Presuppositionalist Author Interviews Eli Ayala (Audio Gets fixed at the 2 mins & 20 Sec mark)

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December 17, 2020

Presuppositional apologist Mike Robinson interviews me on various topics such as Van Til, Bahnsen, and many of my non-presuppositional guests.

00:02: All right, well, this is going to be a little different. This is not another episode of Working with Apologetics, but it might as well be.
00:10: Since it is on my YouTube channel and my Facebook page, I'm going to be interviewed by Michael Robinson, who is an author, he's an apologist, and he's written many books at a very popular level, very accessible to folks on presuppositional apologetics applied to various religions, atheism, agnosticism, things like that.
00:29: And he has been so kind to invite me onto his show, but we were having some technical difficulties, so now we are here on my platform, and he is going to be interviewing me on the topic of his choice.
00:43: All right, so without further ado, I'd like to introduce Mike Robinson, and for his purposes, you can introduce me to your audience.
00:51: Fantastic, Eli. It's so good to have you. And for my audience here on Crossing Crown Radio on YouTube and the
00:57: Gospel Truth Podcast, it's so great to have Eli. He's an apologist and theologian, and he's become one of the best apologetic interviewers around.
01:07: I kind of kid and call him the precept Joe Rogan, if you will. Obviously, he doesn't throw all the curse words out, but he's a good interviewer.
01:16: I mean, he's interviewed, as you've probably seen your followers, so many different scholars and apologists and theologians.
01:23: It's great. So, Eli, it's great to have you back again. How's life? It's been very busy, but it's been super good.
01:41: Ask the people if it's just you or me and you on the audio.
01:46: All right. Your audio is really bad. It's my audio, so let me try doing this.
01:52: How about now? Does that sound a little better? No, it still sounds real grainy. OK, so let me try one more.
02:06: I can't hear you now. It's silent on your end. Still silent.
02:16: I'll let you know when I can. How about now? Perfect. Much better? Much better.
02:22: OK, it's probably because of the headphones that I had on. All right. Do you mind if we start the whole show over or is that a hassle?
02:28: Well, we can start here, and I can send you the video, and you can edit it on your end and just remove this part if you'd like.
02:37: OK, yeah, we'll just continue then. So we don't have to do any of the intro.
02:42: So you said, I asked you, how's life? I don't know if our audience quite heard that yet. Yeah, things have been very busy.
02:50: As folks know, I'm also a middle school, high school teacher. I'm a youth director, and I do
02:56: YouTube. So it takes a lot of time and, of course, preparation. So things have been a little busy, but they've been good.
03:03: I'm actually writing a book called The Precept Answered Book, in which
03:09: I'm going to just – actually, you mentioned Hank Hanegraaff not that long ago. It's actually the book that I'm writing is inspired by his
03:18: Bible answer book. And so what I wanted to do was take common questions on presuppositional apologetics and provide an almost devotions -length answer so that it's a nice lesson tool for someone to say, hey, how do
03:30: I respond to that objection, that presuppositional methodology circular? And then it will just have like a devotions -length response to that.
03:37: I'm also working on an online school where people can sign up and learn presuppositional apologetic methodology where I'll be the instructor.
03:45: People can sign up and have access to a video series where I unpack some of this stuff in a way that's easy for folks to understand and apply.
03:54: And that's going to be on the platform of my upcoming website, which we are currently in the process of hopefully launching maybe within a month or so.
04:03: So all of that is in the works, so things have been really busy. Wow. It sounds like you're super busy.
04:09: That's great. You must have a jet pack on. Make sure you – if you have time, you may not, but alert me when you're breaking out in some of those areas, and I'll bring you on and we can let everybody know about the website and all the other wonderful things that you're doing, especially the book.
04:27: The book sounds like a fantastic idea, so I'll be praying for you that that goes forward really well.
04:34: I appreciate it. You mentioned you're a schoolteacher, of course. How's the lockdown affecting your area and your school over there?
04:42: Well, things have been really inconsistent. When someone has COVID and there's some connection with being in the school or someone in the school has it or whatever, we all go home and we teach online.
04:56: So it's been like a flip -flop back and forth from teaching in person and teaching online. So we had like a week and a half off.
05:03: We came back one day and someone in the school somewhere had it, so they sent us back home again, and that happened twice.
05:09: And then now this week we've been in person for three days, but now we have a blizzard. So now we're back home, and then tomorrow is the last day until the
05:17: Christmas vacation. So it's been a little hectic, but we're making the best of it, and hopefully we'll survive this year.
05:26: Wow. Now, you are one of the people that my channel followers request the most that I bring back.
05:33: And I think because of a few things, at least by reading their comments and just understanding your ministry, number one, you're really good at breaking down difficult concepts and ideas and ways that help non -specialists and non -scholars understand.
05:47: So that's a wonderful gift, and I know it's also one of your goals. What inspired you to do that, to have that kind of approach?
05:57: Well, I'm very practical in my approach. I mean a lot of people tend to be fooled by all the books in the background, so people can look at me like, oh, you know, he's such a scholarly and studious person.
06:08: I'm like, listen, I have three little kids. I have two jobs, and most of my learning, while I've glanced over many of my books, has been through audio exposure and lectures and things like that because I just don't have the time to sit down and open up a book.
06:23: And so when I read a book, I read with the intention of answering the specific question that I'm bringing to the book.
06:31: I don't have time to learn the ins and outs of Cornelius Mantill's upbringing and the different schools that he went to before.
06:39: I want the nuggets, especially with the presuppositional methodology and the various objections that people pose against it.
06:48: I want to know how do I respond to this objection or how do I understand this or that argument without having to read the entire vast literature on the topic because I just don't have the time.
07:00: And so when I finally get a grasp on what I'm looking for, my goal is to get that information to the average person so they don't have to plow through all of the literature, which if they can, that's great.
07:12: But not everyone has the time to do that. And because that's the case with me, I'm very sympathetic towards that.
07:18: And I'm a teacher, so part of my training is to break down complicated concepts and simplify them.
07:25: And so I try to do that to the best of my ability. Well, presupp is always needed then, and it's really good that you're doing that.
07:31: Now, before we get really deep in the apologetic issues, I have a question, just a quick question on the election and so forth.
07:40: But what do you think about this seemingly false election of Biden and the growing power of the progressives?
07:46: How do you think that's going to affect apologetics? Should apologists and evangelists do something different in the ministry with unbelievers, with this in mind, with the growing power the progressives have?
07:57: Well, I can't really speak to whether this election has had any fraudulent issues behind it, because I haven't been following that aspect of the narrative that's been going on.
08:09: However, when people are in power and certain organizations are able to kind of have a platform to promote certain views that are anti -biblical, then, yeah,
08:19: I think that can pose a challenge in the context of apologetics as certain social agendas are being pushed.
08:26: That's going to require us as Christians to really be able to engage what people are talking about at various levels of society, whether it's at the popular level or if it's at the level of the media and politics and things like that.
08:40: And that's just, that is not something new that Christians are challenged with. I think that apologetics and living a consistent
08:49: Christian worldview perspective requires us to apply public principles to those areas of life.
08:56: And so whether if it was Biden or Trump or whoever is elected, I think the Christian is called to apply the
09:02: Christian worldview consistently in whatever realm we find ourselves in. So it may be a little more challenging in the upcoming years, but given the endurance of the
09:11: Christian faith throughout history, I think the Christian worldview and many Christians who are seeking to honor
09:16: Christ and everything that they do, I think they're quite up to the challenge and we should encourage others to do that challenge as well.
09:23: I agree. Now you got your degree at Liberty University in theology. So how did you discover that?
09:29: I don't know if I've heard this on your videos directly. How did you discover the work of Van Til and Bonson? Yeah, well, my exposure to the presuppositional school of thought is probably similar to a lot of others.
09:42: And that the first time I ever heard of presuppositional apologetics was in the Gordon Stein, Greg Bonson debate in 1985.
09:51: And again, because I was already exposed to the more evidential and classical methodologies, there was something very unique about the presuppositional approach in that it was very much grounded in scripture.
10:03: Now, there was philosophical language in Bonson's presentation to be sure. And there's most definitely philosophical language found in the work of Cornelius Van Til.
10:12: But the principles out of which that language came out of was very firmly grounded in the authority of scripture.
10:20: And I really resonated with that. It was unashamedly a Christian defense. I thought it was fascinating that Bonson sought to defend not some specific item of the
10:30: Christian worldview, but he sought to defend the Christian worldview as a worldview system. And that was another way that I never really thought of, you know, engaging in apologetics in that way.
10:40: So that piqued my interest. And so I began to devour the works of Dr. Bonson.
10:45: And then, of course, by extension, you hear of Van Til and who's this Van Til guy? And, you know,
10:51: I began to read the books written by Van Til and the rest is history, I suppose. Wow.
