The Exclusive Nature of Christian Theism

As human beings, we are wired to think in generalities. To know particular things, we usually place them in broader, more general contexts. We try and see the qualities a thing shares with other things, and through a process of abstraction, we create classes and general categories. Abstraction is an integral part of human thought. So it is no surprise that when it comes to the question of the existence of God, philosophers have applied the process of abstraction.


Van Til taught that abstract reasoning is the hallmark of non-Christian thought. What he meant by this was that unbelievers would always think in general terms so as to avoid dealing with the concrete claims of Christian Theism. So, for example, they will speak and argue about God in abstraction. Not the Christian God in particular - not Yahweh - but some vague sense of “god”. A lot of philosophy of religion is done in abstract. “Naturalism” and “Theism” are conceived in abstraction. By reasoning abstractly, the unbeliever never has to face the Bible’s claims. Hence, as long as abstract thinking continues to dominate philosophy, there is a systematic bias against Christian Theism even though philosophers may pretend to be neutral or objective. 


Something many unbelievers and Christians who debate the question of God do not realize is that Christianity is a very exclusivist worldview. What this means is that its truth rules out all other worldviews. The Bible itself draws the battle line and makes a stark distinction between those who are for God and those who are against Him. The Bible often makes use of war language to stress the antithesis between those who are for Christ and those who are against Him. The Bible refers to all other gods as man-made idols. God frequently made exclusive covenants in Scripture. He chose the Israelites and called them His people. All other nations were their enemies automatically. So Christianity is a very exclusive club. There is no middle ground - one is either in or out.


The implication of this is that the tenets of Christianity are non-abstractable. What this means is that whatever Christianity teaches, it teaches uniquely. The Christian does not share any beliefs with the non-Christian. When the Muslim comes and says “we both believe in God”, the consistent Christian will point out that the Muslim believes not in God but in an idol. To the Christian, the Muslim is no different from an atheist. So to group the Christian and Muslim under the same umbrella of “God-believer” is to reject the Christian position from the very outset. This is because the Christian shares no beliefs in common with the Muslim. If Christianity is true, every single Muslim doctrine is false.


The antithesis between the Christian and unbeliever is that radical. It is so radical that to affirm any single Christian doctrine is to affirm the entire system. A worldview cannot be consistent with Christianity without entailing it and reducing to it. This implies that Christianity cannot share a class with any other worldview. 


If this is the case, then the concept of “general theism” which is the subject of discussion in contemporary philosophy of religion is incoherent. Because if it includes Christianity, then it is simply Christian Theism and therefore not a “general” concept after all. If it doesn’t include Christianity, then it is a non-Christian concept, and therefore concrete. The general theistic concept of “God”, for example, is assumed to be a general concept which both Christianity and Islam share. But the Christian concept of God essentially rules out the possibility of other coherent God-concepts. So a general God-concept, if it includes Christian Theism, would just reduce to the Christian God-concept, and if it doesn’t, it would cease to be a general God-concept - just a non-Christian God-concept.


Another implication of the exclusivity of Christianity is that pre-dogmatic natural theology - which aims to serve as a rational basis for Christian belief apart from Christian revelation - is self-defeating. For if it is successful, then it proves a non-Christian God-concept and cannot serve as a foundation for Christian theology. 

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