Presup for the Kiddos w/ Eli Ayala & Joel Settecase

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala. And today, upon popular request, we're going to be talking about apologetics and kids.

All right, now myself and my guest included have engaged in debates with atheists and all sorts of unbelievers.

And so we've heard all the questions and the objections and we've tried our best to formulate sophisticated responses and things like that.

We're both within the context of teaching and explaining and things like that. And sometimes it can look as though it comes very easily.

And in many regards it does, in some regards it doesn't. But today, when

I was, I don't know what I was doing. I was doing something around the house and my son, who's four, you know,

I was kind of caught up in the business of what I was doing. My son asks me, dad, who made

God? That happened to me. It's not just what people's of the generic, like, you know, when an apologist is trying to talk about the importance of having an answer, he literally asked me that question and all of a sudden everything went silent.

And I looked into the sky and I said, it begins. And so, yes, you are going to, you know, if you're in apologetics, you're doing, you know, you're sharing your faith and you're trying to equip yourself to do it in a way that is skillful, biblical, and just tactful, there's gonna come a time where you're going to have to give these responses to your children.

And let me tell you, as I said, I've engaged in debate. I'm a teacher. I've taught apologetics to middle school, high school students, college age students, adults.

The hardest thing to do is to explain biblical truths to a four -year -old.

Okay. My son's like, yeah, well, Jesus is God and Jesus is everywhere.

He does, but sometimes he's not because sometimes he has a body. And so God died on the cross.

He listed a whole bunch of heresies, but you can't call him heresy, he's just poor. So how do you explain the hypostatic union to a four -year -old how do you explain the doctrine of the

Trinity and issues of perichoresis and the inner penetration of the persons of the

Trinitarian essence? How do you explain that to a little kid? And better yet, how do you explain the fundamental foundations of the

Christian world and life view to a four -year -old? This is very, very difficult for me because I tend to be an analytical thinker and I tend to try my best to be very precise in what

I say and I make qualifications here and qualifications there, it's difficult.

And so I have a guest that I'm going to be having on today, Joel Setecase, who is over there at the

Think Institute. He kind of does what I do, he conducts interviews and talks about apologetics and theology and things like that.

And I'm gonna have him on to help me, help you teach apologetics to your kids in general and how to apply presuppositional apologetic methodology to your kids.

Not apply it in the sense like you're doing it on them, but how do you teach them presuppositional principles?

If many of you guys who are aware of a lot of the apologetic literature out there, you'll be aware that within the classical schools of apologetics, there's a lot of material out there to teach children.

I was just speaking with my last guest, my last guest, Seth Bloomsburg in my last episode.

And I was talking about the series of books that Dr. William Lane Craig has put out. And it's a children's series where you have these, mother,

I think it's Papa Bear and Mother Goose or I don't remember the characters, but in the format of a children's book, he's teaching children the cosmological argument, contingency arguments, moral arguments, even throws a little bit of Molinism in there, okay?

So all that to say, it is not impossible to take a lot of these complicated apologetic ideas and teach them to children.

And indeed, 1 Peter 3, verse 15 tells us that we are all to set apart Christ as Lord in our hearts and always being ready, always being ready.

That means whether you're old, whether you're younger, we need to be equipping ourselves and our family to be ready to give a reason for the hope that's in them.

So I'm really excited about this specific topic and I'm really excited about my guest,

Joel Sedake. So let me just give a kind of an in -depth, in -depth, well, yeah, somewhat of an in -depth introduction to who

Joel is, if you don't know who he is. And then when I invite him on the screen with me here, he can give a little bit of his own background, maybe add some information that I'm going to miss.

I'm sure he is a very deep man and there's lots of information that will not be captured by this introduction.

But Joel Sedake is a man whose life has been transformed by the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the founder of the

Think Institute, a teaching ministry that equips believers to explain, share and defend the Christian message.

He's a former pastor. Joel has been working in Christian ministry and education since 2009. And he earned his

BA in history from Grove City College and his master's in philosophy of religion from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Joel is a speaker, preacher and public theologian, the host of the Think Institute podcast, the lead teacher of the

Think Institute and the lead writer for the Think Update, a worldview evangelism and apologetics publication of the

Think Institute. Joel is also the author of Catechids, the new covenant catechism for little ones, as well as a number of courses and curricula.

And he runs the Christian Culture Builders social media groups on Facebook and MeWe and the Hammer and Anvil Society, the semi -secretive applied theology wing of the

Think Institute. Joel is married to Eliza, I think I got that right. And they live in the

Tri -Cities area of Illinois with their four children. He also enjoys pina coladas and long walks on the beach.

That's a lot of information there, but hopefully you get a glimpse into the man, okay?

And without further ado, we will invite the man to share the screen and we'll begin this very, very interesting, fun and yet very important topic.

Precept the kiddos. How's it going, Joel? Hey man, I'm doing much better for hearing that introduction.

Most of which was actually true, most of which. Most of them, okay. So there's some false information here, okay.

It's called the pina coladas thing. I'm more of a daiquiri man myself. All right, fair enough. But if you hand me a pina colada,

I won't turn it down. And you know what? Long walks on the beach, now we're talking.

Now we're talking about a good time. Okay, very good, very good. So we kind of gave kind of a formal introduction, but who are you,

Joel? Who is the man, right? If you can give kind of an informal introduction of who you are, how you became a

Christian, how'd you get into apologetics? I know folks enjoy that sort of information. Why don't you share that with us? Sure, I was raised in a

Christian home, and which was a major, major blessing.

Both my parents loved the Lord, still love the Lord to this day. And I asked

Jesus into my heart, if you're listening via the podcast, you can't see I'm making air quotes right now, because you probably recognize some of the errant theology and that idea of asking

Jesus into your heart. But as a five -year -old, that's what I knew, and that's what I did. I would say the earlier years of my life were really characterized by the word hidden.

I was the first born in my family and wanted to make a good impression. I wanted people to approve of me.

And as I grew, my capacity for sinning grew, but unfortunately my capacity for resisting sin and fighting sin and putting it to death did not grow.

And so a lot of my life was characterized by the word hidden. I was hiding to a certain degree who

I was and what I was doing behind the scenes. Although I was a Christian, I felt guilty about my sin.

I didn't have the victory over sin that God would give me later in life. And then when

I was in my early 20s, I had a fresh encounter, you might say, with the Lord that I'll spare you some of the details, but I had just gone through a breakup with my girlfriend

I'd been with for a year. And there was this mentor that was working at the place where I was working, and he really reminded me about the unconditional love of God.

And this was in the context of talking about my breakup. And we talked about the unconditional love of God, and it was like the

Lord, just through this brother's counseling, really helped me see that God's love for me was unconditional, based on Christ, not based on myself.

So although I had been keeping parts of my life hidden, God wanted me to be fully open with him and to accept his free grace openly and fully.

And so over that next year, I was really mentored in a lot of ways by another brother who was working at that same place.

And I would say my life since that time, Eli, has really been characterized by the word open.

I can really be open about who I am now, open about my relationship with Christ.

Will I sometimes be called a hypocrite? Absolutely, of course, yes, because I don't live up to God's perfect standard.

We all fall short in many ways, and I'm the chief example of that. But I've experienced God's grace and his mercy, and the rejuvenation of the

Holy Spirit in my way, in my life, in a way that I can really only attribute to God.

I know him, I know Jesus, I love him, he loves me. And the cool thing is, after I had that encounter with the

Lord Jesus, he gave me another desire of my heart, and I ended up getting back together with my girlfriend and ended up marrying her.

And so that's my wife, Elisa, and together we have four kids, and -

Elisa, not Eliza. Okay. That's right, yep, that's right. Was that one of the false, that was one of the false things you said.

That's right, and you know you made up the Pina Coladas thing yourself, but - I did, that was, I added there.

But Elisa and I now have four kids, so I'm a proud father of four. And throughout the years,

God's brought me out of the business world, where I was a financial advisor, and brought me to the realm of Christian education,

I was a, I'm a former youth pastor, former associate pastor, but I've got a background in education, background in children's ministry.

That was my first ministry gig. So I've spoken, by God's grace, I've spoken at numerous kids' ministries and retreats and events and overnights and all kinds of stuff like that.

And as the father of four kids, and with my experience in ministry, the development of young minds in the biblical worldview and the ability to defend and articulate the biblical worldview and really believe it and to really know

God is very, very deep, deeply ingrained in my heart. It's something that's very personal to me, very important to me.

So when you suggested this topic, it really, I was very grateful for that.

I love the opportunity to talk about this stuff. Gets me up in the morning, literally, because sometimes my kids do get me up in the morning.

And it keeps me up at night as my wife and I are talking about how to disciple our kids.

So it's a topic that's near and dear to my heart and a deep part of who I am. That's awesome. So we were going to talk about,

Joel suggested that we talk about something to the effect of, something about the transcendental argument and why does the transcendental argument demonstrate the triune

God, which is a big question. We have addressed it on the show in the past. And I was like, well, why don't we do something about teaching presuppositional apologetics to children?

He was like, ooh, okay, that's really good. So you can, I could tell right off the bat, this was something that he was passionate about.

And I'm glad that he's on here to talk about it. So four kids, huh? How old are they?

Well, our oldest is nine. And then it goes nine, seven, six.

He's not reading the lottery numbers, guys. That's right. Well, I have, so our first three, all the three of them are exactly all one year, four months and 11 days apart.

So the first two are one, are 16 months, 11 days apart. And then the second and third are 16 months and 11 days apart.

So right now nine, seven, six, and then three. Our baby is three.

That's right, she just had a birthday recently. Well, how on earth?

I mean, it looks like you have a bunch of books in the background there, and you can see there are some books in my background here. I would imagine you've read a little bit of a lot of them.

And this is a question I always, I have this kind of private conversation with a bunch of people.

I just recently had a conversation with Braxton Hunter of Trinity Radio, who's in the chat now. And I always ask people who do what

I do and have kids, and I ask them, well, how do you do it? How do you find the time? And I've gotten some encouraging answers and some disheartening answers.

Some good one guy was just like, listen, you just gotta ride the wave, man. There's nothing you could do. Because it can be challenging.

How do you find the time to keep yourself sharp and in the know with respect to theological topics, the apologetic topics, while having four?

I mean, I have three kids. You have one more than I. I mean, four kids is a lot. That's a lot of kids, bro.

How do you do it? You know, I've got an amazing wife. I mean, I really have to give credit to Elisa.

Elisa homeschools our kids. This is our first full school year homeschooling. And she started doing that before the pandemic, actually about a month before all the lockdowns happened.

Our kids were going to a private Christian school before that, but she is just absolutely incredible.

She and I together are missionaries with, well, the Think Institute is the organization that we started, but we started it under the umbrella of crew church movements.

So we're both crew missionaries. And so we really partnered together in this.

She handles a lot of the really vital administrative work. And then when she's doing that, I'll take the kids or else my mom, you know, the kid's grandma will take the kids, which we're blessed to live close to her.

But Elisa is just unbelievable. She's just my right arm, man.

She really is. And then, you know, I gotta say too, God has just been incredibly gracious.

We started the Think Institute about three weeks before my son started, our third born,

Lucas went into heart failure in 2019. And that's a long story. There's a lot that happened before that and a lot that's happened since.

But we were starting this ministry in the context of going back and forth from the hospital, extended stays in the hospital, just a lot of craziness.

And, you know, in times like that, God's grace is just abundant.

And he provides through his people. He provides through just strength and perseverance through the Holy Spirit.

And so we were really started in the crucible. And so now that that season of life, again, by God's grace is passed, is over to a large extent, he's gotten a heart transplant.

I feel like I'm riding on easy street, man. You know, it's just, it's a lot easier right now.

But that doesn't mean it's easy, you know, I look at other guys whose kids are older, you know, there are some men that I really look up to, their kids are older, they're out of the house, you know, their grandparents, and the amount of energy they have in the content, they're churning out is like, man, it's hard for me not to be envious and covetous of that, you know,

I have to repent because, oh, what would I do with all that time? But, you know, that's -

Who's your favorite Christian YouTuber to watch who's putting out some good content?

You don't have to say this one, but if you have a favorite one -

No, don't worry, I wasn't going to, but no. No, for those who don't know,

Eli has been on my Sons of Thunder show and then with my brother Parker, which was, right?

