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Presuppositional Apologetics: The Correct Way to Defend the Christian Faith

For The King — FTK
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Presuppositional Apologetics: The Correct Way to Defend the Christian Faith

February 16, 2022
For The King
For The KingFTK

This Wednesday I have Bryce as my guest again! We walk through the presuppositional method for defending the Christian faith. We base a lot of this material off of a book by Dr. Greg Bahnsen called Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith. You can pick up the book here. We hope this episode equips you to defend the faith and destroy the god's of this age like secularism, evolutionary theory, feminism, and the like! Go to battle Christian warriors! You've been made a new creation and have been given a new mind, do not use the old mans ways of defending the faith with vain philosophy! 

"but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect" - 1 Peter 3:15 

"We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ" - 2 Corinthians 10:5

Key Texts:  

* Isaiah 1:18-20 

* Colossians 2:2-5 

* Psalm 119:160 

* Proverbs 26:4-5 

* Proverbs 1:7,22,29 

* Romans 1:18 

* Acts 17 & 26 

* 1 Timothy 6:20 

My guest joining me this week is my brother Bryce. Bryce just finished his undergraduate degree in philosophy and recently started his MDiv. from Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary. He hopes, if the LORD wills it, to be a pastor shepherding Gods people one day. 

Website: forthekingpodcast.com 

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/For-The-King-105492691873696/ 

