A Special Apologetics Methodology Dividing Line

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll -free across the

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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

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James White. And welcome to a special edition of The Dividing Line on a Wednesday, pretty unusual to do something on a

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Wednesday, but I'm not so certain how next week's going to go as far as how many Dividing Lines we're going to get and how long they're going to be.

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So I, this morning, happened to listen to The Encounter, but I'd actually heard a few minutes of it live while I was in Germany last week on the

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Saturday. It was actually strange that I was an hour ahead of London, and so I caught the live feed of The Encounter between K.

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Scott Oliphant and Kurt Jarosz on the subject of the kind of apologetic methodology that should be used by Christians.

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And since I got a chance finally to listen to the entirety of the program this morning, I thought, this is extremely educational,

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I think there's some important things here, and interestingly enough, having watched the video this morning of Tony Maiano talking about his arrest outside of Wimbledon, basically the gospel has been made illegal in the

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United Kingdom. According to the story that Tony told, he was preaching from, as I recall,

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First Thessalonians about sexual purity, said something about homosexuality, a woman walking by, and this is interesting, said,

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F you, and then went and called the police. Now, of course, I would consider that very threatening behavior on her part, but of course that's okay.

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As long as you're a pagan, you can use that type of language in public, and that's alright.

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But if you're quoting from the Bible, that's bad. And so Tony was arrested and taken to jail for seven hours, and so on and so forth.

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Now, they decided not to file charges against him, amazingly, but I'm sure if he went back there and did the exact same thing again, and someone were to walk by and feign this kind of offense, the point being that to preach the gospel to pagans is offensive.

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It's offensive. It is fundamental to the biblical message that the gospel offends the natural man.

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He is a stone of stumbling. And what

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I'm seeing, as I am seeing evangelicals collapsing left and right on gay marriage, it's no big deal.

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It's not much different than whether you drive down the right side of the road or the left side of the road.

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It's no big deal, and we just need to love our LGBT brothers and sisters, and they never talk about the

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BT part, do they? They only talk about the LG part because, you know, monogamous, even though it's a tiny minority.

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Well, you know, how do you even start with the transgender stuff from a

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Christian perspective? You don't. That's why. Anyway, we see this collapse all around us where people are going, well, that battle's over.

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Just might as well, you know, just go along with the flow. It's like, excuse me, excuse me, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

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Wait just a minute. Everywhere I look in the New Testament, and I wasn't planning on talking about this, but everywhere

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I look in the New Testament, I find texts that are crying out to me in light of what's going on in our culture today.

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For example, I forget what I was listening to, but someone mentioned the text in Hebrews that the marriage bed is undefiled.

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What is the marriage bed? How can that? There is no question whatsoever from anybody what the marriage bed meant to the writer of the

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Hebrews. None. Zip, zero, nada. So what our culture is saying to us is, change the definition.

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Change the definition of the marriage bed. Abandon biblical authority.

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Change definition. There's lots of folks going, well, you know, it's the only way we can survive, I guess that's what we need to do.

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And then we have, in the same book of Hebrews, the description of Jesus as the one who becomes the source of eternal salvation to those who obey him.

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And we have so many people today saying, you know, we don't really know what Jesus taught on these things.

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How do you obey Jesus if you don't know what he taught? And if you can't obey Jesus, he can't become the source of eternal salvation to you.

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Can he? Hmm. So much. The reality is, the gospel is offensive to the natural man, and every time man tries to make the gospel amenable to the wisdom of the world, you have a denial of the gospel.

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That's what you get. So in light of that, it was fascinating to listen to the encounter between Dr.

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Oliphant from Westminster Seminary and Kurt Jarosz. Now, of course,

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Kurt Jarosz was one of the speakers at the unbelievable conference that had just taken place in London.

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So it's fairly obvious which side of these things Justin comes down on.

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I mean, he once again did his best to be as fair as possible and to ask good questions of both sides.

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But there were a couple of times, it seemed to me, that because Kurt was a little bit, he seemed to be a little bit out of his element and somewhat, maybe, nervous about taking on a scholar of the rank of Dr.

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Oliphant, that he had to sort of take up that side a little bit and ask some of the questions that needed to be presented.

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Obviously, I could listen to the entirety of the program. I have many times recommended that you subscribe to the

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Unbelievable Radio broadcast. It certainly, at the very least, gives you a taste of what is going on across the pond, in essence.

