Bahnsen on Self-Deception

S. Joel Garver

this essay originally appeared in an earlier form in Christendom Essays edited by James B. Jordan

Presuppositional apologetics and philosophy, while largely inspired by the writings of Cornelius Van Til, is not all of a piece. The differeing interpretations of presuppositionalism each have their own perspective on the issues involved which, in turn, manifest themselves with varying emphases in practice. Since Greg Bahnsen's rendition of presuppositionalism had been a rather helpful and an influential one, in the following I wish to examine his discussion of the knowledge of God in unbelief, focusing on his analysis of self-deception. This is an area in which, it seems to me, Bahnsen's view is problematic and can easily lead to an overly rationalistic apologetic.

Let's begin by recalling Bahnsen's general analysis of self-deception as that was explained in his doctoral dissertation and which he put to use in later writing without any significant emendations (e.g., see his "The Crucial Concept of Self-Deception in Presuppositional Apologetics" in Westminster Theological Journal [1995] 57:1-31). The analysis is designed to provide conditions under which it would be accurate to say that some subject S has deceived himself with regard to a given proposition p, based upon paradigmatic cases of self-deception. It goes something like this.

(1) S believes that p (weakly, without assenting to it)
(2) S is motivated to ignore, hide, deny, etc. his belief that p
(3) By rationalizing adverse evidence, S brings himself to believe that he does not believe that p

There are a couple of elaborations, caveats, and qualifications. Statement (1) is intended to convey the idea that p is not an occurent or presently conscious belief for S. Though S might exhibit behavior indicative of a belief that p, he would be unlikely to admit that he believes that p. (2) is pretty straightforward. S doesn't like that fact that p is true (or so he believes) and wants a way out of that somehow. (3) gives the mechanism of that way out. Evidence for p is rationalized (by reinterpretation, a new framework, self-blinding, ignoring, etc.) and, thereby, S brings himself to believe that he does not believe that p. (3) is worded this way primarily to allow that S is not so irrational so as both to believe and to disbelieve that p at the same time. We should keep in mind, however, that Bahnsen contended that believing that one does not believe that p is, for all practical purposes, tantamount to believing that not-p (for instance in terms of how the beliefs would govern behavior and decision-making). Bahnsen also expressed that this analysis was adequate, in part, because it avoided explaining the concept of self-deception by using even more problematic concepts such as the "unconscious" or "levels of consciousness".

That's about all there is to the analysis of self-deception as Bahnsen gave it. The application that he made, of course, was to the knowledge that unbelievers have of God, that is, to situations in which p stands for the proposition that God exists.

I don't have any problems with saying that this sort of phenomenon exists or that this is rather common or that this is an adequate analysis of those cases, as far as the account goes. But I do have a problem with using Bahnsen's analysis as a general account to cover all cases of theological unbelief. My misgivings are the following:

(1) Is it really true that "believing that I don't believe that p" is tantamount to "believing that not-p", even for practical purposes? It seems to me that the second-order belief (the belief about one's own beliefs) is going to have very different kinds of consequences than the first-order one (the belief about reality). Suppose, for example, we allow p to stand for the proposition that there is sufficient milk for tomorrow's breakfast. If I believe that I don't believe that p, it turns out that I believe that I don't believe we have sufficient milk. If I simply believe that not-p, I believe that we, in fact, do not have sufficient milk. In the former case, my belief allows for the possibility that there is, in actuality, sufficient milk (though I don't believe so). In the latter case, my belief does not allow for that possibility. The former belief might first lead to checking the refrigerator while the latter would lead to a trip to the store. Not only do the contents of the two beliefs differ, so too do the practical entailments. Thus I don't think Bahnsen adequately defended his suggestion.

(2) Even as an account of irrational behavior, Bahnsen's account strikes me (as has his approach to exegesis, theonomy, etc.) as a bit too rationalistic. Why not just come out and say that sometimes people believe contradictory propositions? His analysis seems to me to be caught in the same kind of dynamics that prevented Plato's Socrates from seeing the possibility of a person knowingly doing what she believes to be wrong. It took Augustine to correct this stream of Platonistic thinking. Augustine's view of the human person was higher than Plato's since Augustine saw us as the image of a God who was far higher, personal, and more free than Plato's Form-of-the-Good. The greater our origin and goal, the greater our ability to fall since, according to Augustine, we were made even capable of using our freedom to turn away from the knowledge of the good and, thereby, from freedom itself. Likewise, though we are in the image of Truth himself, might we not be capable of knowingly pursuing untruth in unreason? If so, then we can't we believe contradictions?