Contact: forthekingpodcast@gmail.com 

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Transcript

There is no order. There is nothing. There's not even chaos.
It's nothing. It creates everything.
That's absolute absurdity.
Yeah, their starting point is absurdity. And if we all came from nothing and nothing matters at all, then why is it a big deal if I'm a Christian? Why is it a big deal for you?
And that's where we don't say, "Oh man, he set out my worldviews absurd. Let me try to find some sort of ground he's gonna be in." He's gonna look cool to him, so let me, I'll do the cosmological argument.
Maybe I'll join by our logos. Yeah. I'll accept evolutionary biology, but that's really not essential.
It's not essential. It's not the gospel.
Don't think I will even ask you to make Jesus Lord of your life.
That's the most preposterous thing I could ever tell you to do. Jesus Christ is Lord of your life. Whether you serve him or not.
Whether you bless him, curse him, hate him, or love him. He is the Lord of your life.
Because God has given him a name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow.
In tongue confess that he is Lord. Some of you will bow out of the grace that has been given to you. And others will bow because your kneecaps will be broken by the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron.
And I'll not apologize for this God of the Bible.
[Music]
Isaiah chapter 1 verses 18 through 20. Come now, let us reason together says the Lord, though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.
Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Welcome to the For the King podcast. Wherever you're listening in from, we appreciate you guys spending some time with us to hear the good news of Jesus Christ, to hear about God's word, the Christian worldview, the supremacy of Christ.
Right now, Bryce and I are on vacation with our family. We are in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. We're actually, if you're curious, we were in the Gatlinburg Pigeon Forge area hanging out for the week.
So it's been a good week.
Bryce and I have been filming some podcasts, we've got some good extended time together, which is awesome. We are fittingly in the Smoky Mountains.
Also, I'm smoking my pipe with the Cairo on the front for Christ my King as I go to battle.
And Bryce is smoking a nice Cuban cigar. Yeah.
And we're spending some time together just hanging out. And we wanted to do a longer episode this week, a wonky Wednesday, where on these wonky Wednesdays, we talk about nothing wonky in the sense of,
it makes no sense, or it's very odd. It's just maybe not your conventional wisdom you've heard, and maybe some good biblical teaching of the Christian worldview, implications of the Christian worldview is really what these Wednesdays are about.
We start off reading Isaiah chapter one, talking about God wanting not us to find some neutral place with Him, but he says, "Come and let us reason together rightly based on God's word, because it ends for the mouth of the Lord has spoken." Based on God's word, we come and respond to Him. So this episode, as you can see in the title, is about presuppositional apologetics. Now, for a quick intro for those of you that are maybe new to apologetics, or maybe you've been steeped in apologetics for a while, and you just haven't even heard that there's a whole other world and methodology of apologetics that hasn't even dawned on you have been presented to you yet.
So, the one Bryce and I are presenting to you today is presuppositional methodology, the presuppositional method. Classical apologetics, as we will lay out in this whole episode, is totally different. It's a different methodology.
So we have these two opposing ways of defending the Christian faith, as we're told to in 1 Peter, always being ready to give an answer for the hope that's within us. Those are the two methods. We're talking about that today.
So, is there any other introductory things, or are we good to get into it?
Yeah, that's great. Okay. So, the root of the issue and why presuppositional apologetics is helpful, this is going to be, we're going to build a whole argument here, so this is kind of step one, would be that there is an epistemic problem, which can also be thought of as a moral problem, or you could say it's an epistemic problem rooted in moral depravity.
So, that's a way you can connect the thoughts. Now, what's the case, why are we saying this? Why would we say that there's an epistemic problem, and why is there a moral problem? If you're new to philosophical language, epistemology is just the study of how one would come to a true understanding of any piece of knowledge, any propositional piece of knowledge. So, there's a bunch of different theories of knowledge.
What we're talking about here is the knowledge of God, that's the epistemic problem, the ability to understand God rightly.
And as we see in Calvin's book one, when he talks about the knowledge of man or the knowledge of world, of the world versus the knowledge of God, we can't understand ourselves rightly apart from proper knowledge of God, and we can't understand God rightly apart from proper understanding of ourselves. So, that's what this is all rooted in, that there has to be a correct understanding and then a remedy to the issue.
So, do you want to get into the text or is there anything I'm missing there for the epistemic problem/moral problem? In our thinking. Good intro. Good intro, okay.
So, Bryce has Romans 1. I'm sorry, I have Romans 1. I'm sorry, I have Romans 1.
So, we read in Romans 1, God is giving, he's speaking to the church in Rome, and he's talking about the depravity of mankind and certain specific things. He's mainly talking about sexual immorality, also along with them exchanging the image of God for other images, and this is what God says. "Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who was blessed forever.
For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women in exchange and natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, and the men likewise give of natural relations with women, and were consumed with passion for one another. And other men committed shameless acts with men in receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error." I feel like I missed the... No, I think that's it. God, yeah, so God gave them up to the impurity of their minds.
Yeah, sorry. So, I'm sorry, and then in verse 28, this is really the crux of it, "And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done." Sorry, I should have just read one more verse. I'm sorry.
So, we see this whole procession of God giving them up to the impurity of their minds, which then affects, because of their moral depravity, at the end, God says that He gives them up at the end of that whole section there from 24 to 28. He says that He gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. So, in any intellectual field, morals are always connected to every intellectual field.
Whenever you're doing science, mathematics, whatever, whether a natural science, a social science, whatever, there are obviously morals involved in social science, but there are so many implications morally based on natural science. So, God has given them up to a debased mind, and they are not able to think clearly, and because of these things, because they've been given up, they don't do what they ought to do. Right.
And the major point in Romans chapter 1, too, is that there is a suppression of truth happening. That's what Paul says. They suppress the truth, but how do they do that? Right? So, there's the intellectual sphere.
There's the epistemae, the knowledge that's happening of information that you're taking in, propositions that you're knowing.
Right? But how do you suppress it? And Paul says they suppress the truth and unrighteousness, and that's the main thrust of his argument, and this is why we title this the Epistemic or Moral Problem. Right? The problem for why we don't know is because we suppress the truth of God and unrighteousness.
We morally, because of the depravity of our hearts, which just means that we have become darkened in our thinking. And this is what we call, theologians call this the noetic effects of the fall. Noetic in the sense of our knowledge, the knowledge that we have in our minds, those faculties have become darkened.
And this is something that's just absolutely littered all throughout the Scriptures, and Paul says this in Ephesians 4, verses 17 and 18. Paul says, "Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do." How do they walk? "In the futility of their minds." There we have again the minds, the faculty of the mind. Verse 18 says, "They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them." How are they ignorant? Why are they ignorant? Due to their hardness of heart.
So when people deny the things of God, when people deny the Lord Jesus Christ and the Father who sent Him,
ultimately this boils down to their ignorance is due to the hardness of their hearts. They have not been made alive. Because we are all sinners and we have fallen short of God's glory, we now have our minds darkened to the understanding in the things of God.
And this is mankind's natural state. In Romans 8 it says, "The natural man does not accept the things of God." And this is the main thrust of Paul's argument here, is that our minds have become darkened. And we're just building a ground working here.
This is foundational, which is why we're laboring it. Exactly. Because the major assumption by presuppositional apologetics is the assumption of the Bible and that mankind's reasoning faculties, the understanding that they have, has become darkened.
They are just like the Gentiles who do not understand. They're ignorant. Why? Because of the hardness of their heart.
We all have a heart condition. You can't separate knowledge from moral suppression. The reason they deny God is because they suppress His truth in unrighteousness.
And we're going to get more in depth into why this is opposed to classical apologetics. But the reason why we're starting here is because there's a fundamental difference between the extent of the ability of the unbeliever to reason well to God. Classical apologetics gives a crazy amount of credence to the unregenerate man's ability to reason himself to God.
Which is why we're trying to show the complete and utter difference.
So in 1 Corinthians 1, 18-25 we get more of this from the Apostle Paul. Starting in verse 18, "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
For it is written, 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.' Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, and folly to Gentiles.
But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God for the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." Quick interaction with that text. In fact, Terry, he's asking against the knowledge of God, where is the debater of this age? Or the scribe, the wise one, the one who called themselves wise. He's insinuating that there isn't even a similarity between the two, the two camps.
That when he's saying God has made foolishness the wisdom of the world, he's saying there is the reasoning of the world, the way they reason, the way they think, those who are in the world, those who are not regenerated by the Holy Spirit.
The way they think is foolishness as opposed to God's wisdom. And his wisdom is laid out in his word.
Christ is, the case here in 1 Corinthians says Christ is the wisdom of God.
So the cross, that's why he brings up the cross here, Christ crucified, it's a stumbling block. That's the wisdom of God he's talking about.
He's not talking about some ethereal attribute of God, God is wise. He's bringing it down and saying it's these words that are laid out, it's this gospel that Christ gave us. That all is folly to the world and they cannot reason themselves too and write understanding of God apart from the cross of Christ.
So, good?
Now, let's move on to, do you have anything there? The only point I would add, which you've already hit, but just to clarify even further, is when it specifically says the world not by wisdom, new God. This is a very key text for presuppositional apologetics because it demonstrates that there is not some lacking intellectual or wise knowledge that somebody needs to believe in God. Exactly.
We are not to be filling their heads with knowledge. And we'll get into this a little bit later on. But the reason that we're not to be filling their heads with knowledge, for the purpose, we should fill their heads with knowledge, but for the purpose of their belief in God, of their accepting Lord Jesus Christ, is because the world not by wisdom knew God.
They didn't know God because of wisdom.
Exactly. That doesn't mean we don't present them with wisdom.
That doesn't mean we don't present them with intellectual knowledge, which we'll end up getting into.
But the world not by wisdom knew God. So that's not the reason that they will know the Lord.
That doesn't mean we are devoid of reasons for understandings for our faith. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
And that wisdom there, I would say that is worldly wisdom. Not by worldly wisdom can you achieve the knowledge of God.
It is by the wisdom of Christ, which is wrought in you by the Holy Spirit.
Hello. There we go.
All right.
So let's continue. First Corinthians, same book. Let's go to Chapter 2 and let's read verse 14 real quick.
Well, you had quoted it earlier. Do you just want to leave it there? Let's reiterate it actually. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are falling to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
They are unable to understand the things of God. It's impossible apart from the Holy Spirit. Exactly.
When you go and read that full Chapter 2, just go read First Corinthians Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.
This really gets into the heart of what we're getting at. It's the Spirit's work to enlighten the person's... I mean, we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves in a sense, but that's just what the text says. We gain the mind of Christ by the Spirit's power.
And that's really important for us to understand is that it's not by intellectual knowledge.
It's by the Holy Spirit's sovereign work in our lives. And this is why if you really are reformed, not just a Calvinist, if you're reformed and have a reformed understanding of the Scriptures based all the way back in apostolic tradition, you're going to be pre-sop.
This whole, the based mind talk, this is total depravity. That's really what we're laying out. Total depravity, we're just stretching it and applying the doctrine of total depravity to what? The mind and the human's ability to reason.
We're just applying it there. So that's why if you're reformed, classical apologetics is more of an Arminian concept, that there's a measure of grace inherent in the person, a measure of goodness inherent in the individual. Which is why if you're a reformed theologian or if you're a reformed person and have a reformed understanding of the Scriptures, pre-step positional apologetics really is the only thing that makes sense and is consistent with your Calvinism.
And even with that being said, we do want to recognize that these people that we're talking about, they are brothers in Christ. They are brothers. Yes, yes, yes.
