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The Impossibility of the Contrary: Without God You Can't Prove Anything
The Impossibility of the Contrary, Volume Two of the Bahnsen Apologetic Trilogy is now available! Click here for Volume One (Against All Opposition) and here for Volume 3 (Pushing the Antithesis).
“In various forms, the fundamental argument advanced by the Christian apologist is that the Christian worldview is true because of the impossibility of the contrary.”
— Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen
If religious skeptics have forsaken biblical presuppositions, why is it they can think rationally, apply the scientific method, and require some semblance of morality? The answer is simple. Unbelievers are philosophically schizophrenic. They don’t often live consistently with the governing principles of their materialistic worldview. For example, “The success of modern science has been due to its ‘borrowed capital,’ because modern science is like the prodigal son. He left his father’s house and is rich, but the substance he expends is his father’s wealth.”
Those who deny God have no way to account for the uniformity of nature and its laws. “[N]atural man does have knowledge, but it is borrowed knowledge, stolen from the Christian-theistic pasture or range, yet natural man has no knowledge, because in terms of his principle the ultimacy of his thinking, he can have none, and the knowledge he possesses is not truly his own. . . . The natural man has valid knowledge only as a thief possesses goods.”
Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen (1948–1995) graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary where he simultaneously received the Master of Divinity and Master of Theology degrees. He later received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern Cali- fornia. He is the author of Always Ready, Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended, VanTil’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis, and innumerable essays and articles.
“In various forms, the fundamental argument advanced by the Christian apologist is that the Christian worldview is true because of the impossibility of the contrary.”
— Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen
If religious skeptics have forsaken biblical presuppositions, why is it they can think rationally, apply the scientific method, and require some semblance of morality? The answer is simple. Unbelievers are philosophically schizophrenic. They don’t often live consistently with the governing principles of their materialistic worldview. For example, “The success of modern science has been due to its ‘borrowed capital,’ because modern science is like the prodigal son. He left his father’s house and is rich, but the substance he expends is his father’s wealth.”
Those who deny God have no way to account for the uniformity of nature and its laws. “[N]atural man does have knowledge, but it is borrowed knowledge, stolen from the Christian-theistic pasture or range, yet natural man has no knowledge, because in terms of his principle the ultimacy of his thinking, he can have none, and the knowledge he possesses is not truly his own. . . . The natural man has valid knowledge only as a thief possesses goods.”
Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen (1948–1995) graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary where he simultaneously received the Master of Divinity and Master of Theology degrees. He later received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern Cali- fornia. He is the author of Always Ready, Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended, VanTil’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis, and innumerable essays and articles.
218 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2021
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About the author
Greg L. Bahnsen
77 books145 followersGreg L. Bahnsen was an influential Calvinist Christian philosopher, apologist, and debater. He was an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and a full time Scholar in Residence for the Southern California Center for Christian Studies.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 28, 2021
Looking for a book that teaches how to apply Presuppositional Apologetics? Greg Bahnsen is one of my favorite Christian apologist and surprisingly most of his books are published after his death than when he was alive. This latest book is published in 2021 by American Vision that is edited from the audio teachings of the last Greg Bahnsen from an apologetics’ conference during the 1990s sponsored by American Vision. One might ask why another Bahnsen book on Presuppositional apologetics? David Bahnsen, the son of Greg Bahnsen in the Foreword said it is his favorite book by his father (vii). Reading David saying that made me want to read the book even more. I thought this book is worth reading even if you read older published works by Greg Bahnsen since in this volume he does cover more refutation of false worldviews than some of the other books published pre-2020 and that’s a big plus for Bahnsen fans. Please don’t think this book is just a repetition of materials in other books (there are of course some things that are constant). Plus I think its always good to sharpen and be reminded of how Presuppositional Apologetics works and how is it applied; I don’t think this is going to be the only time I read this book especially when it comes to discipling others in apologetics. I also think for those new to Presuppositional Apologetics this book does give readers a good intro.
The book consists of ten chapters. Chapter one is titled “Answering Fools According to their Folly” and based upon Proverbs 26:4-5 it talks about how to and how not to respond to a skeptic in a way that honors God. That’s helpful right off the bat to put the rest of the book in a good trajectory. Chapters two through five goes over four checklists of refuting someone with chapter two covering arbitrariness, chapter three on inconsistencies chapter four on consequences of one’s unbelieving worldview and chapter five on the precondition of intelligibility. I loved how Bahnsen’s methodology in the book is systematic in a way I haven’t seen in some of his other writings where he begins from the more simple to the more deeper types of refutations. By the time you get to chapter five you reach worldview level refutations. Chapter six is a much needed discussion about the difference between proof and persuasion. This is such a rich chapter since there’s a lot of confusions between persuasion and proof even by Christians. I appreciate the book’s examples of refuting worldviews presuppositionally where evolution is dealt with in chapter seven and Islam in chapter nine. In between these chapters Bahnsen dealt with two objections to Christianity and Presuppositional apologetics with chapter eight addressing the problem of evil and chapter ten on circular reasoning.
