What is presuppositional theology?

Question: Dear Dr. Roane, what is presuppositional theology? 

Answer: One of my favorite theologians, if not my absolute favorites, is Origen (ca. A.D. 185-253/254) who make a clear distinction between seeing and knowing. The Evangelist John, he asserts, nowhere claims that he or anyone else including Jesus has seen the God. “To see and to be seen belongs to bodies,” he says. Therefore, to following Origen’s logic since God is in essence the primal spirit—although, without beginning or end, and in essence without dimension; hence He is unseen, but not unknown. Seeableness, if I may coin the word, pertains to bodies, in his opinion; and, to know and to be known belongs to the intellect.

So, to quote Origen at length, he states:

Finally, even [Jesus] himself did not say in the Gospel [of John] that no one has seen the Father except the Son, nor anyone the Son except the Father. But He did say, “No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son.” By this it is clearly indicated that whatever among corporal natures is called seen and being seen, is termed, between the Father and the Son, knowing and being known—by means of the power of knowledge, and not by the frail sense of sight. Insomuch, then, as neither seeing nor being seen can be properly predicated of an incorporeal and invisible being, neither is the Father, in the Gospel, said to be seen by the Son, nor the Son by the Father; rather, they are said to be known.[i]

For me, this concept is absolutely revolutionary, and ties neatly back into the opening statements of John in which he stated that the Word was that light which lights everyman’s heart—not in a physical sense, of course, but in the sense of enlightenment. This, I believe, is the point that Saint Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033 – 21 April 1109) struggle so unsuccessfully to get across with the ontological argument as proof of God’s existence. Karl Barth, too, although, he gave high marks to the concept, was never quite ready to (as far as I know) put his final stamp of approval on.

Of course, Cornelius Van Til presuppositional apologetics, I believe, borrows heavily from St. Anselm’s theological ontology—perhaps, via Karl Barth, whom he so steadfastly opposed. Although, I do not consider myself an authority on Van Til, I do see a logical subliminal source here.

Back to Origen. Had his insight been fully understood and acted upon, I do believe, it would have rendered all the cause and effect arguments of St. Thomas Aquinas virtually useless, as I believe they are anyway. This I say, because for an effect to have a cause, there must be the concept of an ultimate cause to begin with—it cannot be the other way around. An eternal universe offers a cause, just not a plausible one since it is by content circular; whereas, for an uncaused cause to cause an effect is the only logical recourse out of the logical conundrum.

Theology by its very nature is always a given. How can we have access to something that we cannot naturally analyze without a revelatory process—revelatory in the sense that it is unattainable by our normal senses or methods of inquiry? 

God, in my opinion, is always made known to us, never discovered in the sense of a natural investigation. The cognitive sense in the “I—Thou” in a Buberish relationship is an intuitive process; whereas, the “I--It” is always introduce through an act of discovery. One is knowing, the other is seeing.

Science by its very definition deals only with that which is seen; however, nothing is known in the ultimate sense. Whereas, on the other hand, God’s self-disclosure is always made known, never discovered. Earthly, sensual knowledge can never be final in the real since of the word since it is by its very essence an effect, never the ultimate cause.

Thus, the “Ultimate Cause,” either retrogressively or progressively is always independent of the effects. Ex nihilo creation can only enter the realm of discovery from an ex nihilo source. That is not to say that God is in essence nothing, but it is to say that He is incorporeal—therefore, the “totally other” in any corporeal or dimensional sense of the word. Whereas, on the other hand, temporality is of necessity dimensional, either in time or space. However, the uncaused Cause is unmatched in any of the categories of temporality.

Theism, as opposed to atheism, is made natural not by discovery, but by the Word of light given to all men. Therefore, knowledge of God is intuitively natural not by self-discovery or an innate ability to know but solely by an act of God. Conjuring up convoluted thoughts about the nature of God is futile and a useless pursuit. All of our thoughts are incapable of grasping the reality of God without a confirming source of knowledge—that being, of course, the uncaused Cause that we call God; although, He, himself, chooses to be known primarily as the self-existing One.

We know of a certainty that Christ in and of himself as the Son of God and the Son of Man has made God known to us—that is, Jesus is God’s express image; however, to express or project an image is only a replica in the temporal sense. His essence is therefore of necessity by its nature unseen and is only seen, as it were, in a reflective sense in the power of His Glory. The glory seen, however, is always an effect of the Cause; thus, only a likeness of the effect, never the Cause.

This twist of logic is in essence what Origen was striving for when he wrote:

Since our mind is in itself unable to behold God Himself as He is, it knows the Father of the universe from the beauty of His works and from the elegance of His creatures. God, therefore, is not to be thought of as being either a body or as existing in a body, but as a simple intellectual Being, admitting within Himself no addition of any kind. Thus, He cannot be believed to have within Himself something greater and something lesser. Rather, He is in every part μόνος (the Alone) and so to speak, ἑνὸς (the One). He is the mind and source from which every intellectual being or mind takes its beginning.

In summary, this is only a convoluted way of saying that in and of Himself is unknowable. We can, however, know that:

“According as his divine power He has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue (2 Peter 1:3).”

Thus, we can say that the person Jesus in the ontology of the Trinity is truly El Shaddai – The all Sufficient One.

Think about it.

JimR/-

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[i] Origin: The Fundamentals of Doctrine. p. 193, The Faith of the Early Fathers vol. 1. By William A. Jurgens. The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN. 1970.