Archie Sproul is known for his classical apologetics. We love him. He's a gifted brother in Christ.
He's a stalwart defender of the reformed faith.
But at the same time, we want to have a humble pushback to such a great saint that classical apologetics is more akin to an Arminian doctrine. But we do want to recognize with David, like he says in Psalm 15, "Honor those who fear the Lord." We want to honor our brothers and revere them as stalwart defenders of the faith and contend for the faith that was once and for all delivered to the saints.
But at the same time, this is the pushback to them. What they truly believe as a reformed Christian should push them to this direction as opposed to classical apologetics. Exactly.
So another text that we can bring up here too is a very classic one. It's Psalm 14, verse 1. And I'm going to quote the part that usually most people know, but then I'm going to keep going on to demonstrate our purposes more. It says, "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.' They are corrupt.
They do abominable deeds."
Man, you can't have a smoke. I'm breathing a smoke. I think it's not bad.
I know. They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds.
There is none who does good.
Paul ends up quoting this again back in Romans 3. "But the fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.' What is this fool like? He's corrupt. He's abominable." Right.
There is no one who says it.
Whoops. I was just saying.
Wow. Bless thee and keep me. Bless thee and keep thee.
All right. Sorry. Continue.
So what it means to be a fool is not that you are lacking some sort of intellectual knowledge. What it means to be a fool is that you are morally suppressing God's truth. We keep touting this again and again and again.
Wisdom is righteousness. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That's how you receive wisdom and knowledge and understanding.
It's by God's grace intervening in your life, by the grace of the Lord Jesus. Exactly. But what we should be understanding is that those who say there is no God, they are foolish not intellectually, even though they are intellectually, but they're foolish primarily because they are depraved.
Yeah. It's not before intellectual reasons that they deny God. It's simply for moral reasons because they are sinners.
And they love their sins. And they love their sins. So they'll reject anything.
They can't even come close to a holy God. Yeah. But that holy God is there and he is not silent.
Exactly. So this is the main thrust and the main argument for this epistemic moral problem. So you want to get into the remedy.
So here's the remedy to this issue we have, which is going to be, we've already been talking about it, but let's get into it. Now I'm going to read 1 Corinthians 2, verse 1 through 16. "And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.
For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and with much trembling. And my speech and my message were in not implausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and power, so that your faith might not rest on the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understand this, for if they had they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
But as it is written, what know I has seen, seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man, imagine what God has prepared for those who love him. These things God has revealed to us through the spirit." That's the main thrust of the remedy. "For the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
For who knows a person's thought except the spirit of that person which is in him. So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit of who is from God that we might understand the things freely given by God.
And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the spirit. Interpreting spiritual truth to those who are spiritual reiterated. The natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are falling to him and he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ." The remedy is the spirit of God, the power of God, the power of God manifesting the spirit of God. That is how we have our problem solved here of an epistemic allegiance to sin.
Now if we repent and believe in Christ because of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, we can have right thinking and right wisdom. That when employed in scientific data, in the social sciences, wherever you are at, will achieve true understanding of the world. And because we have a true understanding of the world, true understanding of God, as Calvin says, and because we have a true understanding of God, we will have a true understanding of the world.
And that is why the remedy is always the same thing in every situation. It is the gospel, the true gospel of Jesus Christ, that he came to die for sinners and he rose again from the grave and he seated at the right hand of the Father. This is the gospel.
We are sinners. We need this Savior. We suppress God's truth and unrighteousness.
We deny him day by day, not because of intellectual reasons, but because we morally hate God and despise the things of God. We do not accept the things of God. The only way for our minds, the reasoning faculties of our minds, to be straightened because God is in the business of making crooked things straight.
The only way we have to happen is by the gospel of Jesus Christ by, like Rocky said, repenting and believing in God. And that's how we now have the mind of Christ. And this is the exact same thing that Paul even says in Ephesians 4, from what we quoted earlier, that they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart.
Paul then lays out the remedy in verse 20 through 24. He says this, "But this is not the way you learn Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him that the truth is in Jesus." Let me hit that again. "The truth is in Jesus.
To put off your old self," that's the sinful nature, "which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires." So this is all morals, and these wicked morals of mankind are being washed away by the blood of Christ, and this is what he continues to say, "and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds." Specifically, he addresses the mind, "and to put on the new self, which is Christ, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." So again, this is always moral implications. So if we are Christians who believe in the inspiration, authority, the infallibility, the inerrancy, and the sufficiency of God's Word, then if you're reformed, if you accept these things, you must accept that Christ redeems not only our souls, but our souls encompass our whole being, who we are, and our minds. Our minds also, we cannot neglect the mind.
He regenerates us wholly as a whole person, not just our hearts. It doesn't just make our hearts new. He makes everything about us new.
Because we are now regenerated and born again, everything about our lives are different. When we look at a tree now, it's different. When we look at leaves, when we look at, as I'm looking at my brother, it's different.
As we look at... You respect me finally. Finally. It was hard to even find that in my grace.
Exactly. Not something that was... But when we think about God, it's different now. And what's that difference? The blood of Christ.
Exactly. The mind of Christ that has now been given to us. So God's Word and the enlightening by the Spirit... Is the remedy.
Is the remedy through the gospel. Exactly. And the gospel redeems us wholly.
So this is the whole groundwork that we're going... Groundwork. 20 minutes of groundwork. Let's get into the nithigriti.
Let's do it. Okay. So... No.
You. So the second thing that we're going to talk about is the Lordship of Christ in epistemology. So again, the epistemology is the study of knowledge.
How we know what we know. So Jesus is Lord in our epistemology. And this means that we cannot serve two masters.
You cannot serve God in money. You cannot serve what you think intellectually is right in what God says. Exactly.
What God says is what is. That's what happens. Okay.
Yeah. So the Lordship of Christ, the nature of what Christ is laying out, we learned in a more full way from Dr. Greg Bonson's book, Always Ready, Directions for Defending the Faith. This book was written, I think, in the '90s.
'80s, '90s, something like that. Dr. Bonson has since passed away, but he was a godly man, and he has. In that book, in this book, I'll put the resource in the show notes.
He lays out, you know, the rules, the directions for defending the faith, which is based on a presuppositional apologetic. And also, this whole argument Bryce and I are laying out, I will put in a Google Doc and also upload on the show notes. Now, in his book, remember, we're talking about you cannot serve two masters in the Lordship of Christ in epistemology, of two masters of epistemology, your source of knowledge.
On page 49, Dr. Bonson lays this out. So I'm going to read a few things from him. He's going to say it a lot better than we can.
Christ's epistemic lordship. God's knowledge is original, comprehensive, and creative. There are no higher principles or standards of truth to which he looks and attempts to bring his thoughts into conformity.
There is no mystery surrounding his understanding for it is infinite. God's mind gives both diversity and order to all things, thus guaranteeing the reality of particulars, multiplicity, and yet assuring that they are intelligible. Unity.
Point two, all knowledge and wisdom have been deposited in Christ, the source, standard, and embodiment of truth. Point three, God's word thus has supreme, absolute, and unquestionable authority in the realm of knowledge as well as morality. Point four, this also means that God's word must be the final standard of truth for man, in which case it cannot be challenged by some more ultimate criterion.
Point five, consequently, the teaching of Christ in Scripture has self-attesting authority. Christ clearly speaks with the authority of God, is the repository of knowledge, and is subject to no authority or standard more basic than himself as the way, the truth, and the life he alone is adequate to witness to himself and his word. Amen.
So the nature of the Master of Christ, the Lordship of Christ, if we're talking about that Master, the Master we want to serve, is a self-authenticating, original comprehensive, infinite multiplicity, unifying knowledge that entails knowledge that comes in the form of morality, which also informs the way we would think rightly about all other ways, the final standard of truth being God's word in Christ himself, which is the embodied in truth, and he has given us the truth. And that's why Paul says in Colossians that in Jesus has hidden all the wisdom and knowledge of God. Exactly.
If you are a Christian, you believe that. So why would we go anywhere else but to Christ? And this is not Rocky and I denying the reality. Of natural revelation.
We're not denying that.
Exactly. We're not denying that.
But what we are saying is that Christ is absolutely central. Why? Because it's the same God who revealed to us the scriptures that reveals himself to us in nature. So we have to absolutely be focused upon Christ and Christ alone because apart from Christ, all these things fall apart.
Because Jesus is the Word of God, and by His the Word of His power, He upholds the universe. He's upholding all things. He is the logic of God.
He's holding all things together in Him. In Him is deposited all the wisdom and knowledge of God. So we are just as the kings in the Old Testament came flooding to Solomon to learn from Him.
We too should be flooding to Christ because true knowledge, true wisdom, true understanding, true enlightenment is not found in Buddha. It's not in Allah. It's found in the world's wisdom.
It's not by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens. Those guys can buzz off. Yeah, exactly.
They can buzz off.
No famous scientists. Not Neil deGrasse Tyson.
None of these people. It's to be found in the person and the work of Jesus Christ alone. If you're a Christian, you ought to think this way.
If you're not a Christian, you're obviously not going to think this way. But I start saying you should, obviously. But if you're a Christian, this is the way you should think, and you're living inconsistently if you don't think this way.
And even if you're not a Christian, every single benefit that you have, every knowledge that you have is only because of Christ. If Christ did not create the universe in the way that he made it, you would know nothing. Without Christ, you have nothing.
You can't prove a single thing. Not even a scientific method apart from Christ. You can't prove any of it.
Nothing that you have. No morals, nothing. Yeah, you're living in God's world.
This is our Father's world. And he rules it. And you can't raise any lofty claim against him.
You can't know anything apart from God. Everything that you have is by God's revelation. And what we're relying on, most clearly presented, is through God's special revelation, which is found in God's word.
Right? So what God's word says is what it is. So because of God's word, evolution's wrong, transgenderism's wrong, Marxism's wrong. We can go through all these different worldviews and declare them to be wrong, because when these worldviews clash, only one is left standing and it's God.
God and his word. Right? And this is what Bonta means when he's saying in these points that this is the unquestionable authority. This is the final standard for truth.
This is the self-attesting authority of God. It bears witness by itself. Just like everything that Rocky is... If you look at Rocky, what makes him to be a human is the way in which God created him.
So you see these characteristics like his hands, his ears, his eyes, his nose. All these characteristics testify to who he is. Right? But in the same way with the word of God, this analogy will break down.
But in a similar way analogously, it testifies to itself of its nature and character of what it is. Right? So when you look at God's word, it testifies itself authenticating that it is the word of God. And we'll get into this a little bit later on too.
So can you walk us through... Because of the things we just laid out, not being able to serve two masters and the Lordship of Christ and knowledge, we can now have a true understanding of the myth of neutrality. Right. So many Christians want to appease the atheist, the pagan, and join them, join hands with them, by coming to a neutral place to try to reason together.
When God says, "Let's reason together in Isaiah 1," we're talking about you come over to where I'm at. You listen to my words and you do what I say. Yeah.
Because God has authority. Right. There is no arguing with an ultimate authority.
Right.
So there is no neutral place for any human ever. There's not no neutral place.
Secularists want to think they're neutral. Yeah. Oh, we're not religious.
We're neutral.
Because there's so many different religions. We're the other thing.
We're the thing in the middle where we're neutral. We don't have a position on religion. When actually their entire movement is religious in nature.
That position on religion is a position on religion. Yeah. Like you can't just... Just like a non-denominational church is a denomination if you walk through what they believe.
