Taking Presup to the Streets with Ricky Roldan

Revealed Apologetics

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00:01

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala. And today

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I have another guest with me, but before I announce that guest, I want to direct your attention to a previous episode that I had with Joshua Pillows, where we talk about some really interesting stuff.

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We talk about presuppositional apologetics broadly and generally, and then we narrow in the discussion with respect to responding to various objections.

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One specific objection known as the Stroudian objection, which is understood by many people to be a very strong criticism of presuppositional argumentation, transcendental argumentation, things like that.

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And that was a very, very practical discussion. I actually thought it would be more abstract and difficult for people to follow because, what the heck is a

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Stroudian objection? Who the heck is Stroud? And so I thought it was going to be a little bit more complicated, but we ended up having a great, like down to earth sort of discussion where we unpack some stuff that I think is very, very easy for folks to glean some really helpful tips in terms of understanding the nature of presuppositional apologetics and the nature and uniqueness of Van Til's transcendental approach.

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So you definitely want to check out that episode. Well, today I have

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Ricky Roldan on, who is a gentleman that I've met through the

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Facebook page that he has, Reformed Presuppositional Apologetics, I think that's what it's called.

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And it's an awesome Facebook page where I've benefited greatly from Ricky and from other people who have been on there.

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They're just a great group of guys where you can just learn and ask your questions. And there's so many different resources there.

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You definitely want to check that out. But when you're introduced to Ricky, you will learn very quickly why he's just someone that I had to have on.

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Now, here's the thing. You guys have heard me talk about transcendental reasoning, presuppositional apologetics, antithesis, neutrality, autonomy, all these philosophical, you know, jargon, which is important by the way.

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But Ricky is really good at taking those things because he's very knowledgeable in those areas, but he's very good at taking it to the streets, kind of taking those concepts and really just speaking about them in a way that the average

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Joe could understand. And that's what we need to do. We need to be able to bridge the gap between academia and the person on the street, okay?

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And so I think Ricky is an excellent person to do that. He's a godly man, knows his scripture, and he has definitely been an encouragement to me over the, would

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I say years or at one year? I don't know, maybe I'll get him on. Let's see. Let's get Ricky on. There we go. How's it going,

02:54

Ricky? What's up, man? How long have we been, you know, Facebook messaging and phone calls?

03:02

It's been a few years. Yeah, it's been a few years, right? I'm kind of thinking, I'm like, I don't remember when we first started.

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Well, you first started calling me when you was kind of like, you know, Vantill, Clark.

03:16

That's right. That's right. I worked through those things together. So, I was in the same boat, you know?

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That's right. That's right. And most people who study presuppositional apologetics, they definitely run into the

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Clarkian version and it becomes very interesting. And, you know, a lot of people sway back and forth, but when you get things all sorted out, you know that Vantill was right and that's the way to go.

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That's right. That's right. So, why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself, perhaps something that I didn't mention, maybe some, a little bit of background information, and then we'll jump right into our discussion.

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Sure. So, basically, you know, I was raised in a Christian home. My father was a minister.

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And hold on, I got this little, some kind of, all right. Something popped in my window.

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So, I was raised in a Christian home. You get in the name of Jesus. Yes. You know, bro, you're supposed to rub, you're supposed to rub the oil on the four corners of your screen, bro.

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So, that doesn't happen. You don't get no viruses. All right. Perfect. All right.

04:24

All right. Good, good. Go for it. Yeah. So, basically, my father was a minister since I was, since I can remember.

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He started off as a Pentecostal minister in my young elementary years.

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Now, long story short, you know, he became reformed, part of the PCA when

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I was little. Okay. So, I was a preacher's kid. He was studying, working full time, and studying to be a minister, to be ordained in the

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PCA at the same time. So, and from there, you know,

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I did my own thing. I was rebellious, you know, I ran the streets and wanted to rather, you know, hang out with my buddies and do stupid stuff.

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So, one of those things, you know, the preacher's kid, they say, oh, they're the worst. So, it was like, well, in my case, yeah.

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But there's always that lingering, you know, teaching that they always -

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Sure. Doing little devotionals at the house and everything. So, that always stuck in my head.

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But I finally became Christian around when I was 20 - Okay. Years old.

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And, well, I say that that's when I know I made that conscious decision to say, hey man,

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I gotta pump the brakes and I have to put my life in the hands of Christ.

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It was one night I was reading the book of Romans. It's funny, because I only went to the

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Bible because I met some guys at a concert. Okay. A Christian concert. They invited me, some friends from a local area, which later

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I became part of their group, Remnant Militia, a Christian hip hop. But they were talking about the rapture and all this stuff.

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And I knew, being in the PCA church, that, you know, we were not dispensational or whatever.

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So, I was like, oh yeah. Mind you, I didn't care. But I was like, you know what? Give me a week and I'm gonna prove you guys wrong.

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Right. So, here I am, thug off the street, opening the Bibles, oof.

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Oof. And I'm going to Revelation.

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Revelation was taking me a lot to Romans. Okay. So, I'm reading Romans and, you know, all this stuff about, you know, like Romans 3, 4, 5.

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I just kept going and going. And I was like, man, I am a wretched sinner.

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And that's the night I broke down and I gave my heart to the Lord. And from there,

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I started wanting to preach the gospel to my buddies in the street, you know, my hangout, the corner where, you know, we did our thing over there.

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And they thought I was nuts, you know, because one day to the nets, you know, they're like, what are you smoking?

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Let me get some of that, man. I'm like, nah, man, I'm being for real. And from there, you know, just kept studying.

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And in about 1996, I started the Urban Reform Ministries.

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Okay. And my thought process was this, man, because, you know, growing up in a reformed church, you hear a lot of, you know, academic terminology and theology, listening to my dad teach and him giving me

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R .C. Sproul videos. And in my mind, I'm like, you know, the person in our culture is not gonna run over to a

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Christian bookstore and pick up Van Til, you know,

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Gordon Clark or R .C. Sproul, or, you know, Lorraine Bittner, Burt Call for Hodge and, you know,

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Bavinck. And they're like, they're not gonna do that. I'm glad though, these days things have changed.

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Things have progressed to where we're able to now to have these things, even the urban culture is wanting to dive into these things.

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Sure. And I give that credit to, of course, God, the Holy Spirit, but through using the

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Christian hip hop music throughout the years, Calvinist rappers coming out and talking about these words and, you know, election and predestination and what is this, limited atonement, what's going on with that?

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And it caused people to dive into that. And there's been a, how you say, an awakening within the urban culture for reform theology, which

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I find to be, you know, a great thing. But when I was doing it, you know,

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I was like the only person in the urban culture doing reform stuff, you know, reform in my lyrics and in the concerts and the preaching and the debating at concerts and things like that.

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And my thought was that, that I wanted to take the heavy language, the terminology, learn it, absorb it.

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Sure. But when I used to study in the beginning, I had the Bible, I had a dictionary, a thesaurus, a

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Bible dictionary, you know, I had all these books out to make sure I knew what these words meant.

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And I thank God for R .C. Sproul because I was a Ligonier junkie. I still am, you know.

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Well, real quick, did you pick up the R .C. Sproul, The Life? There's like a biography that just came out.

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I did, I did. Yeah. I was waiting for that to come out. Yeah. But what

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I appreciate about Sproul's books is that he would have certain words highlighted throughout the book.

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Sure. And you could go to the back of the book and he tells you what all these words meant. And that was super helpful for me in my walk and in my study in the reform faith.

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So my thing was, I wanted to absorb it, learn it, and then bring it to the urban community and teach it in a way we can understand.

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Now, I don't mean by that, that the urban culture or the urban citizens, as I call it, like people like us, is that, oh, we're just dumb.

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We don't know these words and we don't know how to read. That's not what I'm getting at. But my point is getting them interested in wanting to learn these things.

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You know, how does that relate to me? How does that relate to my everyday life and my struggles in the urban community?

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You know, things like that. So, you know, I brought that up to my session in the

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PCA. They loved it. They were like, oh, you know, this is part of the, you know, this needs to be done.

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Sure. So long story short, I started the Urban Reform Ministries doing blogs.

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And before all this great technology that's happening now, all we had was websites with chat rooms.

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Yeah. Back in the day, you know. I was always on the

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Puritan board. Yes. I was always on the Puritan board talking to, you know, elders and ministers and professors.

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And I learned a lot from them going back and forth and asking questions. To this day, I still ask questions.

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So basically that's what my heart is, is to bring the gospel first and foremost to the urban context and bring in reform theology to the urban context.

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Teaching the words, but also giving the definitions and just explaining it in a way easy to understand.

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You know, that's why I'm, you see me on online and I'll do those things.

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I'll, might be a small paragraph. Some guys be like, man, you know, you throw everything into two sentences.

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I said, well, yeah, well, that's what I'm trying to do. Sure. It's not like I'm being lazy.

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I'm trying to bring it, condense it down to where it's understandable, but also it gets the point across.

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Right. You know what I'm saying? Well, I - I've been doing it ever since, man. Started the reform presupposition apologetics page.

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Sure. That's been growing. People have been learning and I just doing my thing, man.

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That's all. Well, definitely. People should definitely check out the podcast and really the Facebook page.

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There's just so much there. Even in the file section, when I finally learned what the, yeah, there you go.

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See, your logo is cooler than mine. Oh my goodness. It's like, dag, bro. Shout out to Arturo Hurtado.

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Okay. He made it for me. All right. Very good. Redeem Project Radio. Looks awesome, man.

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Yeah. It just resonated very much with something you just said. When I had interacted a little bit with Dr.

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John Frame on Facebook, and no, we're not, we're not buddy -buddy. I just, every now and then I'll, he doesn't seem too happy.

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He's retired and seems bothered when people reach out to him. That's true. I had this conversation with him too.

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He was like, dude. He'll go, I don't want to go into a big back and forth, but let me answer your question. Then he'll give me like two paragraphs and he goes, there you go.

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You did it. I already wrote more than I wanted to. And I got a little nugget out of him where I was like, all right,

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I'm not going to ask you. So I won't bother him until next year. We'll see. Well, you have to strategically, you know, bother him at one point and then wait a couple of months and then bother him again.

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But he said, he said one of the things that he wished that Presuppositional has got better at is that when we do

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Presuppositional apologetics, we don't always have to bring the unbeliever through the history of epistemology to make our point.

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And that really is the issue of simplifying. I think a lot of Presuppositionalists have gotten their steady diet of Bonson videos and Bonson lectures.

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And those things are super important in laying that foundation. But I think we need to do a better job in learning how to take off the training wheels of Bonson's language and contextualize the concepts where we are.

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Now, would you think, would you say that when you became a Christian, that that, cause

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I know you read a lot of Van Til, Bonson, you listened to the lectures and things like that. How quickly did you find the necessity to contextualize these lofty concepts that you were learning in the specific context that you found yourself in?