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But we're going to listen to some portions of it and hopefully make this an educational discussion for all of us.

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We'll start today planning on doing an extra long version. Yes, I will be here tomorrow.

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And I just realized I will have to at least be able to take a single call tomorrow because I'm hoping that Paul Skazafava will be able to join me.

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So I suppose if I bring the phones up, I might be able to make it work. You're worried in there because I'm going to make it completely irrelevant, aren't

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I? If I learn how to do this on my own, I know I won't be able to adjust the volume on the phone.

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Oh, I'm worried I'm going to get that phone call. Oh! Well, nothing I can do about that.

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Anyways, tomorrow is a holiday here in the United States. It's not anywhere else, but a holiday here in the United States. And so I will be winging it on my own tomorrow.

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But anyways, we'll let you know again on Twitter and Facebook what time we'll be doing the show.

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All right, let's get into it. We start with a definition. As you may be aware, Dr. Olyphant has a new book coming out.

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I have pre -ordered at least the Kindle version, I've put the paperback version on the

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Ministry Resource List, if someone would like to get that for me, called Covenantal Apologetics.

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Covenantal Apologetics rather than Presuppositional Apologetics. He feels that Presuppositional Apologetics does not really grasp, as far as a description, the heart of the issue.

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But here's the definition that Dr. Oliphant began with, and I, again, to help us get through things and to make people sound so much smarter, we'll be playing this at 1 .2

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speed. So it's a little bit faster, but it allows us to get more done here on The Dividing Line.

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As I understand it, whether we're giving it that name or Presuppositionalism, it sort of turns on the idea that when, say, engaging in a dialogue with an atheist, for instance, you would be questioning whether they have any basis on which to be even making the kind of claims they make about the universe, logic, truth, morality, because their presupposition about the basis of those sorts of things that we tend to do our thinking and reasoning with are actually, for you, dependent upon a transcendent reality of God.

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Is that a kind of fair way of trying to encapsulate the... Yeah, I think that's good. I think that's good, except when you inserted the phrase, for you, you know, you relativize it, whether it's for me or not.

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The fact of the matter is, none of those things can be what they are, and none of us can be who we are, unless Christianity is true, unless it's the case that God exists and that He created the world and that He informs everything that we do, we live and move and have our being in Him.

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And whether I believe that or not, it's the truth of the matter. So we try to help people understand that it's not simply relegated to a belief system, even though that's included, but it has to do with the state of affairs as they obtain now in the world, and the state of affairs as they obtain now in the world are what

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Scripture says they are. Now, that is sometimes hard for Christians to grasp, who have been introduced to a form of Christianity that is basically an add -on to their pre -existing worldview.

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That's one of the reasons why a lot of Christians struggle with the idea of covenantal apologetics, presuppositional apologetics, this approach, because what they have is a worldly worldview, and they've tried to tack

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Jesus onto their worldview. And if that's where you are, you're going to have a hard time figuring out what

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Dr. Oliphant's talking about. In fact, you're probably going to end up agreeing with Kurt Jarosz against him.

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I've said many times, our message is absolutely, positively radical.

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It is radical to say that God, the creator of all things, entered into his own creation 2 ,000 years ago in a dusty corner outside of the central places of thought and culture of the world in the backwaters of Palestine.

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I mean, that is a radical, absurd thing to say to the vast majority of human beings.

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And as Paul said, the Jews? Stumbling block. To the

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Gentiles? Foolishness. More on us. And every time the

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Church tries to get beyond what the Bible itself says, at that point, it ends up producing its own foolishness and not realizing what the wisdom of God is.

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By the wisdom of God, man by his wisdom will not come to know him. That's the

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Bible. That's New Testament revelation. And if you're a New Testament Christian, that's your ultimate authority.

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Let's listen to some more of what Dr. Oliphant had to say. Yeah, thanks. I think what Kirk said initially is about right.

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I mean, technical theological point, it's not the doctrine of original sin that we both would agree on. It really is the doctrine of total depravity.

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And the reality of what, let me just try to put it this way, the reality of the approach that I teach is not really that new in terms of historic

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Reformed theology. And I think that the point needs to be made that the approach that I teach could not be held or maintained by someone who is not

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Reformed in their theology. Now, to catch that, I agree completely.