And like in the same way, like you can't be in the middle of a battlefield between two armies and say, "I'm neutral." You're going to get shot one way or the other. You can't do that. You are on one team or the other because you're either serving God or you're serving your father's sake.
It's one of the two. Or it's like saying there is no truth, which is the truth. You get wrapped up in the world that God created.
The nature of the world that God created is there is no neutral place. That's the way he made the world. And this is the problem with Christ or chaos.
With our society that people think that there's such a thing as being unbiased. Every single person is biased. There's no unbiased source.
What we want are true biases. Exactly. That's what we want.
It's impossible to be unbiased because every single person has presuppositions. Here's a few. I believe right now that I have two hands, ten fingers, two toes, ten fingers.
I believe that God created the world in six sequential days, 24 hour days. I believe that Jesus Christ is the savior of the universe. These are my presuppositions.
These are my commitments as a Christian. In the same way that the atheist believes that they came from... Ponskum. Ponskum, that they're chemical gas, that nothing came from... Nothing produced everything.
They have these commitments as well that they do not prove. Every single person has biases. And this is the myth of neutrality that you can be unbiased or "objective." So we're going to hear on page 51 what Bonson, how he lays that out.
Yeah, and Bonson says on page 51, and it's section 4, and he says, "Neutrality and scholarship, apologetics, or schooling is both impossible and immoral." Point A, no man can serve two masters, and thus one must choose to ground his intellectual efforts in Christ or in his own autonomous reason. There is no middle ground between these two authorities. Okay, it's either Christ or yourself.
Yeah. No middle ground. B, neutrality would erase the distinctiveness of the Christian's position and muffles the antithesis between godly and ungodly thinking.
So it's not that there is this sort of neutral thinking that is amoral. It's neither godly or ungodly. What they're basically saying is, well, it's not ungodly or godly.
It's just true reasoning. The unbeliever has reached some true reasoning. But it's not godly, right, because they're not Christians.
It's not leading them to Christ, right? But it's just good reasoning. It's true. And that goes into the schoolteacher that teaches proper calculus mathematics or arithmetic, any of that.
And they do so apart from Christ. They're actually teaching one of the most damnable things, and that is that you don't need Christ to do mathematics. I'm sorry, folks, but you do, because if you don't have Christ, mathematics wouldn't exist.
Because if there is no god, then you cannot have such a thing as 2+2 equaling 4. God is a logic. Jesus is the word of God, the logos of God, he is the logic of God. And him has deposited all the wisdom and knowledge and truth and understanding all of it.
You cannot make sense of why there's mathematics in this world apart from it being God's world. And that's exactly what you see happening. You see school systems in Washington and in Seattle specifically that are saying that it's, I mean, this is a different issue, but that it's racist to think 2+2 equals 4, or that that's just some sort of social construction.
These things are not a social construct. That's why from all ages, you see a person grabs one stick and they grab another stick and they recognize, oh, I now have two sticks. They never think I have three sticks.
So this is just the silliness of this thinking. There is no distinction between godly and ungodly thinking. It is either godly or ungodly.
And it's not whether you're going to have these antithesis. It's which antithesis are you going to take? What distinctions are you going to grab onto? What is it going to be, either godly or ungodly? And then Bonson says this in closing, "A Christian who strives to be neutral not only denies the lordship of Christ and knowledge and loses his solid ground and reasoning, he also unwittingly endorses assumptions which are hostile to his faith." So here's the issue mainly right here. The Christian who wants to abandon commitments and allegiances to Christ for the sake of sounding an electual, this is the exact kind of person that Bonson is talking about.
Here's an example. - Biologos. - Okay, yeah.
- Did you have a better one? - I was actually going to talk about people in Biologos. Like, I was going to talk about the vein in that, but Biologos specifically, they think that-- I don't even want to say evolutionary theists. That's just so demeaning already.
- I know. - They call themselves evolutionary theists. They think that there is-- I mean, the majority of them, I mean, they're Christian specifically.
- Yeah. - But they say that evolutionary thinking, Darwinism, is this sort of neutral ideology that is neither Christian or non-Christian is something that Darwin discovered, right? And this is the neutral ground that they've stepped onto. They said, you know, the word of God says one thing.
It says that the world was created in six 24-hour days, but we're actually going to step on this place of neutrality because of an objective standard. We clearly have misunderstood the Bible. So therefore, because of that, actually, these six days are not really 24-hour days.
They're long extended periods of time. - Ages. - Ages.
We're just going where the neutral knowledge leads us, right? Because we're after truth. We want to discover God. - Yeah.
- Because we don't want to neglect natural revelation. God's revealed himself in nature. Therefore, if Darwinism's true, then clearly the Bible can't mean what it obviously teaches.
- Yeah. - The Bible says that God made the world in six 24-hour days, and he marks that by the tolid oath of creation. And this is getting into another discussion, but that he says these are the generations of creation when God made the heavens and the earth, and that marks historical.
This isn't mythohistory. This is not historical. Very clear, no, Hebraus, who truly understands the word is going to even say anything otherwise.
And when they do, that's because they've stepped on neutral ground. They've denied-- - They've adopted ungodly presuppositions. - Exactly.
- That would cause them to say such things. - Exactly. And this is why we're-- It's always an attack at the presuppositional level.
What they presuppose or assume or are committed to, these are very interchangeable words, right? Is there a commitment? So what do they hold onto as truth? - Yeah. - Our commitments is that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that the Bible, what it says is true. So because of that, these are our commitments, we build up from there.
We build our worldview from God's word specifically. And this is what we're called to do as Christians, is trust in God's word. We're not to live by blood alone, but by every word that protrudes from the Father's mouth.
- Yeah. - That's how we're to live. - Yeah.
- By God's word and obedience to Him. - Exactly. So the point of that whole section was that every worldview has presuppositions.
Every worldview that answers the questions of life has presuppositions that entail methodology and approaches to those questions to answer them. - Yeah. - Okay? So first point so far, because this is a longer podcast, so to make sure you guys are sticking with us, first point, the epistemic problem and the moral problem is that we're debased in mind.
Remedy was the Spirit of God for generating us. Second point, the Lordship of Christ in epistemology is that He is the Lord of it, and that any other Lord that you would bend the knee to, you've now abandoned Christ. And that every worldview has gods that you're bending the knee to.
Third point that now we're going to start on right now is our point of contact is not what we just laid out, the neutrality that so many people, so many Christians try to bridge with the unbeliever. Our point of contact is not natural revelation, although it will match up perfectly to it if applied properly. Our point of contact, well, so I guess before we hop there, we want to say we do not grant their presuppositions to do so in our apologetic or to abandon our own when we do have an apologetic and we're debating, where's the debater of this age? When we are debating with them, we don't adopt their presuppositions.
So our point, that's not our point of contact is that we shouldn't ever feel the need to adopt their presuppositions and reinterpret God's Word or not do or say what God has explicitly commanded us to say. So for instance, in His Word, what has He told us? He's the Creator, He's there, and He's our Lord. The cosmological argument does not presuppose that.
That is not us bridging, that's not a good apologetic, that's not us bridging the gap with the believer and appealing. We'd be appealing at that point to the laws of logic and reason. Although good, natural revelation, that found in the mind of God, good, that's not where we go when we're defending the knowledge of God.
It's not an intellectual problem. It's not an intellectual problem, remember? It's a moral problem. Yeah, they know God exists, that's what Roman said.
To the premised argument, whatever you're trying to propose to them, is that God exists and you must bend the knee to Christ. If they don't want to do that, if they love their sin, they're not going to do that, no matter how much logic you present them with. This is not an intellectual problem, which is the point.
It's an epistemic problem based in morals. So our fourth point is that the point of contact is not the depositions that we must adopt on the other end, but that the other end is made in the image of God that is employing the laws of logic and reason to even think they're evil, wicked thoughts. And that they've suppressed that truth.
They've basically taken the good things that God's given them by virtue of being made in the image of God, and then they're suppressing that truth. Something I want to bring up here too is just to be a little bit more practical and maybe very heady and stuff. Every theological presentation needs a good anecdote.
And this anecdote is helpful. Back before I was a Christian, and Rocky would present the gospel to me, and he would use God's word, I would always answer back to him and say, "You can't use God's word to prove God's word." And Rocky didn't say, "Oh crap, he presented this." "I guess I just have to throw out God's word now. How do I reach him now?" "I can't use God's word, how do I reach him?" That's my point of contact.
What neutral ground must I step on? And thank God that Rocky didn't step on some neutral ground, that he continued to use God's word to penetrate my heart, because my problem was not something intellectual. I was morally suppressing God's truth and unrighteousness. So his point of contact really was he came to the image of God as I suppressed his truth, God's truth and unrighteousness.
So helpful anecdote to help us to see exactly what we're trying to get at. We don't abandon the Bible just because somebody doesn't believe it. In the same way that you don't abandon justice when a pedophile is saying, "I was just doing what?" Love is love, bro.
Yeah, love is love, bro. Exactly. And just to piggyback on that, if you proclaim the gospel to somebody based on God's word, which is where the gospel is found, the good news of Jesus Christ and how we know Christ in God's word, if you attempt to do that with somebody and they reject you, which they do very often, and then you turn around and say, "Well, I must try another method." What a disgraceful thing to the gospel of God.
Amen. What a disgraceful thing that you think you need to go elsewhere to your own intellect to reach this person. It is a massively dishonoring thing to do to God, which is kind of the point of what we're saying, classical apologetics is rooted in immorality.
Classical apologetics, I'll say it again, classical apologetics is rooted in immorality because of this very point. That you think the best way to defend the faith, to give a reason for the hope, if the reason for the hope within you is your own intellectual understanding of the cosmological argument or whatever deductive argument you want to try to present, if that's the basis of your faith, what a dishonoring thing to think that God's word is not sufficient, that what he's told you is wrong. You thought it would be best if God's word contained the cosmological argument, the Kalam cosmological argument.
That's the best thing for God to reach the world. Why didn't he do it? Well, because he must think that his word is better and because of the obvious nature, Romans 1 is clear, you don't need any of those deductive arguments, the cosmological argument, ontological argument, because creation itself is already all of those, already done. It's done.
God's already made the argument. The argument is that he created something. That's done.
You don't have to try to make a case for a deistic creator. He's already did that. And the general revelation's already done all those arguments for you.
So, you're basically trampling under God's work of natural revelation and then he's already given us a special revelation, which is an even clearer picture of who he is. That actually gets us to the saving knowledge of Christ and you think you need to go elsewhere. That's our point of contact, is the gospel always, and appealing to, the image of God imprinted on that person, which is the gospel's doing what? Okay, let's go to... I'm sorry.
Here, you piggyback while I get this text going. So, and something specifically that I wanted to mention there is that... I just like literally, as I was wanting to say that... Well, then just forget it then. I lost it.
Did you think about it while I was getting this? I was going to have you say it while I was getting this and now I'm going to get this while you think about it. Okay, okay, say it, say it, say it. Velocity.
There's no way. And the problem... Just keep losing it. Cigar, man, it's really getting to me.
Yeah. I'm just joking. The main issue really is not that you... There are not these reasonable arguments that you may look at.
That's not the issue. The issue is specifically with what is the methodology for how you defend the faith. Exactly.
Not saying that these arguments are not beneficial in some way. I think that there is some benefit to them, although I do doubt the plausibility of them in the sense of proving the Christian God. But they alone is not the method for giving an apologetic that is presented in not only the New Testament, but also the old.
Yes. What we're talking about is what method do we use? How do we defend the faith? Not what is acceptable or not acceptable in terms of knowledge, because there are these true things. The classical apologetics, they'll stumble upon true things, but the problem is they use these things... It's like Cain.
Cain made a problem. He picked up a good thing that God made, a rock, and he beat his brother upside the head with him. Yeah.
The problem wasn't the rock, it's how he was using it. So the problem is not the truthfulness of these matters. The problem is what method are you using? Sorry.
What does the Bible say? That's more clear. Because of the nature of... Like I was saying in Romans 1, the natural revelation of God, those arguments will automatically carry truth to them, because God's creation is evident that he exists. Exactly.