10:57: I lived in Las Vegas when I first heard about Bonson. And it was 1996.
11:04: He died in December 95. I'd never heard of him at all. I lived in Southern California just down the road from him without obviously knowing him because it's a huge place.
11:13: So now I'm in Las Vegas and a friend turns me on to, like you said, the Bonson -Stein debate.
11:18: And I go, wow, this blew my mind. And he had all these other tapes of Bonson and all of his lectures and stuff.
11:26: So we're just devouring it. We go, we got to go down to his church, right? Now, this is 96. We did not know that he died.
11:33: So when I heard that he died after hearing dozens and dozens of his tapes, it's like, whoa.
11:42: So it hit me in a very personal way because I couldn't go down to his church and see him, which would have only been about five hours away from Las Vegas.
11:50: So that was really interesting for me. But it really brought me, and I'm similar to you in some ways, obviously, in the evidential end of it, that I started as an evidentialist working on college campuses and universities and demonstrating
12:04: Christianity as truth from the evidence. But once I got Bonson, I didn't chuck the evidence, even though I know
12:11: Bonson and Van Til never said to. But a lot of people thought that. And I know you've discussed that on your
12:16: YouTube channel. How does evidence fit in with the system of Van Til and Bonson and some of the other presupp scholars?
12:26: Yeah, this is a very common misunderstanding of the presuppositional methodology, especially when someone comes from the more evidential and classical perspective and they see the value in the presuppositional approach.
12:39: They're kind of torn between this dichotomy of, well, the presuppositional approach seems interesting, and there's some value there.
12:46: But these other arguments that I've become familiar with, arguments like the cosmological argument or the teleological argument or the moral argument, those more traditional proofs that are very popular in the apologetic literature,
12:57: I don't want to give those up because I see value in those as well. And so you have the person kind of torn back and forth.
13:03: You know, it's either or. But in reality, because the Christian worldview is being defended as a worldview system, that everything within the
13:14: Christian system bears witness of the truth of the system as a whole. And so what we would teach as presuppositionalists is that everything is evidence for God.
13:25: And if everything is evidence for God, then we can appeal to anything as evidence for God.
13:32: The difference is that when we appeal to the evidence, we try to avoid two evils, two intellectual evils.
13:41: And this is highlighted in the work of Greg Bonson and Van Til. I'm not sure they refer to it as the twin evils, but I do.
13:50: And this is I think this is what these are the two things that the presuppositionalist who seeks to defend the faith in a way that's consistent with commitment to Christ.
14:00: These are the two things that they want to avoid at all costs. And they want to point out when these things rear their head, both in the unbeliever and most especially in the apologetic methodology of the believer.
14:12: And that is the hidden assumption of neutrality and autonomy.
14:18: Neutrality being that we can talk about facts completely independent of our worldview commitments, and we kind of just follow the facts where they go.
14:26: That's a more neutral approach. You know, it's kind of a nobody knows as of yet mentality.
14:31: And then there is this idea of autonomy, which the word literally means self law.
14:37: And so we are a law unto ourselves. Our reasoning capacity doesn't really rely on the resources of divine revelation, but rather within the ability of the of the belief of the person's mind.
14:48: They can just by pure reason, just reason themselves up to, you know, knowledge acquisition.
14:53: Right. And so we want to avoid that because, number one, it's impossible to actually function in those categories.
15:00: No one is really neutral. And given the fact that everyone's made in the image of God, no one is actually autonomous.
15:07: But when we pretend that we can be neutral or autonomous or and autonomous, then not only do we destroy the strength of our own perspective, but we're actually functioning in mythological categories that no one is neutral.
15:22: No one is autonomous. And so the presupposition list will take the evidence and these various arguments and instead of present them in a way that assumes the possibility of neutrality and autonomy, they'll present them in a more in a way that's more consistent with their broader worldview commitments.
15:39: And so we can formulate a cosmological argument, a teleological argument within the context of a worldview system that doesn't cater to the pretended neutrality and autonomy of the unbeliever.
15:53: That's a fantastic point. And that's what I really got out of it, because I when I got saved, I was 19 years old.
15:59: I was a professional minor league baseball player. My life was perfect. Great family, money, everything
16:05: I wanted. And all of a sudden I walk in the 7 -Eleven store late at night in Van Nuys, California.
16:11: And this long -haired Jesus freak guy comes up to me and says, if you die tonight, would you go to heaven or hell?
16:17: I don't know. I don't care. I just get this Hershey bar and milk. And right there he showed me my sinful nature and gave me the gospel.
16:27: I got saved right at the counter of a 7 -Eleven. So I get saved at 19.
16:32: I'm thinking, wait a minute here. What did I do? And so I'm putting my autonomy in place here, not knowing what you had just said as being true.
16:40: And so I went home. I go, okay, if this thing is true, if there's evidence for it, I'm all in. If it's not, I'm going to do my own thing and have a great life.
16:47: So my dad had a large library. I investigated every single world religion I could come across. I even went to a
16:53: Jewish bookstore and said, I'm about to become a Christian. I'm half Jewish. Give me all the reasons why
16:58: I shouldn't become a Christian. And they couldn't give me anything. They gave me a book called You Take Jesus, I'll Take God.
17:04: I read that. It was very, very weak. And so I remember one night I was surrounded by books, sitting on my floor, surrounded by stacks of towers of books, and thinking and crying out to heaven, wow, there's all this evidence and proof
17:19: I never knew. Right? And so my evidential heart was so pleased, thinking
17:25: I could be the judge and I shouldn't be the judge. But that's how my inclination was, you know, just put all this in.
17:34: But we should never, ever put God in the dark. God is God. And there is no autonomy, like you said.
17:40: And these things are so powerful. And that brings me to the next question. It may just kind of piggyback on what you just said, or maybe you're going a different direction.
17:49: What are some of the most important aspects of Van Til and Bonson's thought that you think? Well, what drew me to them is really their commitment to scripture.
18:01: I mean, a lot of people will argue, you know, well, we can't assume the Bible is true. And there's just something about that that just doesn't sound very
18:10: Christian. I mean, you know, a lot of evidentialists will speak this way. It's like, well, you can't assume the
18:16: Bible because that's the very thing we're trying to prove. And so they'll have something else put in place with regards to their ultimate authority.
18:26: And what drew me to Van Til and Bonson is that the way they presented the
18:31: Christian faith just seems more consistent with what I see in scripture. Now, granted, you don't see the
18:38: Apostle Paul or John or the disciples or Jesus speaking of transcendentals and presuppositions and things like that.
18:47: There is no denying that Bonson and Van Til definitely spoke in philosophical categories that were alien to scripture.
18:54: But that's because, and I appreciate this, that's because Bonson and Van Til were speaking in the context in which they found themselves in.
19:03: Van Til was interacting with, you know, Barthian theology and, you know, idealism.
19:10: And so he spoke in their language, but the soil out of which he spoke was grounded in principles that I think are very much biblical and include the supremacy of God and his revelation, the necessity of God's triunity and how we should consider
19:27: God as the grounding and foundation of our being and knowledge itself. And so I found
19:32: Van Til and Bonson to be very consistent with the scriptural principles in a way that I, you know, sometimes cringe when
19:40: I hear other apologists, you know, not do it that way. So, and I say that respectfully, as you know,
19:45: I've had many guests on my show who aren't presuppositionalists, but I highly respect the work that they've done and are currently doing.
19:52: So that's what drew me to Bonson and Van Til. What do you think, and you've talked to so many scholars recently, what do you think is the main difference between Bonson's thought or approach and Van Til's?
20:08: And then maybe even go into the difference between some of the modern high level scholarship, like a
20:14: James Anderson and Welty and those kinds of guys versus Bonson. So kind of a little bit of evolution of Van Til to Bonson and Bonson to others.
20:24: Yeah. Before I answer that question, I actually see some people asking in the comments that because this is on my platform, they're saying, who's
20:33: Mike Robinson? And I just want to give a 30 second advertisement. Mike Robinson is a presuppositional apologist and author, and he's written many books at the popular level on presuppositional apologetics.
20:47: And this is interesting as it applies to competing religious perspectives. And so you definitely want to check out his books on Amazon.
20:54: I have one in my in my room, not in my office here. I highly recommend Michael Robinson's books, especially if you're just beginning.
21:03: He writes in a very, very easy to follow way. And so I highly recommend his book.
21:08: So that's who Mike Robinson is, if you're wondering who it is. And he's interviewing me on my platform here is because we were having some technical difficulties.
21:17: So I figured going live, folks who follow my channel would appreciate it also. So at any rate, go ahead.
21:23: Your question was, what was the difference between Bonson and Van Til? Yeah. And then because of all the scholars that you've interviewed recently, them and Bonson.