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If you're going to be consistent, I've seen some people just sort of try to isolate the transcendental argument for the existence of God out from the theology that substantiates and supports it and try to use it.

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It doesn't work. And here's one of the key issues. I'm sorry that I sound like a broken record, but I will continue to sound like a broken record as long as the

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Lord gives me breath to sound like a broken record. And that is, your apologetic methodology is derived from and determined by your theology, not the other way around.

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It seemed very clear to me in this discussion that Dr. Oliphant agrees with that.

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That's his position. And Kurt Jarosz, his apologetics actually determines his theology.

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It seems very clear to me, because when he mentions theological issues, it's sort of like, well, you know, we could argue about that, or we could, you know, we could talk about the view of man, da, da, da, da.

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But, and then it's back to the practical ramifications of how you can get people to agree with Christianity or your version of Christianity.

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And it's backwards. It is absolutely backwards. You can't do it that way. Your apologetic methodology must flow from your theological commitments to the gospel of Jesus Christ, first and foremost.

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I've used the illustration before. If you asked Robert E. Lee, and I know some of you go, oh, but he's probably the greatest general in America ever produced.

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If you ask Robert E. Lee, defend, the first question out of his mouth is going to be, defend what? What am

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I defending? Where is it? Identify it. Well, if we are defending the Christian faith, then the

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Christian faith that we hold will determine, beyond question, the essence of our apologetic methodology.

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The foundation of the approach is Reformed theology itself. So, Kurt's right.

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There are, you know, if you want to speak more broadly in terms of Christendom, there are two basic options in Christianity.

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One is what we call more an Arminian approach to theology, where you give some credence to a notion of what we call libertarian free will.

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And then the approach that I take is that we are dead in our trespasses and sins, and because of that, the only way that people will move from wrath to grace is by the power of God the

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Holy Spirit changing our hearts so that we can believe. But having said that, we also hold in Reformed theology—let's just move the discussion a little bit over from apologetics to evangelism.

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Any Christian understands that for a person to be converted to Christ, they have to hear the gospel.

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Romans 10 is clear about that. You have to—someone has to preach the gospel in order for one to believe. Now, would you preach to someone who has absolutely no capacity to even understand the terms or ideas that you're communicating?

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Of course you wouldn't. There is a capacity there, but the problem is that those who remain in their sins, unless the

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Lord changes them, will always twist and turn those truths of the gospel into something that to them is not believable.

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It really is unbelievable and incredible. But it's the communication of the truth that God uses to convert people and bring people to himself.

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So as in evangelism, so also in apologetics, if we are communicating the truth and doing that in a way that is in accordance with what

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God has told us, then I'll speak for myself, but I think in terms of the view that I hold and that Van Til holds—he made this point in his own writings—there's nothing wrong with natural theology in and of itself.

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There's nothing wrong with evidences. Someone asked me to give a talk on apologetics a number of years ago, and I entitled the talk,

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Why I Am an Evidentialist. And the reason I gave it that title was to try to help people understand that there's a myth out there that the view that I hold is opposed to evidences.

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I think we make more of evidences than any other apologetic approach is able to do, because everything evidences the existence of God.

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So all of these things can be taken in the proper way and utilized in an apologetic approach in the way that I'm thinking about it, but apologetics has its impetus in Reformed theology.

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So all of these things have to be understood in that context. It's very, very important.

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Again, the intimate, organic relationship between the fundamental assertions of the

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Gospel itself, the existence of the triune Christian God who is the basis of all of existence, the only logical basis for the explanation of mankind and our ability to communicate—all that is absolutely—it must be there.

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And one of the things that breaks my heart is how many people are interested in apologetics, but I find them to be extremely shallow when it comes to their theology, or extremely willing to compromise on important issues of theology for the sake of what they think is an apologetic advantage.

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Now, why would you even do that? Because you're not trusting that fundamentally the only way that you have any success in apologetics is if God blesses your proclamation.

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And this is something that's important in our day, folks. If we live in a society that is under God's judgment, we better not judge the success of our apologetics by numbers.

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We must judge the success of our apologetics by the glorification of God and the proclamation of His truth and the vindication of that truth, whether the vast majority of the people around us buy into that or not.