Or did you come? Yeah, you came out with it too. Yeah, it was both of you guys, yeah. And Eli has really helped me out in my own apologetics work and preparation.

But, I mean, for me, I mean, James White, I love watching

The Dividing Line. I know you've had him on your show as well. I haven't had him on yet, but he just liked one of my posts on Gab.

So I feel like I'm one step closer to getting Dr. White on the show. James White likes one of your posts, he puts on his sunglasses, that's right.

That's a big deal. That's right, very good. So, okay, very good. Yeah, I like James White.

I listen to, I like Doug Wilson's stuff. The disclaimer with any

Christian thinker who's got a big name, you always have to say this, I don't agree with everything that they say.

Yes. Well, it's true, I mean, you know. But I should go without saying, like, obviously, they're not Jesus, okay?

I would hope that anybody who likes my stuff would not feel the need to give that disclaimer, but just so that I don't get too much flack.

I don't agree with everything they say, but they do put out a lot of very good content. So Doug Wilson, James White, there are many others.

But yeah. All right, very good. Well, that's good. I love the kind of that introductory sort of stuff and to see a little bit of the background, what you're listening to.

And I'm always looking for new, I mean, I do listen to The Dividing Line, but every now and then someone suggests something new and interesting, and I'm always jumping into something useful, especially.

You know what? Yeah. Let me give you a recommendation. Sure. Two, actually. So my brother

Parker has a show, Parker's Pensies. He mispronounces it intentionally.

Okay. Yeah. And that is a very, very intellectually stimulating show.

Okay. And then my buddy and co -laborer,

Rafe Chenery, has something called The Christian Optimist. It's just a podcast now, but he's gonna be transitioning to video soon.

And his stuff is very, very good. It's usually a monologue rather than an interview.

And it's really at the pastoral level. But The Christian Optimist, I think, he's one of my favorite guys to listen to.

Yeah, very good. Well, thank you for that. Well, let's jump right into our topic. So presupp for the kiddos. Let's define again, if there are people who are listening for the first time and are interested in just the thumbnail, which suggested apologetics for kids, and maybe you don't know what presuppositional apologetics is, why don't you define for us what presuppositional apologetics is?

And then let's dive into how one might teach this to children, to our kids.

So what are some practical examples that we can teach our children to think presuppositionally?

So why don't you define the methodology and perhaps we could jump into some application. Okay, yeah, sounds good.

So presuppositional apologetics. Well, first of all, apologetics, that word comes from 1

Peter 3 .15. The word is apologia, which refers to a vindication or a reasoned defense that one might give in court.

And the term apologetics has to do with the discipline of vindicating biblical truth or Christian truth claims over against unbiblical thoughts or unbiblical messages.

All right, I'm gonna stop you right there. So a Christian apologetics is the vindication of the

Christian perspective, right? So I'm a five -year -old, daddy, what's apologetics?

Ah, okay, apologetics is showing why God is true and everyone who says he's not is wrong.

Okay, there you go. Thank you, dad. I'm gonna go back to bed now. All right, yeah, get back to bed.

What are you doing? So good, so when I ask you to define certain terms, I want you to give me the official definition and then the kiddo's definition.

Okay, yeah, that'll be fun. We'll see how I do on that. Yeah, because again, this is a very important aspect of communication is we need to learn how to contextualize all of this sort of stuff.

So go ahead, I apologize for interrupting. You can continue with your official apologetics definition and then we'll jump into the application.

So apologetics is the discipline of vindicating Christian truth claims over against doubt, unbelief, unbiblical thought and messaging.

And the goal or the content being defended according to 1

Peter 3 .15 is we are defending our hope, the hope that's within us. And what the

Bible teaches in Colossians 1 .27 is that our hope is Christ in us.

It says, it refers to it as Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now, Jesus Christ is not maybe

Lord, not probably Lord. Jesus Christ is definitely Lord.

Jesus is God, Jesus is King. So when we are doing apologetics, when we are vindicating

Christian truth or showing that God is true and everyone who says he's not is wrong, what we're doing is explaining and proving, if you will, why

God and his word are absolutely true. So we don't wanna deal with probabilities.

We don't wanna deal with just sort of vague claims that could apply to many different religions or systems other than biblical

Christianity that God actually teaches in the Bible. We wanna deal with what God says in the

Bible and why it is absolutely, positively, completely, certainly true.

And so how do we do that? Well, presuppositional apologetics as opposed to other forms of apologetics has a particular approach.

And I'll just sort of cut right to the method and you can feel free to stop me and ask for more detail. I know that you've dealt with this many, many times in your show, pretty much every episode.

But what we do is we want to compare worldviews. We want to, there's a two -step or a three -step process where what we do is we assume we take on the unbiblical worldview, the non -Christian worldview for the sake of argument and we examine it internally.

I like to describe this as a home inspector going down into the basement of the home and looking around at the foundation and revealing that there's no foundation there.

There's nothing holding up the house. And then the way that that works is we're asking questions to determine what the unbeliever believes, what they actually believe, and then we're showing how their beliefs don't line up with each other, how their presuppositions, their foundational beliefs don't line up with the things that they conclude with their conclusions.

Again, getting back to the house metaphor, there's nothing connecting the roof to the ground.

The house is just sort of floating there in midair. And we show them this is a problem. The roof's gonna come crashing down on your head if you try to live in this house.

This is not safe. All right, then what we do is we go into the biblical worldview, biblical Christianity, and we examine it and we look at the foundation and we see that it's strong.

We see that it's solid. We look at the walls and we say, oh, look at these walls. These walls could hold up anything. Any roof that this house wants to hold up, it can do it.

It's certainly strong. And the way we do that is we invite the unbeliever to adopt the biblical worldview, again, for the sake of argument, and we show them it's internally consistent.

There are no contradictions. Because if there's a contradiction between two of the beliefs of a system, then the system is necessarily false.

Contradiction implies falsehood, implies that it's not true. So do you want me to explain this for a five -year -old?

Well, I mean, okay, so - Or do you not like that definition? No, no, that's fine. And I think there's great value in using examples like the foundations of a house.

I mean, this is something that Van Til did all the time. As a matter of fact, it was something that annoyed a lot of people in that instead of going into some of the rigorous logical details, he would use very homey analogies.

But that is still very useful to teach children. And so that analogy that you use,

I think, is good. If people who are kind of in -depth in this apologetic methodology sort of stuff, you might want the more rigorous, logical layout of the argumentation.

But if you're looking for ways to teach your children, I think using these analogies are very important, especially the kind of example that Van Til used with the little girl sitting on her father's lap to reach up and slap him.

But if someone were to say, because you have maybe an 11 -year -old kid, like, well, okay, Daddy, well, yeah,

I think there are some things that my friends believe that I think are kind of weird. Like they think, I'm just gonna make this up, that the universe popped into existence out of nothing.

Or the universe just always existed. Now, Dad, I can show how that kind of doesn't make sense, but how do

I demonstrate what we believe is true? How would you explain that? I'm 11 years old.

I'm kind of on the, a little bit more of the knowledgeable 11 -year -old. So I'm not the 11 -year -old who's just kind of like,

I don't know what's going on. It's more of the 11 -year -old who's asking deep questions and wondering about these things.

Well, so first of all, I would wanna give my kid credit, pat on the head, pat on the back, little

Hershey's kiss or something, because he's recognizing the differences here.

He's identified a clash of worldviews. He's got his biblical worldview specs on and he's able to discern the difference between what he believes and what his friend believes.

And if I could camp there for a second, I wanna just really reiterate the importance of laying down that foundation of, see, rather than really get into the specific arguments that we prepare our kids with,

I really wanna talk about the importance of laying down that foundation. So let me do that real quick and then

I'll come back around to that argument. Is that fine? Okay, so in terms of if someone were to say, yeah, but I don't wanna, my kids, this is why they have teachers.

Like I put my kids in a Christian school. I bring them to Sunday school. Why do

I have to teach my kids how to defend their faith? The rationale for teaching your kids apologetics, teaching them to defend why

God is true and everyone who says he's not is wrong, is thoroughly biblical. God made your kids to serve and glorify him.

Psalm 103 talks about all creation, worshiping and glorifying God. Many other verses do as well.

We all need to learn to know God so that we can serve him the right way. This is what

David instructs his son Solomon in 1 Chronicles 28, nine.

So our kids are created to worship God, but they need to learn to know how to do that.

They need to learn to know God. And God has commanded fathers and by extension mothers and parents, fathers and mothers, to bring up our children in the teaching and admonition of the

Lord. Ephesians 6, four talks about that. So what this means is we need to prepare our kids to be disciples.

We need to prepare our kids to demolish arguments against Christ as 2 Corinthians 10, five talks about.

So the biblical rationale for teaching our kids these things is irrefutable.

It's in there. Part of that could absolutely be bringing your kids to Sunday school, sending them to Christian school, et cetera, getting a really good homeschooling curriculum.

I think that's all very good. I think it's all very valuable. The important thing though is that we as parents need to really take ownership.

So that's why I say if my kid at 11 years old is recognizing, hey, my neighbor, friend or whatever, my classmate is a materialist, not using those words necessarily, but believes the universe popped into existence out of nothing, hey, great job.

Son, great job. Daughter, you recognize that's not what the Bible teaches. So my first question then is what do we know?

Or what does the Bible say about that? I'm always asking my kids that. Well, what does the Bible teach? You know, what

I'm doing, Eli, is I wanna know if I've taught them what the Bible teaches. Am I actually, yeah.

Let me just share something real quick because that's funny. I have a friend who catechizes his kids as well, and they were watching

Moana. And in the opening scene of Moana, it says, it's kind of giving the narrative of like the gods, you know, whatever, that created the islands.

And it said, in the beginning, nature. And he just put the movie on pause and he's like, all right, kids, what's wrong with this statement?

And kind of use that as an example to remind them what they were taught with respect to what happened in the beginning according to the

Bible. So I think that's a really good example. Taking pop culture, movies, cartoons that they're watching, and not being preachy and pausing it every two seconds to get a sermon out of it.

But being able to integrate, you know, these worldview issues. I mean, this movie is coming from a specific perspective.

We as Christians, you know, we don't believe that. How would we respond to this? What does the

Bible say? And always bringing people back to, our kids back to the foundations. I was thinking of Deuteronomy 11, verses 18 through 20, where it says, fix these words of mine, speaking of God's law in your hearts and minds, tie them as reminders on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

Teach them to your children, speaking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up, write them on the doorpost of your houses and on your gates.

There is this great emphasis in scripture upon drilling these foundational truths into our children, into the fabric of our lives so that we remember them and they become useful when we are in a context that we are required to kind of give an answer, to give a reason for the hope that that's in us.

So those are some kind of simple examples that you've just expressed. And just reminding me, my friend said that he did that with his kids while watching

Moana. Just gives me an idea of all the different kinds of examples we can use, depending on how old your kid is and you know, what you're doing, so.

Well, a hundred percent. And you know, when I think about teaching my kids to defend the faith, I think about it in three, or I try to look at it from three different perspectives.

As a good Framian, you know, I wanna be a tri -perspectival in how I approach this.

And so. Wait, you're a Framian? I thought you were like Vantillian, bro. We're done.

I'm just kidding. And there's people, I know there are the presuppositional purists out there saying, ugh, a

Framian. Listen, I love John Frame. Well, I mean, Vantill's great. He just, he has to be interpreted.

You know, he's like, he's like the Pope. The Pope might speak ex -cathedra and he's infallible, but you know, you gotta have the magisterium to interpret what he says.

And that's, and that's Frame. Frame is our magisteria. Okay. And then Vantill is our

Pope. No, in all seriousness, the three perspectives that I look at it from, you've got doctrine.

So three Ds, let's keep it simple. I'm a former preacher, okay? My wife would say I'm probably still a preacher around the house, but the first D, doctrine.

So that's catechizing. And I wrote a catechism called catechids, the new covenant catechism for little ones.

I'm partial to it. I like it. I think it's been helpful for a lot of people, but if you don't like mine, there are other good ones out there.

There's the old school Baptist catechisms. Of course, there's the Westminster shorter catechism. There's a ton of good catechisms out there.

You could take mine and take the parts you didn't like and develop it into something different, using it as a skeleton.

But there's the doctrine aspect of it. There's the devotion aspect of it.

