(The following is an edited email correspondence.)

I am most interested in a point that you put forth in your book, Presuppositional Confrontations. My hope is that you will further expound upon this point for me:

"The real common ground that the Christian has with the non-Christian is that they are both made in the image of God. However, the non-Christian suppresses and denies this common ground in his explicit philosophy. Therefore, in terms of our explicit philosophies, there is no common ground between the Christian and the non-Christian. But the knowledge of God is inescapable, and surfaces in distorted form at various point of the non-Christian's philosophy. Thus the Christian argues that the non-Christian already knows about the true God and denies it, which means that the non-Christian is without excuse and subject to condemnation." (PDF, p. 29)

We must never say that there is absolutely no common ground between believers and unbelievers, but we can say that there is no explicit common ground, since unbelievers deny what they already know about God. But since they already know something true about God, then there is common ground at least in this sense, although unbelievers suppress or deny this in their explicit philosophy.

If there is absolutely no common ground in any sense, then unbelievers would not even be human. However, we have at least the image of God in common with them, and also the universal and inescapable knowledge about God and his moral laws.

There is no explicit agreement between Christian and non-Christian philosophy, and in this sense, there is no common ground. This is in opposition to classical and evidential apologetics, which say that unbelievers have "common ground" in the sense that they do not even need to reject their basic principles to reach God, and that they just need to use those principles a little better.

But there is really zero common ground in our explicit philosophy, because even 1 + 1 = 2 means something different to me than to an unbeliever. I think of it in relation to God, but the unbeliever doesn't, and it is possible to write out this "relationship" in propositional form. Therefore, "1 + 1 = 2" is a shorthand for something that has different meanings and implications for the believers and unbelievers. In this sense, there is no common ground. Thus the unbelievers must give up their basic principles to convert.

Recommended:

Vincent Cheung, Ultimate Questions

Vincent Cheung, Presuppositional Confrontations

Vincent Cheung, Apologetics in Conversation

Gordon Clark, Karl Barth’s Theological Method (ch. 4)

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