They're going to automatically carry truth, and they're deductively done, premise by premise to conclusion, which is why, yes, it's good to understand those things, and we should rejoice that it's obvious to look at the world and others of God, but they will never, ever get you to the Christian God. The gospel is who Christ is. That's God.
Because you get to the Father through the Son. You get to the Father through the Son. That's good.
Yeah, exactly. Christ says that multiple times. The only way to get to the Father is through me.
Not the cosmological argument, not reasonable deductive arguments. Okay, that's good. Now, what I was getting at earlier about why the point of contact is the image of God, because the gospel, like we're saying, to get to the Father, you must go through Christ.
What does that do? Well, in Colossians 3.10, we have the text, "And having put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of the Creator." So Paul's exhorting us to put on the new self, which is carried in the knowledge of God, to put on the new self, being renewed in the knowledge of God. And then, sorry, having our image renewed in the knowledge of God. I'm sorry I said that wrong.
But that is why the point of contact is the image of God and it's being renewed in the truth of the gospel. Not the truth of the cosmological argument, or the ontological argument, the teleological, whatever. That's not where you're being renewed in the image of God.
So that point of contact is the knowledge of God, which is implanted in the person that's being renewed in more knowledge of God. True knowledge, which is most clearly seen in God's Word as regulation and the gospel, not in all those arguments we keep critiquing. And that's the point, that's why the point of contact is not the reason of the person because that is being suppressed in unrighteousness.
Right. And Paul even lays this out even further in Romans chapter 2. And he says this in verses 14 through 15. He says, "For when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.
They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them." So what do we see happening here? We see Paul talking about the law that God has written on the hearts of mankind, the conscience, which testifies and reveals to God's handiwork and what we're supposed to do, and we've done this in the previous episode, but like it says in Galatians 3, 24, "The law is a schoolmaster which leads someone to Christ." You pose the moral law to them because if the problem is that they suppress God's truth because of moral reasons, because of unrighteousness, the word for suppression there, I've heard it displayed like this before, it's the same sort of word that we would use for somebody with a huge beach ball trying to push it under the water. That's their moral suppression happening there. What we do is we come and we poke that beach ball to flip it up to reveal, "Oh crap, what I was doing is not something intellectual.
It was rather something moral. I was trying to suppress this in unrighteousness. Now my unrighteousness is completely seen now." So you appeal to the person's conscience.
How do you do that? The gospel. You go to God's law. This is why, like we've talked about with the law of gospel distinction in previous episodes, the law of God exposes mankind's sinfulness.
And because we are sinners, we need the grace of God which is only found in the person and work of Christ. That's why Paul says in Titus 2.11, "The grace of God has appeared bringing salvation for all people." So the gospel that penetrates this conscience of the person, and we do this through different methodologies, but specifically with that we appeal to the image of God and the suppression of truth. Exactly.
Okay, a few more texts from Bonson's book. On page 47, Bonson says, "The unregenerate thinker does not merely need a band-aid of additional information. He needs the major internal surgery of regeneration.
He needs to forsake his thoughts and be renewed in the knowledge after the image of his creator." And then he quotes Colossians 3.10, which is why I brought that up earlier. Cornelius Van Til, he was a professor at Westminster Seminary in the '50s. I'm not sure.
I can't remember. In the 20th century at some point, this is what he says about the point of contact, which is the image of God that we've been laying out. "Assured of a point of contact is the fact that every man is made in the image of God and has impressed upon him the law of God.
In that fact alone, we may rest secure with respect to the point of contact problem. That fact makes men always accessible to God. Only by thus finding the point of contact in man's sense of deity that lies underneath his own conception of self-consciousness as ultimate can we be both true to Scripture and effective in reasoning with the natural man." Again, the point of contact is the image of God.
That's an important point that we've been trying to labor. That is the point of contact. So move on.
That's a really good summation in the whole thing. Okay, so continuing on. We're going to continue building on this argument.
There's an epistemic problem and a moral problem. We know that remedy is the spirit of God. We know that Christ is the Lord of epistemology and all of our right understanding.
Now, having that in mind, how do we reach the unbeliever? Well, our point of contact is not neutrality. Our point of contact is the image of God and the truth that has suppressed in him with the law of God written on his heart. They by nature do what God has put in his moral law.
So how do we reach this point of contact? What's the methodology by which we would put our finger on the heart of the person to engage in an apologetic endeavor with them? Well, a classical apologist would say that we need to reach a neutral ground of reasoning, deductive logic reasoning, and present them with arguments based on the evidence. The presuppositional apologetic would use something entirely different in their methodology. They would use a two-fold method.
This is laid out in God's word. A quick note, that classical apologetic method of meeting somebody at the neutral point is not to be found in God's word. You won't find that anywhere.
But the presuppositional apologetic of two-fold methodology is found in God's word, namely in Proverbs 26, 4 through 5. And before I read that too, I would like to say the only place that we do meet them is on the mat. We meet them on the mat. We meet them in the battlefield as these worldviews clash.
Exactly. Collision. It's not on this sort of neutral ground where we go and we make peace.
We make peace in the middle and talk about it. Yeah. We should be like William Wallace does when he says, "I'm going to pick a fight." Yeah.
What are you going to do? What are you going to do, William?
"I'm going to pick a fight." "I'm going to pick a fight." I don't know how to do it. Yes. Scottish accent.
But he does not accept the peace agreement because that is cowardly, that is wimpy. Yeah. He doesn't do that.
The worldviews clash or the armies clash together and we see who comes out on top. Yeah. So we meet them on the mat.
We don't meet them on neutrality. Exactly. That's a poster, I think.
Exactly. So yeah, Proverbs 26, 4-5 says this, "And it seems contradictory, but when we understand the twofold apologetic method, this really comes to light." Yeah. It says, "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.
Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes." So here's the important point to note here. This is not a formal contradiction. A formal contradiction is what is univocal.
That is to say, if it said only, "Answer not a fool according to his folly," and then the next verse said, "Answer a fool according to his folly," that would be a contradiction. But that's not the whole sentence. Yeah.
We have to take into context, what is the sentence that says, "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself." That's why we deny neutrality. We do not want to become like the fool. We do not want to become like the pagan.
You have no command in Scripture to act as the pagan either morally or intellectually, which we have seen are really one size of the same coin. Yeah. Your intellectual sphere is a bleed from your morals.
So you don't want to be like the person. So what this means is that we do not abandon our presuppositions or we do not change our clothes to fit the neutral ground that we are trying to reach to the unbeliever. Yeah.
We do not change our clothes. We keep our clothes on, which is the garments of Christ. We don't change them.
Yeah. And then it goes on in verse five says, "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes." So what does this mean? This doesn't mean that you never engage with the person. What this does mean is that you show them the foolishness of their own worldview by sort of entering their worldview and showing how it's inherently inconsistent.
Yeah. That doesn't mean that you're abandoning your commitments. What it is saying is you're telling the person, "Let's act as if that's true." You do an internal critique of their system.
Right. If that's true, this, this, and this. That's why what I would say is when you look at the atheists, they believe that nothing came from everything.
That is a formal contradiction. I point that out. If that's true, then everything is absurd because that starts in absurdity.
There is no order. There is nothing. There's not even chaos.
It's nothing creates everything. That's absolute absurdity. Yeah.
Their starting point is absurdity, which means absurdity is morally permissible to intellectually. It's permissible to have such an idea. They would, I'm sure, would say that Christianity is absurd, which I don't understand why there's anything wrong with Christianity being absurd.
Yeah. If we all came from nothing and nothing matters at all, then why is it a big deal if I'm a Christian? Why is it a big deal for you? That's where we don't say, "Oh, man. He set out my worldviews absurd.
Let me try to find some sort of ground." I need to look cool to him. I'll do me a non-devolutional argument. Maybe I'll join BioLogos.
Yeah. I'll accept evolutionary biology, but that's really not essential. It's not the gospel.
It's not the gospel. The gospel is just a couple sentences, but most of God's word we can just forget about. Yeah.
So we don't want to do that. That's the point. That's why we think this is important.
That's why this is good, what we're getting into here. Let me know what you're really trying to say. You don't put on the other team's jersey to try to win.
Yeah, exactly. That's just so silly. Yeah, you just think about it.
Yeah. It's like, let me put ... Well, this is what Thomas Aquinas did. He put on his Aristotelian jersey and he said, "Let's go show the pagans," when Summa Contre de Tiles and his regular Summa, just to Christians as a systematic theology, he said, "Let me put on my Greek philosophy Aristotelian naturalist jersey on and then let me teach Christians how to think about this." Thomas Aquinas is not somebody you want to go to at all for apologetics on a lot of things, but that's one of the things he's most famous for is just five ways.
All those ways are just completely ridiculous. Yeah. We don't want to do that.
You don't put on another team's jersey to go to battle. You put on the robes of Christ. And that's what Robert the Bruce did.
Robert the Bruce, he did. You guys got to go watch Brave Hearts. He put on Longshank's England garbs.
He did. He put the garb. He dressed like one of his inner guys and betrayed William Wallace.
When you do classical apologetics, you act more like Judas and Robert the Bruce as a traitor than you do like a child in servant of Christ. This is not to say these people are born again. I'm not equating them to Judas that they should go hang themselves because it would be better for them not to be born.
This is just a pushback that this is the logical conclusion of what they're doing. Yeah. It is.
It's true what we're saying. Again, we believe they're born again. Your apologetic method is not salvific in nature.
It's not a primary doctrine. It's important. It's very important and it displays your lack of understanding of the primary doctrine.
Even though you believe it and you could articulate it and say it, you're not fully believing it with every facet of your being. I don't do it either. Bryce doesn't do it, but Bryce and I are trying to be consistent.
That's why we've been on this kick. We want to be consistent as Christians. We want to wear the robes of Christ in all that we do, even in our apologetic.
This is where we have such high respect for R.C. Scroll is unreal. This was a-- We love R.C. He was a wonderful, great teacher, great preacher. He really-- Honestly, he's one of the main motivators for why so many are reformed nowadays.
Exactly. God really used that servant. He has a mansion in heaven.
He really does. But when you go and listen to Dr. Greg Bonson and R.C. Scroll debate apologetics, R.C. Scroll really reduces himself to absurdity in a lot of ways. He denies his certitude of knowing God, which we have every reason to believe in God through the person of Christ.
He gives us absolute certainty and assurance of our salvation. If you don't have certainty of God, you have no assurance. If you don't have certainty of God, then you don't have these doctrines of Scripture that we've laid out.
Exactly. That's not to say that he's being unfaithful, that he's not a faithful Christian. What it is meaning is that he is being very inconsistent with everything that he has taught and that degree.
Exactly. And every theologian has his shortcoming. John Calvin's was Peyto baptism and honestly, a presumptive regeneration with his child.
But I would-- I mean, R.C. Scroll, that's what it was and Peyto baptism. And Peyto. But I mean, everybody's got to have something, I guess.
I'd rather it be that than denying the Lordship of Christ. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so our point with that two-fold apologetic laid out in Proverbs 26, 4 through 5 is we are to demonstrate to the fool why their worldview is inconsistent.
We do an internal critique. We answer the fool according to his folly. We tell the fool exactly what their foolish thoughts will lead them to.
And why the Christian view is the only-- the only tenable option. The only option worth entertaining is the Christian worldview. And then that's why we don't answer a fool according to their folly, unless they be conceited and think themselves proud, right, that they're-- that they figure something out.
So on page 60, Van Til has a quote, Cornelius Van Til, which has had a huge influence in Dr. Bonsen's life. The struggle between-- on page 60, quote, "The struggle between Christian theism and its opponents covers the whole field of knowledge. Christian theism's fundamental contention is just this, that nothing whatsoever can be known unless God can be and is known.
The important thing to note is this fundamental difference between theism and anti-theism on the question of epistemology. There is not a spot in heaven or on earth about which there is no dispute between the two opposite parties. They're completely set at odds against each other.