21:35: Yeah. Well, I think Van Til is in a very interesting way.
21:41: When he was around, he was in a sense ahead of his time because of the things that he addressed.
21:46: But at the same time, I think Van Til, unlike Bonson, can sometimes seem as though he's frozen in time.
21:54: And so that when you read Van Til's work, you're sort of wondering, well, who is he talking to?
22:00: I mean, like you don't recognize unless you have a good grasp on the history of modern philosophy, like the idealist and the
22:10: Barthians that he was interacting with, unless you have a knowledge of that kind of period in philosophical history, you're not really sure who he's addressing.
22:20: And so it's very difficult to see how Van Til applies his very interesting apologetic to the kind of like current and contemporary scene.
22:29: So on the one hand, you can learn about his argumentation. And I would highly recommend that people read
22:35: Van Til to learn what he's saying. But then once you read Van Til, it becomes much harder to apply it to say like the new atheists or, you know, the people you find on the
22:46: Internet. And that's where Bonson is super helpful. Bonson wasn't working in ministry when the
22:53: Internet was around, but he was so practical and so knowledgeable in the work of Van Til and such an astute philosopher and an excellent teacher that he was able to take the difficulties of Van Til and solidify the key nuggets and convey that to the average person.
23:12: And so this is what we're missing today in the presuppositional realm today.
23:17: We have scholars that write books and they're really great and we can follow along.
23:22: But there's not many people who have both feet, both in academia and popular culture, in the same way that Bonson had.
23:29: And so there's kind of something that we're missing when we're reading other presuppositionalists who are excellent, but not many people doing debates as Bonson did.
23:38: And so it's hard to see the practical application of a lot of what Van Til was saying. Also, I would say that when you take
23:46: Van Til and Bonson, what you see lacking in both of them, which I think was developed more in more contemporary presuppositionalists, is an expectation of the philosophical issue of the one in the many.
24:00: And so it's mentioned to what people are saying they're having some audio issues.
24:07: I'm not sure. Let me see if I can fix something here. I don't want people to feel as though, well,
24:14: I'm using my microphone here. You sound good from my perspective. Not perfect, but pretty good.
24:20: OK, yeah, I'm not really sure what's happening. Echo cancellation is on. OK, well, I'm not sure.
24:26: So I'm going to I'll try to speak lower. Maybe if I'm speaking out loud, switching back and forth, understandable and not.
24:32: Hmm. Not sure what's happening there. I've never had that problem using this before. Try plugging in headphones.
24:39: Well, I was using headphones and that's the issue there. So let me see if I go on my
24:45: YouTube channel and see how the audio sounds. Give me like 10 seconds. Sorry, it seems helpful.
24:52: People helpful in the comments. They let you know, you know. Well, he's doing that. I'll plug his
24:57: YouTube channel again. Revealed apologetics. The great thing about Eli's channel is he's got dozens and dozens and dozens of videos on interviews with scholars, with his own teaching also, as well as some debates.
25:14: And so I would really encourage you. I get in my hot tub and I just turn them on and just sit there and bask and listen to his latest interview.
25:24: That's a first. That sounds like I turn my hot tub so hot because it's very good for you.
25:32: I won't get in the physiology of that, but it's really, really good for you if it's really, really hot, but it's uncomfortable. So to be able to sit in there,
25:39: I need something to focus on. Right, right. That's funny. Hot tub apologetics would be a great podcast.
25:49: Hot tub apologetics. That's really catchy. Maybe there's something to it.
25:57: You know, I don't know how your audio is going, but I have this book that might be interesting to a lot of our viewers, not because of the book title and what's in it, although that is too.
26:08: And I'm sure a lot of our audience has this book, probably in a different format. But notice the early format I have it in.
26:14: It's called Christian Theistic Evidences by Van Til. People say, oh, Van Til is against evidence. Well, here you go.
26:19: But that's not the main thing because most of our audience probably knows that. But Gordon Lewis, it's his copy.
26:26: I don't know if you can see that. A guy who came against Van Til because Van Til didn't believe in evidence.
26:35: Maybe he changed his view after he read this, actually got his copy on Amazon. I didn't know it when
26:41: I bought it was his copy. And I opened it up. I go, wow, here's a guy who says Van Til doesn't ever use evidence.
26:48: He's against evidence. And he actually read the book. Nice. Very good. That objection constantly is put out there.
26:59: Now, another interesting thing is that Van Til and Bonson, while they didn't reject evidence, they didn't really expound too much as to what that would look like.
27:10: They would say that we don't reject it and they would explain why. But we don't see a lot of examples.
27:17: Now, I met up with John Frame some years back in his office when he was working.
27:22: So it's been a couple of years. It's been some years. And we spoke for a couple of minutes. And he told me that prior to Bonson's death, he actually was interested in working on a book that kind of put this issue of presuppositional methodology together with evidence and give various examples that I guess he never had the opportunity to work on.
27:44: But that would have been an interesting book. But there are others like Tom Notaro, who wrote a book on Van Til and Christian evidences.
27:53: And as I said before, that Van Til and Bonson didn't really hash out a lot of this whole issue with how the
27:59: Trinity solves the philosophical problem of the one and the many. I want to know this is a difficult read, but it's an example of a young apologist, theologian, pastor who moves
28:11: Van Til's thought on this issue forward. Now, it's a difficult read, but if people can put the work into it,
28:17: I think it's super helpful. His name is Brant Bacherman. And Brant Bacherman wrote
28:23: The Vindication of Christian Paradox. I think that's what it's called. And he addresses this issue of why
28:31: God, in order to ground intelligible experience and knowledge, why God must be a trinity.
28:37: And he goes into the issue of why he can't be a bininity, one being two persons, or a quadrinity.
28:45: And it's very interesting. He's got charts and graphs and explains it very well. And so I highly recommend people check out that book.
28:52: But that's an example of someone who pushes Van Til and Bonson's thought forward.
28:58: See, Bonson — And you had him on your show too, correct? I did, and we had a two -hour interview. It was a two -hour interview.
29:05: It's long, but it is one of my favorite interviews. But if you take a look at Bonson, Bonson was an analytic philosopher who placed great emphasis on epistemology.
29:15: And so the value of Bonson that you're not going to get from other people is that he focuses on those important epistemological questions.
29:23: How does the unbeliever justify knowledge claims? And he explains how the
29:28: Christian justifies knowledge claims. And so there's a great emphasis on the epistemological side of apologetics that we really get a robust presentation of in Greg Bonson.
29:38: Whereas someone like Bosserman focuses on the issue of the Trinity, or someone like Scott Oliphant, who really tries to recapture the presuppositional methodology within the language of Scripture.
29:51: And so he speaks and emphasizes the importance of covenant, you see. And so all of these people kind of put together,
29:59: I think, help move forward what Van Til was trying to get at. And I think that's very important because apologists on the internet who are engaging in kind of that popularized interaction, we need to learn to move away from many of the presuppositional quips.
30:16: The kind of the, you know, all men know that God exists and you're just suppressing the truth.
30:22: Well, that's true, but you can't just establish it by simply saying it. We need to learn with gentleness and respect to explain to the unbeliever within the context of our interactions, our conversations, our debates, why that's the case.
30:36: And so while it's true that the presuppositional approach does not require the believer to be an expert in the field he's critiquing, because of the nature of the method, you don't have to be, they're just key questions you can focus on, that shouldn't replace our desire to really learn what the unbeliever is saying so that we could really address them where they're at and apply our presuppositional argumentation or biblical argumentation to those specifics.
31:04: So I think that's something that all of us can work a little better at as we seek to move forward what
31:09: I think Greg Bonson and Van Til kind of provided for us a very strong foundation for. Yes, and I agree, and I'll give a shameless plug only because what you said so important about giving the evidence and stuff,
31:21: I've written a lot of books on that subject, including Science Requires God, get that on Amazon as well as God Does Exist.
31:29: And then I wrote a book called Fake Atheism, which, you know, tries to demonstrate
31:34: Romans 1 and applies it. But those are important subjects that have to be, like you said, not just a slogan, and then okay,
31:42: I'm done. But engaging the people in a conversation, listening, maybe more than you're even speaking.
31:49: You're really good at that, I've noticed. And trying to be respectful, like Scripture tells us.
31:55: Obviously, some people have to be, you have to be bold to them and maybe even robust in your response. But most of the time, it's just a matter of being humble and patient and listening and then giving them the law and the gospel and then giving them proper apologetics.
32:09: But what is, in your opinion, a really good proof for the existence of God?
32:15: We know the tag can come in many different forms and in different ways of applying it. What would you say to the audience, a good way of saying that, say just to an atheist?
32:25: He's kind of a nice atheist, if you will, but he basically says, you know what, there's no proof for God.