(3) Couldn't the belief that not-p be equally well described (and, in some cases, better described) in some other fashion? Such as: Cases of accepting not-p as a working hypothesis by resolving to act as if not-p were true. Cases of taking a policy of action to bring oneself to believe that not-p. Simply asserting that not-p, despite underlying belief to the contrary. Aligning oneself with others who are committed to not-p. None of these cases would count as full-blown belief that not-p (and thus would not count as cases of holding contradictory beliefs), but they might look very much like it. And yet none of these cases necessarily involve Bahnsen's third condition, that S believe that he not believe that p. Moreover, since Bahnsen seems to allow a distinction between full belief and mere "acceptance" in his first condition (i.e., belief does not entail assent), his account already contains the resources to provide alternative accounts.

(4) Problems (2) and (3) imply a wider problem. Why should we think that there is any such thing as a purely "general" analysis of self-deception that will apply to all, or even most, cases? The traditional approach of (analytic) philosophy--which tries atomistically to isolate concepts and give a rigorous set of necessary and sufficient conditions for them--seems to ignore the relational, dynamic, and functional nature of concepts as well as the multivalent nature of language and reality (as was recognized, e.g., in medieval accounts of analogy). Bahnsen's presuppositional critique of non-Christian thought didn't go far enough to question all the canons of the philosophical tradition, especially as that comes to us in its Anglo-American variation.

(5) I would also be open to the idea that the knowledge of the truth of p (e.g., concerning God's nature and existence) which, according to Bahnsen, unbelievers ignore and deny through a process of rationalization, is not always best analyzed in terms of the subject's propositional knowledge--a belief in certain propositions. There are forms of knowledge (personal awareness or acquaintance, practical know-how, intuition, etc.) which are not exhausted by propositional knowledge. For example, can a couple's knowledge of how to dance the Lindy Hop be best analyzed in terms of a set of beliefs about the dance? Or does it involve some kind of practical feel for the steps, an embodied awareness of the movements, that cannot be fully exhausted propositionally? If so, then there may be kinds or instances of knowledge that do not in any way involve the subjects believing certain propositions. Thus, rather than knowledge "that God exists," the knowledge of God may sometimes be better theorized in terms of an existential awareness of the divine presence, a fundamental openness of the human person to the Person of God, or the like.

(6) There may also be unbelievers who quite consciously believe that God exists and assent to that proposition, but still lack the requisite faith in God--a trusting reliance upon God, working itself out in love. According to James, the demons have such a faithless belief in God. So did, perhaps, Ivan Karamazov when he "respectfully returned the ticket" to him. So did the Pharisees.

(7) Even in regard to the range of behaviors we describe as "self-deception," it seems to me that Bahnsen's account is a little "thin." He wants to avoid problematic notions such as the unconscious. But the idea that unbelievers simply rationalize the evidence for God seems too simplistic. What about unconscious beliefs? Levels of consciousness? A multiplicity of competing wills? Compartmentalization? Sure, these are complicated, but so are people in the image of an infinite God. And if accounts of human behavior do not match the complexity of human experience, the phenomenology of our lives, then how can they be compelling?

(8) From the previous point, (7), we can see that we need to problematize the notion of the individual subject of knowledge. We do not fit the model of a Cartesian ego who individually assesses its ideas as clear and distinct and then either assents or does not assent to each. Rather, not to put too fine a point on it, we are pulsing, hot, smelly bodies, whose hearts are revealed in emotions, desires, gestures, positions, poetry, music-making, and relationships and who are equipped with conceptual, linguistic, and symbol-transforming capacities that are thoroughly embedded and enmeshed within habits, family, society, and culture. Epistemological analyses that don't make room for these kinds of considerations, it seems to me, either falsely portray experience or provide accounts so general as to be vacuous. In either case, if such analyses are being constructed for a primarily practical activity such as apologetics, it seems to me that they would do well to deal with the true range of human existence.

(9) Unbelief is idolatry and Bahnsen's explanation of self-deception (even in his more apologetics-oriented writings and tapes) makes reference to that largely only in its talk of motivation to ignore, deny, etc. belief in God--to exchange God for unbelief, a lie. But it seems to me that idol-smashing is the nexus of apologetic activity. The unbeliever's motivations are schizoid--wanting a god, but not God. Idols are, therefore, not merely "lies" (though they are that), but engage the unbeliever on a variety of levels--propositional, but also, ritual, affective, linguistic, narrative, and so on. Moreover, the idols of unbelief make promises, hold out blessings upon which they cannot deliver, except by enslaving their worshippers. Apologetics, therefore, involves unmasking idols in order to commend the Savior as the only truly faithful covenant Lord. More often than not, this is not a particularly intellectual process, but rather resembles a sort of counseling situation (dealing with, e.g., screwed up priorities, bottled up bitterness, unbiblical expectations, resentment, false images of oneself or others, etc.). A "transcendental proof" given in a simplistic fashion seldom begins to address folks outside of the academy, in my experience (and is only ridiculed within the academy since it really doesn't constitute a "proof" in the traditional sense at all--more on that below).