I wanna teach my kids to actually know Jesus. I was just talking with my brother Parker this afternoon, and he was talking about how he knows

Jesus. Jesus is not a proposition for him. Jesus is a person.

How do I know Christianity is true? Well, I know Jesus. I want my kids to have that as well, that personal piety.

We talk a lot about, as evangelicals, we talk about a relationship with God.

It's a relationship with Jesus. And sometimes people say it's not a religion. It is a religion, but it is also a relationship.

So I want my kids - Not either or. That's right. It's a false dichotomy. So I want my kids to be reading the Bible. We do family worship with our kids every day, at least five or six times a week by God's grace.

And there's Bible reading, there's prayer, there's discussion. We sing a song most days.

I want them to get in those rhythms of regular daily devotion.

I want them to know Jesus. I can't force them to know Jesus. Only the Holy Spirit can bring them into that relationship, but I wanna provide a context where they can.

And then the third, so you've got doctrine, you've got devotion, and then the third D is defense. Now, this is what we think of,

Eli, when we think about apologetics. And oftentimes people might wanna jump right to the defense. I wanna teach my kids apologetics.

I wanna give them arguments. I'm gonna get out the little William Lane Craig book with the goat, no, no, what is it?

The goose and the bear. And somehow the goose and the bear are married and they're kids, but the boys turn out to be bears and the girls stay geese.

It's this weird - There's some worldview issues in there. I don't know. By the way, I own a couple of them, and except for the areas where I would disagree with Dr.

Craig, they're pretty cool. I think they explain some stuff pretty well. Okay, good, good. That's good. I don't wanna throw,

I just think that that aspect of it is funny, and obviously I'm not a, I don't share his approach to apologetics.

Brilliant man, all the disclaimers, everything else. But sometimes we wanna jump right to the defense, but the defense has to rest on the doctrine and be situated in a context in which there's devotion happening, where I'm not just defending propositions.

I'm not teaching my kids to win an argument, although I think my kids are pretty smart. I think they can win arguments.

Not against me or Elisa, but against other kids, sure. But I want them to know

Jesus. So that's like, as I was talking with Parker today, Parker goes, what, do I have to defend that my dad exists?

No, of course not. He's my dad, I know him. So - I like what you're saying, because you're speaking about the apologetic task not in the abstract.

It's not, we're not teaching our kids to defend like this conceptual scheme, but it's rooted in our genuine relationship with the

God who is there. And I think apologetics can be very abstract for people. It's like, well, we're gonna argue for a first cause.

There has to be a designer out there or a foundation for morality, which I would all agree. But the way you are describing it, really when we're teaching our kids, it's not just facts, we are teaching them how to defend the father of facts, the father we know who is there.

And so that relational element is so important because when we teach our kids to think along those categories, it really grounds them in a spiritually healthy context and not just one in which they're enriching their intellect.

And I know a lot of apologists who are obsessed with philosophy and I have nothing against philosophy. I use philosophy, it's important, it's foundational, but they're just immersed in all of this philosophical literature and they're very weak in their

Bible. They're very weak in their own spiritual formation and prayer and things like that. So I think the way you're describing how we should teach our kids apologetics with this relational foundation,

I think is so key and important that I think a lot of people miss. So I very much appreciate that aspect of your explanation.

Well, yeah, and when you have that, stopping the movie becomes a regular, natural part of family life.

And it's so cool that you use that example because if you didn't, I was going to anyway. Stopping the movie is a great discipleship technique when you've got kids.

And like you said, don't do it every couple minutes for two reasons. One, we're not supposed to provoke our children as dads, right?

So we don't wanna do that. In fact, the same verse that says, bring your kids up in the teaching and admonition of the

Lord says, fathers do not provoke your children. That's one. Two, if you keep interrupting the movie, the movie never ends and then it's never bedtime.

And then you and your missus can never be alone. So you want those kids in bed. You wanna stop the movie maybe once or twice.

You don't wanna annoy your kids too. You don't wanna annoy your kids too. My son gets annoyed when

I used to order a bunch of books and he likes when things come in the mail, like packages. He always thinks it's like a present or something like that.

And I got like these, yeah, I got this box with like, he's like, my son was like, he's like four.

He goes, are those your God books? He calls them God books. He's just annoyed that I got another book and it wasn't a present.

Yeah, you don't wanna overwhelm your kids always talking about apologetics, always talking about theology and doctrine, but you want to naturally just weave it into the fabric of your life, right?

It's, and I think that's very important in being strategic about that, but go ahead. Why don't you finish? Well, yeah, I was recently watching

Avatar, the last airbender, which my kids love. I think the other Avatar with the blue people.

Not the blue, mostly naked people. This is the cartoon, the old

Nickelodeon cartoon and my kids really love Avatar. And for the most part, I think it's fine.

Some might disagree with me, but there's a lot of pagan weirdness in that as well. A lot of sort of pseudo -Buddhist kind of, semi -Eastern religious type stuff.

And at one point someone's telling Aang, the main character, you must find the answers within, the deepest answers are all within yourself.

And so I pause, I couldn't not Eli, I couldn't not pause at that moment. And I said, kids, I forget what

I said. Kids, do we find our deepest answers from inside of ourselves?

No, where do we get them from? From God. That's right, kids, boom. See, here's the thing, they know the answers that's gonna get the movie back turned on for them again.

That's right, very good. But the point is we've drilled that enough and not only have we drilled it, because rote memorization is very important.

And that's why catechism, catechizing is so vital for your kids. But we've also, it hasn't just been the rote stuff.

It's been buttressed by a lot of back and forth interaction, a lot of conversations before bed, a lot of conversations on the road.

Answering their questions as they raise them, asking them, posing them questions.

Just tonight, because this conversation was on my brain, while we were driving in the car this evening, we're doing role -playing.

And I'm like, okay, let's practice, kids. Why do we think, why do we know the

Bible is true? And the kids, my kids tend to go super hard. So they're like, they wanna role -play.

They're like, yeah, I'll be the dumb idiot who doesn't believe the Bible. And I'm like, kids, all right, listen. Like, not believing the

Bible doesn't make you an idiot. There are a lot of smart people who don't believe the Bible. Okay, dad, but does being smart mean you're always right?

No, dad. Okay, so let's talk about it. So we're doing role -playing.

So then when I pause the movie, when I stop the movie, they're primed, they've got this stuff top of mind, because we've been drilling, we've been talking, we've been answering questions.

And so I think stopping the movie, great technique. And if you wanna come back to your original question, like what about the kid who believes that the universe popped into existence?

If I'm laying down a foundation with my kids, they should be able to recognize that that's unbiblical.

And then what I've done, Eli, is in that one third of the pyramid or of the spectrum, whatever it is, the defense,

I will talk to my kids, as young as they are, I'll talk to them about how if the

Bible is not true, if God is not there, then we have no basis for believing anything at all.

We have no basis for thinking we can know anything. And I will tell my kids that. And guess what?

They get that concept. Now it takes some scaffolding, it takes some support, some explaining.

And even tonight, we were talking about how, we were sort of addressing the idea, the philosophy of scientism, which most people who subscribe to that might not even use that term.

But the idea that science is either the only or the most reliable method of gaining true beliefs, of learning the truth.

We were talking about that. And I was role -playing with the kids about how the dead end of scientism, where it leads you is,

I believe in science, but that belief itself is not taught to me by science.

That belief itself is a super scientific or a non -scientific belief.

It doesn't mean that science doesn't give you truth. It just means that if you start without God or without biblical truth, you don't get science thrown in.

So a kid might hear that. A kid might be talking to his friend on the playground, says, well, my dad says he doesn't believe in God, he believes in science.

That's kind of a kiddie thing that people say. I mean, it's also a phrase from natural libre.

I don't believe in God, I believe in science. And I've heard this too. I work in youth ministry as well. And I was a speaker at a

Bible camp and there was an atheist kid, who's a Christian now, by the way. I know a lot of atheists in the chats and they're like, oh, this apologetic is a waste of time.

Okay, you can say that. I've actually spoken with a lot of people and there was a friend of mine who was a hardcore atheist.

And he actually invited me to his house to watch a documentary that he thought disproved the Bible. And he had all his atheist friends there and we had great conversation, respectful.

And later on, I think like five years after I lost touch with him, I met him in the parking lot of a hospital and he kind of attacked me joking.

He kind of gave me a bear hug from behind. And he goes, Eli. And I turned around, I'm like, oh snap, what's up, man? And he didn't say hi.

He didn't say, how's it going? He says, thank you. I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, I just wanna thank you so much for those conversations that we had back in the day.

I'm a Christian now and I'm going to be a youth pastor. And because of our discussions, and yes,

I used presuppositional apologetics to address some people who say presub doesn't work. He says, because of our conversations and it played such a big role in my conversion,

I'd like to have you and your family come out and hear my first sermon, which was, he was gonna be doing it at a church at Fire Island, which is, if you look at Long Island, it looks like a fish.

Fire Island's that skinny strip there. You can kind of take a little ferry out there. It's nice and vacation -y sort of place.

But he was preaching at a church there and invited us out so that we could hear his first sermon. So this stuff,

God definitely uses this apologetic, but with respect to, what was

I saying at the beginning? I lost my train of thought there. I was trying to make a point there. Oh man, brain fart.

Scientism. Oh, okay, so the kid. So we were in a circle, so we had a breakout session and there was this one kid who was an atheist, a nice kid, he wasn't starting trouble, but he was the only atheist there and he wanted to let people know he was an atheist.

So the way he answered certain questions would hint that he's an atheist. And so when we got to his turn in the circle, kind of where people are sharing, he's like, well,

I don't believe in God, I believe in science. Oh yeah, right. This kid was probably ninth, 10th grade, very smart.

He was a very smart ninth, 10th grader. And of course, as I said, he's a Christian now and he's actually helps with the

Bible camp and facilitates, he's very passionate, which is awesome. But yeah, if your son or your daughter comes up to you and says, hey, my friend's dad said he doesn't believe in God, he believes in science.

I didn't know what to say. How would we respond to that, dad? How would you guide your daughter or your son in navigating that sort of discussion?

Yeah, it's a great question. So how old is my child in this scenario? Well, let's say ninth or 10th grade.

Oh yeah, sure. Well, so if you think about the classical education progression, okay, elementary years, early elementary years, that's where you're teaching rote memorization.

That's where you're teaching the grammar. That's the grammar stage. By the time you get more to middle school, those upper elementary years, now you're in the logic stage, which is where you're bringing the ideas together.

By the time you get to high school, those upper years of the child's education, secondary education,

I guess you'd say, I mean, that's rhetoric, it's go time. So if my child is ninth, 10th grade,

Lord willing, they've gotten a good, solid foundation in the biblical world and life view. Okay, they've got the doctrine down, not that they've exhausted all possible knowledge about God or obviously, or biblical truth, but they've got the good foundation.

Lord willing, their devotional life is strong, is primed, and they've practiced, they've learned how to give a defense, a biblical defense, defending biblical content in a biblical way.

And so at this point, I might just simply ask him, well, what do we know about science?

And, well, I was just talking with my kids today, actually, about the importance of asking good questions. And so I would hope my child would understand that a man's heart is like deep waters, but a man of understanding draws it out.

Or how do we draw out someone's heart? How do we pull what's underneath to the surface? We have to ask questions.

You know, Jesus asked over 300 questions. He directly answered three, at least by some countings.

So Jesus was a master question asker. I want my kids to be like Jesus.

I wanna be like Jesus. So hopefully I've trained them, I've taught them to ask really good questions. So the child comes to him, or the young adult at this point, comes and says,

I don't believe in the Bible, I don't believe in God, I believe in science. I would hope that my child would at least understand that from a biblical perspective, we love science.

Scientific inquiry is one of our greatest tools for discovering God's world and gaining true information from it.

But at that point, by high school, I would also hope that they would understand that the underlying principles that give rise to science, starting with Christian theism, belief in the triune

God of scripture, which is your formulation, by the way, the triune God of scripture. I'm sure you didn't invent it, but I got that from you and I use that all the time now.

The triune God of scripture is the foundation for the underlying principles that give rise to science.

Principles like inductive reasoning, uniformity in the cosmos or in nature so that things are consistent.

We can do an experiment on Tuesday and expect to get similar results.

On Wednesday, all things being equal. Logic, mathematics, all of these invisible, immaterial, unchanging, universal, absolute, and knowable principles.

And when we're talking about logic, equally ultimate principles as well. Law of identity, law of non -contradiction, a law of excluded middle, neither of which is logically prior to the others, much like the triune

God. And so you've got unity and diversity. You've got laws and facts.

And now this is getting deep. I realized that, but my 15 year old, 16 year old should at least be able to articulate that God is the foundation for those principles.

So as Christians, we believe in the validity of science. It doesn't mean all of our scientific conclusions are always correct, but the process, scientific process is correct.

Hopefully my child has studied the scientific revolution in history.

So he would know about Newton and Tycho Brahe and Galileo and men who were, and women, who were steeped in the biblical worldview, which gave rise to science.

All right, so hopefully my child is, I don't expect him to remember all those facts necessarily, but hopefully the foundation is there so he has a well to draw from.

And then my child would know how to ask questions. Well, when you say he doesn't believe in God, he believes in science.

What do you mean by that? What does that mean? And - What brought you to that conclusion?

That's a nice little - Well, you're right. Tactic from Kochel, right? I've never read the book, but -

Oh man, you totally have to read the book. It's excellent. I intend to. Real quick,

I just wanna stop real quick to let folks know, if you have any questions, type it in the chat there and towards the back end of the episode, we'll take some questions.

So as I say, always preface your question with the word question. So I differentiate your question from the rest of the comments.

If there are no questions, I'll just go through some of these comments and maybe we can kind of comment on the comments because I do see a little bit of some stuff here that we can draw upon and expand a little bit on.

So definitely, if you have a question, it doesn't necessarily have to be on this topic, although preferably, if you do have a question about teaching apologetics to your children, but if you have kind of a general apologetics question, we'll take those as well, okay?

So there we go. All right, so you wanna finish your thought that you were just sharing before?

Oh yeah, sure. So my ninth or 10th grader, here's what

I'm expecting. The way I'm expecting that conversation to go, this is sort of in my idealized imaginary future, okay?

If I've done my job, this is how that conversation will go. Okay, Jacob, tell me about that encounter.

Well, I said, I'm a Christian. He said, oh, I don't believe in God, I believe in science. And I asked him, what do you mean by that?

And then he explained his thought. Probably Jacob's not saying position, but his thought at that point, that he thought that Christianity and science didn't agree or that science and faith are mutually exclusive, or whatever phrase my son's using at this point.

And then I'll say, okay, so what did you say? His son uses that? Even though, well, you should meet my son. Okay. My kids are pretty smart.

But they take after their mom. But so, okay, what would you say next time? Well, I asked him what he meant by that.

And he said, yeah, faith and science don't go together. And then I asked him, my son hypothetically talking, and then

I asked him, well, how do you know that? And then he explained, well, because the Bible requires you, or religion requires you to have faith in spite of the evidence, but science relies on evidence to reach conclusions.

And so I asked him, well, how do you know that that's true? And I would hope that he came around to this idea that if you start without God, you start in an imaginary universe in which

God does not exist, scientific inquiry is not actually possible.

There's no reason to think that we can gain information from the world. And I would hope that my son would have a good working knowledge of what are the necessary preconditions or the necessary environment in which science can take place.

And that he would, here's what I would have at least hoped. I would have at least hoped that he would have vindicated his

Christian belief in the form of explaining why from the

Christian worldview, science fits perfectly. Science is exactly what you would expect if the triune

God of scripture is there. And he is there, and that's why science works. I would at least hope that he had gotten that part of the equation down.

If he went on to do a reductio, an internal critique of his friend's position, hey, so much the better.

If he asked him, well, what's your basis for truth? How do you account for logic?

How do you account for uniformity in nature and induction in a world without God? And showed him the absurdity there.

Hey, so much the better. Yeah, and I like how you're using words that a teenager may not be familiar with, but maybe in some sense, it's good to,

I mean, if you're, like you said before, it's laying the foundation. So you're teaching your kid these things.

Maybe the other kids aren't learning these things. So if someone says, I don't believe in God, I believe in science. And your son being trained in apologetics says something to the effect of, well, without God, you have a problem with induction going on.

The kid's like, well, I don't know what induction is. Oh, so then what, then how can you say with confidence, I believe in science and science is based on induction.

You see, you're using the word science and you don't even know the content of science. And so maybe you should rethink your statement.

You don't believe in God, you believe in science. You don't even know what you mean by science or how the scientific process works.

Yeah, and it's, there's really no reason to think that kids can't learn these terms.

Absolutely. Kids can memorize all the characters of Avatar. Kids can, you know, my oldest is learning how to code.

You know, they can, kids' minds are unbelievable. They can learn these concepts.

Even our three -year -old, we were driving by a church yesterday and saw the cross, or we were actually in a church yesterday and she saw the cross up in the front of the chapel.

And she said, a cross, Jesus died on a cross. She just turned three, not that long ago, but she's associating the cross with, you know, a very important tenet of the gospel.

She's three years old. Kids can learn these concepts. There's no reason why a kid can't learn about induction and what logic is and, you know, how immaterial laws can be grounded in God, but they can't be grounded in a material universe, a purely material universe.

I think that's well within the concept of a ninth or 10th grader to grasp. Yeah, I knew a kid who was in third grade.

He was obsessed with Pokemon. And it was that time when Pokemon was really like a big thing. And this kid walked around.

I used to work childcare. So I teach middle school, high school students. Well, I used to teach middle school, high school students.

I'm currently looking out for a job now. But when I used to work in elementary school, there was this kid,

I remember his name was Sam. He was a really little kid and he was obsessed with Pokemon. He had this Pokemon encyclopedia.

It was like a giant book at all the different Pokemons and all their powers and all the things that they evolved into.

And this kid knew it like the back of his hand. Some of the names of these creatures, I couldn't even pronounce.

I was like, wait, a what? You know, he's like, and a Pikachu evolves into a Raichu. And I remember listening to him go on and on.

And as I was listening to him, I was like, wow, how silly is it that this kid knows all of this stuff inside and out, yet the average

Christian, even in church, like we don't teach our kids like these deep doctrinal issues that we think it's too deep for them.

When in fact, a lot of these kids, like you said, their minds are amazing. They're able to learn these concepts.

Teaching teenagers doctrine and apologetics, I found that they were immensely interested and able to grasp the concepts.

You know, I've had students come up to me and say, Mr. Ayala, you know, I was interacting with someone on Instagram. And I used that thing you said in classroom and like the other guy didn't know what to say.

And it built up their confidence. I'm like, hey, you know, that's great, you know? So these things work if we lay, as you said before, and it's very important, laying the foundation, teaching your kids apologetics.

You can't come at the question, how do I do this from a wrong perspective? You know, we're talking about induction. We're talking about science.

We're talking about philosophical categories and things like that. I'd be like, well, how am I gonna teach my kid this?

You know, you expect me to teach my teenager this? No, we expect you to lay the foundation over the course of their lives.

These are things that we, in some case, we've been doing since they were little, or in other cases, you didn't realize you should have been doing this, and so now you're playing catch up.

Unfortunately, it makes your job harder, but there are ways to go about that. But it's this issue of laying the foundation, which is very relevant to the presuppositional methodology, because all parents teach their kids foundational issues, but the nature of the

Christian foundation is grounded in God's word, and so grounding our kids, hopefully, with the work of the

Spirit in the relationship with Christ and feeding them from the scriptures,

I think is vitally important in laying that groundwork, allowing them to not only know what it means to think

Christianly and biblically, but teaching them how to think biblically. When Greg Bonson had a lecture, he says, listen,

I'm not trying to teach you pat answers, and if the atheist says this, then you say that. He's like,

I wanna teach you how to think so that regardless of whatever objection someone raises, you're already thinking a certain way, and you know how to come at these questions in an effective way and in a biblical fashion.

So that foundational thing you mentioned at the beginning, I think is vitally important to understand. Yeah, and you know, you sometimes hear people say, well,

I'm not gonna indoctrinate my kids or I'm gonna let them decide for themselves.

Here's the thing, and this is, I mean, going back to Van Til again, this is, well, and good grief, man, going back to scripture itself, to the words of Jesus, there is no neutrality.

If you're teaching your kids that there are many viable options, you're essentially teaching them that what the

Bible says is incorrect. That's right. You know, because the Bible says that there are not many viable options.

And right there, Joel, when someone hears you say that, they'll be like, well, wait a minute, you should be open -minded. Right. You see, the very fact that you are willing to be open -minded over foundational issues shows that you're not open -minded because you're closed -minded against the position that says we shouldn't be open -minded with respect to these foundational issues.

That's right, that's right. Which just, you know, makes clear the point that there is, in fact, no neutrality.

Yeah, I was on the street. Yeah. Oh, no, no, I didn't mean to interrupt. No, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. So I was, back in February, I was on the street doing some evangelism.

I was down at this event called Declaring Truth at Mardi Gras. And we're on the street, it was my first time street preaching.

I lasted 30 minutes, and then I was exhausted, man, I was done. But I was handing out tracts, and I got into this great conversation with a young man, 25 years old.

And we were talking for quite some time. It was a wonderful conversation. Here's the thing.

I love talking with non -believers, love it, especially if they're, you know, no one is neutral, but if somebody's willing to have a great conversation and be open and friendly,

I love that. So we're talking for quite some time. And he kept on telling me, look,

I've got nothing against Jesus, I'm not against Jesus, I'm just not convinced, I wanna know, you know, and that's why I'm talking to you. And suddenly something dawns on me.

This man is claiming to be neutral towards Jesus, but Jesus himself doesn't give him that option. Because Jesus himself says, whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

So I thought of that verse, and I told it to him. And I said, you know, my friend, you keep saying that you're neutral towards Jesus, but here's what

Jesus actually said. You know what he said? He goes, oh, I could never believe in somebody who said that. And I said, well, so it doesn't sound like you're very neutral towards him.

And he goes, yeah, well, you know, imagine if, you know, Drew Brees said, you're either with me or against me. And I said, sure, but Drew Brees is also not claiming to have authority over your life.

And by the way, if Drew Brees were to say that, I would rightly be against him. But that's not who

Jesus is. Jesus is, Jesus claims to be Lord. Jesus claims to be your maker and the

King and Lord of heaven and earth. That is not somebody that you get to be neutral towards. And by claiming to be neutral, you're saying that what he said in that statement is false.

That means you're against him. Neutrality, asserted or purported neutrality is a position against the

God who says you can't be neutral. And so God was very wise, obviously, definitionally, in not giving man that out, not giving us that option of neutrality.

We're with Jesus or against him. And I gotta tell you, when I speak to believers and we recognize that there is no neutrality,

Eli, when I talk to you, I talk to other believers that I know, that's a blessing, that's a blessed truth.

Oh, thank God that he brought me from being against him to now being on his side. We don't view that as this harsh truth and this harsh statement.

We recognize Jesus brought us out of the domain of darkness, out of the kingdom of darkness, and God brought us into the kingdom of his beloved son.

And you read Ephesians one, and you see what God did as he rescued us and placed us into his family in Christ and the blessings we have.

It's a blessing to know that that dichotomy is there, it's real, there is no neutrality, and it's a blessing to be on this side of that dividing line.

Sure, sure. That's good stuff, man. Well, listen, we have some good questions coming in, and I wanna make sure we give time for those questions.

And some people are commenting, they found this discussion very helpful. And so for that, I thank you very much. I think you did an excellent job explaining from experience and hopefully people will be able to use this in a practical way.

So let's jump into some questions and comments. I'm gonna go right back to the top. Let's see here.

There you go. You just gotta give me a moment because I have to scroll through. I don't have like someone who goes through the comments for me and feeds me the, we do the old fashioned way.

Old school, we do it ourselves. That's right, that's right. So let's see here. There were a couple, there we go.

Well, it's not a question, but it's a nice comment here. Jess says, great topic today and on time in my life with my children.

I think it's kind of relevant to where she is in her life. Okay, let's see here.

Sorry, I have to move a little down. All right, here's a question.

Brenda says, why would you teach children fallacious logic? Assuming this person is an unbeliever.

Of course, I've been reading through the comments. So I'm not sure if this person's an atheist or some kind of non -Christian theist or whatever.

But Brenda thinks that presuppositional apologetics is bunk. And so I would assume that fallacious logic refers to apologetic methodology or something you said.

How would you respond to someone who says that presuppositional methodology is just fallacious, a fallacious sort of logic?

Yeah, I'd wanna know what she means by that. I would imagine she probably means in terms of with the,

I mean this respectfully, but the tired and unimpressive claim that presuppositional apologetics is circular.

I mean. Sure, yes. Right, you hear it all the time. You hear it all the time. Yes, yes, yes.

So, I mean, there's an answer. Brenda may not like it.

Spiritually, things are spiritually discerned. But the answer, maybe we could pose it in the form of a question.

And Brenda, I mean this respectfully. I've got no ill will towards you, don't know ya. But what's wrong with fallacious logic?

See, as a Christian, I recognize that fallacious logic is bad, it's problematic, it actually violates the character of God, the nature of God.

As a Christian, I believe that logic is rooted in God's perfectly logical character.

And logic is, by the way, tied to absolute standards of goodness, absolute standards of truth.

So truth, logic, goodness, purity, beauty, righteousness. For me as a Christian, these things are all linked.

So if I'm teaching fallacious logic, that's highly problematic, and that's even sinful if I'm doing so willingly.

So I have a major problem with fallacious logic. Now, presuppositional methodology is not fallacious.

It's not begging the question, and it's not viciously circular. Sometimes it gets that reputation simply because people don't understand that all reasoning, when it comes down to ultimate standards and foundations, is finally, ultimately, circular.

So if I say - Here's some context here. So she says, or he, I don't know if it's a he or she, because I don't know the people who post personally, but Brenda says, presupposing

God exists is logically fallacious. I'd wonder if Brenda would say that presupposing the nonexistence of God is logically fallacious.

Right, yeah. If you're gonna say presupposing anything is logically fallacious,

I mean, well, let's look at what it means to presuppose. Well, I guess maybe let's look at logical fallacies.

Logical fallacies presuppose absolute standards of logic, rules of logic, laws of logic that are immaterial, unchanging, and absolute, universal, knowable, equally ultimate.

As a Christian, I would expect that logic would be a thing.

As a Christian, when God says, come, let us reason together, or describes the Son of God as the Logos, or the one in whom all things consist,

I would fully expect that if a God like that were holding the universe together, that the universe would be governed by laws of logic.

Speech and thought would be governed by laws that are identical to the laws of logic. So fallacious,

I'm sorry, I'm reading what it says on the screen here. Yeah, well, presupposing God exists is a fallacy. William Lane Craig says so, so.

I wonder if she's trolling us. I wonder if she's trolling us, because, because. Actually, Brenda, hopefully

Brenda's not trolling. I would think that, hopefully. We usually don't get trolls here, so let's give

Brenda benefit of the doubt. William Lane Craig does have a problem with presuppositional apologetics in that he thinks it is circular.

It commits what he says, a logical howler in the five views of apologetics.

But of course, as much as I greatly respect Dr. Craig, he is not knowledgeable in presuppositional methodology.

He doesn't know much about the development of the thought and what Van Til was getting at. Indeed, he had one point said in an interview or kind of on a panel, he said that Van Til was not a philosopher.

He had a PhD in philosophy. Again, comments like that, I think are, he probably has a passing acquaintance with the methodology and has interacted at a certain level, but definitely some of the objections he raises do not evince a deep understanding of the nature of presuppositional argumentation.

And I say that with great respect. I love Dr. Craig, he's a brilliant philosopher, but in this area, I think he's way off.

But go ahead, if you wanted to add to that. No, no, I think, again, Brenda, I'd really encourage you and challenge you to examine what you mean by fallacy.

Fallacies only make sense, fallacies make perfect sense within the Christian worldview. Presupposing that God exists within the biblical worldview, there's no logical contradiction there.

There's no problem presupposing that God exists if you've adopted the biblical worldview. And it's within the biblical worldview that logic makes sense and fallacies are a problem.

Now, if you start with an unbiblical worldview, which the triune God of scripture is not the ground of reality and the prime reality and the explanation for metaphysics and epistemology and everything else, well, then what is logic?

What is an immaterial law? You know, what is an absolute law? What is the law of logic other than just your own preference and feeling about how things should operate?

And again, Brenda, I say that respectfully, but if logic is just, and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but if logic is ultimately not grounded in God, you're gonna have to find another basis for logic.

And that basis for logic is going to have to not only have all those attributes, but it's also going to have to be self -revelatory, self -revealing in such a way that he or it has spoken to you and revealed absolute truth to you.

Brenda, at that point, you're just talking again about the triune God of scripture. Real quick, apart from the fact that Brenda says,

I think respectfully here, I'd like to debate, Joel. There you go, we'll just put it there. Brenda also says, no one really asserts foundationalism anymore,

Joel. So I guess that appeal to foundations, if you don't have to appeal to foundation, but you're gonna have your worldview planted firmly in thin air, and that is open to its own set of criticisms that are rather easy to address.

So let's move on to - Real quick, by saying that's not true that no one asserts foundationalism, but sometimes

I might use the word foundation. That doesn't mean I'm alluding to the philosophical school of foundationalism.

So just - That's important to note there, because I have had guests on, we were talking about foundations, and some of us are, so you guys are foundationalists?

No, we're not foundationalists. I would say we are presuppositional transcendentalists, at least that's how

I call my position, if you want the technical nomenclature. I'd have to see what exactly you mean by that, but it probably, I would probably shine on.

Mr. C has a statement here. Fact, without their book, I would assume he's talking about the Bible, they would have nothing to say.

They would just be as clueless as they say non -believers are. What do you say to that? Oh, that's one of the best compliments

I've received. Listen, what that tells me is that what I'm saying is firmly rooted in scripture.

Man, by God's grace, I really hope that that's true. I really hope that I'm accurately reflecting what the

Bible teaches. And here's the thing, Mr. C, if you were to adopt the biblical worldview, if you were to adopt my book, as you call it, or our book, you too would have clarity in reasoning your way out into the world.

You would have a strong basis, or a foundation, again, to use that problematic term, but you would have a strong, sure study basis for believing that you can trust your truth -seeking faculties, your reasoning, your interaction with the world, the fact that the world is giving you reliable data when it comes to truth.

It's not as though the Bible is the sole intellectual property of Eli and myself. The Bible's claims are for you.

As a matter of fact, I was just talking with my kids. Remember, this is about kids today. So I was just talking with my kids about how do we know the

Bible is true? And my kids, this just goes to show you that evidential apologetics really is ingrained in us from childhood, because my kids start talking about evidence.

There's evidence that the Bible is true. We were talking about archeology and archeological digs, and we were talking about what is a greater authority, an archeologist and his statement, or God's word in scripture?

Eli, I'm talking to you now at this point, right? Because I know you and I agree with that. Well, of course, God would be more reliable. Obviously, right?

So what we were talking about is that the Bible is the highest authority.

That's why the Bible has to be self -authenticating, because just as God has no one greater than himself by which he can swear, he swears by himself.

So the Bible, which is God's word, God's self -revelation, its authenticity cannot rest on another standard, or else that standard is more ultimate than the

Bible. And so the Bible is authoritative. So I'm talking with my kids about this. And we, as I'm sort of Socratically reasoning with them, we landed on the conclusion,

I led them to the conclusion, and they wisely followed, that the

Bible is authoritative, over Christians, but not only over Christians. So God's call to repent and trust in Jesus Christ is for Christians, but it's also for Mr.

C. And so you can say that it's our book and that we would be clueless without it, but let me just say this to you,

Mr. C. I hope that one day you will be like us as well, that you will have answers as well, and not only have answers, but have a good reason for believing that those answers are truthful.

And I would warn you that if you ignore what the Bible says, not only will you not have a good basis for your beliefs or for believing that they are true, but ultimately you will stand before God someday.

And the same Bible that teaches that you are made in the image of God and you are morally responsible for how you live and how you think even, and how you respond to your feelings, is the same

Bible that says that the wages of sin is death and trying to live autonomously, Mr. C.,

from God, trying to ignore God, is sinful. And I wanna warn you that God's wrath is prepared for those who reject

Jesus, who reject God's word. And Eli and I have been giving you a lot of truth in this episode.

And Jesus alludes to the idea that we'll be judged on the final day based on how much truth we received.

And so I wanna warn you, Mr. C., not out of self -righteousness or because I think I'm holier than you.

I'm probably a much bigger sinner than you, but that's okay, because Jesus came to save sinners.

So I wanna urge you and invite you to repent and trust in Jesus Christ, who died for sinners like you and like me, and you can receive him as your

Lord and Savior today. And you can be on this side with us. And you can be saying, man, if it weren't for God's word,

I'd be just as clueless as I was back when I saw that video. We'll get Mr. C. on the show to talk about it. We'll get him on, amen.

That's right. Mr. C. also makes a statement here. He says, I appreciate Joel's honesty.

And I'm sure Joel appreciates that you appreciate his honesty, because I hope you don't think Joel is being dishonest.

People might think we're crazy for being Christians and believing what we believe, but hopefully what comes across is that we are being genuine when we say we believe it.

So that's definitely a compliment there. But Mr. C. says, I appreciate Joel's honesty. He admits that he's a believer because of upbringing and a woman.

Most apologists won't admit that their conversions were that simply based. To be perfectly honest, based upon your story that you shared at the beginning,

I don't see how one could draw the conclusion that the only reason why you're a believer is because of how you were brought up and because of a woman.

But why don't you correct that statement based upon what you believe as a Christian and how you believe all this salvation stuff works?

Sure, yeah. Ultimately, Mr. C. has to be careful of committing the genetic fallacy that says how you came to a belief has an impact on its truthfulness.

So let's say that I did come to my belief based on my upbringing and a woman.

That would have no bearing whatsoever on the veridicality of the belief, on the truthfulness of the belief. So that isn't how

I became a Christian. I became a Christian because the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to the truth of God's word, and I repented and received

Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord. I think that that happened when I was five and I prayed to receive Jesus into my heart.

It may not have happened until later in life. Only God knows for sure, because I've had different, quote unquote, experiences that you might compare to something like a conversion.

But to say, well, and I understand that this is kind of a backhanded compliment, and I'll take it.

That's fine, I'll take all the compliments I can get. But better than being called intellectually dishonest, which is what

I get normally when people don't want to engage in this apologetic. But how

I came to my belief, or how Eli came to his belief is completely immaterial as to the truthfulness of the belief.

So what you've got to wrestle with, Mr. C, and what I hope you can see, and I hope that you will come to believe, is that the

Bible is true, completely regardless of whether or not Eli, or I believe it, or you believe it, or how we came to our beliefs or our disbeliefs.

I mean, you may have come to, you may have been a member of a church, and then were turned off by the church, and left the faith.

And far be it from me to say, well, your belief is invalid because of how you came to believe it, or your unbelief, your position.

No, I'd want to know who you are, I'd want to know what you actually believe, and then we can examine your worldview internally, and see if it makes sense, and if it's internally consistent, and if it comports with reality, or corresponds with reality.

But to say, maybe you're just implying this, that one's, the truth content of a position is, has any correlation whatsoever to how someone came to believe it, is fallacious.

And as a Christian, I have a problem with logical fallacies, as we talked earlier. Well, that latter part there, it says most apologists won't admit that their conversions were that simply based.

I'm not sure what he means by that, almost, I mean, there are not a lot of apologists who say that they were saved because some dramatic apologetics experience either.

Right. If you think about it, right? Right. Look at, take a William Lane Craig. He wasn't converted because of apologetics.

Most apologists that I know weren't converted because of apologetics. I mean, it definitely helped, you know, give some reasons for some of the things that they were believing.

But I'm not sure who's in view when he says most apologists. I mean.

Yeah, I don't know. People's stories aren't simple. There are a lot of complicated and multifaceted reasons, things that God uses to bring someone to faith.

But at any rate, let's move along here. Dylan says, you should do an episode on Calvin and presuppositionalism.

As a matter of fact, that would be an excellent idea. Hopefully I can get someone from Westminster who could bridge that important gap and make that connection because there's definitely an important connection with Calvin and the presuppositional methodology, okay?

The Christian Worldview Project asks, how much is Joel's microphone? Jordan.

Is that a personal question? That's a personal question. Yes. Listen, God owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

So money is no object. No, I don't remember. Send me a DM, Jordan.

Come on, man. Why are you asking me these questions? I love Jordan. Okay, Jess asks the question, how would you, and she was saying that I think her son or someone said this to her.

How would you answer this question from a child? Who is the face of evil? That sounds like a kid question, doesn't it?

Oh, and I gotta tell you, this is why I love kids' questions because -

They throw you off, man. They throw you off. It's like, what does that mean, the face of evil?

Like evil has a face and someone has that face and I wanna know who, dad. I love that question.

You know what I would do? I have John Bader hit. This is the face of evil right here. There you go. I love it. You know what I would do?

That's the face of evil. That's good, yeah. Yeah, show them that shirt or hold up a mirror.

Ooh, getting, okay. Dropping that total depravity joints. I mean, it depends on how old your kid is, right?

Because at the end of the day, so my kids learned about sin very early on. I've been catechizing my oldest since he was three.

He's nine now. And I remember at one point, Jacob turns to Fia, our second born, and he goes, they're like toddlers, you know?

I think Fia was one or two, okay? And Jacob goes, Fia, you're bad.

And she goes, I'm not bad. He goes, yes, you are, Fia, you're bad. She goes, I am not bad.

And he goes, you're a sinner. Yeah. With all the gusto of a fundamentalist firebrand preacher, man.

That's awesome. It would be safe to behold. And so, you know, I have to talk to my kids about, look, we're all sinners, but that doesn't mean you get to judge your siblings.

We deal with each other by grace as God deals with us. But who's the face of evil?

Well, you could say Satan, you know, you could say ultimately what every child needs to learn.

And God help us if we aren't internalizing this truth about ourselves, is that sin, the human heart is desperately wicked and sick and deceitful, according to Jeremiah.

Who's the face of evil? Well, Jess, I am. You can show her a picture of Joel Seneca's and you can say, that's the face of evil.

And he's the worst sinner that he knows. And the Lord Jesus Christ saved him from the depths of his sin.

So there you go. If you need an example, I'm happy to play that example, but just make sure you tell him what God did by his grace, by sending his son,

Jesus Christ to die for me. And I'm sure there are countless Christians the world over who would say the exact same thing.

Because once we start comparing our sin to somebody else, again, yeah, Satan, sure, you could say Satan's the ultimate embodiment of evil.

But what God does is God overcomes evil. One way or the other, God overcomes evil. That's how great

God is. And so if you show him the face of evil, make sure you tell your child about the incredible greatness of God's grace.

Very good. Drop that law and gospel on them. There we go. Dylan asks, where did

Calvin differ from Van Til's apologetic? You can take that or I can take that.

That's up to you. Oh, no, that's all you. Go ahead. Okay. Well, you have to understand that Van Til is speaking of argumentation along transcendental lines, which are categories that Calvin was not dealing with.

He wasn't dealing with transcendental categories. However, Van Til, so in that sense, they differ.

Van Til is giving a robust transcendental formulation of the truth of the Christian worldview. Whereas Calvin is not doing apologetics along those lines.

If you study the apologetic tradition of the reformers, a lot of them were along classical lines.

I mean, that's why classical apologetics is called classical apologetics. It has been the way apologetics has been done classically.

So you do have argumentation over whether Calvin was a classicalist or whether he repudiated argumentation altogether, but they differ in the projects that they're doing.

Calvin is speaking to a different context. Van Til is formulating responses to skepticism and trying to bring together some of the theological insights of Calvin into a consistent apologetic methodology that flows from what

Van Til believed to be Christianity come to its own, namely Calvinism.

Again, so the reform theology, the Calvinism of Van Til and presuppositional methodology as an apologetic defense,

Van Til desired to put forth an apologetic that flowed out of a consistent application of Calvinism as he understood it.

So they're different in the projects that they're doing. Van Til's dealing with idealistic and Kantian philosophical categories.

Calvin is the lead theologian of the Reformation period. And so he's dealing with Roman Catholicism and things like that.

And so they're different in their emphasis and their difference comes in their context.

Because they're in a different context, the things that they're saying are gonna be very different. So Van Til has a greater apologetic emphasis in terms of objective argumentation along transcendental lines.

And Calvin, obviously given his historical context was not very much involved in those sorts of things. Okay, good question.

All right, let's see here. Kyperion Burian asks, should you discuss the transcendental argument with your child?

I don't know if Joel is coming back. He seemed like he walked away from his screen, which is completely fine.

But we'll continue to move along for now. Yeah, absolutely. I think you should discuss the transcendental argument with your kid, but you don't have to call it transcendental argument.

Again, like I said at the beginning, it's important that when we learn the biblical apologetic, the biblical way of thinking along these presuppositional lines, the scripture being our foundation, what you wanna do when you teach your kids is to contextualize these things.

When I explain transcendental argumentation with young people, I don't call it transcendental argumentation, although they are well within their capacity to learn that if a kid knows that a

Pikachu evolves into a Raichu, right? Then a kid could know that a transcendental argument basically asks this question, what must be true in order for something else to be true?

Simple. That's kind of a sort of transcendental question.

So you can discuss these issues, right? You can use biblical categories. So I love the passage in the book of Psalms where it says, in his light, we see light.

You know, what does that, what is the precondition? What must be true in order for us to see, to have knowledge, to have a proper understanding?

Well, we must see things in light of God's light, in light of his revelation, in light of what he has provided, in light of his divine commentary as to the nature of the world and how we should understand it.

So yeah, absolutely. I think you should talk to your children about transcendental arguments, although feel free to talk about it without using that kind of a complex philosophical terminology, okay?

Did you wanna add to that, Joel, at all before I move on to the next question? No, no, I agree. I think you take kids,

I guess I do, real quick. Take kids' level of development and the knowledge that they have into account and respond accordingly.

Sure, absolutely. Nick Smelser, Smelser, Smelker? I do apologize.

That's probably right. I always call him Smelker. He watches my show and comments. Okay, all right. Question, he says, I have a six and eight year old boys.

At this age level, what are some good things to consider in introducing apologetics? We're going through catechids now for a doctrinal foundation.

Why don't you take that one, Joel? Oh man, that's awesome, Nick. Thanks for asking that question. And thank you for going through catechids.

Bro, give me any feedback that you have about it too. I've been very blessed to see how that resource has been blessing others.

So what resources to use? Man, you and your wife,

I'm assuming you're married, Nick, I don't know you that well, are the best resources. So you're laying down a foundation.

Your kids are six and eight. Here's what you can do. As your kids are watching cartoons or whatever, anything that has a message, playing video games, reading books, story time, you be listening to the messages that they're receiving and even go so far as to read those, read or watch them beforehand.

I mean, I will sometimes do that. I'll watch a movie before my kids watch it so that I make sure, hey, is this safe for my kids, if it's borderline.

But be prepared to ask those questions. Be prepared to stop the movie and ask the question, okay, what's being taught here?

What are they saying? What does that mean? How does that line up with scripture? And don't just let them get away with the

Sunday school answers, the easy peasy, Jesus is the answer to everything and Bible's the answer to everything else.

What's being taught, okay, and what does the Bible say about this? What does God's word say?

Be ready to ask those questions and introduce that real world cultural interaction and worldview analysis.

You can absolutely do that at ages six and eight. When my son was four,

Lucas, when he was four or maybe five, he was in the hospital and he was talking with one of his nurses and a male nurse and they're talking and I try to model evangelism for my kids.

So I'm kind of trying to strike up a conversation with this guy. He's really just a great dude, but we're talking and I asked him, so I mentioned how we're

Christians and I said something along the lines of, so do you consider yourself religious or spiritual at all?

That's a great question to ask, by the way, I highly recommend it. And he goes, well, I was raised

Buddhist and so I guess I'm still Buddhist, but I do believe in God.

I sort of believe that there's one God, but I'm not sure. And Lucas, who was like, again, four at the time, looks up at him from his hospital bed and goes,

I won't tell you the guy's name, but he goes, let's say his name is Danny. He goes, Danny, there's only one

God, not a million. And he says it with this conviction and the nurse looks at him and you wouldn't believe how hot he got under his collar.

He starts getting all, he's getting all nervous and he goes, I know, I know, I know.

And it's so funny to see this guy hemming and hawing in response to this four or five year old little boy because guess what?

Danny, the nurse, is created in the image of God and created with the knowledge of God. So all it took was a little kid giving a strong affirmation that there's only one

God and that Danny knew him, basically, very Romans one, and that's all it took to convict this guy.

And it was just the greatest thing to see. And look, all glory goes to God. And he said after that, you are a sinner.

No, his older brother came in for that. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Yeah, you know, all glory goes to God, but I know it's because Elisa and I have been laying down that foundation that there is one

God. Look, the first question of the catechism is who is God?

And the answer is the Lord is God. And the second question is, I've revised it over the years, but originally it was, is there more than one true

God? Now it says, is there any true God besides the Lord? Same general gist.

And the answer is simple, no. So those two questions,

Lucas had learned those two questions when he was very young, and that's all he needed to apply to that apologetic situation.

So if you're laying down a foundation and you're quizzing your kids and you're drilling your kids and you're pausing the movie, you're their best resource.

I will say there is, as far as I know, there is a real dearth of really good quality presuppositional children's material out there.

I've toyed with the idea of writing a presuppositional catechism type thing. I don't know of any really great books that are good for kids.

I think parents just need to study it and teach it to their kids in simple ways. And that'll really help the parents know it better as well.

Because you learn 99 % of what you teach or whatever the statistic is. Eli, how would you? I like how you say that they're the best resource because a lot of people think like, well, maybe

I could do this if I get this other person to talk to my kid or if I buy this, that, or book, or if I take a course here.

It's like, well, no, you're the best resource. You're closest, you know your kid better than someone writing a book out there.

You learn the material, contextualize it, and find strategic ways to really use that information and watch episodes like this.

Look for what people have to say and make it your own and contextualize. I think it's very important. One more thing on that too.

Sure. If you're doing family worship times with your kids, and I hope you are, if you're not, please start.

As you're taking your kids through the gospel, pay special attention to those apologetic encounters Jesus has with the

Pharisees, scribes, and Sadducees. Because guess what? Jesus is reasoning with them in a presuppositional way.

Jesus used presuppositional apologetics. I almost feel bad calling it presupp, with regard to the, like, it's the

Lord. Like, whatever he's doing. No, no, he did. We know how you cast out demons. You cast out demons by the power of Beelzebub.

Jesus is like, well, if I cast out demons by the power of Beelzebub, by what power do you cast them out when you do the same thing?

You just got presupped, you know? You got presupped, that's right. That's right. That's awesome.

Kyperion Burian says, I think Oliphant's Covenantal Apologetics is a great book on thinking biblically and theologically.

I agree. I like Oliphant's book. I had Oliphant on the show a while back. It was a really good episode. You guys should check that out.

Jess says, I have two children. I have to teach them about God. Love this episode. Of course, it's very helpful.

Thank you so much for that. Mr. C asks a good question here. When your child encounters a

Muslim, Mormon, Hindu, et cetera, and that child claims that their God is true, how do you teach them to debate the issue of different gods?

Great question. So again, it starts with the foundation of knowing that who is

God? The Lord is God. Is there more than one true

God? Are there any true gods besides the Lord? No. So it really depends on your child's age.

But my kids, again, they're homeschooled. We're just wrapping up our first full year of homeschooling.

God bless my wife. And my kids have learned about pagan religions. They've learned about Greek polytheism.

They've learned about traditional Aztec religion. They've learned about traditional

Chinese religion. And so they're being exposed to it within the context of a

Christian home, Christian family. And the great thing about homeschooling, by the way, just a quick shout out and endorsement of homeschooling, you get to curate your kids' experience.

You get to curate their exposure to these other worldviews. So Mormonism, Islam, Hinduism, and man, when we're talking about Hinduism, there are multiple varieties of Hinduism.

So it's really hard to paint with a broad brush, although I do sometimes work for just speaking in terms of generalities.

But if you're thinking presuppositionally, you'll always know the right questions to ask any variety of Hinduism. And that's exactly it.

What you wanna do is you wanna teach your children to examine worldviews internally. What does that mean?

