Transcendental Argumentation Made Easy

Undoubtedly, the cornerstone of the Van Tilian defense of the faith is the transcendental argument for Christian Theism. 

However, the philosophical nuances of this argument may seem complicated, especially for those not so philosophically inclined. So here’s…


How to argue transcendentally in 4 easy steps


1. Begin with some feature of human experience. 

Van Til taught that one can begin with any fact and formulate an objective proof of Christianity. And he was right. Greg Bahnsen famously formulated a toothpaste proof for God’s existence.

The transcendental argument starts with any fact or feature of human experience that is undeniable or taken for granted. We can start with the beauty of flowers, or music, or the applicability of mathematics, or the success of science, or the deliciousness of my mom’s cooking. It doesn’t matter.

What we’ll notice is that all these things that make our experience what it is (coherent, rational, and intelligible) all presuppose certain things. That is to say, without certain things, these features of our experience would not be possible. These things have been called “preconditions of intelligibility” by some Van Tilians.

For example, recognizing and appreciating the beauty of flowers would not be possible without a conceptual scheme that can categorize and interpret sense perception. The deliciousness of my mom’s cooking presupposes decades of trial and error dedicated to the development of recipes which in turn wouldn’t be possible without a uniform and predictable universe. 

Things like conceptual schemes and the uniformity of nature are what we can call preconditions of intelligible experience. They must be the case in order for our experience to be what it is. If we reflect on our experience and what we take for granted, we can come up with many more of such preconditions.

The point is that the transcendental argument begins with human experience and tries to uncover the necessary preconditions for the possibility of such experience. 


2. Assume Christianity is false. 

The next step in the transcendental approach is to assume that Christianity is false. 

It may seem weird to say that a Christian has to assume Christianity is false in an argument for Christianity. But this assumption is only being made for the sake of argument. We do not actually have to think Christianity is false. All we’re doing is asking our audience to make that assumption so we can derive something from it. It’s a perfectly logical move, and is an essential step in formulating a transcendental argument for Christianity. 

In practice, this assumption of the falsity of Christianity usually involves denying one or two fundamental tenets of the Christian faith. 


3. Derive from this an inconsistency with the feature of human experience. 

Once we’ve assumed the falsity of Christianity, the next step is to demonstrate that that assumption leads to the denial of the feature of experience we took for granted in step 1. Demonstrating this shows that the truth of Christianity is necessary for that feature of experience. If I assume Christianity is false and then all of a sudden I’m unable to account for the uniformity of nature, that proves that Christianity is necessary for the uniformity of nature. 

This step is probably the most important because it is where the bulk of the philosophical work is done. If you’re interested in learning how the denial of fundamental Christian tenets leads to the impossibility of the various things we take for granted in our experience, I wrote a book that goes into that. You can grab it here.


4. Conclusion 

After demonstrating that Christianity is necessary for the preconditions of intelligibility, we can then draw our conclusions. The conclusion is that Christianity is necessary for human experience to make sense, and that the various arguments the unbeliever wants to give against Christianity are all self-defeating because they presuppose Christianity.

And that’s transcendental argumentation made easy!

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