Constructing a Christian Philosophical Apologetic Against the Mormon Worldview -- Part 2/4

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Between Scylla Bahnsen and Charybdis Lane Craig: Principles from Christian Philosophical Apologetics and their Application to the Criticism of the Mormon Worldview

Perhaps two of the greatest defenders of the Christian faith during the latter half of the twentieth century were Greg Bahnsen and William Lane Craig (who arguably continues to hold that status). It is well known that the differences between their apologetic methodologies are very significant and foundational, and consequently, there may be a tendency for a proponent of one such methodology to underestimate the insights provided by the other. What I intend to argue in this section of my essay is that we can take one fundamental insight from both of these methodologies and apply them to the task of critiquing the Mormon worldview with devastating results. While space considerations do not allow me to go into great detail, it should not be too difficult for any serious student of Christian apologetics to see how these arguments can be developed, or where one can turn for further information.

The Impossibility of an Actually Infinite Regress

From Craig, we need to take the idea of the impossibility of an infinite regress.1 This idea is one of the foundations of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. As we will see, it can be applied as a criticism of not only certain Atheistic cosmologies, but Mormon Cosmologies as well. A brief statement of the crucial step in this argument can be found in Craig’s book Reasonable Faith:

“A collection formed by adding one member after another cannot be actually infinite. [ . . . ] It’s important to realize that this impossibility has nothing to do with the amount of time available: no matter how much time one has available, an actual infinite cannot be formed. No matter how many numbers you count, you can always add one more before arriving at infinity. Now someone might say that while an infinite collection cannot be formed by beginning at a point and adding members, nevertheless an infinite collection could be formed by never beginning but ending at a point, that is to say, ending at a point after having added one member after another from eternity. But this method seems even more unbelievable than the first method. If one cannot traverse the infinite by moving in one direction, how can one traverse it by moving in the opposite direction?”
(Craig, 1994, 98-99)

The Transcendental Grounds for Morality, Intelligibility and Knowledge

The Transcendental Argument for the existence of God purports to show that only the Christian worldview can provide the necessary preconditions for knowledge, morality and intelligibility. While it may be problematic for one to show that no possible worldview other than Christianity could provide such preconditions, it will be seen that at least certain version of Mormonism do seem to fail in meeting this challenge.

A brief statement of the Transcendental Argument (stated with emphasis on Atheism’s failure, due to the context of his remarks) can be found in Bahnsen’s opening statement in his debate with Gordon Stein:

“The transcendental proof for God's existence is that without Him it is impossible to prove anything. The atheist world view is irrational and cannot consistently provide the preconditions of intelligible experience, science, logic, or morality. The atheist world view cannot allow for laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, the ability for the mind to understand the world, and moral absolutes.”
(The Great Debate: Does God Exist? Dr. Greg Bahnsen versus Dr. Gordon Stein2 )

An argument against Mormonism which is similar to this one – if not in letter, at least in spirit – will be presented below.

Bearing these two principles in mind, let us see how they can be applied to the Mormon worldview. The application of these principles will be the subject of parts 3 and 4 of this series.

Notes for Part 2

1. Though conceptual distinction by means of analytic refinement is possible, I will treat the concept of an infinite regress as synonymous to the concept of a set of an infinite number of things formed by successive addition.

2. A transcript of this debate is available at the following web address: http://www.bellevuechristian.org/faculty/dribera/htdocs/PDFs/Apol_Bahnsen_Stein_Debate_Transcript.pdf

Continue to Part 3