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Yeah. Well, listening to them, examples will pop up in my head and I'll just write them down.

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And how do I simplify that? How do I take that in and simplify it to where it can be understood by the layman?

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And we're all pretty much laymen who don't have any, bunch of degrees on our walls, things like that.

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But yeah, it's pretty much it. I would think about what you're saying. Sometimes I'll rewind it, listen to it again, rewind it, listen to it again.

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Many times over when I'm reading, I'll read it again. If I don't understand it, I go back and try to read it slowly and get the picture and then condensed it.

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Cause sometimes, as you know, when you're reading books, theology books, they tend to, and I don't mean this in a mean way, but it's just the nature of academia, that they beat around the bush.

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They'll start, they'll make the point here in the first paragraph to say, okay, this is the main topic of the chapter and then, and then at the end, it's the conclusion, but there's a lot of things in the middle that it's filler.

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You have to sell books. I mean, you gotta have the content, you know? Right, right. It does not exist.

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You have 200 pages, you know, working stuff. It just says, you have a book. Pages are blank. A pamphlet.

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Yes. So, you know, just doing things like that, understanding words, looking it up.

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And that's why I tell people, and I talk to my son, who's getting into all this.

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Sometimes it's like, man, I don't, you know, all these words, I said, remember, you use, you know, the dictionary.

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And once you understand the word, now you can understand what, how it's being used in the context of what they're talking about.

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That's very important. You know, definitions are vital to understanding context of what somebody's trying to say.

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And that's pretty much it, man. I believe that the Lord has called me to do this.

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Because sometimes, let's be real. Sometimes there's a struggle. You want to give up. You're like, ah, man, you know, this, this, that.

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But then there's that, that tug that said, no, you got to keep going. You got to keep going.

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You got to keep going. You got to keep doing this. And may the Lord use it how he wishes.

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Whether it reaches a few, a lot, one, two. It's, it's, there's a reason why, you know,

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God is using these things. Now, now when people get into apologetics, it can be very intimidating for a lot of people because of the vocabulary, because of the kinds of people who do it, like very educated people, things like that.

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I remember you said something to me a while back, a couple of years ago, I think. And you said, to be careful of the temptation of comparing yourself with people who are learned in the eyes of the world.

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And you said something, something to that effect. And it stuck with me. I don't, I mean, I don't know if you might not remember you said that, but how do people overcome, like someone from an urban context that you don't have the fancy terminology.

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I mean, someone's really like street, but they love the Lord and they want to defend the gospel. Like how does someone overcome once they're exposed to this world of apologetics?

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How do they overcome that intimidation factor of comparing themselves with other people?

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Well, I can only give you an example from my experience.

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I know what it is. Just always remembering the beginning, remembering what

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I'm doing, remembering why I'm doing this in the first place.

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Sure. There is that temptation to, and it happens a lot. And this is no knock.

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I don't wanna step on nobody's toes, but I've had friends in the urban context and they just kind of like, just leave it to the side.

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They leave it. And now they're more, they're different. I get it.

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Listen, to each his own, but there's that temptation to not wanna deal with the urban community.

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It's too hard. It's just, this is too hard stuff. And people in this culture are hard headed.

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You gotta be more aggressive. And it's true. It's a different, people think that this is just a bunch of guys who wear baggy pants, big shirts, and listen to rap music.

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No, there's a lot more to it than that. There's an identity. There's a culture within, it's a subculture within the

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American culture. That actually, and what I like about it is that it brings all races and nations together into one culture, right?

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I'm Latino. I got a Puerto Rican culture, within the American culture that includes the hip hop community.

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But within the hip hop communities, black, white, Asian, European, African, I've gotten emails from Australia, South Africa, Russia, Israel.

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When I was heavily into the Christian hip hop scene, and I said, man, look how beautiful that is, that it just unites.

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Now we can just get them all to understand that, bring them into the

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Christian arena of hip hop. So they can have music that is more edifying to their minds and to their soul and to their heart.

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So the urban Christian community, it's hard because there's a lot of things we have to deal with, right?

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You gotta deal with all kinds of cults, false religions, mysticism, that's all engulfed within the urban community.

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So apologetics is super important in our ministry because there's a lot of different,

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I would say punches, you gotta know how to bob and weave and block is because they're coming from a lower place.

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It's not just, how do we do Islam or Mormonism?

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It's stuff that don't even exist anymore, that's been dying out, that I was dealing with when

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I was younger, younger in the faith. Now, how has the

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Bible informed your apologetic and how you engage people in the context that you're in?

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So how do you contextualize your apologetic and your knowledge of the

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Bible to the specific context that you're in? Because again, when we speak of presuppositional apologetics,

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I mean, that's a big old fancy terminology, but we really believe it's biblical apologetics. How do you meld those things together and apply it in your specific context?

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Well, depending on who I'm speaking to, depending on what

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I'm discussing with who, what are they into? I can find out what is their views.

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They're Christian, not Christian, or they're in a sub -Christian category, like in a cult or a false religion, or atheism and narcissism, it just depends.

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So you're chilling with a guy and he's like, yo, Ricky, man, I don't trust that Bible stuff. The Bible's written by a bunch of white people who are trying to oppress us.

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How do you deal with, granted, within the urban community, it's not people are dumb, they're people who are smart.

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They just don't articulate it because of just where they are. You know what I'm saying? People ask - Well, they're scared to.

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Ignorant questions, informed questions, questions where you need to be able to think on your feet.

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If you're just chilling with a dude and the guy's like, yo, I don't, they come up with the, let's take the wacky example, okay?

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Man, the Bible's written by a bunch of white people who are trying to hold us down. That's why I can't believe the Bible.

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How do you engage someone who says something like that? Yeah, well, first of all,

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I correct them on their world history, on the history of Christianity, explain to them that it's not written by a bunch of white people, but that Christianity is a white man's religion and things like that, kind of remind them of all the

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Africans and the early church

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Christians where many were, haven't even seen a white person before, you know, in Africa and Egypt and things like that.

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So I kind of just, I'll throw that in there real quick to make them like, go look that up.

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But then I'll just get into the issue about the Bible. You said the Bible, I'll explain to them what inspiration means.

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I'll explain to them that, you know, yes, it's written by men, but it's ultimately inspired by the

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Holy Spirit. What does inspired mean? You know, things like that.

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And then - How do you know that, bro? How do you know? Yes. As a bunch of white preachers told you, you see what

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I'm saying? Like that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do a little role play and interact with some of that.

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Because I think in my, I mean, I don't do apologetics a lot in an urban context, but I have interacted with people from that context.

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And so you'll get stuff that's like a curve ball. Like you're like, how the heck am I? I mean, it's a random, you know.

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I'll give you a good example of one that's kind of not around anymore as much.

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Okay. But in the nineties, which by the way, you know, the urban context thing,

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I kind of say, well, anybody who's in the urban community, whether you're skate rats or hip hop or heavy metal and these sub genres or even academic world.

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Cause I know, I tell people I'm bilingual. I know how to speak to the academics and I can speak to, you know, those -

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Speak academic. You can mix them together. I can, you know, sit there and use the big words when

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I have to, when I'm dealing with people, especially my denomination. And they're like, I didn't know you knew that.

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Like, ah, there you go. So, but one, this religion is called

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Holy Tabernacle Ministries. Okay. And it was a subset of the 5 % nation of Islam, which

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I dealt with a lot in the nineties. I've gotten to debates with them on the street when they're in winter and where I live in Florida.

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I used to go on the weekends and preach the gospel on the street to whoever who would listen.

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But in my way were the 5 %ers who will come, you know, with the bow ties and their bean pies and their newspaper, the last trumpet, you know, the

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Islamic 5 %er newspaper, Farrakhan and things like that. And we will get into debates and even fighting for people's attention.

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That's how rough it is. To the point where you have to watch your back because mind you,

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I'm in the hood. So you gotta be careful. So Holy Tabernacle Ministries will claim that we are reptilians.

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Mind you, this is a serious religion. Did you say reptilians? Reptilians in human form, right?

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That's gangster right there. That's the crazy stuff, dude. So we are originally, according to this religion, which again, with many 5 %ers were mixed within this, that we're actually for the planet

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Titan and that we are reptilians in human form.

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And seven, in the end, God will return in a spaceship, seven spaceships will come and take us back to planet

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Titan, which is the real heavens. So I had to deal with people like that on the street, online and around my circle.

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And one time I went to, this guy knew me. He came up to me while I was there on the weekend, talking about Christ and telling them how

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Islam was garbage and that's the way we had to talk. Listen, let me tell you something, brother.

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Within the hood, ain't no time for all this watered down beat around the bush, nicey, nicey, politically correct evangelism.

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We got no time for that because the Muslims are ripping apart

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Christianity with no shame. So, and not that you wanna stoop to a level, but you have to be aggressive and now they will drown you out.

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They would, you know, vocab alone, I'm sure he can relate to what I'm saying. So a guy came up to me,

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I knew in school, he was like, listen, Rick, my teacher is gonna prove that Jesus never resurrected.

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Now these were regular five percenters. Okay. But some of them were into the Holy Tabernacle Ministries too, where they had little pamphlets.

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So they invited me, they wanted me to come because they wanted to prove to me that Jesus never resurrected using

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Paul in Corinthians 15. Oh, that's interesting. That's like,

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I'm gonna show you a magic trick. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. That's a very good way to disprove the resurrection, but okay.

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In my head, I'm like, okay. So I show up a few days later, is at the person's house, the teacher's house.

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And I sit there and they're passing out their, you know, passed out Bible. I have my own

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Bible. I had the Reformation Study Bible. Okay. Back then when it first came out. And you go on through 15.

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So he goes to that one verse where it says, if Christ is not raised, this is all in vain.

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So he did it. He just went to one verse and said, see, even the Christian's hero, the apostle

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Paul said that Jesus never resurrected, that the Christianity is in vain and yada, yada, yada.

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He went on and on. And the guys were like, oh, you know, I could see them kind of looking at me and I'm sitting there.

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It's like 10 of them all around me. I'm the only Christian there. And I'm like, okay.

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I'm like, you know, can I go? Can I respond to that? You gotta be respectful.

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I'm in their house. You know, I'm not trying to be crazy. So they say, yeah, go ahead. Go. And I went, got up with the

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Bible and I said, okay, let's read from verse one. Mm -hmm. So I read the whole context and I showed where he was being, you know, sarcastic when he was saying that.

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And that his point is that Jesus did raise from the grave. And I was, you know,

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I showed them that in the context that Jesus is the first fruits and we will be raised. And I started preaching the gospel and the guy got up, the owner of the house, that was the teacher, went, got a nine millimeter and put it to my head while I'm talking.