How do they know, or how do they claim to know? What are the implications of that is another great question. So for example,

Islam is in many ways the best competitor to Christianity. I'm not saying it comes close to the biblical worldview, but I'm saying in terms of right now,

Islam, because it has its own version of theism, monotheism, is in many respects similar to Christianity, at least at the surface level.

And so with Islam, you have to dig, and by the way, they have what they claim to be a revealed book, a revealed holy book.

Which by the way, I'm gonna stop you there. His next statement there was a qualifier as to how not to answer his question, which

I'm very happy because the way you answered his, you're answering his question is not the way he said not to answer it.

So you could respond to Muslims, Hindus, and whatever without quoting the Bible. A presuppositionalist doesn't need to just sit there and quote scripture and say,

I'm right, you're wrong. That would be a very superficial understanding of a presuppositional approach. But when he says those kids have their books as well, apart from Islam, all of the other books you refer to either piggyback the

Bible. And so they're very open to criticisms and inconsistencies there. Other non -monotheistic religions don't have the same sort of revelation as the

Bible claims for itself. So to say that they have their books as well as though those books are making similar claims, that's actually not the case.

But go ahead. And I think that's very important. The biblical worldview is the only one that even claims to have anything like the

God that we have. It's not like there's another, see, here's the thing, for this universe to make sense, to make sense of the universe, maybe we should say, biblical

Christianity in which God is triune, so the primary metaphysic, the base of all reality, the one behind it all, if I'm explaining to a kid like God who created everything, the fact that he's triune is the only game in town.

Islam has a conception of God that is, you might think, well, it's pretty close because there's one

God, but he's just not triune. In fact, Muslims say that even makes it better because it's simpler. Look, the fact that God is not triune presents huge problems for accounting for the existence of logic, the existence of unity and diversity, identity and differentiation, fact and law.

The Muslim God does not even come, the more I study this, the more I'm just impressed with this fact, the

Muslim God does not even come close to accounting for human experience, the nature of the cosmos.

It doesn't correspond with reality, and it doesn't explain the laws of thought and the laws of language that we need to be there in order to make sense of reality.

And then there's the question of could a monad, a unitarian conception of God even communicate with his creatures?

Could he love his creatures without that attribute of love being depended in some way upon his creatures, unlike the triune

God where the Bible says God is love? So you're not gonna sit there and just quote the

Bible, but you better know the Bible. You better know what the Bible does teach, and you better be able to, as Eli, as you articulated very well, you better know how to ask the right questions of any worldview, because you know what?

If I'm talking to your typical, I guess, mainstream

Sunni Muslim, the answers that he gives and the way he gives his answers, and even the authoritative text and tradition that he's gonna accept is gonna be vastly different than like an

Ahmadi Muslim. Ahmadi Muslims aren't even counted as Muslims by Sunnis.

They view Ahmadis as we view Jehovah's Witnesses. So you need to really take your apologetic down to the personal level and find out what does this person actually believe.

Eli, my computer is about to die. If it does, I will jump on a different computer, okay? So I'll be back, but my sound quality and picture might not be as good, but I just wanna let you know that.

That's okay. We'll just keep moving along. There are some really good questions coming in, and I do wanna address them. Why don't you take the next one?

I know we're going. Yeah. Okay, good. A wise man sees trouble coming and prepares for it, but a fool keeps going and is punished, according to Proverbs.

So I'm gonna see trouble coming right now and prepare for it. I'm gonna go switch computers, so I'll be right back. Yeah, all right, very good.

All right, so the Christian Worldview Project asks, if unbelievers already know that God exists, what level of knowledge does an unbeliever really have about this

God that we are defending? Yeah, the level of knowledge is described in Romans chapter one, right?

What can be known about God is made known to them through what has been made. His eternal power, his invisible attributes, things like that.

It's a limited knowledge, but it is a sufficient knowledge for their condemnation. So now, if you wanna get into the specifics, does the unbeliever know the

Trinity and things like that? I know that's a more complicated and technical answer, but just from a very simplistic way of addressing the question, they have a sufficient level of knowledge for their condemnation.

So that's what I would say with respect to kind of the level of knowledge. You don't wanna get into some of the specifics because the

Bible is just letting us know that man has a sufficient knowledge for the condemnation. It doesn't give us all of the metaphysical ingredients as to what that is.

And there are ways to expose the fact that they know God by using a presuppositional approach. I think a presuppositional approach does very well to show the knowledge of God that the unbeliever is suppressing, as Romans chapter one says.

Mr. C asked the question, aren't you simply teaching your children what to believe? No, when you teach, well, yes and no.

When you teach someone how to think, that is intimately connected to the what.

You cannot speak of the how without also simultaneously speaking of the what, right?

So the what, the content, and the how, the method, they are not disjointed and disconnected.

They must be together, otherwise it'd be meaningless. If I were to say how to think, think about what, you might have to fill in the what no matter what.

Sorry to say what so many times. So yeah, we teach our kids what to believe, but it's not a simple dogmatic assertion.

We also teach our children how to think about those things, why we believe them, right?

Why we don't believe other things, right? So it's not just a either or a situation here. When we're teaching our children and wanna do so in a holistic fashion, employing all the different items of human experience and how we think about them and how we're consistent with our foundations, why our foundations are true, why anyone who holds to a different foundation has problems, we explore that as we interact with other worldly perspectives, right?

So there are different ways you can go about doing that. All right, so here Mr. C goes on.

Shouldn't we teach our kids how to believe things rather than simply what to believe?

Well, again, you're gonna have to have a what even before. You don't just tell someone how to believe something independently of them already believing content, right?

And that content, some they just know innately and others you have to teach them. So you cannot divorce the what from the how, all right?

Okay, let's see here. Let's see here, moving down here.

Let's see, Blake Isaac asks, are you saying without scripture you couldn't know there is a

God? Well, without scripture, since scripture forms really the basis for our metaphysic epistemology and ethic, our worldview foundation, without the biblical worldview you couldn't make sense out of anything.

Without God's revelation, you couldn't make sense out of anything. Again, people can make knowledge claims, but then what is the justification for those knowledge claims?

And we'd have to ask kind of those more deeper and fundamental questions. Now, yes, I understand that there was a time before the

Bible existed, but there was never a time according to the Christian worldview in which revelation never existed.

Natural and special revelation always existed and always provided a context for interpretation.

It just so happens that when God's revelation is codified progressively through written revelation, we have a more fleshed out revelatory context out of which we can make sense out of our worldview and things like that.

All right, good question. Let's see here. Okay, I like that.

Vipers and diapers, that's a good one. I guess a totally depraved baby. That's a good one here.

All right, let's continue down. And I believe,

I believe those were the last questions. Okay, sorry if I went through that rather quickly.

We are coming up on two hours here. So especially that one with, what's that one question was really good.

Yeah, meh, meh, meh, meh, was the question, are we saying, are we saying, what was that question here?

Okay, so this question - we couldn't know that. Yeah, that's a good question and perhaps deserves more attention.

But I guess I would reiterate what I said, that there's never a time in history according to the biblical worldview in which there was no special revelation.

Special revelation and natural revelation always existed. It just so happens that the Bible is the written manifestation and more clarified, more detailed, revelatory knowledge that's given to us by God.

So yeah, you do need revelation within our perspective. I would say from a presuppositional perspective, we would hold to what is called a revelational epistemology, right?

And so yeah, that question is a good question and perhaps deserves more detail and more time to explain, but -

Can I jump in on that really quickly? Yeah, absolutely. Go ahead, go ahead. So the question has to do with, do you need scripture to know that there is a

God? Not according to scripture, which would be another way of saying no, because according to the biblical worldview, and I think that,

I mean, I know that this is, hold on, let me rewind a little bit. I'm just getting back on to stream here and I'm on my wife's computer.

Things look a little differently right now. It looks good, you're fine. Okay, okay, praise God. Well, so no, so God's eternal,

God's invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen ever since the creation of the world, having been revealed in the things that have been made.

So Blake, what that means is this, the creation itself testifies to you, me, and everybody else, completely even in the absence of special revelation, inscripturated revelation or prophecy, that not only that God is there, but that the specific

God who is there is there. So not just that there is a God, but that the

God whose divine nature is, as the Bible says he is, and the

God who has the specific eternal power and has it eternally that the

Bible says is there, is there. And so while that knowledge is enough for culpability, it's enough to condemn because we know enough, and look, if I'm gonna fill in some of the gaps in that statement, if I'm gonna sort of flesh that out,

I guess we could say maybe, I don't wanna play with those gaps, but if I could maybe flesh that out a little bit, it might be a little bit more theologically safe way to put it.

What do we know based on the things that have been made? What can we know about God, his eternal power and divine nature?

Well, we know something about morality, don't we? We know something about mathematics, don't we? We know something about logic, don't we?

We know something about the intelligibility of the cosmos and the possibility of scientific inquiry and other forms of inquiry.

We know something about love. We experience a form of love in our families and our relationships and our friendships.

We know something about beauty and truth and goodness. And so God's eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen in all societies, in all cultures, although, so again, ask yourself this, based on what non -believers, and I don't know if you consider yourself one or not, but based on what non -believers know, even the limited knowledge that they have about God's nature and God's power, and we might say about their obligations, does anyone actually live up to what even they would say they ought to live up to?

Does anyone even live up to their own ethical standards, moral standards? Like there's this idea that everyone has that we ought to act a certain way.

I ought to do certain things. I ought to wake up earlier. I ought to treat people with more kindness. I ought to serve people more.

I ought to be less selfish. I ought to lie less, get drunk less. Whatever your thing is, whether it's big or small, you don't live up to your own standard, neither do

I. The question is, how is there this standard that we all have that stands over and against us and even accuses us?

You ever think about why? How could that be? If morality is just this internal thing, why don't I live up to this standard?

Why do I feel like there's a standard over against me? Why when I lie do I feel that twinge in my conscience?

I shouldn't have said that. Why, based on what? Why is it wrong to lie? See, God's eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen in the creation of the world.

It's ingrained in the fabric of the world. I don't need the Bible to see that, but the Bible sure does explain why it's the case.

So it's not enough that the knowledge that we have of God is not enough to save us.

It's only enough to sin against it, to make us guilty when we sin. So on judgment day, no one's gonna be able to stand before God and go, oh, sorry,

I didn't have a Bible. I didn't know you existed. God's gonna go, oh, well, it was a toss -up, really. The world did seem pretty neutral, didn't it?

No, God's gonna go, look at all the information I gave you. Look at the way you said other people should act, and then you didn't live up to your own standard.

Do you think you lived up to mine? Or did you really think that you were the ultimate standard of goodness, truth, and beauty?

Come on, you didn't believe that. God's not gonna speak to us like that, right? But he could. And so no, we don't need a

Bible to know about God's eternal power and divine nature, but we do need a Bible to reveal how we can be saved for violating

God's eternal power and divine nature. That is where the gospel comes in. I keep coming back to the gospel because it's the most important thing anyone can know.

Very good, thank you for that. Now let's take this last question here. I think this is appropriate for our topic. Jess asks, study plans with kids.

I've been doing parables. Any tips? Love it. Jess, that's awesome.

Absolutely, study the Bible with your kids. Let me tell you what I do, not because this is the way that everyone used to do it, but because it works for us,

I think it's a good way of doing it. Okay, here's what we do. Three or four years ago, our kids' ministry at our old church challenged us to read through the gospel of John.

It was like over the summer, the course of the summer. Well, we did it, I'll say this.

I don't know how many families did it, but we ended up doing it, reading through the entire gospel of John. What we do is this. We would read like maybe a chapter a night, but oftentimes just one pericope.

If you don't know what a pericope is, it's those little sections in the Bible that have little headings that, you know, the heading's not really there in the original text, but it kind of makes it easier to understand what's going on.

So we'll read one of those sections or else we'll read a chapter or a few of those little sections, and then we'll talk about it.

And what do we talk about? Well, it depends on where we're reading in the Bible, but we'll talk about it, we'll discuss it.

And if you want to know what we talk about, I'm happy to tell you about that. But we read, that summer we read

John, and then I think we went to Matthew after that and probably Mark and probably Luke after that. But now what we do is we just read through the

Bible. So several months back, let's say nine months ago, something like that, we started in Joshua.

And the reason why I wanted to start in Joshua is because I wanted to read the part of the Bible that was the most similar to Lord of the

Rings or Narnia. Like, where's the action, man? Like, where are the battles? So we started in Joshua, and I figured we'll just keep reading.

