How can the Christian justify circularity in his argument for Christianity?
… (N)o system can avoid circularity, because all systems … – non-Christian as well as Christian – are based on presuppositions that conrtol their epistemologies, argumentation, and use of evidence. Thus a rationalist can prove the primacy of reason only by using a rational argument. An empiricist can prove the primacy of sense-experience only by some kind of appeal to sense-experience. A Muslim can prove the primacy of the Koran only by appealing to the Koran. But if all systems are circular in that way, then such circularity can hardly be urged against Christianity.
Allerdings dürfe sich der Zirkelschluss nur auf das “letzte Argument” beziehen:
Circularity in a system is properly justified only at one point: in an argument for the ultimate criterion of the system. The Christian emplys circularity in his argument for Scripture, the rationalist in his argument for reason, and the empiricist in his argument for sense-experience…
Trotz dem Zirkelschluss kann ein Argument für den christlichen Glauben ansprechen, denn:
The unbeliever is made in the image of God and therefore is made to think in God’s way. In the present context, circularity is God’s way. Thus the unbeliever, at some level of his consciousness, will recognize the persuasiveness of the circular argument for Christianity.
John Frame. The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God. P & R: Philippsburg 1987. (130-132)
