Common Ground, Part 5

If logic and reason have their source in the mind of God, and all people use the laws of logic to think and live, then it is therefore true that all people think and live based on the mind of God. It is then also true by implication that all people have the ability to use reason as a means to get to God. And when a person uses reason to discover the truth of Christianity, he also realizes the shocking truth that it was God who led him the whole way. It turns out that neutrality really is a myth, but the good news is that this “neutrality” that had once been repudiated by pressuppositionalists actually turns out to be biased toward God’s side. This so called “neutrality,” it had been argued, is a weapon of the atheist. It now seems much more likely that this “neutrality” is a weapon of the theist.

Obviously this does not mean that reason and logic cannot be used as a tool to disprove God, as many atheists and skeptics have shown us. But it does mean that the way in which they use these tools is fallacious, twisted, and in the end, untenable. Cornelius Van Til is very useful in helping us see how this twisted thinking comes about. Summarizing Romans chapter one, he argues that the unbeliever knows God clearly, but he suppresses that truth and exchanges it for a lie (Frame, Christian Apologetics, 107). The noetic effects of sin have caused him to reject the truth, and yet he finds that he cannot live apart from the truth at certain levels. In order to argue that there is no absolute truth, the relativist must agree with the universal truth that there is no truth, thus reducing his view to absurdity. He cannot be right without being wrong. If an apologist is to accept his view for the sake of the argument (position of neutrality), he can help the relativist come to the conclusion that his view is ultimately untenable. The common ground in this case is the fact that there is absolute truth, and it is knowable, and indeed, assumed by the relativist for everyday reasoning and survival.