If you had lived in Europe prior to about 1890, or in the United States before about 1935, you would not have had to spend much time, in practice, thinking about your presuppositions. (These dates may be slightly arbitrary as the change came in Europe, at least, fairly gradually. In America the crucial years of change were from 1913 to 1940 and during these relatively few years the whole way of thinking underwent a revolution—1913 was a most important year in the United States, not because it was the year before the First World War, but for another highly significant reason, as we shall see later.)
Before these dates everyone would have been working on much the same presupposition, which in practice seemed to accord with the Christian’s own presuppositions. This was true both in the area of epistemology and methodology. Now it may be argued that the non-Christian had no right to act on the presuppositions he acted on. That is true. They were being romantic in accepting optimistic answers without a sufficient base. Nevertheless they went on thinking and acting as if these presuppositions were true.
What were these presuppositions? The basic one was that there really are such things as absolutes. They accepted the possibility of an absolute in the area of Being (or knowledge), and in the area of morals. Therefore, because they accepted the possibility of absolutes, though men might disagree as to what they were, nevertheless they could reason together on the classical basis of antithesis. So if anything was true, the opposite was false. In morality, if one thing was right, its opposite was wrong. This little formula, ‘If you have A it is not non-A’, is the first move in classical logic. if you understand the extent to which this no longer holds sway, you will understand our present situation.
Absolutes imply antithesis. The non-Christian went on romantically operating on this basis without a sufficient base for doing so. Thus it was still possible to discuss what was right and wrong, what was true and false. One could tell a non-Christian to ‘be a good girl’, and, while she might not have followed your advice, at least she would have understood what you were talking about. To say the same thing to a truly modern girl today would be to make a ‘nonsense’ statement. The blank look you might receive would not mean that your standards had been rejected but that your message was meaningless.
The shift has been tremendous. Thirty or more years ago you could have said such things as ‘This is true’ or ‘This is right’, and you would have been on everybody’s wavelength. People may or may not have thought out their beliefs consistently, but everyone would have been talking to each other as though the idea of antithesis was correct. Thus in evangelism, in spiritual matters and in Christian education, you could have begun with the certainty that your audience understood you.
PRESUPPOSITIONAL APOLOGETICS WOULD HAVE STOPPED THE DECAY
It was indeed unfortunate that our Christian ‘thinkers’, in the time before the shift took place and the chasm was fixed, did not teach and preach with a clear grasp of presuppositions. Had they done this they would not have been taken by surprise, and they could have helped young people face their difficulties. The really foolish thing is that even now, years after the shift is over, many Christians still do not know that is happening. And this is because they are still not beging taught the importance of thinking in terms of presuppositions, especially concerning truth.
The flood-waters of secular thought and the new theology overwhelmed the Church because the leaders did not understand the importance of combatting a false set of presuppositions. They largely fought the battle on the wrong ground and so, instead of being far ahead in both defense and communication, they lagged woefully behind. This was a real weakness which is hard, even today, to rectify among evangelicals.
The use of classical apologetics before this shift took place was effective only because non-Christians were functioning, on the surface, on the same presuppositions, even if today they had an inadequate base for them. In classical apologetics, though, presuppositions were rarely analyzed, discussed or taken into account.
So, if a man got up to preach the Gospel and said, ‘Believe this, it is true’, those who heard would have said, ‘Well, if that idea is so then its opposite is false’. The presupposition of antithesis invaded men’s entire mental outlook. We must not forget that historic Christianity stands on a basis of antithesis. Without it historic Christianity is meaningless.
Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1968), 13-15.
top image: a recent cover of The God Who Is There