Dr. James Anderson explains how the transcendental argument maintains that even those who doubt God’s existence must presuppose him to reason and express that doubt. He explores why the laws of reason require a personal, transcendent source and how human rationality depends upon the divine mind as the foundation of all rationality and truth.
The following is a transcript of the video above.
What is the transcendental argument?
The transcendental argument is an intriguing argument for the existence of God advocated by the Reformed philosopher and apologist Cornelius Van Til.
Transcendental arguments, in general, are what we might call anti-skeptical arguments. They aim to show that a skeptic who doubts something must actually presuppose the very thing he doubts in order to doubt it.
The idea behind the transcendental argument for the existence of God is that skeptics who doubt God’s existence must presuppose his existence to articulate their doubts. Even to argue against the existence of God, they must, in some sense, tacitly presuppose that God exists.
It is rather like someone arguing against the existence of air while depending on air to breathe and communicate his denial that air exists.
How, then, do we make the transcendental argument for the existence of God? That is the million-dollar question. I believe there are several ways to do it, and I am working on a book in which I attempt to explain some of the argument’s different forms.
Here is one simple and brief version: For us to reason, there must be laws or standards of reasoning. We might call these the norms of reason. They guide our thinking so that we think in the right ways.
These laws of reason cannot come from us because we did not invent them. They are, in a sense, transcendent. We are subject to the laws of reason. At the same time, because they are laws of thought, they cannot come from an impersonal source. They can ultimately come only from a personal, transcendent source.
The laws of reason must be grounded in a divine mind that serves as the ultimate standard of all rationality and truth. The argument, therefore, is that human reason ultimately depends on divine reason. It depends on the existence of a personal, absolute God who is the source and foundation of the laws or norms of rationality upon which we all depend.
There are many details to fill in, but the basic idea is that we cannot get rationality for free. For there to be any rationality in the universe, there must be an ultimate and absolute rationality grounded in a personal, absolute God.