Anti-theism and theism completely at odds with one another. And we must do an inner critique of their system if they really can make sense of God's world with what they're saying. Because they're stealing a lot from God's world with certain ideas and starting points and presuppositions that cannot account whatsoever for all the things they believe.
And here's an example of that. When you talk to an atheist and he says, "Oh, I believe in morals." Right? They're just intuitive. Then you say, "Ah, ah, ah." That's not right.
You don't say, "Oh, man, what do I do from here?"
He believes in morals. He thinks he can do the same good things I can do. Well, then how does he get that knowledge? He's really got me up one.
Here's the thing. You got him up one. How does he give a foundation and an origin for these morals? This is what we press.
We don't press...obviously everybody uses morals.
We don't think atheists are idiots. We don't think that they're...they don't try to appeal to... They're not Neanderthal barbarians.
They're educated, well-meaning people.
Exactly. But the problem is that they cannot give and count.
This is why you'll hear Bonsen say this. You'll hear somebody more modern like Jeff Durbin or Douglas Wilson say this. By what standard? By what standard do you say it that's wrong? You think it's wrong to murder.
Great. I also think it's wrong to murder.
Here's why I think it.
The Word of God says...
I think it's God's standard that he lays out in his Word. How do you get that? Oh, you get it from yourself? Oh, well, what if I believe that it's actually okay to murder somebody? What if that's what I believe? Now we're contradicting each other. Who's right? How do you know you're right and not wrong? Right by what standard? You're appealing to the ground that they're standing on.
You look at somebody's feet more than you look at their face, honestly.
Yeah, you want to see where they're standing. And if they're standing in some place where they're going to trip and fall, you're going to tell them, "Hey, you're stumbling into foolishness." Classical apologetics are really trying to figure out whose noses are longer, but really you need to be looking at the person's feet.
You need to figure out what ground are they standing on. Noses are longer as in they're all fibbing? They're all like lying. Yeah, they're fibbing.
Yeah, lying.
Oh, yeah, fibbing. Yeah, fibbing.
You've heard of that, right? You know all about fibbing. Fibbing. All about it.
Fibonacci sequence. I've been born fibbing.
I know.
Liar by birth.
Yeah, so that's our point. Hopefully you're understanding the all-encompassing nature of what we're saying here.
This is the importance of presuppositions. It's very important to look at presuppositions. Pre-suppositions guide everything a human does, which is why Bryce was saying earlier there's no unbiased source.
I had an atheist tell me he used to be a Christian and he said, he said, "I started reading unbiased sources. I stopped reading Christian sources. I started reading unbiased sources." And then he said, he read like, "Oh, I started reading The Guardian." And like, you know, I forget what else he said, like CNN.
And I was reading BBC.
I read Richard Dawkins. Yeah, and I read the God Delusion.
You know, unbiased sources.
Sources without a position in the world. They just are saying things from a point of neutrality because, again, this is the assumption that secularism is neutral.
It's not religious, therefore it's neutral,
which is not true whatsoever. So when people say that, you call them out and say, "Listen, you're not biased, bub." Okay, get real. CNN's really the only unbiased source.
Who is?
CNN. CNN. Yeah, exactly.
Well, I mean, when they say this, so many Christians let them off the hook.
Do not let them off the hook. Or when they're, you know, they're now in the coffin, objection to Christianity, if they say, "Oh, well, then where does, if there's an all-benevolent God, he's all-powerful and we know there's evil in the world." Well, then how could God be all good? How could he be real if there's evil? And then you just say, before we get there, I would like you to lay out what evil is.
Can you tell me what that is? Because I don't understand.
I'm going to need to know evil to answer your question. And then if they are consistent, they'd say, "Well, I don't know." And I'd say, "Well, then what's your bloody question?" But if they say they do know, "Well, then you get to have a great argument now and destroy them and their argumentation that they don't have a grounding for it ever." You never even have to answer their question.
The only person who has the right to ask that question is the Christian himself.
"God, why do you allow evil?" Which is why we see Habakkuk and Job. A lot of these questions come up.
The Christian is the only one that has the understanding to ask that question. And the remedy of that question, again, is Christ. Exactly.
So that's a good example there. So the objection raised to this way of arguing from the Christian worldview,
from your presuppositions is, well, if you're arguing from your presuppositions, which are not based on evidence whatsoever, isn't that circular reasoning that you appeal to prove your later points, you have to appeal to a point you never proved in the first place? Is that circular? Actually, honestly, it is circular. So maybe that's a logical fallacy.
Let's just abandon this all together.
Actually, we're not going to uphold this podcast because we just realized it's circular. It's a fallacy.
Psych? Psych? Second, what is this? You want to go there first? I'll do that. Okay. So first off, it's not circular.
It's an argument from... if you're going to be consistent,
technically, if you're going to use a fallacy, it's an argument from authority. But as you'll find out, and if you take a formal logic class, which I have because I'm a philosophy major, you'll find that it's not always the case that this is bad. Yeah.
So in the second London Baptist Confession of Faith in 1689, in chapter one, verses four and five, it really hits on this question right here,
which is why I would conjecture that these particular Baptists were presuppositional. But this is what the Confession says, and this is just a statement of faith, essentially, what we believe. And this is what it says about the Word of God.
"The authority of the Holy Scripture for which it ought to be believed depends not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God, who is truth itself, and author thereof. Therefore it is to be received because..." Why is it to be received? It is the Word of God. Paragraph five says, "We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church of God to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scriptures, and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, and the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God.
They fool discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation,
and many other incomparable excellencies and entire perfection thereof, are arguments. These are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God, yet notwithstanding our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts." So here's the consistent theme that you'll find through the Reformers and through the Puritans, and through the modern people like Cornelius Van Til, Greg Bonson. It's that well-seen, urban, change-white.
The Word of God is self-authenticating and self-proving. And here's how it's not circular, because as we talked about earlier, the reason you know Rocky as a person is because of the characteristics that make him to be a person. When I look at a bear, I don't say, "Hmm, is that a human?" Is that a rocky up there? Is Rocky up there? Is Rocky mauling that girl? You look at the characteristics of it, and this is the things that they know.
It's the heavenliness of the matter. It's the doctrines that are found in it.
It's the scope of the whole, which is to give glory to God.
It's the full discovery of the only way to salvation deposited in the person of Christ.
It's all these incomparable excellencies and perfections that constitute it as being the inspired, infallible, inerrant Word of God. So you look at the characteristics of it, and you see that that's what it is.
You don't say, "The Bible is the Word of God," because it's the Word of God. We say, "The Bible is the Word of God," because of the excellencies of the matter. That's the argument.
It abundantly, as it says, evidence itself to be the Word of God.
That's what we're saying. We're not saying that the Word of God is the Word of God because it's the Word of God.
What we're saying is that look at its character. It's self-attesting. It tests to its own self.
It bears witness about itself, and this is what we do all the time.
If you go, if you get something, a speck in your eye, how do you examine it? You use your eye. If your famous court cases happen with Kyle Rittenhouse, he testified about himself, didn't he? He self-attestified.
Jesus says the same thing in the Gospels, that his own words are testimony to himself.
There's other witnesses, obviously, but there are things that can self-testify. Here's the problem.
Is it right? Is it a true self-attestation, or is it a false attestation?
How does it actually testify to itself? That's the whole point. The heavenliness of the matter is found in the Word of God. It's inerrant.
There's no error contained in it. There's no imperfection.
Well, in every other single book, worldview, whatever, will leave you wanting.
The excellencies of God's Word is that it answers every, it resolves every single issue that humans have. It resolves it all. It's an all-encompassing story that answers the question.
John Calvin argues this in his first book as well. God's Word is wonderful. It answers every question.
It flows perfectly and tells one cohesive story. Every other holy book, every other way of thinking, leaves so many questions unanswered, and you're left with one thing without a comprehensive understanding of the world. It gives you a comprehensive worldview, whereas everything else never gives you that.
Exactly. The nature of the thing is... Yeah. And that's why we say it's self-attesting.
It looks like what we say it is and what it says it is.
In 1 Timothy 3, what it says it is, it is. You're like a blind man in a new house smelling some bacon, and you want it.
You're trying to go get it.
But you're never going to be able to reach there because the whole house smells like it. I had to think for a second what you were getting at, but I see what you're saying now.
I see what you're saying now. You are just trying to help out your well-meaning. Exactly.
Acts 17. We'll get there.
So the point is everyone is circular.
Isn't it circular? Yes, everyone is circular.
You just have to... We have to determine if this is correct. Argument from authority, circular self-attesting, argumentation.
And the nature of God's word is that it is true, and it's trustworthy to do such an argumentation from it because of the nature of the thing, because it is God's word. If it really is God's word, the buck stops at God. You can appeal to God because he's the final authority.
The way the atheists would do this is they would appeal constantly to either empirical evidence... That would be where the buck stops, or rationalism, their own reason, or their feelings. Romanticism, feeling-based worldview. Every worldview has a presupposition.
The buck stops here, circular reasoning.
Why is this true? Well, let's revisit that. I'm going to assume that.
That's why that's true because I started there, remember? And let's name them. With science, they assume the scientific method and empiricism. Exactly.
It's assumed.
With mathematics, they assume logic. They assume that these numbers are constant.
These are obvious examples that... The philosopher assumes rationalism, in a sense. Exactly. What else? That's like some of the major ones.
When somebody's presenting an argument, they're using logic, how do you prove logic? Logic is self-attesting, in a way. Sense is self-attesting. Yeah, and transgenderism assumes a sexual nature, a metaphysical person that has a sexual nature.
I'm not me. I'm not my physical body. I'm not my material body.
I'm some woman and whatever. I don't even know how they would... If you press them on what they would say. Or a materialist assumes that everything is material.
The buck stops at material. So there's presuppositions in telling every single worldview. Do you want to backtrack and go with argument? As we move to our final point, we have a few more points.
We have an epistemic problem, a moral problem. We know the Lord Jesus is the Lord of epistemology of that problem and he can help us by giving us the remedy of his spirit. Our point of contact with the unbeliever, with the Lord of Christ still in mind, is not neutrality with that person, but then being made in the image of God and suppressing that truth, that we can dig out through the methodology of a two-fold apologetic that's not circular in any way, shape or form, that does an internal critique of the opposing worldview and shows the importance of presuppositions and continues to press that point, which then leads us to our last couple of points that success is found in this apologetic... Or sorry, how is this success found in that apologetic that we're laying out? Why do we think that this is successful? Why do we think God's Word? Why did God go here? Why is this best? Why would God think that this is the way things ought to be? And the reason why is because we do not appeal to autonomous principles.
That's why this works. That's why this helps because it's compelling. And I think Bryce has a quote he's going to read, page 83.
Do you want to read it? Well, I don't even know where it is. Oh, sorry. But this apologetic is successful again because it addresses the heart of the issue, which is autonomous principles that the person's conjuring up in their mind.
So, and this is what Bonson says on page 53 of his book in the chapter entitled, God. He said 53. Oh, 83, sorry.
Yes, 83.
In his chapter entitled, God Must Sovereignly Grant Wisdom. And he says this, So here's what he's meaning by this.
If you are your own standard, these things are at complete odds with a true understanding of the Lordship of Christ and epistemology. Right. And these things are contradictory.
And this is something you see that's literally littered throughout the Proverbs. Literally littered throughout the Proverbs. Yeah, go through all the Proverbs.
It's literally littered literally all the other day. So I'm just going to rattle off some of these passages and we'll kind of just kind of briefly talk about them. So Proverbs 18, 17 says, The one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him.
Who's this other? Is Jesus. He comes, he examines your heart. The spirit convicts you of sin and he exposes you of your unrighteousness and he draws you to himself.
He calls you to himself. Right. The way that you think it seems right until someone comes and examines it.
Right. Or until someone looks at your foundations of what exactly you believe and shows the inherent inconsistencies of them. Their success in doing such a thing.
Such a methodology would find success. Proverbs 14, 12 says, There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. Right.
It seems right to you. But its way leads to death because you're suppressing God's truth and righteousness. Sin is lawlessness and this lawlessness leads to death.
