Can Muslims and Jews Use TAG?

When I began getting a better grasp of Presuppositional Apologetics and transcendental arguments, I started running into a little problem. Whenever I would apply the transcendental argument against unbelief, often times I was met with some variation of this objection: “well I see no reason why a Muslim or a Jew or any of the other monotheistic religions couldn’t use the same argument you’re using to prove their own god”


The issue wasn’t that I thought the objection was forceful. My standard approach was to point out that, although they resemble Christianity in some ways, at the points where these religions disagree with Christianity they begin to fall into the same philosophical problems that non-theistic worldviews fall into. 


Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with this approach. However, this objection got me thinking about what’s going on in the background whenever we engage with some unbelieving worldview. 


Whenever we engage an unbeliever, we are engaging a variety of unbelief. From Van Til and Greg Bahnsen, we learn that, at the most fundamental level, there are only two worldviews. If this is true, then the diversity of unbelieving worldviews boils down to variations on a common, more fundamental, principle. In other words, fundamentally, Islam and atheism are not really different. There is a general principle which unites both of them at the fundamental level. SoInstarted thinking about what this principle was. What is that general principle that is able to unite all variations of unbelief, be they theistic or non-theistic? Finding this principle would explain why a Jew or Muslim would not be able to use the transcendental argument. It would allow us to make a transcendental argument for a uniquely Christian Theism. 


I had some ideas about what this principle could be. At first I thought that all unbelieving worldviews are united in their rejection of the Christian worldview. This is true, but it needs to be more specific. Since Christianity is a revealed worldview, my next thought was that they are united in their rejection of Christian revelation. In other words, all non-Christian views operate on an autonomous epistemology. This is correct, so I dig deeper. All unbelieving views reject what the Christian Scripture teaches. So I thought about the unique teachings of Scripture, and one thing stuck out to me: the Lordship of Christ. Only the Christian religion affirms that Jesus Christ is Lord. The Christian affirms that Jesus Christ - who is fully man - is Lord over the entire universe. All unbelieving worldviews deny the Lordship of Christ - this is the root of the antithesis between Christianity and its competitors and it allows us to divide all worldviews into two: those who affirm that Christ is Lord and those who don’t.


So I discovered the unifying principle but I needed a way to cash it out philosophically. I thought about the Lordship of Christ and what it entails. Jesus Christ is Lord because Jesus is God. More specifically, He is the Son of God. My mind was drawn to the doctrine of the Trinity - God in three Persons. The Christian God is triune and metaphysically ultimate. He is both absolute and personal. So all worldviews that reject the Lordship of Christ reject the doctrine of the Trinity. And to reject the doctrine of the Trinity is to reject the existence of a God that is both absolute and personal. 


As such, I concluded that the philosophical principle that unites all variations of unbelief is the commitment to metaphysical impersonalism. I began a philosophical investigation into the concept of metaphysical impersonalism and how to cash out the disagreement between the Christian and unbeliever in terms of a disagreement over whether or not metaphysical impersonalism is true. 


And that’s how The Best Argument for Christianity was born. It is the culmination of my investigation into the uniqueness of Christianity. In it, I focus on the concept of metaphysical impersonalism and how it is at the root of all unbelieving rejection of Christianity. I explain that it is the philosophical antithesis of Christian Theism. Thus all flavors of unbelief - be they theistic or non-theistic - affirm metaphysical impersonalism. I then formulated a transcendental argument that proves not just any theism, but Christian theism in particular. My aim was to leave no room for the thought that a competing religion could use the same argument. I believe I was successful. If you’re interested, you can grab a copy here.

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