As I said elsewhere Greg Bahnsen is one of my favorite apologists and reading this latest book made me remember all the reasons I love about Bahnsen: He was biblically driven, worldview conscious, laid out his presentation clearly and rigorous in his refutation of unbelieving worldview. And this book displays that. I enjoyed Bahnsen’s treatment of the problem of evil by emphasizing that God has morally sufficient reason to permit evil while at the same time emphasizing that because evil is real we have to ask what worldviews makes sense of the intelligibility of the existence of evil versus making nonsense of existence of evil. The problem of evil gets brought up a lot so I’m glad there’s a chapter here in the book. I also am glad to see him deal with the issue of Circular reasoning as a charge against Christians in general and Presuppositionalists in particular. Only one slight criticism I have is that Bahnsen on page 76 said he debated atheist Gordon Stein on 1984; it was actually on February 11, 1985 (I know, this might seem like a Bahnsen fan thing…). Elsewhere on page 98 Bahnsen states the debate was in 1985. Overall I recommend the book very much.
The book consists of ten chapters. Chapter one is titled “Answering Fools According to their Folly” and based upon Proverbs 26:4-5 it talks about how to and how not to respond to a skeptic in a way that honors God. That’s helpful right off the bat to put the rest of the book in a good trajectory. Chapters two through five goes over four checklists of refuting someone with chapter two covering arbitrariness, chapter three on inconsistencies chapter four on consequences of one’s unbelieving worldview and chapter five on the precondition of intelligibility. I loved how Bahnsen’s methodology in the book is systematic in a way I haven’t seen in some of his other writings where he begins from the more simple to the more deeper types of refutations. By the time you get to chapter five you reach worldview level refutations. Chapter six is a much needed discussion about the difference between proof and persuasion. This is such a rich chapter since there’s a lot of confusions between persuasion and proof even by Christians. I appreciate the book’s examples of refuting worldviews presuppositionally where evolution is dealt with in chapter seven and Islam in chapter nine. In between these chapters Bahnsen dealt with two objections to Christianity and Presuppositional apologetics with chapter eight addressing the problem of evil and chapter ten on circular reasoning.
As I said elsewhere Greg Bahnsen is one of my favorite apologists and reading this latest book made me remember all the reasons I love about Bahnsen: He was biblically driven, worldview conscious, laid out his presentation clearly and rigorous in his refutation of unbelieving worldview. And this book displays that. I enjoyed Bahnsen’s treatment of the problem of evil by emphasizing that God has morally sufficient reason to permit evil while at the same time emphasizing that because evil is real we have to ask what worldviews makes sense of the intelligibility of the existence of evil versus making nonsense of existence of evil. The problem of evil gets brought up a lot so I’m glad there’s a chapter here in the book. I also am glad to see him deal with the issue of Circular reasoning as a charge against Christians in general and Presuppositionalists in particular. Only one slight criticism I have is that Bahnsen on page 76 said he debated atheist Gordon Stein on 1984; it was actually on February 11, 1985 (I know, this might seem like a Bahnsen fan thing…). Elsewhere on page 98 Bahnsen states the debate was in 1985. Overall I recommend the book very much.
January 16, 2022
Very helpful in understanding the foundation points of the Christian religion and how we can use that foundational basis in every aspect of life.
September 8, 2021
Another excellent and very readable presuppositional apologetic work by Bahnsen. This is volume 2 of the the 3 volume Bahnsen trilogy.
1. Against All Opposition
2. Impossibility of the Contrary
3. Pushing the Antithesis
1. Against All Opposition
2. Impossibility of the Contrary
3. Pushing the Antithesis
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November 25, 2021Excellent book. This is the second volume of the trilogy from America Vision. I believe much of this came from his more intermediate apologetics lectures. Very good material covering Islam and Bertrand Russell.
January 19, 2022
Fantastic intro to presuppositional apologetics
July 16, 2022
Excellent book on apologetics.
February 22, 2023
Great book on presupp apologetics.
February 23, 2025
It's Bahnsen...'nuff said.
December 10, 2023
This is quite a useful introduction to presuppositional apologetics and ideas like the transcendental argument. I think it would benefit from an improved structure, and some of Bahnsen’s ideas and labelling of concepts do at times seem overlapping or redundant.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews