Jordan Peterson and the Bible: Presuppositionalism Intro

So, we're going to do a short little lesson on presuppositionalism, and in light of what happened this week with Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, this will be a good tie-in to everything. Alright, so we're going to talk about presuppositionalism, and to see if presuppositionalism is taught in the Bible.

What would be the biblical witness for that? So presuppositionalism, anybody want to give a definition of what you think it is? Something you presuppose, okay. Anyone else out of all six of you? It's going to be difficult to hide this morning.

Alright, we'll go on, alright.

Presuppositionalism is a biblical defense of the faith, using the scriptures as our ultimate authority and foundation, over and above anything else, such as empiricism, rationalism, or scientism. That presuppositionalism, right, not just a presupposition, we'll get into that later.

So as Christians, when we defend the faith, we're defending it based on the authority of the Bible, and not any authority found in mankind, right? So we're not relying on men's wisdom, we're not relying on scientific evidence, we're not relying on empirical evidence.

Okay, so empiricism, what is that? Empiricism is knowledge that is observational, relying on sense perception. It's guided by experience rather than theory. And like Bonson says, empiricism basically stated is, seeing is believing.

So if I can see it, touch it, feel it, smell it, taste it, then it's true. So all information, how you garner or get truth, which is, the big word is epistemology, how you know what you know, is gained through the five senses.

And the question becomes, how do you know your senses are reliable? Someone feels something, someone feels something else, who's right? So the final arbiter would be, on that empiricism view, mankind.

Then we also have rationalism. Rationalism, as a philosophy, stresses reason as the means of determining truth. Reason arbitrates truth, basically thinking is believing. So if I can rationalize something in my head and come to a conclusion, I can come to it rationally and it's my rationale that's the basis for truth.

And finally we get to scientism, the belief that the scientific method is the only method for discovering truth. Repeatability, or repeating, is believing. Because part of the scientific method is, your experiments must be repeatable and tested over and over.

So what's the common thread between all three of these methods? Right, they're rooted and grounded in mankind. And what do all three use? Right, negatively stated, you're correct. All three of these use logic and reason, but can't account for it.

None of these three methods, you can't do a scientific test that says, oh, logic exists, reason exists. So all three of these methods are rooted and grounded in the heart of man, and none can actually support or prove the logic and the reason that they use to get to these conclusions.

That's going to come a little bit later, we'll see what that is. So a biblical defense of the faith, this is presuppositionalism. The presuppositionalist starts with the scriptures. The scriptures are God-breathed, and therefore divine.

So why would we trust the scriptures over and above man's reasoning? What are some reasons? Say again, brother? Our reasoning can be faulty, sure.

What else?

Why would we use the scriptures? God has the ultimate truth, Sarah. God is perfect, right? I'm going to go into a couple of more reasons, but those are all valid answers. God is omniscient, right? So the scriptures are God-breathed, therefore they're divine.

They're a reflection of God's mind to us. The scriptures are infallible. They can't be wrong. It's not just that they aren't wrong, it's that they can't be wrong. That's what infallible means. It can't be wrong.

If it's coming from God, God is the source of truth. It must be true. And we'll go over a scripture later in Hebrews where it says God cannot lie. So everything that God presents us is true. The scriptures are God's revelation to his people.

So based on scientism, empiricism, and what was the other one, empiricism, scientism, thank you, rationalism. How do they gain truth? They don't gain it revelationally, they garner it or get it experientially.

Our epistemology, which again is the way you know what you know, the study of the way you know what you know, is revelational. God reveals something to us such that we can know it with certainty. We have an omniscient God who knows everything, and when an all-knowing being reveals something to you, you can know it for sure.

Versus not having an all-knowing being and you experiencing something or doing a scientific experiment, you may come to a true conclusion, but you cannot be 100 certain about that unless you had all knowledge.

So as Christians, we have the word of God which gives us the truth that we need, and it's revelation from God himself. So not only that it can't not err, it is 100 true because he knows everything. Is that making sense?

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, the presupposition is God exists and the Bible is his word. So it's kind of a two-tier thing. God exists and the Bible is his word. And obviously, God tells you, sends his word into the world, and the word of God testifies to the existence of God.

The scriptures are certain since they're grounded in an omniscient being. Man's reasoning is subservient to God's word. You hear this word, especially by Dr. White all the time, autonomy, self-law, self-reason, I govern myself, or I have my own perception of the world.

God's perception of the world, because he created the world, supersedes our perception.

Of it.

So anytime, and Sproul said this, anytime I disagree with God, I'm wrong. God is always right. So my knowledge has to submit itself to God's knowledge. I'm subservient to him. If that wasn't the case, if God didn't exist, we would have a whole bunch of autonomous human beings all telling us what truth is, and you would never know for certain.

That kind of world doesn't exist because the world wouldn't exist without God.

Okay?

Let's move on. So what is a presupposition, Jerry? Anybody want to give a better answer? He said something you presuppose if you didn't hear that on the tape. Go ahead, Sarah. It could be. What does pre mean?

Before.

Supposition is an idea or a claim. It's something that you believe in order to explain something else. It's your, your base core beliefs. Presupposition is a base assumption about reality, a fact taken for granted at the beginning of a line of argumentation.

In other words, it's your foundation, your ultimate authority, and your starting point. Every single person has presuppositions. They have a starting point that they assume is true and then work from that.

Okay?

Everybody is a presuppositionalist in one sense. You take atheists who are just materialists. They believe their underlying presupposition is all that exists is the material world. And then they base their conclusions on that.

Miracles don't exist because we can find a scientific or natural explanation for those.

Later.

And then they accuse us of the God of the gaps. Oh, when you don't know something, you just fit God in there. Yet when they don't know something, oh, the scientific method, we just stick that in there.

We'll know it one day. That's not science of the gaps, is it, right? So they have a double standard. So we all have presuppositions. Our presupposition as Christians is God exists and the Bible is His Word.

Presuppositional apologetics, then, is defending your base assumptions, God exists and the Bible is His Word, as your ultimate authority, by using your ultimate authority as your foundation. Now, that sounds a little circular.

Oh, so the Bible is true because the Bible says it's true. Well, yes. Now, when you have an ultimate authority, if you appeal to something above your ultimate authority, well, then that's now your ultimate authority.

Everybody's authority at some point is circular. So when the scientist or the rationalist or the empiricist says, well, my ultimate authority is logic. How did you come to that conclusion? Well, I reasoned my way to it.

Oh, so you used logic to tell you that logic is your ultimate authority. Oh, that's not circular, right? He's being consistent with his worldview because he says logic and reason is his ultimate authority.

But the only way you can get to that ultimate authority is by using reason and logic. So that's circular. So there's vicious circularity, which, you know, is not good, and then virtuous circularity. So when we're talking about ultimate authorities, especially for the Christian, that's a virtuous circle.

If that's your ultimate authority and you appeal to it, it's okay because it's your ultimate authority. If there was an authority above that, well, then that would become your ultimate authority. That would undermine Christianity because God is our ultimate authority.

Is that making sense? Everybody following?

We're good?

Okay, if you don't understand something, please stop. I know we're probably going to have a lot of time. So John Frame says Christian apologetics is the application of biblical truth to unbelief. So anytime somebody is not believing something, what do we do?

We use the scriptures. We go to them and say, look, this is what the scripture says, right? Think about it. Whenever we're arguing with the Jehovah's Witness, a Roman Catholic, a Mormon, a Jew, what do we use?

What?

The Bible. This wasn't a trick question, right? So a Jehovah's Witness says, in the beginning is the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was a God. And now we're going back and forth. Through the scriptures to show them how Jesus is God.

A Roman Catholic is justification by faith. With the Jew, it's not works, right? With a Mormon, it's one God. They believe in a plurality of gods. And what do we use? We use the scriptures. We keep bringing them back to the scriptures.

This is what the Word of God says. And we apply that scripture to their unbelief. The odd thing is, unfortunately, in today's American apologetics world, when an atheist who doesn't believe in God, okay, has an argument with us, we say, well, we'll put the Bible on the side.

Let's argue the science. Let's argue the logic behind it. Why would we not go back to our foundation, our authority, the Bible, and use that to show him, look, God exists. Well, they don't accept that authority.

Well, too bad. That's irrelevant. So what? They don't accept that authority. You show it to them. You show it. You show them what the scriptures have to say about it and how they prove true in the reality of the world around us, right?

So we don't step off the scriptures in order to speak to an atheist because they're not neutral. They hate God's Word. They hate God. They're insolent, arrogant, boastful, right? Romans 1, they're suppressing the knowledge of truth, right?

They all know they're without excuse because they know that God exists. So when an atheist tells you, I don't believe God exists, you just got to tell him the scripture says you do. You're just suppressing that truth in unrighteousness.

Well, I lack belief in God. That's not what the scripture says. We just go back to the scriptures. We argue from the scriptures, okay, to show them their folly and their unbelief. That's why we have to apply the scriptures to their situation.

Okay, let's continue on.

All right.

How does presuppositionalism work? Presuppositionalism tries to bring all human thinking into subjection to the authority of the Word of God. All right, we as Christians, even as we walk out our faith, are continually bringing things that we may not understand or know or have not submitted to God under the authority of God.

Whether it's a relationship, whether it's finances, whether it's your desires, all those things must be brought under the lordship of Jesus. So presuppositionalism seeks to take the person and bring them underneath the authority of the Word of God, get them out of their own autonomy, and go under God's autonomy.

All right, so we want to bring everything in line with the Word of God, underneath, in subjection to the Word of God. Presuppositional methodology seeks to demonstrate that if you don't subject your reasoning to the authority of the Word of God, then your reasoning is grounded upon some other fallible foundation, which will reduce your understanding or your reasoning to absurdity.

Everybody understand what that means? Okay, so we have divine revelation from God, and then we have human reasoning. And we had said before, human reasoning could be wrong, right? So when the atheist says what Hitler did in Nazi Germany is wrong, you say, why?

We're all just matter in motion. He's going to say things that contradict his own position. Why would it be wrong to kill Jews in Nazi Germany? Is it wrong to kill bacteria? No. Then why would it be wrong to kill human beings?

What's so special about them? They're just more highly evolved. Whereas on our view, we say it's wrong to kill a human being because they created the image of God. We have inherent dignity and worth on our worldview.

And our worldview answers the big questions. You know, what is the meaning of life? What happens when I die? Atheism doesn't even come close to answering those questions. Okay, so what we're attempting to do is submit them to the Word of God and expose their folly, shut their mouth, basically.

Presupposition argues that God is the foundation of everything and His revelation gives meaning to everything else. Now, this is really important because on a world, on a universe that has no intentionality behind it, no purpose behind it, no rationale behind it, is a purposeless universe.

Anything goes.

I can define things any way I like, which people are doing now. A man is a woman, a woman is a man. Marriage is between a man, a woman, and two other people, or four people, or six. You can redefine it any way you want and there's no standard by which to go by.

And if God didn't exist, that would be okay. But God does exist. You can't have the world without God. So God is the foundation and gives meaning to everything we do. If there's no meaner behind the universe backing it up, okay, defining it with intentionality, then things are truly meaningless.

But no one lives in this world, most people don't live in this world, as if it has no meaning. We understand intuitively that it has meaning. Van Til says this, we make every thought captive to the word of Christ.

We can understand no fact or right unless we see it in proper relation to Christ as creator and redeemer of me and my world. In other words, we need to see everything in light of God's revelation. And this is stated in Psalm 36, 9, in your light, in your light, God's light, do we see light?

So when God illuminates something for us and describes something for us, then we can know it. And we can know it with certainty because it comes from an omniscient God who's perfect, who can't lie. So now we can stand on the scriptures and say, I know this for certain.

Can the atheist say he knows something with certain, for certain? No, you ask an atheist all the time, could you be wrong about that? Yeah, I could be wrong. Well, if you could be wrong about that, you could be wrong about everything that you believe.

Whereas Christians, we have the foundation of God and his word. We know that this is true because God said it's true. Now I think it's not ironic. It's God's providence. Psalm 39, in your light, do we see light?

John 1, 9, the true light, which gives light to everyone was coming into the world, pointing to Jesus. Who does he say he is? I am the light of the world, right? So through Jesus, we will be able to interpret reality the way it was meant to be interpreted because he sheds light.

He is the light that illuminates us so that we can now see the world with understanding. We can grasp it and understand what the meaning of life is. We can enjoy it. We can glorify God rather than groping around in the dark, the book of Acts says, trying to find what life is all about.

Any questions?

We're good?

Okay.

So what does the Bible say about it? If presuppositionalism is true, the Bible should testify to it, right? Well, Proverbs 1, 7, you guys all know this. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

Fools despise wisdom and instruction. So right off the bat in the beginning of Proverbs, the fear of the Lord, the reverence, the acknowledgement that he is who he says he is, is the beginning of knowledge.

Now I'm standing at home plate and I'm ready to play the game versus standing on first base, second base, third base, or in the outfield, if you were using a baseball analogy, we start at home plate, right?

And then we go around to first base, second base, and third. The atheist or the person who rejects God, lacks belief in God can stand anywhere in the field. But he's not playing the game according to the rules, right?

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That is our starting point. That's the anchor to which we hold everything to, who defines reality for us, such that we can know it for certain. Psalm 110, 111, 10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

All those who practice it have a good understanding, right? So we go from knowledge to wisdom. What is wisdom? The correct application of knowledge, or like pastor says, living life with skill. So once you get knowledge, you start acting on that knowledge, putting it together correctly, you have wisdom.

Proverbs 2 .6, for the Lord gives wisdom from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. So we go from knowledge to wisdom to understanding. We can actually understand the way, what the world is all about and who it's for.

We're gonna see some scriptures about that in a minute. Job 32 .8, but it is the spirit in man, it is the spirit in man, the breath of the Almighty that makes him understand. So as you can see, based on these scriptures, the scripture itself says that the Lord is the source of knowledge.

From his lips come wisdom and understanding. Again, we're getting our information from an omniscient God, a God who knows everything versus finite people who don't know everything, who are seeking out certain truths, and even stumbling on and correctly coming to truth, but cannot really be certain about certain things.

Make sense?

We're good, okay.

1 Peter 3 .15, you probably all know this verse too. But in your hearts, honor Christ, the Lord is holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.

Right?

So again, this is like the flagship verse for an apologist. But again, certain apologists will point people to evidence and point people to, and evidence is not a bad thing, it's a good thing if it's used correctly.

But if you honor Christ, the Lord is holy, you set apart Christ as Lord of your heart, what do you now stand on as the basis for your worldview?

Not a trick question either.

What? Huh?

And what else? What do you stand on? What have we been talking about? The scriptures! We stand on the scriptures are our foundation, right? Everything for life and godliness has been given to us in the scriptures.

So that's our go-to. We stand on that. That's the foundation for our worldview as followers of Christ, right? So we have Christ. If we set apart Christ as holy, we're going to listen to his word. We're going to use his word when we talk to Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholics, Mormons, and atheists.

We don't jettison the word of God because they're an atheist. Colossians 2, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found in Christ. So when we see things through his lens, through his point of view, we're now seeing things correctly. Cornelius Van Tilwood said, we think God's thoughts after him.

So if we think God's thoughts after him, God's thoughts are perfect. When our thoughts line up with his thoughts, we're thinking the way we should be thinking from God's perspective. Colossians 2, 8, see to it that no one takes you captive by the philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ, right?

So we can listen to all these philosophers, all these different people that have all these different opinions. Ultimately, we go back to Christ. What does Jesus say? What does Jesus say about the world we live in?

What does Jesus say about marriage? What does Jesus say about theft? What does Jesus say about justice, right? That's who we want to go back to. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found in him.

So this makes life easy from the standpoint that we don't grope around in the dark. We go back to the scriptures. The scripture will tell us what we need to know about a given subject, whereas the atheist or the philosopher, they're searching for all these different answers that are found in Christ.

Just this week, as providence would have it, Jordan Peterson, he's a philosopher, a very famous philosopher, comes out of Canada. He was interviewed on a show with Joe Rogan. You guys know who Joe Rogan is?

Okay, you know who Joe Rogan is. Now, this is Jordan Peterson. He's an unbeliever, right? And he went to the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D .C., and he was blown away. He's like, oh my goodness, this is just so enlightening.

So he's talking to Joe Rogan, who's an anti-Christian. I mean, he thinks Christianity is foolish. It's bunk made up by Stone Age men and all this other kind of stuff. Jordan Peterson, a respected philosopher that he really likes, is now telling him stuff about the Bible.

This is what he says. We, meaning society, have a bedrock of agreement. And he kind of paused, and he says, that's the Bible, by the way. Now, they didn't show you Joe Rogan's face. They very rarely cut to his face, and I think they did that rarely for a reason, because he'd probably been like, huh, right?

So he got Jordan Peterson, who's not a believer, goes to the Museum of the Bible. He's a philosopher. He's basically saying that the Bible is the bedrock of agreement for all of society. It's what keeps society together.

He goes on to say about the Bible, you listen and see through that. He recognizes that truth comes through the scriptures, through the revelation of Christ in the world. Christ is the one who defines the world.

It was created by him and for him.

Right?

So now Jordan Peterson is basically telling him his perception of truth has changed, because now he's got to see it through a biblical lens. He says, it's not that the Bible is true. It's the precondition for the manifestation of truth, which makes it more true than just true.

Like, that had to blow Joe Rogan's head apart. Like, is this guy kidding? Joe Rogan rips the Bible apart. Yes, Maria. I know that he did a talk with Ben Shapiro. I didn't watch it. I don't know what's in that.

But just this week, this was like front page news for apologists, especially presuppositional apologists, because he used the word precondition. Like, Bonson talks about the preconditions of intelligibility.

What needs to be true for anything else to be true?

Right?

So what needs to be true is that you have an understanding. You can understand truth. You can receive truth. Logic has to be in place, the uniformity of nature, all these things that need to be true in order for anything else to be true.

And here's Jordan Peterson, famous philosopher, saying this on Joe Rogan's show. That's like he dropped a bomb. And Joe Rogan really kind of like appreciated him for it. He didn't go off on him, which is good.

You know how many people listen to Joe Rogan? Lots. Lots. More than Neil Young. Anyway, sorry. I'm getting a little far. OK, so we're going to continue on what the Bible says. Second Corinthians 10 5, we destroy arguments in every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

OK, John 14 6. I am the way, the truth and life. Jesus says, I am the truth. So what do we do? We destroy arguments. Where do arguments exist and where do arguments and opinions exist? In the mind, right?

And we tear those down. How do you tear down an opinion and an argument? By holding up the truth, you hold the truth to their opinion and argument.

Right.

And it basically makes them look like fools. This is the truth of the situation.

All right.

Jesus says, I am the truth. This is why it's so incredible that Jordan Peterson now sees this. He's like, I have to view everything through the lens of the scriptures and Christ. First Corinthians 121.

For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom. It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

All right.

So we understand as reformed believers, the the the condition of man is depraved. We don't have eyes to see. We don't have ears to hear. So man is not going to come to a knowledge of God by his own wisdom.

It comes by revelation. He can use his senses. He can use his reason. He can use science. None of that is going to reveal God to him. Like Peter says, when God asks, when Jesus asked Peter, who do you say?

Peter says, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. Blessed are you, Simon of Adrona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you.

Right.

So we gain knowledge through the scriptures, through revelation from God. First Corinthians 123. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. But those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than man. Once again, this is showing us that God is the one who reveals truth to us through Christ. Hebrews 613. For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, surely I will bless you and multiply you.

And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. Remember earlier before I said, when you have an ultimate authority, if you appeal to something above your ultimate authority, that's now your ultimate authority.

God did not appeal to an authority higher than himself. He appealed to himself. He says, I swore by myself.

Right.

So God is telling you, he is the ultimate authority.

Right.

So as Christians, when we say God exists and the Bible is his word, that's the ultimate authority that we're pointing to. And when we stand on that, rest on that, then we can argue with unbelievers from the scriptures.

We don't have to be afraid of that. For people swear by something greater than themselves. And in all their disputes, an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise, the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath.

So that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. So we have an omniscient God who's perfect, who cannot lie, such that when he reveals something to you, you can take it as truth and be certain.

