by the way, Bahnsen's example of Jesus' word being self-authenticating is both what scripture teaches as well as an example of a self-authenticating, highest authority (scripture, or God's Word). The quote by Bahsnen on page 63 in Doland's post is true. Christ demonstrated to his followers that they must have a revelational epistemology: they must start with God's revealed word as the self-authenticating [not "self-evident"; there is a linguistic difference], and indisputable starting point. So I'm not sure whether the reviewer's point is a criticism of Bahnsen's exegesis or just simply a piece of ridicule of our Lord's claim. Doland, Bahnsen, and every person have worldviews that contain presuppositions which are final authorities used for interpreting and interrelating every aspect of knowledge and experience. An atheist's belief in materialism (as well as the Christian's view of Scripture's authority) is a presuppositional claim about the universe which is not established by the methods of natural science. However, the atheist's worldview, as Bahsnen shows, cannot account for logic, science, morality, etc. The Christian worldview does. Bahnsen's ultimate claim (from the mass of his work in this area) is that if you want to be rational (and thus salvage epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, etc) you must be a Christian: you must have a worldview that provides the pre-conditions of human experience and intelligibility. So what is amazing is not that Bahsnen has a Ph.D., but that non-Christians hold their terminal degrees.

Greg Bahnsen's book, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith, a collection of classroom materials and articles, makes many of the difficult concepts of Biblical apologetics accessible to believers who never went to seminary. One of the greatest minds in evangelical scholarship in the twentieth century, Bahnsen interpreted, popularized, and made practical the groundbreaking work of Cornelius Van Til in what is known as presuppositional apologetics. The book under discussion lays the Biblical foundation of apologetics and gives direction for engaging in discussion with unbelievers. The popular view of apologetics suggests that believers find common, neutral ground with unbelievers in order to convince them of the plausibility of Christianity. In contrast, Bahnsen's basic contention is that believers must maintain the same Scriptural foundation in their encounters with unbelievers as they do in all theological discussion. Bahnsen begins by dispelling the idea that neutral ground exists between believers and unbelievers. When a believer seeks "neutrality," he surrenders "his distinctive religious beliefs" with the result that he becomes "impotent in [his] witness, aimless in [his] walk, and disarmed in [his] battle with the principalities and powers of this world" (4). In contrast, all knowledge and wisdom are found only in Christ (Colossians 2:3), who is the believer's Lord even in the intellectual realm. Believers must have a correct understanding of the thinking of the unbeliever, who "have a vain mind and a darkened understanding" (Ephesians 4:17-18) (12). Bahnsen asserts, therefore, "from the fact that God is the sovereign Creator of heaven and earth, from the fact that the world and history are only such as His plan decrees, from the fact that man is the creaturely image of God, we must conclude that all knowledge which man possesses is received from God, who is the originator of all truth and the original Truth" (24). Thus, neutrality is nothing but a myth. Bahnsen then addresses common arguments against presuppositionalism. Rather than arrogance, believers must maintain a "humble boldness" when dealing with unbelief (36). Also, while an unbeliever would indeed be totally incapable of knowledge of anything if he were consistent with his worldview, he is actually able to attain knowledge. Unbelievers do have a knowledge of God (which they suppress) and thus are able to understand the world (38). And believers are able to engage in meaningful conversation with unbelievers by virtue of several facts. Because God has created all things, "there is no area in the world, in thought, in word, or in deed which is irrelevant, indifferent, or neutral toward God and His demands" (42). And because all men are created in God's image, believers have a "point of contact" with all men (47). Bahnsen next gives practical information about how exactly to defend the faith. He outlines two broad directions on how to proceed based on Proverbs 26:4-5. Fir