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So he takes the nine millimeter, cocks it, puts it to my head. And I'm like, okay.

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He's like, I should just make you submit to Allah or kill you here on the spot.

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And I'll tell you some, this, I was overwhelmed with,

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I don't even know how to explain it beyond. I know it was the Holy Spirit, but it was this confidence of courage just came.

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I was like, pull the trigger because I'm not submitting to nobody but Christ. Wow. In front of the people, they're like, and one of my, the friend who invited me was kind of trying to, hey man, calm down.

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What are you doing? He felt embarrassed. Sure. Because I proved them wrong, just reading the context of the verse.

33:34

And he shoved me out the door. He's all right. He put the gun down. He kicked me out the door and shoved me.

33:39

I fell on the ground and got in my car and I'm driving and realizing what just happened.

33:45

I was like, I was driving home. I had to pull over because that courage and confidence went away.

33:53

It like lifted. Oh my goodness. I was like, oh my goodness. Like, oh, oh, oh my goodness.

34:00

That's it. I went and told my, you know, wife and my parents, like, yo, this just happened. Somebody was like, no, don't go over there no more.

34:08

No, don't do that no more. You're going to get killed. I said, I can't, I can't stop. I'm not, I'm not scared of them. So that's, that's an example of apologetics and polemics within a urban context like that.

34:21

How do you do apologetics with a gun to your head? That's a, that's a technique. I don't think, oh wait, actually

34:26

Bonson did, Bonson did teach us how to avoid the gunshot. If you remember,

34:32

I can teach you how to dodge bullets. You know, I could teach you to move. I don't know if you remember that in his lecture,

34:38

I could teach you to shift to the side or I can teach you how to take the gun out of the person's hand. Unfortunately, he was using it metaphorically.

34:45

So I don't know if that would have worked, but how do you, how do you priest up a guy with a gun to your head?

34:51

Well, I'll tell you, you know, when, when I first started doing actual apologetics. Okay. Within, I wasn't priest up at the time.

35:02

I was very classical. I was Ligonier. I was, you know, R .C.

35:07

Spro, John Gerstner. They were my two guys, you know, John Gerstner was

35:13

R .C. Spro's mentor. Right. And he had videos I would watch on classical apologetics.

35:19

And that's the method I will use. And I wish

35:24

I knew what I knew now back then, because when you're online dealing with atheists and false religions, it's like,

35:33

I used to get frustrated a lot because here I am trying to get the person to at least understand that there's a higher being, you know, by using the cosmological argument, or, you know, the resurrection evidence, all these things.

36:01

But I always found that they had something to say about it. They always, they always said, or that, you know, that doesn't prove there's a

36:10

God and this and that. And then finally, when I started understanding years later, that's about five, six, seven, even 10 years later,

36:21

I'm starting to hear about what this presupposition is through Gordon Clark. And so a few guys

36:27

I knew were Clarkians, you know, Clarkians, what is that? But yeah,

36:32

Dr. Clark was, oh, I know Dr. Clark. The first, one of the first books I've read was, What Do Presbyterians Believe?

36:38

And it was his commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith. And I will study that, like,

36:45

I read that book like 10 times, you know? I said, yeah, I know, but I didn't hear of this scripturalism and Clarkianism, presuppositionalism,

36:55

I was like, what in the world is that? And they were explaining it to me, and I was, okay, that makes sense.

37:01

Then I started to realize, wait a minute, I'm doing apologetics without using my sword.

37:10

You know, I have a sword that God gave me to use and to yield, and here

37:15

I am putting it down and my shield of faith, because I have to be neutral to talk to the atheists, because they're not, that's the mentality

37:25

I had. He's not gonna talk to me if I start with God, if I start with the Bible, because I'm just,

37:32

I'm using what I'm supposed to prove. Right. That's just circular, you know? That's the mentality

37:39

I had, until I started to realize it's not all even about that. It's about being faithful to the verse that tells me, you know, give a reason for the faith that is in you, not in a faith that's general first, then you can get to the faith that's in you.

38:01

It was like, wait a minute, that's backwards. I start, I have to start, and mind you,

38:07

I didn't understand the starting points, approximate point, I didn't, I still wasn't there yet, but what hit me in my head, reading that scripture was,

38:17

I'm not defending the God of the Bible. I'm defending a general deity to eventually get to the

38:27

God of the Bible. Then, as I started reading Clark, became a

38:35

Clarkian for many years, and that was my axiom. My axiom is, the

38:40

Bible is the word of God written. And I would use that axiom, and the atheists, well, but you can't use the

38:46

Bible. No, wait a minute, that's my axiom. Your axiom is yours, and you say you don't have to justify it.

38:54

Well, my axiom is, the Bible is God's word written, and I will argue from it.

39:00

Things like that, right? But then, I started understanding

39:08

Bonson, and asking questions a lot to Cy. I would bother

39:13

Cy every day. What about this? What about that? What about that? He would direct me to Bonson books and things like that.

39:21

And I saw this Jeff Durbin guy, I'm like, who's this Jeff Durbin? Looking him up, he was a

39:27

Ninja Turtle, and Mortal Kombat, and I'm like, ooh, man, that sounds like a cool guy.

39:33

Who's this Jeff Durbin? Who's this? He was a Ninja Turtle. Ninja guy, yeah. Watching his debates, his street evangelism,

39:40

I was like, man, it's just started to hit home. Sure. And when

39:47

I started reading more of Bonson, Van Til, Dr. Love, I was like, wait a minute. And this is not a,

39:57

I'm not gonna turn this into a critique to Clarkianism. I'm just trying to tell you my transition.

40:05

What I understood, wait a minute. Yes, the Bible is God's word written, but I had to eventually conclude that.

40:15

I had to come to that acknowledgement. And how did I do that? By reading the

40:20

God's word. Sure. How do I know the Bible is God's word written? Because God said that the

40:27

Bible is his word written. And I used to ask the Clarkian, wait a minute. How do you justify that?

40:33

Oh, we don't have to, it's an axiom. But you had to come to that conclusion. Yeah, but that's, then they go off on a tangent.

40:43

No, no, something ain't right. Then I started understanding presuppositions and that the

40:49

God of scripture is self -authentic. He is, and I knew that already because of reformed theology, but it just didn't, it didn't click until I started understanding presuppositional from the

41:02

Vantillian view and Bonson, the understanding that God is supreme and he is self -justifying in his word.

41:13

I said, so that's, because Clarkians like to say, well, whatever your justification is, that becomes your ultimate authority.

41:23

That's why we have to use axioms. So, well, the difference is that my starting point is also my justification.

41:32

So there is no infinite regress of ultimate justifications because the

41:38

God of scripture is my justification. Nor is it a fideistic starting point.

41:43

Nor is it fideistic because there's an objective. I believe that the transcendental argument is not only a subjective truth for Christians because we affirm the word of God as the inspired infallible word of God, that's self -attesting, self -authenticating, but also, right, that it's

42:14

God's living word. It doesn't come back void. You see, one of the things that attracted me to the presuppositional approach is,

42:24

I mean, I say this and you still get pushed back. When I use the presuppositional approach in conversation, not so much in a debate, because you are trying to be more formal and you wanna be at that academic level and you use the terminology and stuff like that.

42:41

It just seems to me to be so honoring and glorifying the magnificence of God as a foundation.

42:49

And you say that to other Christians and then you're critiqued because of your apparent piety.

42:55

It's like, oh, well, the presuppositionalists, they just wanna, they sound very pious, but it's still irrational. Sounds real holy.

43:01

Yeah, and it's like, well, if I defend the faith in such a way that just puts Christ at the center, it's empty, but you're just trying to be pious.

43:09

The better way is this more rational way, which almost never mentions Jesus, which never mentions the Bible. And I'm thinking to myself,

43:16

I'm like, like, I get what you're saying. I see your arguments. I don't think they're good because of the whole, I think the whole worldview issue, people just don't really take that seriously in the other camps, in my opinion.

43:26

But no Jesus, no Bible, everything seems to be to the side. I think there was just a show,

43:32

I don't remember, I think you made a comment where the person who was interviewing James Anderson, they said, well, we don't really do that much theology on this channel.

43:42

I was like, you're an apologetics channel. Like what the heck, bro? I mean, like, what are you defending?

43:47

If not like the truths of Christian theology, it just seems that there is this complete disconnect between like scripture and then you have like this philosophy over here.

43:59

And yes, I know people say, well, you need philosophy. Yes, I know that discussion, but there seems to be a clear demarcation in some of these other camps, philosophy, philosophy, philosophy, and then we get to Jesus.

44:12

And what I've benefited so greatly from with the presuppositional approach is how it just beautifully marries the two together and that the philosophy of Christianity flows out of the very soil of the word of God itself.

44:24

So that the very language we use, I think is more reflective of God honoring language in the manner we defend, as opposed to speaking about God in the abstract, in the general, in the ambiguous, in the non -Christians can use those same arguments too.

44:39

And there's really no difference between the two. It just, I don't know. It seems, I mean, it seems more biblical in my opinion.

44:47

And that's, like I was saying earlier, that's one of the main things that hit me was that this apologetic honors

44:57

Christ. Yeah, when I say that, I know people get offended. When we say that, the classical guys, my reformers get offended, what do you mean?

45:06

What do you mean, I'm not honoring Christ? I'm like, I know you want to, your heart's there, but you're being inconsistent within your approach.

45:18

You know, we're still a scriptura, except when we come to apologetics and philosophy.

45:26

No, and that's what eventually hit me, was the transcendental argument.

45:32

That's what brought me to the presuppositionalism. When it clicked,

45:38

I said, this is blowing my mind because I was like, wait a minute.

45:45

So that's why I was, it's not only subjective because we believe, but it's also an objective, logical proof, since without starting with the

45:57

God of scripture, who he is, his attributes, his omniscience, his sovereignty, his ordination, his eternal decrees, couldn't know anything, couldn't prove anything.

46:13

And that's what I tell guys is, yeah, you want to talk about reason, rationality, argumentation, syllogisms,

46:22

I get it. That's all good and fine. But the point is that without the

46:30

God of scripture, you cannot ultimately justify the use of those things in the first place.

46:38

And when that hit me, I was like, whoa, man. I mean, I was very taken of the aggressive nature of presuppositional,

46:47

Paul. I mean, think about it. The presuppositional approach is an all or nothing approach. It really,

46:53

I think, in a way that the evidentialist and the classicalist can't do, it draws this really defining line in the sand where it's

47:03

Christ or absurdity. That just sounds so, I mean, just when you read the Bible, it's like, yeah,

47:09

I get it. It's like, Jesus says, you're either with me or you're against me. If you're not gathering with me, you scatter.