32:33: Yeah, well, with regards to our emphasis in the apologetic encounter, because it's going to depend on who we're speaking with,
32:40: I'm reminded of when I had Pastor Doug Wilson on my show. And he kind of spoke about how
32:46: C .S. Lewis was often very presuppositional in his approach. And he said something very funny that I thought was useful for practical purposes.
32:55: Because, you know, we think as presuppositionists, I have to argue in this way and I have to make sure I have to say this and that.
33:01: And you start mentioning transcendentals and, you know, indirect and direct proofs. And people are like,
33:07: I don't even know what you're talking about. Pastor Doug Wilson said that when
33:13: C .S. Lewis was speaking to nice atheists, he was an evidentialist. Well, I mean, there's evidence for God in the created order.
33:21: You know, look at, you know, if you wanted to use a cosmological argument, you know, you can look at the historical evidence for the resurrection and say, what do you do with this?
33:29: But when you're talking to the atheist who's not behaving nice, then C .S. Lewis was a presuppositionalist.
33:35: Well, well, given your perspective, you can't make sense out of morality. You can't make sense out of logic and things like that.
33:42: So depending on who you're speaking with, the issue is not always whipping out a transcendental argument.
33:49: We speak about specific evidences and specific arguments. As long as when we're doing it, the background music of our lives, our thinking, is always keeping in mind the place in which that argument or specific fact we're appealing to fits within our broader system.
34:08: And so we're always keeping our antennas up and our warning antennas, so to speak, when we're engaging an argumentation that is assuming that neutrality that we want to avoid or that autonomy that we want to avoid.
34:22: So I'll talk about historical evidence. I'll say, you know, I've had Dr. Gary Habermas on and he spoke about the minimal facts.
34:29: I don't have a problem as a presuppositionalist using minimal facts, as long as it's not presented in a way that assumes that, say, for example, historical studies could be understood independent of a
34:40: Christian worldview. As a matter of fact, the funny story, when I interviewed Dr. Habermas, he said that he actually knew
34:48: Dr. Bonson, they were friends, and he ran his minimal facts by Dr. Bonson. And Dr.
34:53: Bonson, after listening to it, Dr. Bonson said, and this is something Dr. Bonson would say, Bonson said, oh, no, no, no, that's not an evidential argument, that's a presuppositional argument.
35:05: And Gary Habermas was like, well, what do you mean? You know, I'm appealing to evidences here. He's like, no, no, no. What you're doing is you're saying that given the unbeliever's assumption about historical study, right, given his assumption, we still can demonstrate on their own standards the historicity of the resurrection.
35:23: So on his assumption, the resurrection as a historical fact is warranted. On our assumptions, the resurrection of Jesus is a historical fact.
35:33: So there are ways to appeal to the specifics of history within a consistently
35:38: Christian worldview context. But we don't always have to talk about that context. I remember another thing that John Frame once said,
35:47: I don't remember if it was in a personal correspondence through Facebook or something, but he says, he says, I sure wish presuppositionalists could argue presuppositionally without having to give the unbeliever a history of epistemology.
36:01: That's normally what happens, right? People will say, well, you can't have knowledge without the
36:06: Christian worldview because epistemologically, it's like lay out the whole history of philosophy that really it just weighs down the conversation and it just loses that practical punch of really conveying the point of what you're trying to say.
36:23: And that comes in unlearning what we learned. If we're reading
36:28: Van Til, if we're reading Bonson and listening to Bonson lectures, we need to know and learn how to contextualize the language so that this is what
36:39: Bonson was so great at doing. When Bonson learned from Van Til, Bonson was able to take that information and convey it to teenagers.
36:47: I mean, he gave classes to people who were off to college, high school students. And so we need to be more intentional about contextualizing what we learn so that we're not bogged down with all of the technical language, which is the source where most of us learn this stuff.
37:02: We're able to take that, have ownership of it, and then convey it in a way that a child could understand.
37:08: Well, that's super. You know, a lot of folks think, well, the precept is really good for atheists and the new atheists and those type of unbelievers.
37:21: But yet, percentage wise, the amount of atheists compared to how many Muslims are out in the world is very small.
37:28: There's a billion, maybe some say a billion and a half Muslims in the world. And we need to really reach out to them.
37:34: A lot of them are coming to the United States. And, of course, with our YouTube channels and Facebook and Twitter accounts, we can reach
37:42: Muslims in their lands, too. How do you think we should approach
37:47: Islam using, you know, which is the biblical foundation,
37:53: Van Til and Bonson's thought in approaching Muslims? Yeah, I think that you bring out a great point.
37:59: There tends to be an overemphasis upon atheism. While the percentage of atheism here in the
38:06: States, at least, is not as large as many people might think. I don't remember the exact percentage.
38:12: But the reason why people focus on them is because they're so loud, so to speak. And I don't mean that pejoratively.
38:18: I don't mean that pejoratively to any atheist who won't be listening. I'm saying that it's the atheists who are writing many of these books and they're appearing on, you know, documentaries and things like that.
38:28: And so they get a lot of exposure. And, you know, and that's why. And you're more likely here, depending on the context, you're more likely to run into an atheist than a
38:39: Muslim, depending on where you are. So I think that's the reason why people tend to kind of see, like,
38:45: God exists or he doesn't. And you see this dichotomy. It's either this or that. But you're right. There are more
38:50: Muslims than there are atheists. And so we need to be able to engage the Muslim as well. But I suppose the question, then, is, well, how would we engage in apologetics with the
39:01: Muslim from a presuppositional perspective? By the way, I have an excellent interview with the presuppositional apologist,
39:07: Chris Bolt, where we address this specific issue. Literally, the episode's entitled
39:13: Priesthood Applied to Competing Religions. Of course, people could avail themselves of Mike's books, which he addressed in this as well.
39:21: But the approach is still the same. What I don't want to do is assume the principles and standards of the unbeliever.
39:30: You'll see this often in the debates with James White and various Muslim scholars that he debates.
39:37: They will use sources to criticize the Bible that they wouldn't allow to criticize their own tradition.
39:43: And so you have this kind of bias in the picking of sources to criticize the other side.
39:49: And that requires you to identify their presuppositions and what they consider to be a valid scholarly criticism or not.
39:57: And so there are different ways you could approach that. Now, we could also take a look at the common ground we have between the
40:06: Muslim and the Christian. And this is very important because another common misconception about the presuppositional approach is that Van Til taught that there was no common ground between the believer and the unbeliever, and that's just false.
40:19: Van Til makes, and Bonson as well, makes a very clear distinction between common ground and neutral ground.
40:26: He said we don't have neutral ground with the unbeliever, but we sure have common ground.
40:32: And what is that common ground? That common ground is God's ground, and it is the very fact that the unbeliever with whom you're speaking is created in the image of God.
40:42: And so there is always a point of contact with the unbeliever. Now, one common ground that we have is that we both believe in some sense that the
40:52: Bible is authoritative. Now, of course, the Muslim doesn't accept all of the scriptures that the Christian would accept, but there is a point of contact.
41:01: And so you can you could and I think James White has done this beautifully.
41:06: By the way, I think it's James White's birthday today or yesterday or something. So if he ever watches this,
41:11: I know I know he has watched a couple of these videos. So happy birthday, Dr. White. At any rate, what he would often do is point that that point of contact.
41:21: Well, if we believe certain aspects of scriptures authoritative and we agree, well, let's work with that.
41:27: You know, if the Quran teaches us that we are to test the revelation that Allah has given in light of what
41:33: God has given prior to that, then let's find the parts where we agree that Allah has given prior and see if Muhammad meets the standard.
41:42: And as you'll find, and of course, I can say this in passing, but as you'll find, there is a great inconsistency between what
41:47: God has revealed beforehand and what we are now learning, given what Muhammad is teaching with regards to God, Jesus and things like that.
41:56: And so it's very interesting that on the one hand, the Muslim will tell us that we should test the
42:02: Quran based upon what has gone before, right? But then when we appeal to what we know about Jesus, which has come before Muhammad came along, then we're told that we can't trust that it was conveyed accurately.
42:18: So then now, which is it? On the own Muslim standard, we're to test. But when we use the sources to test, they said it's been corrupted.
42:26: So now the Quran is telling us to test, but the very means to test it is now not available to us because they're telling us our sources have been corrupted.
42:34: So again, assuming the truth of their position, we can't actually follow what their position requires us to follow.
42:41: And so now we're relegated to just accepting on a bare authority claim that everything we believe about Jesus in the
42:48: New Testament is wrong with regards to his deity and the purpose why he came and things like that. So there are different ways we could approach the
42:56: Muslim. You could also approach the Muslim philosophically, okay? To my understanding, some
43:02: Muslims believe that Allah is so omnipotent that he's actually able to lie.
