The Dutch apologist, Cornelius Van Til, made a fascinating apologetic argument from our use of simple sentences. He said every time we predicate we presuppose the God of the Bible.

What does that mean?

In grammar class, we learned that a predicate is anything that can be said about a subject.

Imagine a velvety, ripe peach. What could we say about it?

The peach is sweet.

The subject is peach and the predicate says something about the peach; it’s sweet.

When we say something about a subject, we are predicating.

Here’s the juicy part: Predication presupposes the God of the Bible! Why?

Because in order to say simple sentences, we place the fruit into a category of peachness. We learned what kinds of fruits fit into this category when we were young, and then as we matured, we used this mental category to classify and predicate things that have the quality of peachness without even thinking about it.

What is peachness?

It’s a category that exists in our minds; It cannot be seen, heard, tasted, touched, or smelled.

For someone who is a materialist/naturalist, who believes only matter exists, such a category could not exist. There could be no immaterial anything, let alone categories such as peachness on such a view. When materialists predicate (and they all do) they are presupposing the God of the Bible because predication itself presupposes the Christian worldview.

(Introduce children to this concept with an easy and simple activity here.)

Skeptics may say a category like peachness comes from our brains, but this argument fails because peachness is a shared concept. When we die, peachness still exists. It’s a universal category and people will continue to put peach-like fruits into the category of peachness long after we’re dead. Similarly, people will be able to identify the fruit in the artwork I’ve created for this post after I’m gone, as well.

If you’re a skeptic, how is it that you’re able identify my drawings of peaches? It’s not a trick question; it’s an impossible obstacle for materialists to overcome. For the Christian, however, it confirms what the Scriptures teach:

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. (Colossian 1:16)

The invisible things such as universal, immaterial categories like peachness were created through God; they come from His mind. “For the Christian, universals exist in a concrete fashion within the mind of the Creator Himself. God “thinks universally” and such thinking is found in man “analogically”. The Christian’s presuppositions about God provide a rationale or basis for the intelligibility of conceptual reasoning (with generalizations, categories, laws, etc.).” (VTA, p. 240)

Here are two more helpful quotes from Van Til:

Because we’re created in God’s image, we are able to think God’s thoughts after Him (Eph. 5:1), and we intuitively know there is unity among like things. As such, “our reasoning presupposes something that is not concrete—something that transcends individual objects or particulars. (VTA, p. 237) “Although our observational experience is always of concrete, particular things, we reason and speak in terms of abstract entities or concepts.” (VTA, p. 238) Furthermore, “we engage in conceptual reasoning because we have been created in God’s image and thus can think His thoughts after Him on the finite, creaturely level.” (VTA, p. 239)

“The whole problem of knowledge has constantly been that of bringing the one and the many together. The whole problem of philosophy may be summed up in the question of the relation of unity to diversity; the so-called problem of the one and the many receives a definite answer from the doctrine of the simplicity of God. (VTA, p. 238)

Conclusion: Only the God of the Bible makes sense of predication.

Thanks for stopping by to see my art and apologetics! Have a blessed day!

~Scarlett

VTA: Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing: Phillipsburg, New Jersey) 1998.