Yeah. And then this is something that like the Proverbs continually hits on nonstop. Specifically when it comes to the fool in the book of Proverbs, which is someone who morally suppresses God's truth.
Yeah. The fool never means intellectual. It's always something moral.
Proverbs 3, 5 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean upon your own understanding. It's not your autonomy. It's not what your mind can conjure up.
And this is something I love about in Martin Lloyd Jones's book on doctrine, his systematic theology in three books. He says this constantly over and over and over again. He says, We do not speculate where the Word of God does not allow us.
We go no further than the Word of God. Yeah. This is the whole point because when you do that, you are on shaky ground because you're relying upon your own understanding.
Yeah. Right. You are not the source of truth and knowledge and wisdom.
It is Christ in Christ alone. And one of the perhaps one of the most greatest statements about this in the scriptures is Proverbs 1, 7. And it says, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of what? Knowledge. It's the beginning of knowledge because fools despise wisdom and instruction.
So knowledge is found when the fear of the Lord, the fear of God, your commitments and your trust being put on him and not yourself, you're not relying upon yourself anymore for autonomy. You're relying upon God. Yeah.
And Bryce and I did a whole series on the fear of the Lord and its connection to wisdom. Yeah. You can scroll up and find it at the very beginning of the start of the podcast.
So the success is not found upon appealing to the man's autonomous mind. Success is found solely and only upon the person being born again. Unless you're born again, you cannot even enter, let alone see the kingdom of God.
You cannot even think about heavenly matters unless you're born again. You cannot have the Christ of which is deposited all the wisdom and knowledge of God unless you're born again. You must be born again.
You must be made brand spanking new. And this means that you must believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. You must repent of your sins and trust in him alone because you're a sinner.
You suppress God's truth and righteousness. You need to believe in Jesus because he is the only remedy to all of our problems. So this is really how we find success in this apologetic methods is because it doesn't exclude the gospel.
It doesn't say the only barrier between this person believing the gospel is because they don't believe in God. We got to get them to believe in God first. The Bible says they already know God exists.
They already know he's there. The only way to get them to believe in the Father is through the Son. You got to get them to the Son.
And how do you do that? You appeal to their conscience. You appeal to that wall, the God which they're suppressing in righteousness. And then when they're convicted, you provide them the Son.
Exactly. The gospel is what transforms us. The gospel is what gives them the mind of Christ.
The gospel is what gives success and apologetic because you're appealing. You're defending the faith that was once and for all delivered to the saints. And what is his faith? It is the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation.
Salvation is the only thing that the person needs. It's not more intellectual knowledge. They need Christ.
Exactly. Okay, so to wrap up, just to put this into practice. We're going to see how it's put into practice in God's Word.
And then we're going to, well, right after we talk about one more concept. So somebody comes up to you and asks you the question. Actually, no, first, let's go to Acts 17.
Let's do this first, see how Paul does it. And then we're going to walk through how you would employ this if somebody were to ask you to do it. So in Acts 17, we see Paul literally interacting with the secular world during his time.
So how does Paul defend the faith? If he were to stand before the best scientist, the best thinkers, the best, the best, brightest and smartest, the Athens, the secular world has to offer. What does Paul do? Let's see. Acts 17, starting in verse 22.
So Paul, standing in the midst of the Aropagus, said, "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you, the God who made the world and everything in it.
Being Lord of heaven and earth does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made them from one man, every nation of mankind, to live on all the face of the earth, having determined a lot of periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way towards him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.
For in him we live and move and have our being. And even some of your own poets have said, 'For we are indeed his offspring.' Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art of imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.
And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead." And then it says that some people believed and some people mocked him. What does Paul do here when he encounters the secular world at his age? He presupposes God, his world, and that his hearers are made in the image of God and are very religious as he perceives. And then he proceeds to touch the finger of their religion and bring it back to the God of the universe with whom they are reaching and groping for, but they do not have the light of God's grace, the Holy Spirit, for them to see properly.
So he, again, to reiterate, he recognizes their religious nature. He says, "I looked at all your guys' idols. I found one that you guys titled the Unknown God, that unknown God that you have no knowledge of and have not been able to access to this point.
I declare to you that it's the God who made everything. The gods that you make are not the God I'm talking about. I'm talking about the God who made you." He flips it on their head, because again, remember, wisdom is always a... Sorry, foolishness is always a flipping of wisdom.
They make idols, and Paul, when he says that being God's offspring, it's not like... we have to think divine beings are like the gold or silver or stone, or an image formed by the imagination of man. That's him quoting and hearkening back to Isaiah, when the prophet Isaiah is talking about how the imagination of man comes up with idols and the same wood that we use to burn, to make a fire, we both worship with our hands and carve with our hands. God is not... He doesn't dwell in temples made by man.
He is the Lord of heaven and earth. So he presupposes God from the get-go. There is a God.
That God you're talking about, I now declare to you, and then presupposes it and lays it out, and then quotes their poets, not because their poets were on to something good, upright, and righteous, and noble, and having right thinking. He quotes their poets, because they're made in the image of God groping for God all the day long, at every moment, at every time, every human is always groping for God and searching, and finding their religious meaning and their worship and things other than the God of the universe. He quotes them understanding that there is a God, but he doesn't take a place of neutrality and says, "Well, now that we know that in him we live and move and have our being," which the Stoic and Epicureans were talking about some... They were talking about more something like pantheism, as what they were meaning, but although they meant it in a pantheistic way, Paul says, "That thing that they said, your favorite poet, he actually was getting at the God of the universe and had some inkling of understanding groping, but you must understand God is not that far from you," is what he says.
So they weren't on to something as if they were getting closer to God. They were just as far away as God as a barbarian was far away from God. But in the same sense, the barbarian would have found some other outlet for worship that Paul could have put his finger on and pointed to, and then immediately pointed it back to God.
So even though the atheist might mean something else when they say, "I believe as an atheist that there is no God," you could put your finger on that and say, "Well, the fact that you can even understand such a being as God or have an opinion about God, or find your meaning of what a person that is a follower of Christ would look for salvation, you look for it in other places, even though you claim there's no God, but you look for religious meaning everywhere based on your morals, based on what you care about and the way you live your life, you look for that all the time." You could point your finger even though they make a statement. You can take their statement that they meant, and Monson talks about this at the end of his book because he does a whole exposition of Acts 17, but you put your finger on something even though they might mean it for their own foolish ways. You can take the wisdom of God and employ it in what they're saying, put your finger on it, use the twofold method because this is, again, this is Paul answering the fool according to their following.
That's what I'm talking about here, this concept. But then he doesn't answer the fool according to his following because he says, "God has created everything and you worship an image," right? So then that's when he critiques the view afterwards by not answering the fool according to their following any longer, that they might not be conceited. He convicts them by saying, "The God I declare to you is one that made the heavens and the earth everything." And then he ends with the resurrection, and he doesn't end with the resurrection the way Gary Obermoss or some of these guys would, William Lane Craig, whoever might argue for the resurrection based on the veracity of the evidence from the early, from the first century texts and from arguments like, you know, "500 people appeared to Jesus, therefore they were all witnesses and you could have went and asked them." All these different ways.
So the eyewitnesses was a woman, you know, why would that be in the scriptures? You know, the women didn't have any power in court to testify. Those aren't the arguments Paul uses. He just literally just drops it right on their platter that Christ rose from the dead.
That same God that I'm saying Christ rose, this is who God is. He just drops it on their platter. So the point is, he presupposes the whole way through when he deals with his secular people of his age, the whole way through.
He never argues for the existence of God, for a deistic God. He never tries to meet them in a neutral place. What he does, he maintains his unique Christian faith and presuppositions the whole way through his argumentation with these stoics and Epicureans.
He employs the two-fold apologetic and he always, again, whenever you see an apologetic presented in the scripture, they always end in the resurrected Christ. Jesus being God, Jesus being the Messiah, Jesus being the Savior, they end with the gospel. They end with Christ.
They presuppose Christ as the Son of God. They don't labor to show he rose from the dead. He did rise from the dead.
We presuppose that. And that's what Paul does here. And if I can make a point on this too? Yeah.
In the last couple of verses, I'm going to read it and then make an easy point of application too. When it says, "Now when they heard of the resurrection," in verse 32, "the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, 'We will hear you again about this.' So Paul went out from their midst, but some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Aragape and a woman named Damaris and others with him." So what the classical apologists would do at this point is they would say, "Man, I'm only getting through these people. Let me become a scholar with them and let me write works towards them since they appreciate my work so much.
And let me actually start getting on their neutral ground and start to appeal to what they believe to be true." But Paul says, "People believe. The Gospel is presented. These people believe and he keeps going on." So the classical apologists are like, "Man, I'm in.
They said they'll hear me again about this. Let me stick around and start writing some books appealing to their own neutral grounds." So an unbiased source. That way we can really get to the truth, the bottom of the truth.
But what Paul does is he says, "This is my mission. I came, I preached the Gospel, and I'm done." It's like, "What is it, Charlotte, man? I don't know. No, it's Julius Caesar.
I came, I saw, I conquered."
You gave me, so I conquered, and he keeps going. Yeah, exactly. So I just... Good.
Good point.
So the last thing, if somebody were to ask you... So this is how Paul did it. If somebody asked me, Rocky, or Bryce, or you, if you're listening, if somebody comes up to you and says, "Prove the Christian faith to me.
How do I know God exists? How do I know that there's a God?" Now you have the task of an apologia. You tell them, "Well, here's how I prove the faith, the impossibility of the contrary." And then, whatever belief system that is enticing them, you do an internal critique of it, you answer the full according to the folly, you show the impossibility of the contrary worldview, of any worldview. You do this with anything.
Atheism, Buddhism, any other religion, any other religion, you do an inner critique of their system, show its foolishness, its folly, its contradictory nature, and then you appeal to those things, those common contact points of why they were even entertaining other religious views, like atheism or whatever. You touch on that and you show them Christ, and you proclaim the gospel to them. You never do an apologetic apart from the gospel, and you always show the supremacy of Christ at all times, and you're apologetic.
So again, as a quick recap, you show the impossibility of the contrary by doing an internal critique of their system and not answering the full according to the folly, and then you don't answer them according to the folly, and then you give them Christ as their... You convict them with the law of God based on the image and the truth that they're suppressing because of their moral allegiance to evil and unrighteous thoughts and suppression of the truth because of their debased mind that God has gave them up to. You convict them of that. You answer the full according to the folly.
You convict them, and then you don't answer the full according to the folly so that they did not become conceited after you've shown the impossibility of their worldview, and then you show the supremacy of Christ. And another way it may be said, it's by the impossibility of the contrary or that apart from Christ they can prove nothing. Apart from Christ they can prove nothing.
Or with Christ you can prove the whole worldview. You need Christ in order to prove it. If Christ you can prove nothing.
And you just posted in Christ or chaos, friend. Yeah. Take it to the map.
Really the presuppositional apologists idea is Christ or chaos. That's our claim. And the claim of the classical apologists is not that they have chaos, right? The unbelieving world has some good inkling and understanding of God.
So I think that's where we'll end. I don't have a doxology picked out, so I'm going to do the classic. To the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, the honor and glory forever and ever.
Amen.
Solely, Dale, Gloria.
[Music]
[Music]