43:08: He's actually called the greatest of deceivers. Now this is interesting with regards to having a worldview and being conscious of your epistemology, your theory of knowledge.
43:19: If the ground of your worldview, which is God, is able to lie, then
43:26: I could just run on you a Cartesian evil demon deceiving you argument, right?
43:33: How would you know that Allah is revealing truth to you if you grant in your own revelation that he's actually able to deceive?
43:42: You see, any argument you give, I can just say, well, he could be deceiving you. Oh, well, he wouldn't do that.
43:48: Well, maybe that's another deception, you see. Now within the Christian world, someone will say, well, how do you know
43:53: God's not deceiving you? Well, in Christianity, given the truth of the Christian system, it's impossible for God to lie.
44:01: And so if you grant my system, that objection falls to the ground because it's not even a possibility. Basically, you're asking, on my view, what if the
44:08: God of the Bible isn't the God of the Bible and he's the sort of God that can deceive me? Well, that's what we call an external critique, right?
44:17: He's externally critiquing my worldview without taking into consideration what my system actually teaches with regard to the necessary honesty of the
44:26: God of Scripture. So there are a couple of angles you can go with the Muslim. Again, it's going to depend on who you're speaking with.
44:32: You do have Muslims who have variations within their perspective, and that's why it's important to ask questions to see where they're at.
44:39: Yeah, that's a key, especially with Muslims is asking questions. I don't know if you interviewed
44:45: David Wood, but you can let our audience know if you didn't how that went. And are there any other scholars that come to mind that you recently interviewed that kind of brought some interesting points that you might want to share?
44:58: Well, I've reached out to Dr. Wood, but I've never been able to actually get an answer back.
45:04: I mean, every person I reach out to, I just assume they're really busy. A lot of people think I have great connections with all these scholars.
45:11: In reality, the only reason why I've been able to get most of the people is because of the coronavirus.
45:19: Everybody's home. Hey, Dr. Elephant, are you open for an interview?
45:26: Okay. I mean, I'm at home. So it's been helpful in reaching out to getting people on.
45:33: But I know people who know Dr. Wood, but I haven't been able to actually get him on, unfortunately.
45:41: But anyway, your other question was with – Before you get there, Eli, I could give you a little possibility.
45:49: Anthony Rogers, he does a lot of work with David Wood. Okay. He's busy too, but he's sometimes available.
45:57: I did an interview with him. He was a pastor in the church that I led in Las Vegas, very high scholar.
46:04: And he might be a good one to interview if you have a chance also. His name is Anthony Rogers. He's got his own
46:10: YouTube channel as well as working – I think I follow him on Facebook. Maybe I will reach out to him. Yeah, he's a real nice guy, sharp guy.
46:18: And that's something you might want to – but go ahead. Well, there is one person I would really love to interview.
46:25: And I did reach out to him, but he was busy at the time. He responded. And so I waited a few months and reached out to him again and haven't received a response yet.
46:35: But I really want to interview Lane Tipton. Lane Tipton worked with the
46:41: Reformed Forum. If people are familiar with that YouTube channel, very, very Vantillian.
46:47: It's kind of an extension of Westminster Theological Seminary, which was where Vantill taught.
46:52: So they're very knowledgeable in the Vantillian tradition. So I would really love to interview him because he is another leading presuppositional scholar and really knows
47:02: Vantill well. And he actually offers a free course on Vantill at the reformedforum .order
47:08: .com. And I'm actually in the process of taking that course just to brush up on the Vantillian background and idealism and stuff like that.
47:16: But anyway, I want to interview Lane Tipton, and I haven't been able to get him.
47:23: Who else is there? And Camden Busey, who is also at Reformed Forum. So hopefully if they ever watch this,
47:29: I'd love to interview them and pick their brains. And I'm sure it would be super helpful and useful for people.
47:36: But what was the other part of your question there? I don't remember. I forget too. But yeah,
47:42: Reformed Forum, they do some good work. And I hope that you get some of those guys. I do know that one reason a lot of the scholars obviously got sovereignty with this
47:51: COVID and all that obviously helped in a practical sense. But I think like Hank Hanegraaff even said this about you.
47:58: He says that you're a very good interviewer, that you let people speak even though when you disagree with them and you push back a little bit, you always do it respectfully.
48:07: So I think that that's a big part of why a lot of these folks also. So hats off to you on that.
48:13: What's your assessment after talking to the Clarkian? And I'm like you in the sense that I'm pro -Gordon
48:21: Clark, but I use his work a lot. And I hope this doesn't sound bad because it's not the same category.
48:27: But kind of like I would do an unbeliever's work in philosophy or ontology or theology or epistemology,
48:33: I'll read their work and say, okay, here's some truth. But it has to go in the Christian worldview. It has to be on the foundation of the ontological trinity.
48:42: Gordon Clark's work I've used the same way, even though obviously he's a strong Christian, a wonderful man of God in many ways.
48:49: I remember going to Southern California and there was this bookstore. And it had like two rows of Gordon Clark's books.
48:55: This was in the 1990s. I bought every title I could. Very good stuff. What's your assessment after speaking to that gentleman?
49:03: It was a very good conversation, very respectful, yet there was a lot of good nuggets brought out there.
49:10: What's your assessment of Gordon Clark's work now after talking to that nice Clarkian guy?
49:15: Yeah, you are referring to a recent interview that I did with Pastor Doug Dalma. And the first time
49:21: I heard Pastor Dalma speak was at Covenant Seminary. There was a lecture he gave and I listened to it through a podcast.
49:30: And I thought he had a really great grasp on Gordon Clark, who is really one of my favorite
49:36: Christian philosophers, not because I agree with him. But you will find that it is so refreshing to read
49:44: Gordon Clark for his clarity. He's so clear. Now, I love Van Til, but I mean,
49:49: Van Til, you read Van Til and you're just like, oh, my goodness. I think I know what you're saying, but why couldn't you just say it a different way, bro?
49:57: And so it can be difficult. So when you read someone like Van Til and you read someone like Gordon Clark, there is a stark difference in the clarity with which they're speaking.
50:07: Now, after talking to Doug, and we've had some correspondence in the past. He's an excellent guy.
50:12: And we definitely appreciate each other's differences and similarities. The interview was not for the purpose of, say, convincing me of the
50:21: Clarkian position. I was a Clarkian for a short time. But the problems
50:27: I have with the Clarkian apologetic is it's fideistic. And this is what is hoisted upon the
50:36: Van Tilian school. Oh, well, Van Til was a fideist. That's not true at all. Well, you have to just accept as an axiom the presupposition that God exists and that's it.
50:46: And you argue from that act. There's no way to demonstrate the truth of your presupposition. Right. In my debate with a popular atheist on YouTube, Tom Jump, he said, well, you can't prove your presuppositions.
50:58: Don't you know what a presupposition is? Right. And I was like, well, I'm a presuppositionalist. I hope
51:03: I would know what a presupposition is. But the common conception is that a presupposition is so elementary that those are the starting points.
51:13: You can't actually demonstrate that your presuppositions are true. And this is sort of in line with what
51:19: Clark was saying. He starts with an axiom. The Bible is God's word. And from that axiom, he would argue that you can build a consistent worldview system that answers the problems of philosophy.
51:31: And so a good worldview is going to be logically consistent and it's going to be able to answer those big worldview questions.
51:39: And so Gordon Clark was a master at constructing a system. The problem is that regardless of the system, it's impossible to know that it's true because it's just hedonistic.
51:52: Now, if there's a Clarkian listening to me and you think I've misrepresented the issue, I know that Clark thought that his position was true.
52:00: But perhaps it's just his own deficiency in what he's trying to get at. It seems to me that fideism, whereas we can rigorously defend the consistency of the
52:09: Christian worldview and answer objections, it seems to me that fideism ultimately would lead to skepticism.
52:17: Even if Christianity was the best worldview system that made sense out of everything, well, because you can't defend the actual truth of the axiom, how do we know it's the correct one?
52:31: And so this is the key difference. And I get this question all the time. Eli, what do you think is the key difference between a
52:37: Clarkian apologetic and a Vantillian apologetic? Well, unlike Gordon Clark, Vantill believed you could prove your presupposition, even if it was your bedrock upon which you cannot go any further.
52:50: But the way we demonstrate our presupposition is not the same way we demonstrate other things.
52:57: So if I were to demonstrate to you some truth of a proposition, I would appeal to something else to show you that given this, this is why we should believe this over here.
53:07: When we're dealing with our ultimate foundations and we're trying to demonstrate the truth of our presuppositions,
53:14: Vantill would say that we don't demonstrate our presuppositions by appealing to something more fundamental than it, but rather we demonstrate its truth by appealing to its transcendental necessity.
53:27: In other words, the truth of our presupposition is demonstrated in that even in denying it, you have to affirm it.
53:35: And that's the transcendental argument is an indirect proof. You're not appealing to something here.
53:43: See, this is why the presupposition is true. It's saying, no, the reason why we know this is true, this foundation, is that if you remove it, you have to assume it in order to remove it.
53:53: You see what I'm saying? So that means that arguments, and this is profound,
53:59: I think, arguments for Vantill, arguments against God's existence are actually arguments for God's existence because all argument presupposes his existence.
54:10: Now, that's a claim. We'd have to go further and show why that's the case. And I would imagine folks who are listening would imagine that I would have a way of trying to do that.
54:19: But that's profound, at least if you just understand the task that the presupposition is laying out for us to accomplish.
54:28: We're saying that arguments against God presuppose God. And that's just to say, you know, the
54:33: Christian God exists by the impossibility of the contrary. More work would have to be done to explicate that, but that's basically what we're getting at.
54:41: And I think that's a little more than what Gordon Clark was doing. If the Vantillian argument goes through, then one's ultimate presupposition can be demonstrated, contra
54:52: Clark's assertion that axioms, you can't justify your axioms. You start with those axioms and then build a consistent system as a result.
55:00: Yeah. For me, over the years, Clark has been very valuable on how he destroys non -Christian worldviews, especially some of the ancient
55:10: Greeks, even those before Socrates and throughout the history of philosophy. He was very, very good at that.
55:16: And so I know a lot of Clarkians are really wonderful and gracious people, and I wish them the best.
55:24: But as we get close to closing out here, I got a couple more questions if you have time.
55:29: What do you think is a place of the law and gospel in our presentation?
55:34: We know that giving people all the evidence or demonstrating the truth of Christian worldview or what have you, it's
55:41: God's grace through the scriptures, the application of law and the gospel under God's sovereignty, that would lead someone to Christ.
55:49: So in the apologist world, I notice there's not as much of that being utilized.
55:55: How can we apply those more and more in our outreach to unbelievers? Are you saying how do we apply what again?
56:03: The scriptures. In other words, the law demonstrating how they're sinful.
56:09: We're sinful. They're sinful. They need a savior, the gospel. Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He was buried and God raised him from the dead.
56:17: How can we utilize that more instead of just being strictly academic and cold hearted with philosophy or theology?
56:24: How can we break that down for folks? Yeah, I think it's very important to remember that in Jude chapter 1 verse 3,
56:31: Jude said that he found it necessary to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered.
56:39: That which we are defending is the content of Christian truth. And so we can't engage in a defense of the
56:45: Christian faith without actually assuming and making explicit the claims of the
56:52: Christian faith, which doesn't just include the existence of God. Remember, we're arguing for the
56:57: Christian worldview as a system. And so part of our presentation should not be simply that the trying
57:04: God of Scripture exists. Flesh that out. Talk about how that relates to our responsibility to him and the fact that we've broken
57:12: God's law and that the only way to be reconciled to him is by placing our faith in Jesus.
57:17: So part of the system, if we're only emphasizing God's existence and not some of those other aspects of our system, then
57:26: I think in our presuppositional approach, we're doing it in a lopsided fashion. Saiten Brugenkait, who often gets a lot of heat on the
57:34: Internet, even from fellow presuppositionalists. There's one thing I do appreciate about him. There are many things, but one thing specifically that I appreciate about him is he says that we need to be careful not to be satisfied with arguing for three hours over the complexity of the human eye.
57:51: I mean, this person doesn't know unless they repent. You see? So our approach to defending the faith needs to be gospel centered.
58:01: You see what I'm saying? And so there needs to be a way in which we incorporate the gospel in the presentation, but at the same time, not coming off as simply preaching.
58:11: We're arguing, but we're arguing for the truth of a system which includes the sinfulness of mankind and the necessity of meeting a
58:18: Savior, which is Christ. And so Jesus should be the central focus, whereas all of these other things that are connected to our system will play strategic roles as we find opportunity to include them in our presentation.
58:31: And that takes practice. I mean, you got to get out there and start doing it, you know, but through practice,
58:37: I think we'll be able to do it much better. Yeah. And like you said, we just need to do it. One quick note for the folks,
58:43: I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but Triablog has a lot of posts on Clark's heirs, and you can look that up on Triablog.
58:52: Great apologetic blog there. So I don't know if there's any other questions that came in, but here's,
59:00: I have basically two questions to sum this up. How's your family doing? And what's your approach in raising your kids?
59:07: You're a teacher, you're an apologist, a minister, a theologian. What would you share about raising your kids and such and how you can encourage others?
59:16: Well, first, I just want to say something with regards to the comments on the side. I'm seeing the comments and I have the ability to share them.
59:23: So after you finish your last question, we could take some live questions if you have time. That'd be great. And then just to let people know if they do have questions, they can type them in.
59:31: Now, with regards to raising my children, I cannot take any credit for the positive things in my kids.
59:38: My wife is a superwoman. I mean, I don't know how she does it. A lot of people, they look at me as the nice Calvinist.
59:47: If you know who Leighton Flowers is, Leighton Flowers is a critic of Calvinism, and it seems like it's all he does.
59:56: But when he's referencing me, he says this, and I think this is interesting, and then we're going to compare it to my task as a parent.
01:00:04: He says, Eli is one of the nicest Calvinists I've ever met. You know, even nicer than Chris Date, who is another
01:00:12: Calvinist who's super nice. And so the perception is that Eli is this really nice guy who's patient with unbelievers.
01:00:20: Let me just tell you something. I'm more patient with atheists sometimes than I am with my kids. And so sometimes
01:00:26: I lose my patience. Sometimes I get frustrated, and my wife is just so good at balancing me out and taking some of the stress off.
01:00:35: Where we're living, it's kind of tight. It's easy for me to get kind of, you know, sometimes I get a little claustrophobic, or my mind's always thinking, and I just want, you know, a free second to consistently think of something, and I get very frustrated all the time.
01:00:47: So I can't take the credit for, you know, the wonderful job that my wife is doing.
01:00:52: But what I can do is glean from what she does and give you advice, okay?
01:01:00: So let me just say this. My wife is really good at incorporating the
01:01:05: Bible into the lives of the children, more so than myself. And one of the deficiencies
01:01:11: I have is that I tend to be overly intellectual. And so when my wife asks me to explain some question that my kid asks,
01:01:20: I know the answer to the question, but I just can't find the words to say it in a way that a 6 -year -old could understand.
01:01:26: I'm not gifted in that area. I may be a teenager, but, you know, what does it mean for God to be everywhere?
01:01:31: How do you explain that to, like, a 5 -year -old? Like, that's really hard. So anyway, my wife makes everything into a song, and she acts everything out.
01:01:42: She'll often have my daughter stand on a stool and sing a Bible verse.
01:01:48: And so the kids will remember a Bible verse, or she'll incorporate it in some story that she's telling or the books that she reads.
01:01:56: And she makes everything very theatrical so that it's just fun, you know? And we have nothing against, you know, going on YouTube and finding
01:02:03: Christian kids' songs and playing it in the house and having the kids dance around and sing the songs.
01:02:09: On Sundays, our kids really love YouTube, so they'll watch a lot of these kids' shows. But on Sunday morning, my wife says that, you know, no
01:02:19: YouTube in the morning except Christian shows and Christian music because Sunday is the
01:02:24: Lord's day. So, you know, my son loves superheroes. Can I watch Spider -Man? She goes, nope, it's
01:02:29: Sunday morning. And so they have to watch something that is, you know, biblical for kids. Maybe it's worship music or maybe a kid's
01:02:36: Bible show or something like that. And so inserting these things at different points in the week and just being strategic about it,
01:02:43: I think she's really good at doing that, and I think folks can learn from that. Well, that's terrific. What a wonderful help me the
01:02:49: Lord's given you. I'll just throw a couple things at our audience because this is really important. As we see the progressives ascending, at least seemingly in power right now, we really need to raise up little disciples in our homes.
01:03:04: For me, the results kind of speak for themselves. Four kids I raised, they're almost all grown and out of the house except for one.
01:03:11: They all married strong Christians, including some ministers in the church, and they avoided all the horrible things that a lot of kids tend to fall into.
01:03:22: And part of this, they were in Las Vegas. So you can imagine the temptation. Yet what I did, and I'm not a superhero or super dad, but what we did was just we knew that little drops on a stone at some point will make a hole.
01:03:39: So we decided, my wife and I, wonderful wife, every night at dinner, and we were able to eat dinner together almost six, seven days a week, almost every week.
01:03:48: So it started adding up. We would go through a catechism question and a Bible verse to memorize and see how they're doing for the week and have them memorize that.
01:03:56: So they were able to memorize a lot of the shorter catechism. Even before they understood it, because once they started understanding it, two, three, five years later, they already had it memorized.