47:16

It just, I don't know. Even those principles that we draw from the method just seem to be so entrenched with biblical truth,

47:23

I think. Right, and that's what a lot of people who reject presuppositionalism and transcendental argument fail to understand is that the secular philosophy, since the beginning of time, philosophy was always about knowledge, wisdom, rationality, reasoning, or sense perception, all these topics that they want to tackle and have different categories for, and epistemology, ontology, metaphysics, all these things, right?

48:07

And that's what the beauty of the transcendental argument of presuppositionalism is, hey, guys, hey, without God, you can't even do that.

48:18

You can't even account for doing those things, for having philosophy, for doing science, for using your brain to think, for reasoning, for seeing, for hearing, for tasting, for reality as a whole, that without first starting with the ontological

48:40

God of scripture, the Trinity, it's the only position, philosophy,

48:50

Christian philosophy that can account for these things, right?

48:57

So it's like, so it's impossible that it's not true.

49:04

That's what, I know a lot of people are like, what do you mean it's impossible, it's not true? Wait a minute, are you trying to tell me you just believe what

49:10

God says in his word, and you're just, it's like, well, that's very, I've had unbelievers say this, and even in like a debate,

49:17

I don't remember who I was debating. I think it was that gentleman, Eric, Eric Murphy. He's like, you know, because I think

49:24

I said something like, I don't believe I could be wrong about Christianity. He's like, you don't see how that's arrogant?

49:31

I'm like, no, it's like, I believe God, like I really do, like I genuinely do.

49:37

This is not like a trick. I'm not trying to set up as a tricky argument that you can't, I believe

49:42

God, and my apologetic flows out of my trust in his word, and my apologetic is an application of those principles.

49:50

I mean, we can get rid of the presuppositional vocabulary, you know, that he's the necessary, basically what we're just saying is in his light, that we see light.

50:00

God as creator is the foundation of all things. He gives meaning to everything. He defines everything.

50:06

I'm made in his image. Everything is revelatory of God. That means I, as an image bearer of God, is a revelation of God, and I'm in constant contact with him every waking moment of my life.

50:17

That's basically what we're saying. If we remove the vocabulary of the apologetics literature, we're basically just grabbing from these,

50:25

I think these biblically grounded truths, whether explicitly stated or logically deduced from biblical truths, and I think that's so important.

50:33

When I study, and again, this is just my opinion in this area, and I understand that it's not always the case, but when

50:40

I study classical apologetics and evidential apologetics, I need to take a break and read my

50:47

Bible because I feel so detached, but when I study presuppositional apologetics, the kind that's not focusing on a specific philosophical aspect,

50:58

I feel both intellectually equipped, spiritually edified, and biblically grounded, and it seems to me, just in my own opinion, that a study of apologetics should be, if it's biblical, it should also be enriching your spirit, not just your mind, and I think that presuppositional apologetics,

51:18

I think does that in a way that some of the other methods I don't think do as well. Right, yeah, and I'm with you on that, man.

51:27

You know, using the transcendental argument to just pull from one precondition of intelligibility, laws of logic.

51:40

Okay, now I'm gonna take the laws of logic. Now I'm gonna argue transcendentally for, you know, laws of logic, therefore

51:47

God. I get it, but in my opinion, that still misses the point, because we're not talking about just the laws of logic.

51:56

It's the whole of God's universe and reality in general.

52:04

It's everything. Sure, can you argue or defend, you know,

52:10

God using the laws of logic with somebody who brings it up? Sure, but I wanna get to the heart of the matter.

52:17

That's another thing you'll realize about me. I wanna get to the meat quick, you know? I wanna get to the heart of the issue immediately.

52:27

Okay, just picture. Are you an internalist or an externalist? You need to repent. It's like,

52:32

I don't care. I don't care if I'm an internal or an externalist. You need Jesus. Just cut right to the chase, bro.

52:37

Some people like to hear their own voice and jump into these discussions. It's kind of like an intellectual flexing of their muscles.

52:44

Like, nah, you need Jesus. You're going to hell whether you're internalist or externalist. And I thought, well, listen, brother, without Jesus, you can't even know what internalist, externalism is in the first place.

52:56

That's right. Again, you keep throwing these words out and I'm trying to tell you that, you know, it's only

53:04

God's revelation that can justify you using language, using words, you know, and the important thing to make them realize is that they make these claims of subjectivity and knowledge, subjectivity and morality and truth, but they don't live that way.

53:27

When they're getting mad at me and calling my views false, not true, you're confused, all of that presupposes my worldview, not yours.

53:44

You can't tell me I'm wrong when you don't even claim that there is any wrong or right or true or false.

53:53

You know, all those things presuppose certainty, for one thing, and absolute truth, absolute knowledge, and at least some things we know, you know, and that's my main complaint with people

54:10

And what they do is they have allowed themselves, and again,

54:18

I don't mean to be offensive, this is my opinion, is that they're way too engulfed in secular philosophy, that they've adopted secular philosophy's definitions and their concepts.

54:37

Then adopting, taking there the unbelieving world to secular world's definition and concepts, now we're trying to apply these things in Christianity when the

54:53

Bible says the opposite about those definitions and concepts.

55:00

See, for example, in the secular realm, they say that, you know, knowledge is impossible.

55:08

Ultimately, you know, truth is whatever you make it, whatever you believe, and all these things -

55:16

You can't have certainty, you'll have like view that's held by a lot of people, this view called fallibilism. So they would say, oh, you can't be certain, you know, certainty is not a requirement for knowledge or whatever.

55:27

And I totally reject that. I reject, I don't care if the dude has 600 doctor degree on epistemology, if they're sitting there with a straight face telling me that certainty is not required for knowledge,

55:47

I'm like, what? That doesn't even make sense. So then it's not real knowledge then, then the knowledge is just information that you have in your brain, whether it's true or not true, if you know it or not, it's just there.

56:03

But I don't think the Bible, in the Proverbs, in the book of Psalms, in Ecclesiastes, in the

56:11

New Testament, when the scriptures is talking about knowledge, it's talking about, you know, something you can know, that you truly know with certainty.

56:23

That what you believe and you believe actually corresponds to what is actually the case.

56:31

Yeah, I mean. It's almost like, how can you say I could be wrong, but still the thing that I claim to know, it's knowledge, although I could be wrong.

56:41

That makes that, I have difficulty. I agree with Dr. Clark on this issue. I'm not sure,

56:47

I haven't really gone to dive into what Van Til and Bonson has specifically said about this issue, but from reading them,

56:58

I think I can safely assume that they do affirm absolute certainty.

57:03

With respect to. Because that's the whole point of presupposition apologetics. Right. It's absolute certainty and knowledge, not probability.

57:12

If we were into probability, then there is no use for presupposition apologetics.

57:18

But, but you see, even the Christian worldview provides a basis, not only for a sort of epistemic certainty with respect to like knowledge claims, but it also provides a context for the very intelligibility of probability because probability itself presupposes certain certainties that might be true.

57:38

So you can, we could be reasonably, so it's like, we can't be certain about this. Why? Well, because this over here.

57:44

Well, if you're not certain about that, then how can, how can this over here make us reasonably certain about this over there?

57:49

It, it just, I don't know. It becomes a fallacious circle.

57:56

Right. And an infinite regress of begging the question. Yes. That's all the bottom line.

58:02

And, but, and, and people think that that is some kind of virtue. It's humble.

58:07

I'm being honest and humble that I, oh, I know that I don't know anything for certain.

58:15

And I am certain that I don't, it just becomes a bunch of babble. And it's like, ah, no, what did

58:21

Bonson say to do? What did Van Til, you know, emphasize? Which I'm starting to get worried a little bit when

58:30

I'm online. I'm like, where is the pushing of the anti -thesis here? Why are we adopting and affirming catering?

58:41

We talk about no neutrality, but here we are catering to secular philosophy.

58:47

Now, of course we want to learn secular philosophy. Sure. But what did

58:53

Bonson say? So we can critique it better. So we can know how to refute it and understand it.

59:00

Not to adopt it. I look at that the same as I look at pop culture,

59:06

American Christianity, where it's trying to cater to the culture, you know, instead of, you know, the church and the gospel influencing the culture, we're allowing the culture to influence us changing our worship services.

59:24

And we're doing all kinds of stuff because we're trying to appease unbelievers when the church worship is not for unbelievers.

59:33

It's for believers to come together and worship. You want to do something during the week to evangelize?

59:41

Great. But when it comes to Sunday and the communion of the saints, the worship service of our

59:49

Lord and Savior King Jesus is for believers to come and worship.

59:55

Once we start trying to change our worship, what we do to cater to unbelievers, we got it all wrong.

01:00:06

In the same vein, when it comes to biblical apologetics, Christian philosophy, we need to show them, listen, your wisdom of the world doesn't work.

01:00:19

It's no good. It doesn't have Christ in it. As a matter of fact, when you put

01:00:24

Christ in it, all your definitions change. See, when you throw

01:00:30

Christ in the mix and his word, now you're talking about true knowledge.

01:00:35

You're talking about absolute certainty, absolute truth, and things like that.

01:00:41

It boggles my mind. Sometimes I'm gonna hear Christians rejecting that you can be assured of your salvation.

01:00:52

You can't be, you're maximally certain, but not all the way.

01:00:59

Something like, so you don't, you're not absolutely certain you're saved. Is Christ even absolutely

01:01:06

God in the flesh? I mean, how far do we take this philosophy from the world and apply it to Christianity?

01:01:16

That's the problem, is that we're afraid of what academia is gonna say about us.

01:01:25

Who cares what they say? That's what the Bible says. Where's the scribe?

01:01:31

Where's the wisdom? Where are you smart guys of the world? Where you at? Because I'm about to stomp you with my wisdom.

01:01:39

There goes that urban coming up. No. So now, right, well, to get back to that point of urban context, when

01:01:48

I'm dealing with Islam or these cults and these mysticism and the chakra, all these chakras and all these things that are not infiltrating the urban community,

01:02:03

I argue transcendentally. I say, okay, great. So what you're saying is that you have true knowledge, wisdom and all that stuff?

01:02:14

Yes. Okay, can you please then, how does your God or mystic view account for knowledge?

01:02:25

The real world we live in. And they usually start contradicting themselves and I stop them.

01:02:34

I'll point it out and things like that. Because you can't in one sense say, my religion is the true religion.

01:02:40

Then in another vein say, yeah, but we can't really know anything for certain.

01:02:46

Knowledge is impossible. Skepticism is honest. And all this stuff, we don't live that way.

01:02:55

Unbelievers don't live that way. Cult members don't live that way. Muslims don't live that way.

01:03:02

Buddhists don't live that way. Hinduism doesn't live that way. There is no human being on this planet, unless you're nuts in a nutty home or something, doesn't live out what their so -called worldview is.