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I just cannot see how Kurt Jarrus would accept what

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I just said. And given where we're facing, folks, and the rapid change in our society, this is vitally, vitally important.

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I like having Twitter up because I now know that Jared Oliphant is listening, and so is Justin Brierley.

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Hi, guys! I hope you enjoy this. Now, moving on to the next section. Now, one of the things that I am going to emphasize—emphasize, emphasize over and over again, let me say it now so you can hear it over and over again—the key issue in this situation, and most of you have not seen the debate that I did with Dan Barker at the

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University of Illinois. If you haven't, it's on YouTube, at least for now. I think all the stuff will eventually disappear, and we have it in the

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AOMN bookstore. Um, when you're talking about the use of quote -unquote evidences, what makes the covenantal approach, the presuppositional approach, different?

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And I felt that Kurt was always saying, well, sounds like we're saying the same thing, and I don't know if that's just a

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British thing or what, but no, we're not saying the same thing, because when I am utilizing, for example, the

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ATP synthase that I used in that debate as an example of the intelligent design of the universe that men are suppressing, when

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I present that, listen to the debate, before I even mentioned it, I made sure that my audience understood that I was not granting to them some kind of human autonomy whereby they, as some kind of judge, have the right to determine

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God's existence. I made it clear they are the creatures of God.

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They are under his authority. Their very breath is a gift from his hand. Every beat of their heart comes from his hand.

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I am not granting them autonomy. I am only using evidence to demonstrate the inconsistency of the fact that they cannot live in accordance with their own worldview.

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That's all I'm doing. I am not doing what the evidentialist is doing and trying to add to the body of facts that they are very busily suppressing.

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And if there is anything that I would have emphasized much more strongly in Dr. Oliven's presentation, it was that point.

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He does say that. But it just struck me, and maybe I have the advantage of having been in the studio many times there in London and sort of, you know,

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I could sort of see what was going on and hear what was going on in my mind and could see exactly where Kurt was going and exactly why it was that he was not evidently hearing what

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Dr. Oliven was saying with the clarity that needed to be heard. And it'll come back to that a number of times.

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This is interesting because when Kurt came back to what Dr. Oliven said, Dr. Oliven had limited his discussion to the difference between Calvinists and Arminians as far as a

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Protestant perspective. But I found this interesting. Interesting your responses on that. Yeah. So first, just a first point of contention.

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Scott mentioned that you can hold to kind of two views, the Arminian view or the Calvinist view. I would say that there is greater room for intellectual dissent there in those two views.

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Both of those camps affirm what's traditionally called total depravity. Now, no,

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I would not say that the vast majority of Arminians I know of would in any way, shape or form actually verify total depravity.

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And you just can't redefine it into the allowance for an autonomous free will on the part of the

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Arminians. I would not agree with that. Arminians have a different way of getting around that to get to man's free will. But not everybody, especially what

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I have in mind here, a Catholic approach to the even more so in Eastern Orthodox view, neither of those two would affirm this same notion on the nature of man.

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Most definitely. And Kurt is putting his finger upon the real issue, how you view both what

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I would consider to be the first two points of Reformed theology. And you all know

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I believe in a stulip. Back when the tulip was designed, the sovereignty of God part was a given.

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It ain't no more. So I believe in a stulip. You got to affirm that first point.

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So you end up with six points. But how you understand God's sovereignty over his creation, and then as a result, how you understand the nature of man, especially fallen man, will determine this issue.

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There's no question about it. There's absolutely no question about it. That's why Dr. Oliven is exactly right. You cannot consistently—I'm not saying you cannot, because there are lots of inconsistent people out there—but you cannot consistently apply covenantal apologetics if you do not have the underlying theological basis to do so.

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So that's maybe what I was getting at at these different views, whether or not man is able to do this, that is, engage in actual theology or theological discussion.

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If man is capable of doing this—you see, this is where Justin, going by London on my way to Johannesburg in late

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September, would love to do a discussion on the nature of man in regards to how we do apologetics.

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Because the biblical witness to the fundamental fact that man, in his most intimate, personal heart, in his mind, in his reasoning, is fundamentally enslaved to sin, and therefore his dialogues, his reasoning is affected by sin and enslavery to sin is central to this whole issue.

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If you don't believe that, then you're on a completely different page as far as discussing what will work and what will not work in regards to this particular subject.

