By Sam Davis and Dan Cook, for Apostoic Venn blogcast.
Long ago, there lived two neighbors, side by side. On the eastern, wooded plot lived Mr. Wright. And upon the western, sandy plot, lived Mr. Slight.
One day, Wright set out into his wood lot with saws, axes, wedges, and rope. He had set his mind upon the felling of trees and limbing them into logs, splitting them into planks and beams. Mr. Wright would be a house-wright.
Between skill, planning, and determination, it was not long before the first tree thundered and fell.
On the neighboring plot, Slight was not merely woken so much as shaken by the tremors running through the earth. He leapt from his bedroll, knocking his tent asunder. “There must be an enemy invading with elephants and cannonade!”
Freeing himself from the coils of his collapsed tent, saber in hand, he moved to flank the point in the nearby forest which must conceal the enemy cannon. Slight was not long in discovering the cause of this calamitous clatter: Wright was felling trees!
“Wright, you fool! Have you not read the words of the King? ‘Even a blessing, early in the morning, with a loud voice, is counted as a curse.’ What is the meaning of this racket!?”
“Slight, my good man, since when does one count the hour after sunrise as early? Up with you, O sluggard, lest you fold your hands and eat your own flesh. I mean to fell logs and build me a house rather than dwell in a tent all my days.”
Slight sheathed his saber and glanced about. “A mess indeed you’ve made here.” He said. “But your desire is a fine one. I too have grown weary of awakening wet from a night in a leaky tent. Methinks I shall build as well.”
Wright beamed. “There are trees aplenty friend! Come and limb them beside me. But, if like myself it is your first construction, I have here the King’s blueprint that would be wise to follow.”
Slight took the blueprint in hand and returned to his sandy plot to muse.
Day after day Wright and Slight felled tree after tree. They limbed them and split them and stacked them alike into piles of useful logs and planks and beams. The forest was a constant noise of industry. Each of them parted in the evening, hauling away a load of planks and logs to their own plots.
At last they had enough to begin. Away on his plot, Wright worked logs under the forest shade. In the evenings he drew plans and calculations for his home. In the mornings, though, he dug deep holes where his home would soon stand. But on the sandy plot, a floor was first, and then walls began to grow.
One morning Slight traveled the way to see how his friend was getting along. Shocked, he could no longer distinguish his neighbor’s land from a sieve, so riddled was it with holes and pits.
“Wright, you silly fool.” He poked at his friend. “Tolerance of your noisy work was one thing, but you’ve graduated to murderous negligence! Have you not read the King’s word, ‘If any man digs a pit and does not cover it, he shall be liable for whoever falls therein’? Do you conspire to lure me to my death upon my visits?”
“Slight,” came the reply, “If warning is what you need, hear me now: I am digging pilings and footings. My land is not safe right now. Do not wander upon it. Have you not read the blueprint?”
“Digging holes!” Scoffed Slight. “What manner of fool would build by taking away?”
“Slight, I shall stand a log in each piling pit to make the foundation of my home. That is what manner of fool I am.”
Slight watched as Wright dragged a straight log to a hole, dropped it in, and leveled the protruding top. “Wright, you fool, why bother taking the trees out of the ground just to put them back into it?”
“And how, pray tell, should I be making start?”
”Why, the ground of my plot is flat enough, and easy to shape! I have wasted no time in constructing floor and walls, and have a home half-habitable where yours is not begun!”
Wright, shook his head, concerned. “Slight… friend. I must caution against proceeding in this manner. Your house will not stand long with sand for a foundation. Please, consult the blueprint.”
Slight Scoffed again. “You talk of dirt as though it had a law, you superstitious old sawyer. I have a brain. I have hands. I have land. That is three foundations and any one would do. Keep your holes and exhaust yourself. I’ll have a roof before your corner posts are plumb.”
All afternoon they bandied words, as Wright worked and Slight watched. Try as he might with reason and appeal, no progress could be made with Slight’s predetermined notions, his will was settled. At length, Wright stood up and stretched his aching back. He spoke carefully, as to a man whose ears only work when the voice is his own.
”Very well friend. If you are determined, I shall no more argue the axiom, but come and work inside it. Let us go this week and finish your home by your own rule, and then I shall be at peace to work on mine. If it stands, I shall be rightly called the fool, and if no, you will be unable to argue that you were merely told.”
Laughing, Slight clapped him on the back. “Come and welcome, neighbor. Stack with me and see.”
They labored together, stacking logs and completing first walls and then setting to work on roof. Wright spoke no more about the shifting sands beneath, but set his shoulders to Slight’s timber with good cheer and merry song. From time to time, other neighbors would pass, and call out with voices disbelieving, “Wright! I should think you know better.” To them Wright would call back, “I know his claim. I will give the claim a house to inhabit.” On the day they laid the last plank, Slight walked the floor with stamping feet. “Won’t bear a load, you said. But see? It bears me.” Wright smiled. “I do see. It will bear you for the time that the sand plans its betrayal.”