(10) The notion of "S bringing himself to believe that p" is highly problematic. It is clear to me that people have no sort of direct or immediate control over what they believe in the way one might have in, say, turning on a light switch (one's "acceptance" of something, as opposed to belief, is a different matter). Consider. Can you now, at this moment, bring yourself to believe that you are not reading? Could you "rationalize the adverse evidence"? I think you will find that you cannot. Scripture teaches that God's existence is so clear, that I find it incredible to believe that people bring themselve to believe that God does not exist (or that they believe that God does not exist) simply by rationalizing the adverse evidence. After all, everything in creation points to God and thus counts as "adverse evidence"--even the ability to rationalize adverse evidence. Such a process of rationalization gives us some kind of hold on an epistemic destination, but no map to get there. How does belief-formation tie to underlying belief-forming practices? How do those practices intertwine with motivations, commitments, values, conceptual capacities, desires, goals, deliberation, patterns of behavior, etc. Any account of "rationalization" cannot simply assert that one chooses what one believes through it, but must say something about how that process supposedly works.

To sum up: While Bahnsen would certainly have held that people reject Christ for reasons that are not primarily intellectual at their root, he still analyzes the mechanism of unbelief and the reasons offered for it, in what seems to me to be an overly intellectualized account that doesn't allow for the true variety of human experience and personality. I would contend that many people reject Christ for reasons that aren't primarily intellectual in either root or branch. The heart does have its reasons of which reason knows nothing, and they thoroughly permeate human life. They do not simply ramify in the underlying basis for unbelief.

The question is, given Bahnsen's emphases and the overall shape of his apologetic, what do you do with a person who basically offers no intellectual reason why he rejects Christ? In such cases it is often a far more complex matter of desires, personal identifications, emotional configurations, past experiences, idols, unrighteousness in lifestyle, and so on. Even when intellectual reasons are given, they are more often than not, I think, less intellectual rationalizations and more the epiphenomena of practical rationalizations that arise from the heart.

A well-rounded apologetics and epistemology will have to spend time attempting to trace the covenantal nature of all knowledge. The idols of unbelief are the covenant lords of the unbeliever's life--they are worshipped, shape past experience, issue commands, promise blessing and threaten curse, and prepare for the future. But, mimicking our covenant Lord, this lordship structures not only belief and knowledge (the philosophical or ideological), but also ritual, discipline, technology, aesthetic expression, emotions, and so on, including all that would fit into the concept of "culture," broadly conceived. But unmasking and smashings idols requires more than just rationally arguing that such idols are worthless--you've got to get out there and ridicule them, smash them, burn them, devoting them to Yahweh's fire.

Bahnsen's "transcendental proof," then, is much less a "proof"--or even an argument--than it is a particular kind of dialectical strategy (which I would prefer simply to call a "covenantal" strategy). The job of unmasking the various idols of unbelief may, in its various forms, sometimes serve as a more practical embodiment of such a strategy. For instance, consider being told that idolizing one's own "rights," status, and "felt needs" can lead to a bitterness that ultimately results in blaming God for the problem and thus turning away from him in practical atheism.

But unmasking the structure of a particular idolatry in this fashion is also a way of telling someone that there is no explanation for his situation, behavior, and emotional attitudes other than the covenantal structure of human knowledge, behavior, and life. But the idol in question fails to provide what it promises (i.e., satisfaction, security, a sense of self and well-being, etc.). What it does offer is only a perverted form a Christian theism--borrowed capital. And only Christian theism can deliver the goods and give an adequate interpretation of what it means to have those goods. While the particular strategy we take will depend upon the context and the person to whom we are a witness, we never suppose a position of neutrality, but "transcendentally" show the weakness and foolishness of idolatry from a position of faith. The Christian narrative provides a means of making sense of the unbeliever's experience and a subversive re-reading of that experience, much in the way that Augustine, in his City of God, re-told the pagan myths in order to reveal their supressed violence. In this way, then, we commend the Savior as the loving covenant Lord who will always keep his promises and bless those who are faithful to him, those who come to identify with his story and enter the narrative of his people.

Since we are convinced that Christ and his Church are really the only alternative to the futility of the ungodly, we don't try to tear down every possible contender to the Faith, but only the ones that stand in the way in any given situation. Since the unbeliever knows the truth of God on some level, we pray that the Holy Spirit may use our words to bring the heart of the unbeliever to find rest in the promises of Jesus. That approach, I think, is the transcendental strategy, albeit in a different guise than Bahnsen usually presented it. Moreover, it avoids any narrow intellectualism and speaks to what Scripture reveals as the real lived experience of human life.