01:03:21

And that's what we as precepts need to point out is to remove that mask from their face and show them, you don't live that way, brother.

01:03:33

You say all these things, but you're contradicting yourself and your view is actually self -refuting.

01:03:43

Things like that. So we got to take from what the world is trying to take from us, from the

01:03:50

Christian worldview, from what the Bible talks about, knowledge, wisdom, and truth, take it back from them and say, no, this is ours.

01:04:00

Why is it ours? Because I am the son of a king. I am a child of God, Jesus Christ, who alone holds the keys to the treasure of knowledge and wisdom.

01:04:16

How? That's where you get into those discussions with them. This is how. And you show how it is.

01:04:24

And so I approach urban apologetics with these false religious cults the same way

01:04:32

I do with atheists. Because again, I'm not the guy who likes to beat around the bush and start going on little rabbit trails and tangents with people about this verse, that verse, or, you know, is

01:04:50

Jesus even God? And is God a she or a he?

01:04:56

And all this stuff that people want to throw at you at one time, say, wait a minute, let's back up. Let's stay basic and foundational because you're making a lot of knowledge claims.

01:05:07

We have to deal with the philosophy of facts first before we continue all these things. Let's kind of reel them back in because a lot of these discussions get off track.

01:05:19

And sometimes you reel them back in and they get angry about it because they want you to answer, oh, you don't have a reputation for why

01:05:26

Jesus is dark -skinned. You know, it's like, I don't care about that.

01:05:33

I don't care about your foundation for knowledge and wisdom that only

01:05:39

Christ has. Because see, you're claiming to have something that Jesus has alone.

01:05:45

Because Jesus said, he alone holds the keys that are knowledge and wisdom. And you're saying you also have it.

01:05:54

So explain to me how it is that you also have it. But when it comes down to it, you show yourself and you show to me that you don't have it.

01:06:04

You can't even account for it. Which again, I bring them back to Christ. You see, that's why you need

01:06:10

Christ. That's why you need to repent. That's why you need to come to faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, to stand as righteous before a holy

01:06:25

God. And the only way to do that is to have the righteousness of Christ imputed to you.

01:06:33

So then I get into the gospel, you know, the essence of the gospel, you know, and showing them how not only does

01:06:43

Christ renew your mind, you know, to think the way he thinks, but the main point is that you need an advocate.

01:07:01

You're a sinner. And here's the bad news. God is holy and we're not, that's the bad news.

01:07:11

Oh, here's some more bad news. God demands holiness to enter his presence. You're not,

01:07:18

I'm not. So how do we get out of this dilemma? Well, that's why

01:07:24

God sent his only son, Jesus Christ, to, you know, live holy, to fulfill the law for us, to fulfill our righteousness, to die in our stead, resurrect for our justification so that when we place our faith in him, we have those benefits.

01:07:44

Just keep preaching it, bro. I'm gonna send the offering plate around to collect. I guess I'm a friend of his,

01:07:50

I'm a preacher, bro. Oh, friend, hey. I think I heard you say a Spanish word in a long time.

01:07:56

Yo entiendo un poquito. Ah, bueno, así es muchacho. The rub is this, that Christ is our foundation.

01:08:04

He's the foundation of our philosophy. He's the foundation of everything that, he is the foundation that gives meaning to everything else.

01:08:13

And as Christians, we should not be ashamed to start there, that we should not be ashamed that the world has this language, has the corner on this specific idea that's popular.

01:08:26

We stand on the rock of Christ. When you were talking a little bit about that before, I remembered

01:08:32

Calvin's words with respect to his commentary in 1 Peter 3, verse 15.

01:08:38

And I think Christian apologists should really listen to this. John Calvin wrote in his commentary, he says, contentious disputes arise from the fact that many think less honorably than they ought of the greatness of divine wisdom and are carried away by profane audacity.

01:08:58

Okay, I'm gonna read that again. I love Calvin, man, he's a beast, bro. Contentious disputes arise from the fact that many think less honorably than they ought of the greatness of divine wisdom and are carried away by profane audacity.

01:09:15

That is Calvin's commentary on 1 Peter 3, 15, our apologetics verse.

01:09:21

And he's speaking about believers who think less honorably than they ought of the greatness of divine wisdom.

01:09:27

We can be intimidated by the intellectuals of the world, but we should not think less honorably of the greatness of divine wisdom.

01:09:34

We should stand with pride on the wisdom of God found in scripture and apply that wisdom in everything that we do, of which apologetics is just one, but it is so powerful in its application that the biblical truth that has not

01:09:50

God made foolish, the wisdom of the world is shown forth when we apply it in a way that is consistent and in a way that's honoring to him.

01:09:58

That's really the issue here is when we're doing apologetics, whether we're communicating that in an urban context, an academic context or whatever, are you doing it in a way that is standing upon the firm rock of God's truth?

01:10:12

If you think that's well, you're just being overly pious, fine. I rather my apologetics sound like it's glorifying

01:10:17

God than not. We just have the extra added benefit that it's actually biblical and true, but that's another issue.

01:10:25

So the debates go and never ending. Why should we be embarrassed to deal with secular atheists?

01:10:36

Well, there's only one atheist. What I mean is secular realm, atheism, we're kind of embarrassed to use

01:10:42

God's own words. That's right. Think about that second. You're saying, wait a minute, we have to put

01:10:49

God's own words to the side for a minute because the atheist is not gonna, but he doesn't.

01:10:55

I'm trying to prove that that's the God's own word. Why? Why are you doing that?

01:11:02

You stand on God's word and you argue from it. You don't argue to it. That's your sword.

01:11:08

You just put the sword down. What you gonna do now? You fist fight with the guy who's holding his sword because he's not putting his sword down.

01:11:16

That's right. You're not being neutral. You've done what he's doing. That's right.

01:11:22

My goodness. It's like, anyway, when those things start to hit you, like, ah. Yes, they're like little hand grenades.

01:11:28

They go off at certain times. You'd be driving, you'd be like, oh, snap, that's what he meant. All right, I think this is a good time to get to some of the questions.

01:11:35

So we have some questions. Thank you for that, Ricky. This was a really great discussion here.

01:11:42

Let's scroll down here. Let me put this up there because I appreciate that. Jesus name magnified says,

01:11:49

Eli, really enjoy watching the content on your channel. Thank you so much. We're almost at 2000 subscribers.

01:11:55

Thank you so much, guys. I really appreciate it. And I definitely appreciate the wonderful comments that people leave.

01:12:02

And if you're enjoying the show, I gotta do this, I gotta plug it. But if you're enjoying the show and the podcast, go onto iTunes, write a nice review.

01:12:10

We've got some good reviews up there. I might share them on Facebook at some point so people can see what folks are saying about the content.

01:12:16

And I'm just very happy that it's blessing people and people are finding it very useful. So thank you for that,

01:12:22

Jesus name magnified. All right, let's go. So here's a question for me.

01:12:29

I'll just answer it quickly. Am I a post -millennialist? Yes, I am a post -millennialist. Next. This is urban reformed apologetics.

01:12:40

You post -millennialist? Yup. You a Christian? Yup. Huh? What was that?

01:12:46

That's sure enough. That's right. Sure enough. Who's the baddest? Jesus. Let me see. What's that?

01:12:51

So here we go. So TJ asked the question, is tag more an argument against naturalism that it is an argument for God?

01:12:59

Why don't you share your thoughts on that? And maybe I'll share my thoughts also depending on how you answer. Well, yeah,

01:13:05

I see what, well, basically the question boils down to is, is tag just an internal critique?

01:13:13

And it's not an objective positive proof for God. Well, it's both.

01:13:20

But ultimately, the transcendental argument, yeah, destroys naturalism because it shows naturalism that it's self -refuting and contradictory and can't account for the preconditions of intelligibility.

01:13:36

But because of that, we understand that it is only the God of scripture that can account for the preconditions of intelligibility.

01:13:45

And all that means is the preconditions for knowledge or the laws of logic, reasoning, our senses, our reliability of our memory, uniformity of nature, things like that, can only be accounted for by God.

01:14:05

And because of that, naturalism, which doesn't have God, is self -refuting, basically what it is.

01:14:14

I would say that the transcendental argument is an argument for the Christian God. And since it's an argument for the

01:14:20

Christian God, it negates all forms of non -Christianity. So it's not a simple internal critique, as you said.

01:14:26

And the question, is Tagmore an argument against naturalism than it is against an argument for God? It almost assumes that the argument is just an argument towards atheism.

01:14:37

It's not. The common objection that people get, well, what do you do when you're coming in contact with a Mormon? These aren't questions that like, oh, presuppose,

01:14:45

I never thought about that. I mean, you just listen to Bonson's lectures. He takes his entire lectures just explaining the very thing that people go on other

01:14:53

YouTube channels and say, this is the silver bullet that kills presupposition. What if a Muslim told you the

01:14:58

Quran is the necessary? It's like, you just kind of like, oh my gosh, like, bro, do you even

01:15:03

Bonson? Like, listen to a lecture, bro, you know? But yeah, it's not an argument simply against naturalism.

01:15:10

It is that, but it's also an argument against every non -Christian position. Any ism.

01:15:15

Any ism that is not Christianity, period. There's only the Christian worldview and non -Christian worldviews.

01:15:23

That's it. That's right. Everything falls under the umbrella of non -Christian worldviews.

01:15:29

The Christian worldview is true. Every other worldview is false. That's right. And you do that by, you know, and that's true by the impossibility of the contrary.

01:15:41

And that gets into a whole bunch of other things that we can do another time.

01:15:47

It's true even when placed in a hypothetical. If Christianity is true, then by definition, everything that's not

01:15:52

Christianity is false. Everything. All hypotheticals, universes, fake universes,

01:16:00

Gotham City worldview, whatever you want to throw out there. If it's not Christian, it's false.

01:16:07

That's right. That's right. That's it. TJ also says, and it's just a statement, but maybe we could address this because I think this is very important.

01:16:15

He says, I'd like to be as brave as both of you. Sometimes I'm afraid to even broach the subject.

01:16:21

Well, what do you say to that? I get what he's saying, but we have to understand that, like, you know, we talk about these things at different levels of sophistication, but it's a command.

01:16:34

1 Peter 3 15 is a command to all believers, number one. And number two, it's not an issue of bravery.

01:16:41

It's an issue of relying on the resources that God has given us in his word and the resource of the very spirit of God.

01:16:49

Apologetics requires not bravery per se, but a trust in God to use the words that you're going to speak to the unbeliever.

01:16:59

And so to encourage TJ, don't pray for bravery, pray for God's wisdom, right?

01:17:06

And the ability to speak God's truth and not worry what people say to you, because God, the Bible says his word will not come back void.

01:17:13

You speak, you trust in God. It's not an issue of we have more bravery than another person, this, that, or the other thing.