01:04:08: Little kids memorize stuff really easy. And then every day they came home from school, they had to tell me two things, and then
01:04:15: I would help lead them in apologetics. What did you see spiritually that made you know that God is there, that he loves you, that he's worthy of worship and so forth?
01:04:25: It could be a worship song they heard. Maybe they witnessed to somebody. And secondly, what did they learn in school, whether it was math, science, history, that demonstrated the
01:04:35: Christian worldview? And I would gradually walk them through that until they got seven, eight, 10, 12, 15 years old, and they were able to do it by themselves.
01:04:43: So I encourage everybody out there, make sure you disciple your kids. You really, really got to do it.
01:04:48: Just a little bit of time every single day adds up. Not all of us have a wife that is so talented and loving as Eli.
01:04:56: So I'd really encourage you guys to do that. And with that, everybody support
01:05:01: Eli's channel. We're going to get into some questions if there's any from the audience. But before, I want to make sure,
01:05:06: Revealed Apologetics on YouTube, please subscribe and hit the notification button. And Eli, if you have any questions from the audience, let's...
01:05:15: Well, I'm reading a funny, in regards to my last statement about having the kids listen to songs. Someone suggests, pre -sup kids song sounds like a great project.
01:05:23: Wow, yeah. One more choice for you. Let's all sing the song by what standard? I love it.
01:05:32: I love it. That's fantastic. That's awesome. All right. So since I'm the hosting platform, let me look through the questions here and I'll share them on the screen.
01:05:42: We have a couple. Someone is asking me, do I work for a Christian school? Yes, I do.
01:05:48: I teach middle school, high school. I teach the Bible classes with one social studies class. A lot of people don't know this, but I have an associate's degree in liberal arts.
01:05:58: I have a secondary education and social studies degree, bachelor's degree, to teach secondary education at that level.
01:06:07: So social studies is another aspect of my area of focus. And then I have two masters from Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary in the area of theology.
01:06:16: So that's kind of my background there. And I'm in thousands of dollars in debt. So it's not as glorious as it sounds.
01:06:24: But anyway, let's see here. So someone has a question. I have a question that is quite important for me right now.
01:06:31: What is the best way to read a book so that I learn the most? The same with listening to audio.
01:06:37: Okay. Well, it's going to be different for a lot of people. But I have a friend who is a fine scholar, and I've had him on my show twice to critique some non -Calvinist positions.
01:06:49: His name is Guillaume Bignon. He's a French philosopher, very intellectual guy. And we sometimes text back and forth and talk on the phone.
01:06:57: I'm like, hey, Guillaume, how do you study? How do you take notes? Do you use like a Word document? He goes, well, and his
01:07:02: French accent, which I'm not going to try to do. He says, well, I find that the best way for me to study is to write handwritten notes.
01:07:10: And I was like, well, that's ridiculous. What do you do when you're reading a book like that's super thick? Okay. But when
01:07:17: I tried to read handwritten notes, it sure took me a long time to get the material.
01:07:23: But what I found is that I remembered the material better than I would have if I typed it out.
01:07:30: Now, I can't impress this upon you enough. There is just something magical about writing something down that it just burns into your mind.
01:07:41: You're reading it off the page. You're reading what you wrote. You're writing what you wrote. There's just so much going on that it just goes so much more further in imprinting it upon your mind.
01:07:53: So I would argue that doing handwritten notes, just bucking up and saying this is going to take longer. But what's the goal here?
01:08:00: Is the goal to finish the book so that I can say I read a book? Or is the goal to memorize and understand the content so that I can actually use the content?
01:08:09: You don't want to fall into the trap of thinking that, well, I've just read a bunch of books. Who cares if you can't remember any of it?
01:08:15: So you want to do exercises that help with memory. Now, for me, writing and typing, those are all fair game depending on what
01:08:23: I'm trying to get at. But I think that's helpful. Most of my learning of presuppositional apologetics, at least, has been through audio.
01:08:32: So I've listened to so much audio that the things that I listen to become the background music of my mind.
01:08:39: It's just almost like listening to a song that I remember the lyrics. Okay? And so when someone says, well, you know, there's no evidence for the
01:08:46: Christian worldview. And then, you know, a bunch of evidence that I have been playing in my mind because of what
01:08:52: I read is accessible because it's just the background music. Right? It's kind of like when you hear a song, you can almost anticipate the next word in the song.
01:09:01: You need to allow the Christian worldview, Christian truth, scripture, theology, the apologetical and philosophical stuff you're reading.
01:09:10: It needs to become the background music of your mind. And that takes work.
01:09:15: It takes training. And so that's a good way to whatever is going to cater to that goal is a good way to study in my estimation.
01:09:23: Okay? Same thing with audio, you know, listening to audio, pausing it and writing something down. I mean, it's an issue about being intentional.
01:09:30: Right? A lot of people open their Bible and say, okay, I read a chapter of John. I'm done studying.
01:09:35: Well, wait a minute. There's a difference between reading and studying. I would challenge you to get either a computer out or a pencil and paper and actually jot some stuff down because that allows you to engage the text in a way that just simply reading it won't do for you unless you have like a photographic memory, which most of us don't have.
01:09:53: Okay? So that's a really good question. Any thoughts on that, Mike? Yeah. I still am a speed reader.
01:10:00: And so I can go through a book in about an hour or two, except Van Til and Kant. Those two guys would always put brakes on my speed reading because of their writing style.
01:10:11: But what I would do is I would put little stickums and pages that were really essential. And like you said,
01:10:17: I would write little things on the side of the page because I have these books for me.
01:10:22: They're not for somebody else later. So I want to be able to access what I read and know what
01:10:27: I read. And like you said, it really helps when you write it out, for some reason you remember them better.
01:10:34: And so that's what I would do. And I would make sure that I pick books that are really important.
01:10:41: And so most of my books were nonfiction. And I was able to do that for 30 years, read one book. That helped me start writing in 2005 and writing over 40 books because I read all those other books.
01:10:53: And so it really, really helps. And so I would encourage people, make sure, though, you always read the
01:10:59: Bible at least two to one over any other book or audio. Audio, like Eli is like most people, we're really, really busy.
01:11:08: We don't have much time. I'm not a speed reader. Audiobooks are such a godsend. Listening to YouTube in your car or someplace.
01:11:15: At the bank, oh, look at this bank line. Oh, my. No, don't complain. Say, look forward to it. That's what
01:11:20: I do. I look forward to lines because now I've got my book out or my audio out and I can listen to it.
01:11:25: So that's all I have to say on that. All right. Here's a question.
01:11:31: Can you give your comment on Bostrom and on Anderson that even an unbeliever, a pantheist or an atheist may use
01:11:39: Anderson's method for warrant in their beliefs when they are apparently contradictory? Well, to be perfectly honest,
01:11:45: I don't remember. I apologize. I mean, I see apologetics. I'm apologizing. That's a different kind of apology.
01:11:52: I'm apologizing. I don't remember the specific comment that Bostrom had on Anderson.
01:11:59: But what I do sense in Anderson's argument in another context, if you listen to my interview with him, you'll actually see a facial expression that I make when he says something, which kind of just gave evidence of a little disagreement.
01:12:13: So I would say that Anderson is a presuppositionalist. He uses the transcendental argument well.
01:12:19: But he says that he only tries to defend that which he thinks he's able to defend.
01:12:26: And so he was actually saying that he would like to see someone defend the Christian worldview as a package deal in the way that some often overstate the argument.
01:12:38: So I don't want to speak for Dr. Anderson. I mean, he's a fine scholar and definitely knows more of the literature than I do.
01:12:44: But it seems to me that his transcendental argument seems to prove, if anything, a sort of generic deity.
01:12:54: He uses his argument from logic. That's my opinion. I might be misunderstanding something. And so if that's the case,
01:13:00: I would disagree, and I would argue for a more holistic approach. Now, again, I'm not an expert in Anderson, so I do apologize if I've misrepresented him there.
01:13:08: But if anyone is interested in Anderson's position or Bosterman's position on Anderson, you want to pick up Bosterman's book.
01:13:16: There is a section on there where he talks about James Anderson. And you want to check out Dr. Anderson's blog,
01:13:22: Analogical Thoughts, which is excellent, which actually has a link to my interview with him on there as well.
01:13:27: So I hope that's somewhat helpful. Let's see here. Let's remove that.
01:13:33: Just a couple more, and then we'll end it here. Now, you've got to go through the comments as well as the questions.
01:13:44: So I have to, like, scroll through it slowly. But we're almost towards the end. Yeah, here's a comment here.
01:13:51: Nate says, if you can get a hold of What Do You Mean?, which is another YouTube channel, apologetics channel, or Apostate Prophet, you'll be able to get in touch with Dr.
