The Transcendental Argument (Part 1)

Introduction

Throughout the history of the Christian church many arguments have been developed to prove the existence of God. Some of the most famous arguments were given by Thomas Aquinas, namely, the cosmological and the teleological argument. While others, such as C. S. Lewis, offered the moral argument for the existence of God. These arguments try to argue from a certain truth in the world to the conclusion that God exists. That is, they are deductive arguments. However, others in the Christian community (especially in the Reformed tradition) have argued for a different kind of argument; an argument that is not deductive or inductive, but transcendental. This transcendental argument for the existence of God (TAG) argues that God is the transcendental (“thing behind” in layman terms) for all knowledge. In other words, for anyone to know anything they must first presuppose the Christian God. Or put more simply, in order for anyone to know anything God must exist. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob stands behind all of our thinking and our ability to think. This approach to apologetics is also called presupposition apologetics because it argues that God is presupposed in order to think or make sense of the world. It is the aim of this paper to briefly layout the TAG and then to respond to recent attacks on this approach. It is not the aim of this essay to prove that the TAG is sound, though I think it is. Rather, the aim of this paper is more modest, in that I only want to show that recent attacks on the TAG fail to do any significant impairment to the TAG.