So we read Joshua, then we read Judges. A lot of good stuff in Judges. Then we read

Ruth, and that was nice for the ladies. The girls like Ruth. The boys need to learn to love

Ruth as well. There's a lot of romance in Ruth. And then we did, and so on and so forth. You know where we are now?

We are now in 1 Kings chapter two. David has just died, but you know what?

We would have been further, but we took a hiatus, and we went and read through Matthew because it was Christmas. So we spent Christmas through Easter reading through Matthew.

And just so happened, God worked it out perfectly, that we pretty much ended Matthew. We got to the crucifixion right about at Good Friday.

We got to the resurrection right about at Easter. God just worked it out that way. But here's, and then we went back to 1

Kings. Here's my point, Jess. Sorry, this is a long -winded way of answering this because I get excited about this.

Okay. Is read the Bible one section at a time, and talk about it with your kids.

What's going on here? Who can summarize the story for us kids? How does this point to Jesus? And Jess, you're going to be amazed at how

God just makes his word come alive, not only for the kids, but for you as well. And man, you want to talk about teaching your kids apologetics?

Teach them the word. Teach them the word. Teach them what it is they're going to be out there defending. Not defending a bunch of propositions.

They're defending God's word, the truth of God's word, the truth of the biblical worldview. So man, just proud.

You said you've been doing parables. That's great. What I would suggest, do whole gospels. See the parables in their gospel narrative context.

So like when Jesus says the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and Jesus makes that statement, he goes, even if someone were to rise from the dead, if they don't believe in Moses and the prophets, they still wouldn't believe even if someone rose from the dead.

Which by the way, Eli, great presuppositional statement there, right? They don't believe the Bible, they won't believe the resurrection.

That's right. But read that, and then take that on to the end of the story where you actually see

Jesus rising from the dead and see how people reacted to it. So you see, then you get the parable, then you get the actual, the experience of seeing

Jesus' words coming true before your very eyes. So if you're reading in Luke, for example,

Luke's got a lot of parables, read the whole gospel of Luke. And see if God blesses it, I think you will. Well, Eli, what would you say?

Yeah, well, I mean, it's really what we were getting at before. And you have to understand, how do you teach presupp to the kids?

I mean, presupp is more than just apologetics. When we were saying something about that it's teaching you how to think, it's not simply teaching you how to think about defending the faith, it's teaching you how to think as a

Christian, bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. So presuppositional apologetics is not simply something we do to unbelievers, defending the faith, it's something that spills over into everything that we do, bringing every thought captive.

Our thoughts can affect how we act, everything that we do, everything that we say needs to be governed by the

Lordship of Jesus Christ, which apologetics is just one branch of that. It's applying what you should be doing in the

Christian life in general to a specialized area of our interactions with unbelievers.

So the beauty of the presuppositional approach is that in learning how to do it, it will force you to know the scriptures, it will force you to confront

Christ in the word of God and remind you ad nauseum of the importance of his

Lordship over your life, over your thinking. So we don't just apply presuppositional apologetics to the unbelievers, we apply that kind of thinking to everything.

And you know what? When we apply it to how we live, that's actually part of the apologetic as well, isn't it?

It's not simply my ability to formulate an argument, a transcendental critique against the unbeliever's position because sometimes we can provide very powerful arguments yet the character of our lives actually shoots our entire presentation in the foot because people tend to think of the character of the person giving the argument, not just the argument that's being given.

So you wanna understand presuppositional apologetics is a small part of a broader, more holistic way of living the

Christian life. And I think that's very, very important to keep in mind. Well, let's conclude there, okay?

I'm glad we went two hours. Someone might look at that and be like, that's really long. But you know, if people are messaging me saying, hey,

I wish we had more information about this specific topic, you have two hours. That's right, go for a run, go for a drive, listen to this discussion and draw some helpful principles out of it and apply it to your lives.

I love Bonson, I love Van Til, I love Frame, I love some of the classical works as well, but you know what?

It sounds overly Christian and cliche, but I'm gonna say it. The best book in apologetics is the

Bible, right? Most of the criticisms against the

Christian faith, whether it's from the atheist, the Muslim, the Mormon, most of them are based upon misunderstandings of scripture.

So don't think that in order to interact with the atheist, for example, you need to learn all this science and philosophy, that's all important.

But really the best defense is knowing what you believe and why. And being able to make the corrections, to point people to the truth, you know, bring the law of God to bear upon them, right?

These are all important elements. And the Bible really is that foundation as Joel was speaking about before, laying that foundation.

And that foundation is not some vague, ambiguous abstraction. It is the propositional content of God's word.

And so you wanna be a good biblical presuppositional apologist? Sure, you wanna read

Bonson, you wanna read Van Til, I encourage you to do so because there's treasure trove of information there.

But even they will tell you that you need to get back to the scriptures, okay?

So with that said, I think this is a good place to conclude. I would love to have

Joel on again to talk about another topic of apologetic significance or maybe evangelism or something like that.

Just listening to you talk, you have a very evangelistic tone and evangelistic feel to how you go about things.

And I think that is a good balance to what sometimes we can kind of just throw the intellectual side out, right?

Not that I wanna kind of dichotomize intellect and evangelism, but you know what I mean. We tend to focus on the specifics of the philosophy and the argumentation.

I like how you draw together that evangelistic heart behind it as well. So I think that's very important when we're doing apologetics.

All right, well, would you like to say anything as we close out here, Joel? Yeah, Eli, I really appreciate this opportunity, man.

This has been just, from my perspective, a wonderful conversation. I've really enjoyed it.

I really appreciate the work you're doing, brother. And I guess what I'd like to say is if anyone has heard what we've talked about tonight, if you wanna get a resource, and Eli, I hope you're okay with me -

Absolutely. Can I talk about my ministry for like 30 seconds? Of course, go for it. To explain who I am? Okay, so I did write a catechism.

It's called Catechids, C -A -T -E -C -H -I -D -S, exclamation point,

Catechids. And it is 100 questions and answers to teach your kids the basics of the

Christian faith. And each question is supported by scripture. I think there's one or two that don't have any verses below.

But the tool, the book has been helpful to a lot of Christians.

And I've just been floored at how many believers are using this with their kids. I mean, I wrote it originally for my kids and God's just blessed it well beyond our family.

All his grace. If you wanna get that, you can go to thethink .institute slash catechids, thethink .institute

slash catechids. You can get a free PDF of that on my website, or you can also get it on Amazon for about five bucks.

So pretty good. I also wanna say my wife and I are support raising missionaries.

We'd love to be your missionaries. If you're looking for a family to support, missionaries to support and pray for, you can go to give .crew

.org slash 1 -0 -1 -8 -8 -4 -1. 1 -0 -1 -8 -8 -4 -1 is our giving number.

We are support raising missionaries through crew. The think institute is funded by like -minded individuals.

And we're incredibly blessed to have the partners that we do. We're always looking to get that out there in case people are looking for opportunities to give.

If nothing else, please do be praying for my wife, Alisa, and me and our family. And then one more thing, that is you can catch all of our podcasts, blog articles.

We've got a number of different shows on our podcast network, thethinkinstitute .net. Joel, let me interrupt you real quick. Someone's asking for, maybe you can put a link in the comments to resources.

Might as well, yeah, try doing that. I think Living Waters is asking for a link. Air Church is asking for a link here.

So folks are, I don't know what happened. He just, maybe he got raptured. I'm sure he'll come back.

Again, I hope you guys are finding this useful. This is so important.

I mean, raising up a child in the way that they should go, instructing them in a biblical foundation, teaching them to think in biblical categories is in a sense, not just training them to be good

Christian apologists, but also teaching them to be holistic Christians, Christians that are able to see the world through the revelation of God, to see this entire reality from the perspective of divine revelation, and that we can trust what

God's word says and use it in practical ways in our lives to honor Him in what we do and what we say and how we conduct our lives.

So this is very, very important information. Hopefully you guys get connected with Joel's content.

If you have not already, subscribe to his YouTube channel as well. I really appreciate you guys listening to my channel and I'm definitely wanting the content to grow and get circulated, but definitely check out

Joel's channel as well. He's got a lot of great resources, teachings and interviews and things like that.

So let me put him back on real quick. And there we go. You made it back. We thought you got raptured, which is not good because then

I got left behind. What's up? Yeah, well, biblically speaking, you don't wanna be the one left behind. Or no, no, you do wanna be the one left behind.

That's right, that's right, that's right. Okay, so Eli, I went ahead and put a link to the catechism in the chat.

If you can comment it, if you wouldn't mind posting that. I'll also put a couple more links just because I'm on my wife's computer and StreamYard's not recognizing me right now.

So I'll give you some links. I got it right here. I'm gonna put it right now. Let's see.

My YouTube channel in there. There we go. And there we go.

I'm happy people are interested in the content. That's good. Yeah, I really, really appreciate the interest.

All right, let me give you one more here. Sure. So this last one I'm putting in, this is our giving link.

And I hate to be that guy, but I really don't hate to be that guy because I think we give to a lot of ministries and it's a blessing and people are blessed to partner with us.

And so there's obviously no obligation, but if somebody wants to do that and wants to learn more. Oh, let me give you my email too.

Hey, listen, we need to get the content out there. And a lot of this requires support.

I mean, I remember debating an atheist. I don't remember which atheist it was. He's probably on my channel.

You can watch. I have a couple of debates on there. Before we actually went live,

I was talking to the guy and I was like, okay, so what do you do for a living? And the guy's like, I do this. I'm like, wait a minute.

So you kind of just like full -time, you sit behind a computer and try to refute Christianity and religion. He's like, yeah.

I was like, you know, he gets paid by supporters and things like that. Not that this is about making money and things like that, but it's very interesting to see that a lot of unbelievers have very strong support that people are willing to pay a guy to sit on behind his computer screen and engage religious believers and try to destroy their faith.

So it is a helpful thing to support Christian apologists in ministry on YouTube, right?

And I have no shame about saying that. Just as we were speaking, someone was generous and gave a financial contribution.

Everything, all those things help. Help us do what we're doing more effectively. And it's definitely appreciated and it's needed.

Whether it's this ministry, Joel's ministry, or some other ministry that you think is doing good work, you should support, of course, supporting your church first and foremost, but definitely trying to support people who are trying to get the gospel out on the interwebs, so to speak.

So did you send me one more link there or? You know what? I'm trying to, let me just,

I'll just give this one verbally. If somebody wants, I do in -church trainings and we've got a number of study cohorts and things like that.

But if you, I'll speak at retreats, conferences. I've got a conference coming up soon.

But if you're interested in booking me to come and speak, I can speak on worldview, evangelism, apologetics issues, or if there's a particular issue you want me to speak about, or I, let me just say this.

I love speaking at kids ministry events, retreats, things like that.

It is a blast. There is nothing like it. So if you've got a kids ministry and you're looking for someone to come and speak at your next like overnight or retreat,

I'm a lot more fun and zany with the kiddos than I am when I'm talking pre -sup and in the thick of it with my atheist interlocutors.

So if you are interested in that, you can contact me through the website or email me and I'd love to talk with you about that.

But we have a lot of fun with what we do and I appreciate everyone watching.

And Eli, man, it is such a blessing to talk to you, man. Really, really appreciate it. Absolutely. It was a blessing to have you on.

And also folks, I really encourage you guys to check out Joel's content, his interviews and discussions, and also put myself out there as well.

I'm also a traveling speaker and apologist. I have scheduled a conference. I'll be sharing the platform with Dr.

Robert Bowman and Anthony Rogers, an apologetic conference in Virginia.

That'll be in October. So I'll definitely keep people posted for that. And so we very much appreciate all those who really waited out two hours and 10 minutes.

Hopefully this provides enough content for you guys to chew on and hopefully use for the glory of God. Well, that's it for this episode, guys.

Thank you so much. Everyone, believers and unbelievers, we very much appreciate your interaction and respectful interaction.

I'm very grateful of the fact that it's very rare that we have internet trolls and things like that.

Okay. Unbelievers who post their questions, hey, those are welcomed. And hopefully

I've been able to address them from my perspective respectfully, and Joel as well. I'm sure he feels the same way.

We definitely encourage the questions and comments. So thank you so much, guys. Take care. That's all for this live stream.