01:14:00: Wood. I've actually been trying to get in touch with What Do You Mean? I forgot his real name. But he makes these short videos that respond to, like, non -Christian memes.
01:14:10: It's a brilliant way of offering critique on what folks are saying in popular discussion. So let's see here.
01:14:17: Did you see that African -American gentleman? Fairly young. Yep. Yep. Here's another question.
01:14:23: Eli, are you still planning debating Jacob Brunton? Jacob Brunton, for those who don't know, is a
01:14:29: Christian. I believe he's a Reformed Christian. But he is an ardent classicalist with apologetic methodology and utterly despises presuppositional approach.
01:14:40: And so I almost had a double debate between myself and Matt Yester, who is another presuppositional apologist.
01:14:47: He's often found on Discord in various rooms debating. I was going to do a joint debate between him and Jacob Brunton and Cody Leibold on something relating to presuppositional methodology.
01:15:00: But it fell through, something on their end, not on our end. We wanted to still do it. So I don't know if we'll do it in the future.
01:15:07: I haven't really been following Jacob's stuff recently. And I'm very, very careful about taking any debates because when
01:15:15: I debate, I like to prepare a lot. And I just don't have as much time as I would like to do those things.
01:15:20: So hopefully in the future, I can start debating. Because I think this is very important. We were talking about Bonson before.
01:15:26: There's just no one debating a Vantillian approach in the context that Bonson did with as much frequency.
01:15:34: So hopefully I can have time in the future where I can actually do some more debates so that we can make this more practical.
01:15:41: So people can kind of see what it looks like to interact with the various views that are out there. So those are just my comments there.
01:15:49: Let's see here. And I think that is oh, here is a question for you,
01:15:57: Mike. Okay. Let's see. Okay.
01:16:02: Someone is asking, Mike, and this is a great question. I think I asked you this too because a lot of people think I speak very well and I appreciate that.
01:16:09: But I hate the way I write. Even when I'm writing my book, I'm writing and I'm like, oh, I just got to get my thoughts out there just to get it out and then
01:16:16: I'll go back and criticize the way I write. Because if I criticize, if I meticulously went through the way
01:16:22: I write, I would never get anything done because I'm just a perfectionist with that regard and I don't like the way I write. But you write wonderfully,
01:16:28: Mike. Again, I highly recommend people check out your books. You write so clearly. Why don't you fill us in on your writing process?
01:16:37: Well, what I try to do is I get a subject that should be interesting and hopefully has some lasting interest, not just a six -month of whatever is going on in the political realm.
01:16:47: So I try to find a subject. I pray about it, make sure that, okay, God wants me to do this because it takes a lot of time.
01:16:54: And, you know, as a pastor, as a family man, you know, and other things, you know, you got to be careful of your time.
01:17:00: So I do that. And then what I do is I just get on my computer. I do an outline by doing the table of contents.
01:17:07: What do I want to do on this video? And I want to be unique because there's so many apologetic books out there. You're not going to sell any generally unless you can have some unique angle.
01:17:17: Being precept, that helps a lot, you know, alone, just being precept. So I write out the table of contents.
01:17:23: Then I take each chapter and I just start going for it. I don't care about how garbled it is. I don't care about, you know, being in good grammar or anything.
01:17:31: I just write it out really quickly, write out the whole book within a week or two.
01:17:36: Then I go back and refine it and tighten it up and make sure
01:17:41: I double check all the references and stuff. Then I send it to our proofreaders and editors, and then that's it.
01:17:49: So I don't know if that helps much, but prayer is very important. And I think some people get writer's block because they try to write initially how they want the book to be in its final edition.
01:18:02: For me, just putting it on the water or on the wall helps.
01:18:07: That's just me. Well, that's super helpful because that's something I do. How do
01:18:14: I want this to be at the end? And I forget it's a process. And so what you just said is super, super helpful.
01:18:20: So you write a table of contents. Do you outline the chapters or do you just have like, you know, the title of the chapter?
01:18:28: And you said, I'm just going to write about how I would just address the title of that chapter at various angles. Do you outline and then write based on an outline or the table of contents simply your outline?
01:18:38: The table of contents is basically my outline because like you, and this might not be useful for a lot of people that haven't had a lot of contact with unbelievers.
01:18:47: Like I mentioned earlier, I was on university campuses for talking to people one -on -one.
01:18:53: And I'm online talking to people one -on -one or one -on -three or whatever all the time. So the thing just popped to me really quick.
01:19:01: And the main thing, like I said, I just don't worry about the style or how its grammar is.
01:19:06: I just throw it out there really quick. And then I go back. And then the subtitles start coming when you do that.
01:19:13: So that's what I do. Now, again, I'm expanding on this question because this is interesting to me.
01:19:18: I hope you don't mind. Oh, no, not at all. But how do you find the time to get your thoughts down consistently?
01:19:28: Do you do it late at night when everyone's ‑‑ I mean, I would imagine your kids are all grown up. I mean, are you an empty nester, right?
01:19:35: No, just one left. Okay. He's like, darn, almost there. I presupposed you were an empty nester because you had a white beard.
01:19:43: I'm like, he doesn't have a little kid running around. Sometimes some of them just don't get out of the house.
01:19:49: At any rate, so when do you find the time to write in a consistent way?
01:19:55: You find that this is the best time for you to write. And how much time do you spend? You said in a week. I mean, that's just ‑‑
01:20:00: I wish. Well, the book obviously is not done. And that's just all the mud on the wall. Sure, sure. 500 pages.
01:20:07: Then I've got to whittle down to 200 pages, right, and clarify and make it organized and so forth.
01:20:13: What I do is what I think helpful for me is like what I mentioned with raising my kids.
01:20:19: A little bit at a time starts adding up. And secondly, I work out five to seven days a week every week.
01:20:27: I've been doing it since I was 14 years old. I've been working out.
01:20:32: Because unlike most of my family members, I always find reasons why I should work out, not reasons why
01:20:39: I should not work out. Oh, you know, I can't work out because of this or that. I still do it.
01:20:44: With writing, at night, especially late at night, you know, late at night can be relative to your lifestyle.
01:20:51: But if I can just get a page or two done, boom, I'll do it. And that really adds up.
01:20:57: If you've got 365 days a year and you do two pages a day almost, let's say almost every day, that's like 700 pages.
01:21:05: I love when people put it into perspective because you're like, wait a minute, I can write a page a day.
01:21:12: It's so doable that in our minds we create these obstacles. Now, how do you overcome your writer's block?
01:21:19: Like sometimes I'm like my brain feels so mushy, but I finally have the time. The kids are done screaming.
01:21:24: They're in bed. And my mind just feels like blah. How do you overcome those moments where your mind just doesn't seem like it's in it?
01:21:34: One thing that's helped me is getting quotes from other people. So I'm sitting there, what should
01:21:40: I do? Okay, I bet you Bonson has said something on this or Ventil or Oliphant or even
01:21:46: William Lane Craig or some evidentialist. Let me look up some quotes and then obviously reference them.
01:21:52: Pop the quotes in there and then boom, expand on that. Like if you were talking to William Lane Craig, you know, and he said a sentence that you either agreed with or disagreed with, you articulate something off of that.
01:22:04: If you have a quote from him on the subject that you want to cover on that little section of your book, boom, you can just go for it.
01:22:12: Now, do you look for a bunch? Do you have quotes set aside or is it as you're writing?
01:22:17: Like I wonder if this person says it and you kind of just go off and look through one of the books. I mean, do you have like a catalog of quotes or is it just like I'm going to have to go look in one of my books and see what this person said and you just keep reading until you find it?
01:22:30: I set up all the books on the subject that I have. And like I said, I've already read them.
01:22:35: They already have the little flags on the books. And so I will do those first and then quote them and cite them.
01:22:44: Then that's mainly for writer's block. When I say, okay, what can I say about this?
01:22:50: And I can't get anything going. I'll look up on the Internet, somebody, see if they've said something on that issue or that subject.
01:22:58: Quote them and then that generally gives me something to talk about on that subject. All right.
01:23:03: Very good. Well, that was my short interview of you. Thank you very much. So technically this is you interviewing me.
01:23:13: So why don't you close us out and then we'll take it from there. Yes. Well, I thank you so much,
01:23:19: Eli, for taking the time to do this. I've grown close to you. I'm just so glad to see somebody your age really pressing in apologetics and doing it what
01:23:29: I think is the right way, with grace and patience, listening to the people. And so out there, if you're out there, please, like I mentioned earlier, go to Revealed Apologetics and like and notify.
01:23:40: Hit the notification button and subscribe to his channel. And thanks again. I hope we can do this soon.
01:23:46: Maybe we can do something consistently once or something on just shooting the breeze on apologetic issues or something.
01:23:52: That sounds great. You can just let me know and I'll make myself available. You bet. God bless you, my friend.