01:17:20

What do you? It's application, you know? That's right. Basically you apply what you, you apply your theology, what you understand and believe about God's word to apologetics and philosophy.

01:17:34

That's right. The problem today is that people are doing it backwards. They're taking, you know, they're starting with apologetics and philosophy and then trying to stuff that into the scripture somewhere.

01:17:46

No, it's the other way around. You know, the God's revelation informs our apologetics and our

01:17:52

Christian philosophy. That's right. Nothing wrong with philosophy. The Bible says what's whack is secular philosophy.

01:18:00

That's his, that's the Durag edition. That's, that's not, that's not real. That wasn't, that wasn't a direct quote, but you write,

01:18:08

I mean, you write. It's like, do not - That's the G, JV, the ghetto translation.

01:18:16

He said, do not seek after whack philosophy, but seek after non -whack philosophy, philosophy after Christ.

01:18:23

That's the ghetto version of Colossians. That was a good one, bro. See, that's what we need. That's what we need the urban folk for to connect.

01:18:29

Got that Durag edition, bro. All right. So Jesus name magnified asked the question, what would you say to someone who isn't willing to try to learn or to take a look at pre -suppositional apologetics, but would rather stay more on the side of evidential apologetics?

01:18:45

So, so it's an evidentialist and they're like, man, I don't want to deal with that pre -suppositional. How would you engage someone saying, hey, you should really take a look at this.

01:18:52

There's really something to this. I would say knock yourself out. I mean, if they're unwilling to even look at it and they want to stay in the bubble of what they already used to, hey, have a nice life, do what you gotta do with it and see how it goes for you.

01:19:14

Right. But I'm not gonna leave until I say, but sir, with all due respect, you're not honoring

01:19:21

Christ with that kind of apologetic. That's when they'll say, what do you mean?

01:19:27

Ah, see now we're gonna start getting into discussion about the method and why I believe pre -supp is

01:19:33

God honoring. First and foremost, that's the importance of the pre -suppositional method is number one, first point, it honors our

01:19:43

King Jesus Christ. And I think too, I mean, if you're talking about apologetics,

01:19:49

I assume your friend is a Christian. And so hopefully he should be interested in whether a person is doing something in a way that is biblical.

01:19:59

And so if you do get the person to even just talk a little bit, I think it would be well worth your time to talk about the biblical virtues of the pre -suppositional method.

01:20:11

Just go through the scriptural principles behind it. And if the person is a Christian and wants to really honor

01:20:17

Christ, you plant those seeds like, well, the Bible says this and which method do you think is actually consistently applying this biblical truth?

01:20:26

Peter 315, what's it say? To be ready. That's right.

01:20:32

Give a reason for the faith that is in you. That's right. And the faith that's in you is Jesus Christ.

01:20:38

So you need to be defending Jesus Christ, not a general Messiah or some general deity using the evidential approach to eventually get your buddy to, or whoever you're talking to, to believe in some higher power.

01:20:54

Nobody cares about a higher power. Higher power send you to hell. General deities are all over the world.

01:21:04

They send you to hell. Only Jesus Christ can save you, save your reasoning, save your thinking process, save your heart, your soul.

01:21:14

And you got to tell your friend without, you know, all jokes aside is asking why, why do you, why not?

01:21:21

Why don't you want to look at it? And depending on what they say, you reel them in into a discussion and hopefully they'll go research.

01:21:29

You did a good way. The way you reeled in, you were like, well, if you're going to do that, but if you're going to do that approach, you're not honoring

01:21:35

God, man. You just walk away. Wait, wait, wait, wait, what do you mean? Now you want to talk, right?

01:21:41

Let's make some Bustelo and we sit down and we talk bro. Right? They don't know about that stuff. Yeah. Hey, I just had some before I got on.

01:21:48

I needed it. I have Folgers bro. Ever since I got married, my wife, she's at, my wife's amazing.

01:21:54

We're, you know, very American family. Once I moved out of the house, no more Bustelo bro. And when I smell it, it reminds me of my childhood.

01:22:02

No more. I rock on a beach. Well, I, to let us know, let me get a twist though.

01:22:07

My wife can cook though. Oh yeah. It's just, you know, she don't cook those things. I used to eat when

01:22:13

I was a kid. Let's not, let's not get this conversation off track. All right. Let's go to the next good.

01:22:19

I don't have that problem. Now my wife's awesome. If the atheistic worldview is shown to be fallacious, why assume the unbelievers worldview to try to prove the

01:22:31

Christian worldview? What do you think? That's a statement trying to show the absurdity of assuming kind of a neutral and autonomous approach or what do you think this person is coming from?

01:22:42

I'm not sure what. If the atheistic worldview is shown to be fallacious, why assume the unbelievers worldview to try?

01:22:52

Okay. You mean assuming the unbelievers worldview to do an eternal critique? If that's what he's getting at, but that's how you're showing the unbelieving worldview to be fallacious.

01:23:04

Right. It's by, you know, taking what they believe and doing an internal critique of their worldview and showing them that a

01:23:17

Christless worldview is bankrupt. Okay.

01:23:22

Good. We're not trying to prove the

01:23:27

Christian worldview. We're trying to say without the Christian worldview, you can't prove anything.

01:23:33

But that's a proof in itself. That's a proof in itself. Yeah. Which more to me is more of a confirmation of that truth that we know.

01:23:45

Yeah. I say a proof because, because O 'Bonson gives the transcendental proof. Right.

01:23:51

So a lot of people think, well, it's not just an argument. It's just a faith commitment. And then you're just trying to critique the other perspective and then they'll bring the valid point that critiquing other perspectives doesn't validate your own, which is true.

01:24:03

Right. Presuppositional approach is not simply seeking to critique others. Right. And that's the mistake people think.

01:24:09

People think that tag is just a bunch of internal critiques of other worldviews. No, it's a positive argument that only the

01:24:18

Christian worldview can account for the world we live in. That's right. Therefore, all other worldviews that does not have the

01:24:26

God of scriptures cannot account for the world we live in. So it's all meshed together. Now the internal critique comes as a partial demonstration.

01:24:35

So when someone says, you know, the Christian worldview provides the only, only the Christian worldview provides the necessary preconditions for knowledge.

01:24:42

The person says, nah, that's ridiculous. And then the internal critique is done to show, no, this is why

01:24:48

I'm saying that. Look, here's your worldview and it can't provide for it. And then here's my worldview. Here's how it can. You don't have to agree with my worldview, but it provides the conditions for these things.

01:24:56

Right. And you can reject the Bible and my starting point of God's revelation or the

01:25:03

God of scripture, however you wanna phrase it, but it just renders your view absurd.

01:25:10

Right. That's the point. You can reject it all you want. I checked this one out.

01:25:15

You have to do an internal critique of my view, of the Christian worldview, not one that you make up all your own in your head.

01:25:22

And that's a problem. A lot of atheists, that they jump to conclusions of what they think the

01:25:27

Christian worldview teaches. And then they start doing a critique and be like, wait a minute, that's not what I believe.

01:25:33

You need to critique what I believe. Right. And once you start to get a person who understands that concept, like I have a few times with a few atheists who have degrees in philosophy.

01:25:45

Well, that's not fair because you have a tight network view that accounts for it.

01:25:53

But they also say, but you're making that up as you go. So no, I'm not making that up as I go to fill in the gaps of where it's weak and it's necessary to be.

01:26:04

That's what the Bible says. And what you're saying is that the Bible is irrefutable. Thank you.

01:26:10

Repent. This one's fun one. Ready? If a person does not hold to scripture, but claims to be a

01:26:19

Christian. There's a problem with that right away. How would you use a presuppositional approach with them?

01:26:26

Okay. If you are a Christian, that would require you to have a Christian worldview.

01:26:32

Now a Christian worldview is derived from God's revelation and God's revelation is description.

01:26:41

So you can't really do that. Well, yeah, you ask them a series of questions.

01:26:47

Right, right. To get to that point. I say, okay, you're a Christian. So based on what authoritative standard do you have to claim you're a

01:26:55

Christian? Right. How do you know you're a Christian? What is a Christian? Based on what? Yeah. Well, I believe in Christ.

01:27:01

Where do you learn about Christ? Oh, the scriptures? Oh, okay. But you don't hold to the scriptures.

01:27:08

So if you don't hold to the scriptures, you don't hold to the truth. And again, what you just did right there is a do -rag edition of a transcendental critique.

01:27:19

It basically, right? You just basically is like, what's a Christian? It's like, you now assume their definition of a

01:27:26

Christian without scripture. If you wanna have Christianity without scripture, let's hypothetically grant the fool's position.

01:27:33

Okay. Well, what's a Christian without the Bible? How do we even define that? Right. And so that's how you would apply a presuppositional approach.

01:27:43

Hypothetically grant the truth of what they're saying and show its absurdity. Right. And if they say, well, what

01:27:49

I believe is my opinion of a Christian is that, wait a minute, now you're bringing in your own subjective definition, the one that you have no authority or standard to even make.

01:28:00

And what you're saying is that you are your standard. You are self -authoritative, which you can't even make because you're finite and your whole entire view then, because of that is self -refuting and fallacious.

01:28:13

Right. Very good. Arno also asks, do you begin with the presuppositional approach right away or do you begin with proclaiming the gospel and then transition?

01:28:22

There's a problem with this question. Perhaps you can unpack it and then I'll kind of add on if there's anything that I can add on to that.

01:28:30

Well, for me, and I believe for Bonson, for Van Til, because of their emphasis of the apologetics coming from a consistent reformed theological worldview is that presuppositional approach already assumes the gospel within it, because that's the point.

01:28:54

And I don't necessarily think you gotta just jump in right into the conversation and say, let's say you're watching a conversation with your friend, an atheist, and they're making points.

01:29:11

Sure, you jump in there and you explain, you get into a discussion with, you be transcendental and show them that their view is self -refuting, but you also wanna proclaim the gospel in there.

01:29:27

Yeah. But you're intermingling all that within your approach, within your apologetics, because again, you have to reference

01:29:37

Christ in your approach in the first place, because he is the one that holds the keys to knowledge and wisdom, right?

01:29:45

So I think what he's trying to ask is do, before I start a conversation with atheists, do

01:29:53

I just present the gospel first, tell him he needs Jesus, repent, then destroy his worldview?

01:30:02

Which is fine. Hey, if you wanna do that, do it. You know, but the gospel is intrinsically tied in to the presupposition approach.

01:30:14

So when you're using the presupposition approach, I think by definition and application, you are preaching the gospel.

01:30:23

Yeah, and I would agree with that. I think, I guess I would reject the notion of transition between gospel and presuppositional approach.

01:30:31

I would say that everything we do is presuppositional. So like when you proclaim the gospel, what are you presupposing?