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But the biblical testimony is so clear and so compelling. I mean, the exegesis of Romans 1 here is central—well,

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Romans 1, 2, and 3, but especially 1 and 3—absolutely central, I think, to being able to answer this question from a biblical perspective.

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And I think all of us can admit what we want is a biblical understanding of how we should do apologetics, not one based upon pragmatism.

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Well, this seems to have worked over here. That's the same attitude that people have about worship.

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I seem to remember something about Aaron's sons, you know? God gets to determine his worship.

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And if we want our evangelism and apologetics to be an act of worship, then they must be determined by God's truth, not by pragmatism.

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Trying to convince someone of the truth of Christianity, Kurt, and you're maybe saying, well, we'll look at the big, you know, the fine -tuning of the universe or the argument from the resurrection.

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Are you kind of assuming that they're, as a non -Christian, able to reason well enough to be able to sort of rationally accept your premises and your argument and so on?

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Or do you hold, as Scott appears to, that no one, until God gives them faith, will ultimately see the truth of an argument for Christianity?

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Now, let me provide a correction. Gives them faith, that is a part of the work of regeneration. That is taking out a heart of stone, giving a heart of flesh.

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That is ending katakanton. Katakanton is suppressing the knowledge of God so they're unapologetus, without an apologetic.

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Romans 1, again. It's not just a granting of faith. It is a radical transformation. It's taking out a heart of stone, giving a heart of flesh.

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It's the heart of flesh, then, that is amenable to the truth of God and will not suppress the truth of God.

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I think it's the radical nature of conversion, of regeneration. And I would say the

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Reformed understanding of regeneration is much more radical than the idea of a valley of dry bones choosing to become something other than what they are.

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That's one of the major differences. Necessarily. Yeah, so I'm somewhere in between in that question. So I see you presenting perhaps what we might call false dichotomy.

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So what I mean by that is nobody's perfect. And we all, you know, the fall has affected us in such a way that we're not perfect thinkers.

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So sometimes we are not perfect thinkers. There is a difference between imperfection and thought and constant, consistent rebellion against God.

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And what is the biblical description? Enmity with God. God haters.

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Is that not the biblical language? It is. There's a difference.

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Big difference. You might have to help people and teach them how to think, first of all. How can

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I teach someone? I agree. I can help an unregenerate person to think more logically.

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An unregenerate person can read a logic textbook and learn about modus ponens and modus ponens and all the rest of that kind of stuff and improve their ability to think, but not on this level.

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The Bible says, they are not able to do what is pleasing to God. They are not able to submit themselves to the law of God.

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That is a spiritual capacity that requires resurrection, regeneration, new spiritual life.

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And that might help them understand more about the arguments. I think even Scott would say trying to teach someone about presuppositional approach can be difficult and time consuming.

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But I would say that there are people no more time consuming than trying to teach someone the ontological argument for the existence of God, I assure you.

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Non -Christians that are very intellectual. They're very intelligent. They can understand. They understand logic. They understand argumentation.

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And then historians, for example, understand how we do history. Many historians who study history... Now listen to this.

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Listen to this. I'm going to roll this back. This is very, very important. Listen to what's said here. Many historians who study history, a lot of them become

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Christians because they apply the same methods to this issue and they realize, wow, this is the best explanation. Now think with me for a moment, folks.

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Is that how you become a Christian? Do you become a Christian? Is a

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Christian a person who has looked at history and gone, oh, that's the best explanation? I thought a

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Christian was someone who repents of their sins and bows the knee to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, trusting upon him for eternal salvation.

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Now God can utilize... I mean, obviously, I believe God can utilize all sorts of things as a mechanism, both of encouraging his own people, as well as a means of removing blockages to bring his people to salvation, all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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But a person who simply goes, hmm, that sounds like the best historical explanation.

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That ain't a Christian. A Christian has had a radical break with a life of sin.

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There's repentance involved. There's faith involved. And that faith is not merely a historical acknowledgement.

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And that sounds like, hmm, sounds like it could be the best way to go. Well, anyways,

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Justin then asked Dr. Olyphant for his definition of the transcendental argument for God.

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So here is his definition of that. Dr. Olyphant If you call it an argument, from your perspective would be when it comes to dialoguing with someone who perhaps does not believe.

