I said in an earlier post about the supremacy of Christ in reason that it seems that with reason we have two alternative views that can be held: one consists in believing that we can have reason because we think reasonably (a one-step circularity, where the idea of reason upholds and supports itself), the other consists in believing that we can have reason because God forms the basis for rationality in our world (this results in a two-step circularity, in which the idea of reason is upheld by God, and we believe in God because of rational reasons).

My original question was: “Is there some kind of excellence in the many-faceted kind of circularity like we find in Christianity that is not present in singly circular reasoning?” But I do believe that I got the horse before the cart here. Before we can ask whether two-(or more)-step circularity is superior to one-step circularity, where reason validates itself, we have to ask whether there are any contradictions in either. I was reading through the Drange-Wilson debate earlier this week and realized that I hadn’t even considered that one might be inherently flawed by virtue of contradiction. This eradicates the asking of this question because it pre-emptively answers it. Doug Wilson writes about the contradiction present in non-Christian presuppositions here.