01:30:36

Well, you're presupposing the truth of scripture. It's just a matter of emphasis. When the person gets pushed back, now you're just bringing out the, you're applying the truth of scripture to the specific objection, right?

01:30:50

So everything we do is presuppositional because everything we do is submitted under the authority of the Lordship of Christ.

01:30:56

Which brings me to another point. Your relationships are presuppositional. Everything is presuppositional in that sense.

01:31:02

Right, so a lot of mistake people make, and it's easy to make, but I like to remind people that presuppositionalism or transcendental, the

01:31:18

Christian transcendental, when I say transcendentalism, I'm not even talking about regular transcendentals of Kant and Strahd and all these people we're trying to refute.

01:31:28

I'm talking about the Christian transcendental that is not just some, presuppositionalism is not just a method of apologetics, but it's also a principle.

01:31:41

It's a principle, it's a truth principle that we're using in our method.

01:31:47

Yeah, it's called presuppositional method, the transcendental argument.

01:31:53

So yes, it's an argument. Yes, it's a method, but don't miss the point is that the transcendental argument and the presuppositional method is a principle that we use when we're arguing.

01:32:10

It's a principle of a belief system from scripture that we're using when we're doing our discussions and when we're using an argument or the method.

01:32:21

So it's more of a principle. You know, that to me, that hit me when

01:32:28

I read what Boston said about syllogisms. And when he said that, you know, that paraphrasing that transcendental argument is not preceded by these things, syllogisms and arguments.

01:32:47

It's the very necessary principle, the truth that makes these things possible.

01:32:54

So again, what he's saying is, listen, the transcendental argument is not just an argument, it's a principle that without it, you can't have these other things.

01:33:05

That's right. Right. Very good. Protestant Warrior asks the question, you could tackle this one because I know you heard this a thousand times, the difference between evidentialism and presuppositionalism and the use of presuppositions and the use of evidence.

01:33:19

Why can't you mesh evidential and presupp together? What does that question assume incorrectly, you think?

01:33:26

Yeah, so that question, and this is no disrespect to the question, you know, obviously.

01:33:35

It's a good question. It's a common objection, it's a common misunderstanding that presuppositional apologetics rejects evidences, right?

01:33:44

No, we can't use evidences, just presuppositions and fetism.

01:33:49

No, that's not the case. We can use evidence within, like I just said, the presuppositional principle, right?

01:34:02

We use the principle of the presuppositional principle, the transcendental principle, but then we can use evidences using that framework, okay?

01:34:13

But the difference is in starting points. And there's a different principle in evidentialism and classical apologetics where they say, our ultimate starting point for knowledge is ourself, right?

01:34:30

Or the evidentialists will go for us and say, well, the starting point is evidences to conclude to God, right?

01:34:40

So, but the two principles are different because the presuppositional approach, the principle is starting with the

01:34:50

God of Scripture and we argue from the God of Scripture where evidentialism and the classical approach principle is starting with self, reason, logic to eventually get to the

01:35:06

God of Scripture so that the classical approach argues to God or to be honest, it argues for a general

01:35:18

God then to get to the God of Scripture. Evidentialism starts with evidences to get to the

01:35:30

God of Scripture or even uses evidence from Scripture, which is, okay,

01:35:35

I'm with that. But the problem is, is there's still starting with self and to evaluate the evidence to come to a conclusion.

01:35:43

The presuppositionalist is saying, wait a minute, the way we're supposed to do it is that we already are starting with the

01:35:51

God of Scripture and we're arguing from his truth and his principles because without him, we can't have evidences.

01:35:59

That's right. Well, we can't account for evidences. We can't justify argumentation and syllogisms and proves and all that stuff.

01:36:09

And you can't mesh evidentialism and presuppositionalism because they're two completely different methods, different frameworks.

01:36:20

So you gotta be very careful to make a distinction between the utilization of presuppositions and presuppositionalism as a method or the difference between evidentialism as a method and the use of evidences.

01:36:35

This mistake is even made with people who should know better. I had Dr. Hugh Ross on a couple of times.

01:36:41

And when I had him on discussing some issues of creation with Dr. Lyle, he made a passing comment that he uses both presuppositional apologetics and evidential apologetics.

01:36:53

They can't do that. You could appeal to presuppositions, but that's not presuppositionalism because we don't have the same starting point.

01:37:01

Right, and you know why that is? Because it brings us back to the point is that people mistakenly, that's what's unique about presuppositional apologetics and the transcendental argument is again, the emphasis is it's not just an argument.

01:37:19

It's not just some argument that I can put here with my classical arguments and throw it in my pocket and then bring it out when

01:37:27

I want to. That's why I emphasize that it's a principle. And the principle is that you have to start with God.

01:37:36

Let me simplify it. Starting point, self, starting point,

01:37:43

God. It bump heads, you can't mix that. It's either, what

01:37:49

Bantill said, it's either theonomy or autonomy.

01:37:56

And what he means is either God or you. And we already know that we are finite beings.

01:38:02

So you can't have both starting points and principles because they clash. One is saying

01:38:08

God, the other one's saying is me. Can't have that. But in the God side, it's you who are starting with God.

01:38:17

So we get it. We don't start with God in some abstract. Like, no, I'm the one who chooses to function and be aware of the context of revelation that I start with.

01:38:29

Right? And that's such a vital - That will bring us to the distinctions of the proximate ultimate starting points.

01:38:38

That's right. Scott Terry asked the question, what's the difference between Cartesian certainty and regular certainty?

01:38:46

Did you want to take a stab at that? You want me to grab that one? What do you want? Yes, go ahead. Cartesian certainty.

01:38:53

Obviously, Cartesian is related to Rene Descartes, which was, he was really a famous rationalist philosopher.

01:39:00

Cartesian certainty speaks of the sort of certainty that you cannot be wrong about that which is certain.

01:39:06

Some philosophers today will make a distinction between, and I think an appropriate distinction, between what is called psychological certainty and epistemic certainty.

01:39:14

So one can be psychologically certain about something, but that doesn't give you knowledge because I can be psychologically certain that my wife is alone sleeping in the bed right now.

01:39:25

But for all I know, she could be cheating on me. Now, she would never do that, but you see what I'm saying, it could be wrong. You see what I'm saying? Epistemic certainty deals with the sort of certainty that I cannot be wrong about it.

01:39:34

Now, when you deal with the certainty within the context of Vantillian presuppositionalism versus the sort of certainty that you're dealing with with Rene Descartes, Rene Descartes' philosophy was at base autonomous.

01:39:48

And so I would argue that he can't even be certain of what we call the local transcendental argument that he's giving.

01:39:54

Namely, cagito ergo sum, I think therefore I am, I'm certain of my own existence. That's true, it is a sort of transcendental argument by the impossibility of the contrary,

01:40:05

I must exist in order to deny my own existence. But what unbelieving philosophers have pointed out, that you can't even know what the

01:40:13

I in the I think therefore I am is. What is the I? What does it mean to say

01:40:19

I? Identity and the meaningfulness of one's identity is dependent upon its role and relation to a broader metaphysical context that gives meaning to the individual fact of the

01:40:32

I. And as Christians, the I, what it means to exist only has meaning in light of the context of God's revelation and understanding my existence, the

01:40:45

I as being an image bearer of God that is individuated from the creator.

01:40:51

You have that creator -creature distinction that we make so vitally important.

01:40:56

So I would say that the distinction is Kant, I'm sorry, René Descartes started with autonomy and Van Til agrees with Descartes' argument in principle, but that you need the

01:41:10

Christian worldview as the context to even make sense out of the I. And that's the same thing with Immanuel Kant. Immanuel Kant believed in transcendental arguments.

01:41:18

Van Til used transcendental argument. What's the difference? Is that Kant started with man, autonomy, and tried to argue transcendental and that's why it doesn't work.

01:41:27

Van Til and biblically speaking, we start with God and the transcendental argument is immune to the critiques that one can posit against, say, a

01:41:36

Kantian transcendental argument. I hope that makes sense. Okay, let's see here. Someone says, my man,

01:41:43

Ricky is a top -notch thinker with a little bit of Latin King in him. Nice, I love it.

01:41:49

Hey, nobody's supposed to know all that. That's right. Okay, we got a couple of questions. How are you doing?

01:41:55

Are you okay for a couple more? Oh, I'll be here all night, brother. Good, good. Let's see here.

01:42:02

We gotta move down just a little bit. All right, real quick before I put this next one up,

01:42:08

I just wanna let you guys know, if you haven't subscribed to the Revealed Apologetics YouTube channel, like, just subscribe.

01:42:14

Just like, put your thing in this, click, click, click, click, like that. Helps me out, okay? And the podcast as well, and the

01:42:20

Reformed Urban Pod. You need your steady diet of presuppositional apologetics and biblical defense of the faith.

01:42:28

Look for resources. Ricky's got great podcasts. I take these videos and make them into podcasts and, you know, be edified, all right?

01:42:36

All right, so Jesus' name magnified. Ask the question, what are your thoughts on R .C. Sproul's criticisms of how we can't have philosophical certainty?

01:42:47

Well, I'm not sure that he would even say that because, again,

01:42:58

I get a lot of my theology from Dr. Sproul, and he's one of the theologians where I've understood that we can have absolute certainty.

01:43:11

Matter of fact, he would denounce. Someone said right there,

01:43:17

I think he actually argued that we could have deductive certainty. So he did affirm some sort of certainty. He affirmed certainty, but only within, and that's the thing about Sproul, that we can have certainty because this is

01:43:30

God's created world, and he created us to have a reason. He would say, you know, he created us to reason, to be logical because we're created in God's image, and we can have certainty because the

01:43:46

Bible says we can have certainty, and that's part of Reformed theology. Reformed theology teaches that we can have absolute certainty, absolute truth, because one of the pillars of our faith is the assurance of faith.

01:44:04

It's in the Westminster Confession of Faith that, and in the London Confession, shout out to my

01:44:11

Reformed Baptist brothers. So, you know, we agree with that.

01:44:18

So sometimes I'm baffled by people who are well -bred in Reformed theology and they deny certainty.

01:44:29

I kind of remind them, wait a minute. You know, Reformed theology affirms absolute certainty, especially when it comes to biblical doctrines.

01:44:42

We can be absolutely sure of the teachings of scripture. Amen. Now, this next question is from my aunt.

01:44:49

Okay, hi, Titiana, how are you? Okay, she says, is reading the Quran wrong? And I'll take that one if it's okay.

01:44:57

It's not wrong, but it is false. So the Quran, you believe the

01:45:02

Quran, that'll send you straight to hell. The Quran has a false Christ. It denies that Jesus is

01:45:08

God in human flesh. It denies that, the Quran denies that Jesus died on the cross, okay?

