In chapter 5, Apologetics as Proof: Theistic arguments, John Frame presents traditional arguments for the existence of God with a Van Tillian conclusion: nothing is intelligible unless God exists, and God must be nothing less than the Trinitarian, sovereign, transcendent, and immanent absolute personality of the Scripture.
Frame states that his argument is not absolute certain except that it conveys some of the evidence that God has revealed in Scripture and the world.
Frame states that Scripture denies that anyone can agnostic for God has clearly revealed himself to all people although they repress this truth (Romans 1:18-21). In one sense, everyone is a theist. Yet unbelievers are atheists for they seek to erase this knowledge and to live on atheistic presuppositions.
Frame writes that the argument that follows is directed to atheists.
The Moral Argument
What are moral values, and how can we come to know them? Frame asks. Some say that moral values are merely individual subjective feelings. When a see a robbery of a bank, that robbery is not wrong because I feel it is wrong, it is wrong because the law has been broken. Others say that moral values are merely subjective feelings shared in a given culture and passed down from generation to generation. When we here of cannibalism in a far off country we don’t say that is their particular taste (!) but rather that is wicked.
We act and think that these as if these values were objective values.
Where does the authority of the absolute moral principle come from?
The source of absolute moral authority is either personal or impersonal.
1. The source of absolute moral authority is impersonal. That would mean that there is some impersonal structure or law in the universe that sets forth ethical precepts and rightly demands allegiance to them. Where does the “ought” or our obligation to obey this impersonal law come from?
If fate, as in ancient Greek religion, is the impersonal law, should I submit or fight fate? If my fate is to die. I should fight fate. I am not obligated to obey this impersonal source of absolute moral authority.
2. The source of absolute moral authority is personal. If agree to pay a roofer for roofing my house, I am obligated to this person to pay him. I have a personal moral obligation. If as a child, my parents tell me to do something, I ought to obey them. I am personally obligated to them. We obey our parents because they are wiser and more experienced than we are.
We ought to obey God because He is a personal absolute or an absolute personality who is supremely wiser than we are.
Moral standards, therefore, presuppose absolute moral standards, which in turn presuppose the existence of an absolute personality. In other words, they presuppose the existence of God.
The Epistemological Argument
Epistemological arguments traditionally start with the phenomenon of human rationality and ask how that can be. How is it possible that the human mind correlates so well with the structure of the world that people can make sense of the world? There must be a rational structure in the world that mirrors or is mirrored by the rational structure of the human mind. An absolute personality is the best explanation.
Metaphysical Argument
Most of the arguments traditionally used in apologetics begin with some fundamental reality in the universe and try to show that that reality presupposes God. These are called metaphysical arguments and the most common ones start from purpose, cause, and being itself. Purpose is seen in the teleological argument, cause is seen in the cosmological argument, and being is seen in the ontological argument.