Wright did not go home that night, nor did he sleep. Hidden in the tree line with a lantern and the King’s book across his knees, he waited. For though he would not save the house, for his neighbor’s life he would do all he could. Nearing dawn, the sand remembered what sort of earth it was. A loud creaking and trembling was emitted, and running at full speed, Wright drew his friend by the hand, out of the structure just in time. The house collapsed, thousands of pounds of logs in ruin where Slight had lately lay.
Gasping and looking from the rubble to his friend, Slight could not speak a word. Wright grasped his shoulder. “I have shown you what you would not be told. We used your foundation and your building plan. I slipped no secret piling under your floor. This was your home, framed by your own axiom; naming a sandy patch ‘foundation’ makes it so. Some men, Slight, cannot be argued out of a belief they will not test, and must see the roof come down for themselves. Forgive my duplicity, and learn with me.” He pressed the blueprint back into Slight’s shaking hand.
Giving The Meaning
Presuppositions are hard, and they’ve fallen out of fashion in the last 200 years, but neither difficulty nor popularity diminishes their importance. Solomon is the master of presuppositionalism, and for many years I didn’t know how to read him. This disconnect is at the heart of why Ecclesiastes is lost on so many. I think the following examples, one from Scripture and the other from literature, demonstrate and then laugh at our ignorance.
Then the king said, “The one says, ‘This is my son that is alive, and your son is dead’; and the other says, ‘No; but your son is dead, and my son is the living one. ’” And the king said, “Bring me a sword. ” So a sword was brought before the king. And the king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other. ” Then the woman whose son was alive said to the king, because her heart yearned for her son, “Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means put him to death. ” But the other said, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him. ” Then the king answered and said, “Give the living child to the first woman, and by no means put him to death; she is his mother. ” And all Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice.
1Kings 3:23-28
There’s another take on this story though, from Huckeberry Finn’s companion Jim.
Jim: Well den! Warn’ dat de beatenes’ notion in de worl’? You jes’ take en look at it a minute. Dah’s de stump, dah—dat’s one er de women; heah’s you—dat’s de yuther one; I’s Sollermun; en dish yer dollar bill’s de chile. Bofe un you claims it. What does I do? Does I shin aroun’ mongs’ de neighbors en fine out which un you de bill do b’long to, en han’ it over to de right one, all safe en soun’, de way dat anybody dat had any gumption would? No; I take en whack de bill in two, en give half un it to you, en de yuther half to de yuther woman. Dat’s de way Sollermun was gwyne to do wid de chile. Now I want to ast you: what’s de use er dat half a bill?—can’t buy noth’n wid it. En what use is a half a chile? I wouldn’ give a dern for a million un um.
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn: Chapter 14
In case anyone is still struggling, Solomon presupposed the child’s true mother would love him and would rather see him in another’s care than dead. Solomon further presupposed that the lying woman would rather have done with the whole matter as long as her rival did not “win” the case. Solomon then feigned a course of action which would lay these presuppositions bare. Jim saw the sword and missed the test; don’t be Jim.
America has recently seen Enes Freedom and Royce White petition to play in the WNBA as trans women. The political left has spent years trumpeting:
Trans women are real women.
Anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman.
Royce and Enes are proving the unwillingness and inability of the Woke and the WNBA to apply their own professed ideas consistently. But the genius is in the method! Royce and Enes didn’t accuse from the sidelines; they walked out onto this farce to show it’s not load-bearing.
Conservatives have long been about the business of challenging the “identity” of “trans women.” And we’ve been accosted as bigots for doing so, told that we could never understand a trans person’s emotional turmoil and that our challenge contributes to that turmoil.
Royce and Enes are truly men, but the Woke and the WNBA cannot come to that conclusion from within their own sexual ideology. Only 2 options exist for the WNBA:
Admit Royce and Enes as WNBA players. This legitimizes an identity that the Woke have been casting aspersions upon.
Deny Royce and Enes as WNBA players. This delegitimizes the trans creed that anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman.
The Woke and the WNBA have no good move. This is checkmate. This is how presuppositional arguments work. We have recently applauded and commented upon Royce and Enes’ efforts, and have done some moderately publicized presuppositional stunts of our own. I expect folly and folderol from my foes; they’ve abandoned God’s Word, which enlightens the mind. However, we’ve encountered conservative voices decrying Royce, Enes, and Apostoic, because they didn’t catch what’s going on.
Believing that Royce and Enes are serious in their claims and quest, and that we are serious in supporting two giant, bearded men playing in women’s sports, they missed the point entirely, lashing out against both so-called conservative “transgender” NBA players and a so-called conservative publication that played along. That was surprising and disappointing. Conservatives need to rediscover the power of the presuppositional argument, and discern it when employed by their allies.
In the interest of educating my brothers, I tender the above humble parable and its explanation.
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