01:45:15

So the Quran teaches anti -Christ teaching. It will honor Jesus on a surface level.

01:45:22

He's a great prophet, but the Bible does not teach that Jesus is a great prophet. It teaches that he is a great prophet and he is more than a prophet.

01:45:30

So the Quran is, all that the Quran is good for is educational purposes, knowing what

01:45:36

Muslims believe so that we can share the truth about Jesus to the Muslim. So it's not wrong to read the

01:45:42

Quran, but I'll tell you, the Quran is false. And you shouldn't read the Quran, if you're a

01:45:48

Christian, without first reading the Bible. Because in order to understand and identify error, you need to be familiar and grounded with the truth, okay?

01:45:59

So my advice to you, Titi, is to ground yourself in scripture, the

01:46:04

Bible. And when that is seeped into your heart and you have a strong foundation in Jesus Christ, then you read other things with caution.

01:46:15

You read so that you're able to share the faith of Jesus with others. That's how I would say. Yeah, so I would say, like, you know, basically

01:46:22

I think what you're saying is it depends why you're reading the Quran. It's a matter of the, most of what we do is a matter of the heart, right?

01:46:32

So the Bible makes a distinction. If you're reading the Quran to understand it, to critique it, okay.

01:46:43

But make sure, like Eli said, that you have a foundation in the basics of Christianity first, so that when you read the

01:46:51

Quran, you don't become all confused and things like that. So like I said, get grounded in the

01:46:57

Bible first. And if you want to read the Quran to understand what they believe, so you can better be,

01:47:03

I read the Quran. I know plenty of verses that I throw out at Muslims to show that it's contradictory and self -refuting.

01:47:13

And for example, in the part where you ask the Muslim, does

01:47:19

God, the Quran teaches that, and Islam teaches that God does not share his holy attributes with man.

01:47:29

That no, no, he is above and beyond. He's totally transcended. He doesn't share his qualities with man.

01:47:37

But then you got a story of Jesus, where Jesus takes mud, forms it, blows life into it and makes a bird.

01:47:48

And the bird flies away. So wait a minute, there's a contradiction that he just created life.

01:47:56

And when I use that on them, they go, oh, I'm gonna get back to you on that. And they never come back to me on that.

01:48:02

I mean, it's real simple. That's only one example, but because I read the

01:48:07

Quran for internal critique purposes, but then again,

01:48:14

I read the Quran years after I was a Christian. Okay, all right.

01:48:19

Thank you for that. Arturo Hurtado says, isn't it easier and more effective to argue against someone's interpretation of a fact, archeological digs, scientific discoveries, et cetera, than trying to go down the philosophical route of presuppositionalism?

01:48:38

Again, there is something wrong in the question, an incorrect assumption, but it's a question.

01:48:44

So why don't you address that, Ricky, and maybe I'll give my two cents. Yeah, well, the problem is that you're already assuming the validity of facts in the first place when you're just arguing fact versus fact, because the unbeliever is gonna interpret those facts in his unbelieving nature, in his way.

01:49:12

The unbeliever is going to interpret those same facts in a Christian way.

01:49:19

So you gotta get to the foundation of the philosophy of facts.

01:49:25

Right, but you can do that without getting very philosophical in your jargon.

01:49:32

You just have to ask them, how does he even account for the reality and validity of facts in the first place?

01:49:39

Things like that. Because again, you can argue facts of archeology, scientific discoveries, fossils, solar systems, the sun, the earth is perfectly aligned between the sun and the moon, and where living organisms can survive, and all these things.

01:50:03

But they're always going to interpret it in their naturalistic, unbelieving, materialistic way.

01:50:12

And they always have an escape hatch, an escape route when you're arguing mere facts.

01:50:20

Right. But so you have to get down to the foundation of their presuppositions, you know?

01:50:29

It almost sounds like isn't it easier to be ineffective to argue against someone's interpretation of the fact that just is presuppositional application.

01:50:40

You're basically asking, wouldn't it be easier to do presuppositional apologetics on them than to do presuppositional? Because what's the presuppositionalist doing?

01:50:46

It's arguing them over the interpretation of facts, right? Right. And the issue, can we interpret facts independent of considering God as the foundation of those facts, right?

01:50:56

So yeah, the very fact that you are talking about interpretation of fact, you're already going down a philosophical route because the interpretation of fact is philosophy.

01:51:04

It's basically discussing one's philosophy of facts. Okay. All right.

01:51:10

Next question here. Scott asks, should Eli grow a beard like Ricky's? Absolutely not. I have alopecia, so I have spots.

01:51:17

So if my beard grows, there are like bald spots. It doesn't grow in as cool as one might think. Okay. That's not of God.

01:51:23

All right, let's see here. Oh, you just look like a cheetah. Facts, bro. It wouldn't look good, man. Okay.

01:51:30

Here's a question by a person. Some person asked the question. Do you think it's okay for ladies to engage in apologetics in the community, not as a church leader, but a regular person in daily life interactions with unbelievers?

01:51:44

Go for that, Ricky. That's taking it to the streets. That's actually a good question for the context.

01:51:49

Oh, well, yeah. They're Christians. They are also commanded to give a reason for the faith that's in them.

01:51:56

That's right. It doesn't say, hey, men, men only give a reason for the faith that's in them.

01:52:04

It's anybody who has faith, man or woman, can engage in apologetics, yeah.

01:52:12

I mean, I'm a Reformed Presbyterian, so within the church worship context, no, but out in the street, daily life, at work, online, sure.

01:52:29

That's right. Go for it. I think it's catching on here. Whack versus non -whack philosophy.

01:52:37

You should write a book, Urban Reformed Apologetics. Whack versus non -whack philosophy.

01:52:44

Bogus versus non -bogus, okay. Basted versus wasted.

01:52:50

He just keeps going. There we go. All right, let's see here. Okay. Slam RN says, even

01:52:58

Jesus was an evidentialist at times. Didn't he say, even though you do not believe me, believe the works that you may know and understand that the

01:53:05

Father is in me and I am in the Father. Is that an example, Ricky, of evidentialism?

01:53:13

No. No? Because again, that's actually a presuppositional verse since Christ is already, as a human, presupposing the authority and divinity, right, of himself, the truth of that.

01:53:33

That's right. And I believe that what he's saying, that these things confirm who I am.

01:53:39

By what? That's the thing. By what I'm doing, this is confirming the already truth.

01:53:47

There we go. That I am sent by the Father. He's speaking to people who already have a scriptural context so that his actions confirm what you should believe as covenant people, which is given to us by the authority of God, the

01:54:04

Old Testament. So that's not, hey, if you don't believe what I say, then come to my acts, what

01:54:10

I'm doing, completely autonomous and neutral. That's not what he's saying, right? He says, sanctify them in truth.

01:54:17

Your word is true, right? Right. So that's definitely not an evidential.

01:54:22

Well, let's, okay, guys, let's assume that I'm not from the Father. Now, look at my works, what

01:54:29

I'm doing. Now let's gather all the information and let's conclude now that I am from the

01:54:35

Father using my works. No, he said, I come from the Father. That's the truth. And my works prove that.

01:54:42

That's right. That's all that is. But that's not, remember, evidence is not evidentialism.

01:54:49

There we go. Evidentialism has a principle. Classical apologetics that uses evidential argumentations of different kinds, those, it's a principle.

01:55:01

The bottom line is our starting point, our epistemic starting point.

01:55:08

And all that means is how do we know what we know? That's right. Because the Bible is concerned about knowledge and wisdom and it belongs to God.

01:55:18

And that's what the world is trying to take away. That's right. Dennis said, just as you were saying that, he's using evidence does not equal evidentialism.

01:55:25

That, yes and amen. That's right. That's very good. All right, let's see. We're almost finished here. We're getting towards the, let's see here.

01:55:35

Disagree. Okay, that was it. Okay, very good.

01:55:41

That was great. I think you did an excellent job. This was very, very engaging and I think people are gonna find it very useful.

01:55:48

So thank you so much for coming on, man. Hey man, it was a pleasure and honor for me to be on Revealed Apologetics with Eli Ayala.

01:55:59

Well, it's an honor and a pleasure to have you on because you've been helpful in many ways. I know I don't interact a lot on the

01:56:05

Facebook page as I usually don't have time, but when I'm holding a baby and I'm just chilling on the couch, I'm scrolling through and I'm learning from the interactions and things like that.

01:56:14

So I'm very encouraged and being educated daily. So I appreciate it. If I could plug my podcast.

01:56:21

Absolutely. Subscribe to the Urban Reform Podcast coming up in the next few weeks,

01:56:28

I'll be doing an entire series on systematic theology in an urban context.

01:56:35

Nice. And Ricky's podcast, I don't know if you still do it, but I mean, I'm just either, I either have an interview or I'm talking about myself or I'm critiquing.

01:56:43

I mean, Ricky's got some music in the background. You know, you could just be listening. He's just like, hmm. He's got that.

01:56:50

I don't even know how to do it. I don't even want to add music to my videos, bro. You listen to Ricky. Even if you disagree with everything he says.

01:56:58

I have a friend that helps me with that. Trust me. Oh, real quick.

01:57:05

Slam RN says, to be fair, I did not say evidentialism. Fair enough. Thank you very much for clarifying that.

01:57:11

I want to make sure we get that on there and represent anyone. Thank you for that clarification.

01:57:17

So definitely, guys, subscribe to the Urban Reform Podcast. Check out Ricky's podcast. He's got some great teaching there.

01:57:24

And just ground it in scripture. You don't feel like you're getting lost in philosophy all the time. I mean, those things are important, but I like how you ground things in the word of God and you bring things back to the gospel.

01:57:35

You place the gospel front and center. And I think that's very important when we're doing apologetics.

01:57:41

All right? Well, thank you so much. Once again, guys, subscribe if you haven't and leave comments.

01:57:46

And if I have a chance, I'll try to get to them. Or if you have a question from me, you can email me at revealedapologetics at gmail .com.

01:57:54

And if you're interested in learning presuppositional apologetics in a more formal way, you can check out revealedapologetics .com

01:58:01

and sign up for PresupU, which is an online course that I teach. There's two versions of it.

01:58:08

One involves a personal interaction weekly on a Zoom meeting. I'm not doing that now.

01:58:14

We finished our first session, but you can download, I'm sorry, you can sign up for all the lectures, receive the

01:58:20

PowerPoints and the notes and things like that. You can sign up and receive that now.

01:58:25

There's no time limit for that. And you work it through the course at your own pace. If you're interested in that, definitely sign up.

01:58:30

Well, that's it for this episode. Thank you so much, Ricky. This was a blessing and a pleasure and looking forward to hopefully having you on again in the future.

01:58:37

Yes, sir. All right, take care and God bless. Thank you so much, guys, for listening. All right.