Now, if your God was able to lie, like Allah, and he tells you something, how could you know if he was telling the truth or not? Could you? No, right? The Quran itself says that Allah is the greatest deceiver.

How could you possibly take anything that he tells you as true at that point? If he's the greatest deceiver, if you're a great deceiver, that means you lie well. Right? So if you're listening to something that the Quran says, and it sounds really good, but you know he's also the greatest deceiver, how can you be sure or certain about something that he tells you?

Our God provides the precondition of intelligibility. He tells us that he cannot lie. He's perfect. Okay, and there is no higher authority than himself. Okay, so we're getting close to the end. Colossians 115, he's the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. So he's before all things, right? He's before the universe. So anything, and the universe was created by him for him, and if he's before all things, he's the one who stands behind everything that we say and do.

He's the one who gives us the ability to reason. He gives us logic. He gives us uniformity of nature. He gives us these things so that we can use our reasoning to glorify him when we think properly, when we use logic correctly, such that we can have wisdom, and we can have understanding of God's word, right?

We're created in his image. Again, on an atheistic worldview, if you're just, you know, materialism or the product of evolution, random chance over time, why would you trust your reasoning? Why would you trust anything in the world?

What is the meaning of life? You'll never come to it that way. It's impossible, right? So Christ is the one who's before all things. In other words, he's behind all things, and he sustains us. Jesus is the reference point by which all of our knowledge is anchored.

So we have a starting point, okay, by which all truth, logic, reason can be anchored to. For the atheist, for the materialist, for any other false religion, they don't have an anchor. Their anchor is themselves, right?

So if their anchor is themselves, how many anchors do we have in the world? Seven billion, right? But if your anchor is Christ, we have one anchor. We're all unified on that. He's the one who provides the foundation for truth.

Any questions? One last thing. We need an ultimate reference point from which all facts are derived. Otherwise, you can have no objective meaning, no objective purpose, and no objective basis for certainty.

You would be devoid of true knowledge, okay? So once we have Christ, we have his word, we have what he says. He's made it clear in the scriptures what he expects of us. He made it clear in the scriptures who he is.

He tells us that we have everything that we need for life and godliness. The atheist or the other religion, the false believer, doesn't have that. So we have something that we can stand on, an anchor to hold our knowledge together.

Questions?

No questions?

Yeah, and ultimately what their conclusions come down to is faith. They have faith that those things are true. Because again, they don't have all knowledge. So you can ask an unbeliever, well, can some additional facts be revealed to you that might change your conclusion?

Well, of course.

Because again, science is open to gaining new knowledge. That's how we came to the theory of evolution. We advanced so far that now we have this new way of understanding things, and we can see more and more what the cell looks like.

So of course, this is evolution. So they're always open to more information being brought to light that would change their existing conclusions, right? So an unbeliever or somebody who holds to the scientific method as the only way to know truth can be derailed if a fact comes to the surface that they didn't add into their equation.

So they can never have 100 certainty.

Follow?

So let me ask you something, because this is a common question with presuppositionalists. So when we're born and we start to go to school and we start thinking, how is God, are we using God as our ultimate reference point?

Wouldn't we be the first reference point? Like when I'm gaining knowledge, aren't I taking that knowledge in and using my reasoning to come to the understanding that God is the ultimate reference point?

How would you answer that? Well, it came from God, but I'm the starting point. Yes, right. I'm arguing from the classical or the evidential apologetic method. They say, well, you know, we need to learn it first and then we come to the conclusion that God exists.

Yes.

Okay. Okay, Lawrence.

Yes, those are two excellent answers. So what I would just add to that is that we are proximate starting points. God is the ultimate starting point, right? So when we are born of God's spirit and now we have eyes to see and ears to hear, we start reading God's word.

We recognize that God is the ultimate starting point and that we're not. For the atheists, they're the ultimate starting point for their entire worldview, right? They have, it's called humanism. Humans are the starting point for everything on that view.

So we understand that we are proximate starting points. We're not the ultimate starting point. So when you're talking to a classical apologist or an evidential apologist, say, yes, of course, we receive these things, but we recognize that God is the ultimate starting point.

He says so in his word.

Okay.

All right.

With that, we're just about out of time.