While I'm a Protestant Calvinist Van Tillian Presuppositionalist, I found the following debate very interesting. It's between Roman Catholic Trent Horn who affirms the use of Thomistic Natural Theology and Eastern Orthodox Jay Dyer who rejects the usual sense and use of "Natural Theology" and instead argues for an Eastern Orthodox version of presuppositionalism. In my opinion Jay Dyer did enough to win the debate.
RESOLVED: Christians should reject Natural Theology - Jay Dyer vs. Trent Horn
https://youtu.be/tLeqQaoSeyQ
I think Jay Dyer was asking questions that necessarily caused Trent Horn to confront the fact that his paradigm of philosophy, namely, Natural Theology in the vein of Thomas Aquinas, was called into question: what I mean by that is Horn kept saying something to the effect that we all can reason as to the things we agree are 'common sense' with both Christians and Atheists. The thing that he appeared to miss is that Jay Dyer was saying that, today, there are many that would disagree that we could even agree upon these 'self-evidential' areas among Christians, Atheists, or Muslims, etc., which directly undermines Horn's key point that we all agree on these basic premesis. That said, Horn kept pointing out that Dyer was using Natural theology in reverse, which is partially true: Thomistic philosophy is working from man to God, but presuppositional philosophy is working from illumination of the Nous in man and union with God experientially via Theosis to man, ie from God's perspective to man, in an attempt to see which paradigm of philosophy best accords with reality. What this means is that one with the presuppostional 'vocabulary' would best be able to have a debate with Dyer or other presuppositionalists because they would intuit the very nature of the questions asked, namely: looking through the lens of the other's philosophy to see which epistomological view best accords with reality and showing how the opponent's view lacks consistency therewith.
ReplyDeleteSadly it seems, it's almost as if Horn is able to defend Catholicism against Renaissance-era humanists, but fairly unable to with say, a Gnostic, Muslim, or postmodern Agnostics because he's ill-prepared to ask questions on the foundation of one's own philsophy itself, including his own, pinholing him into assuming, ala the Renaissance, even today we still have common foundation understandings of reality that would have existed with modernism, but no longer exist in postmodern reductionist philosophy.