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An Ex-Christian Disputes Jesus' Physical Resurrection: Licona vs. Barker - Part 1
Risen Jesus
July 9, 2025
In this episode, we have Dr. Mike Licona's first-ever debate. In 2003, Licona sparred with Dan Barker at the University of Wisonsin-Madison. Once a Ch
What Should I Say to Someone Who Believes Zodiac Signs Determine Personality?
What Should I Say to Someone Who Believes Zodiac Signs Determine Personality?
#STRask
June 5, 2025
Questions about how to respond to a family member who believes Zodiac signs determine personality and what to say to a co-worker who believes aliens c
No One Wrote About Jesus During His Lifetime
No One Wrote About Jesus During His Lifetime
#STRask
July 14, 2025
Questions about how to respond to the concern that no one wrote about Jesus during his lifetime, why scholars say Jesus was born in AD 5–6 rather than
Licona vs. Fales: A Debate in 4 Parts – Part One: Can Historians Investigate Miracle Claims?
Licona vs. Fales: A Debate in 4 Parts – Part One: Can Historians Investigate Miracle Claims?
Risen Jesus
May 28, 2025
In this episode, we join a 2014 debate between Dr. Mike Licona and atheist philosopher Dr. Evan Fales on whether Jesus rose from the dead. In this fir
Why Do You Say Human Beings Are the Most Valuable Things in the Universe?
Why Do You Say Human Beings Are the Most Valuable Things in the Universe?
#STRask
May 29, 2025
Questions about reasons to think human beings are the most valuable things in the universe, how terms like “identity in Christ” and “child of God” can