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I believe, for instance, the what's sometimes called the tag, the transcendental argument for God is fairly key in this whole area of presuppositional apologetics.

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Dr. Olyphant Yeah, that's right. I think there's a lot out there about that argument, and it can become fairly technical.

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But in the way I was trying to articulate it earlier, what it essentially says is that Christianity is true, whether we believe it or not.

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And given its truth, anything that opposes Christianity is false. And that doesn't mean it's simply a collection of false propositions that we hold in our brains.

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But it means if it's false, it doesn't square with the way the world actually is. So what you know going into any discussion, even if you,

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I mean, none of us have the ability or time to study every permutation of unbelief. But going into any discussion of someone who is not a believer, you know going in that whatever position they hold is false by definition.

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So you try to ferret out where the problems are, and you try to work through those, and not only deconstruct what it is they claim to believe, but then construct the

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Christian position to show that that position alone is able to account for what the unbeliever wants to have in his own system.

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And that essentially is the transcendental argument. So if you think about that, let's say, in light of Paul's address at the

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Areopagus, he begins by discussing with the philosophers the nature of God, who he is, what he's done, and then in order to illustrate that point and expound on that point, he uses a couple of Greek poets in his address at the

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Areopagus. And the question, I think, can be asked, and in some ways this is meant to be kind of a trick question, but when

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Paul quotes Epimenides and Eratos, two quotations, in him we live and move and exist, that's one of them, and then the other one is we are his offspring.

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And so I ask the question, in the writing of those two statements, are those statements true?

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Is Paul using the Greek poets because he's wanting his audience to understand what they've communicated as the truth?

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And the obvious answer to that is, of course, no, because both of these men we're referring in him means in Zeus, we are his offspring, we are

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Zeus's offspring. That, of course, makes those quotations false, but what Paul has done is pour biblical and theological content into the reference that is

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God, and now he uses those quotations as points of persuasion so that his audience can understand that it is the true

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God and not Zeus, that these statements are true and not in reference to some false god.

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So that is, I think, one of the ways that we think about argumentation. There are statements out there, statements made, that have a kind of formal truth to them, like those two statements, but the material, the matter itself, makes the statement false.

33:31

Reference makes it false. So we can use statements like that in terms of persuasive points in order to try to help people see the reality of the

33:39

Christian position. The other thing I— Now, that's an excellent summary of the argument.

33:46

I appreciate that. This next section, I think, is very, very important, though, and I realize all these programs are very short, so it's always easy to say, well,

33:55

I wish this had been emphasized, wish that had been emphasized. But this next section needs to be understood.

34:01

The Christian apologist is not to be in the business of defending a bare theism. And that's not

34:06

B -E -A -R. Anyways, I remember when Christopher Hitchens caught out an evidentialist on this very issue, and I've talked about it before, and here's

34:21

Dr. Oliphant saying that. The other thing I think is important to say, and maybe we can develop this a bit, is that in our understanding of apologetics, what we're trying to do is defend the

34:32

Christian faith, because it's the Christian faith alone that is true, and so we're not interested, really, in a kind of generic theism, because at the end of the day, theists wind up in the same place eternally where atheists wind up.

34:46

So unless it's Christian theism, it's idolatry, and we want to move away from that. I think that's what Paul was trying to express to the

34:53

Athenians in Exodus. Now, that is extremely important, because one of the fundamental divides—and

35:01

I have leveled this criticism over and over and over again—is there is a huge difference between saying the preponderance of the evidence points to the greater probability of the existence of a

35:14

God, and saying the Christian God exists, you know it, and you're suppressing it.

35:23

And my concern is—because this can come up a little bit later on. In fact, here,

35:30

I will skip to this. This is going to come up in a second, but listen to what Justice says right here. They would see this as a very patronizing sort of view.

35:39

So if you talk about Romans 1, atheists are going to view this as a patronizing way of doing things.

35:52

If you're telling people, you know God exists, but you're suppressing that. What? That's patronizing. It's offensive to them.

35:59

And I understand how people might go, well, you know, saying that the greater preponderance of the evidence points to the greater probability of the existence of God, that's less offensive than saying

36:07

God exists, and you'll be judged by him, and you're suppressing that knowledge. I understand that.

36:14

Which one's biblical? Which one's apostolic? Which one was less offensive in the days of the apostles?

36:22

You think the apostles didn't know how they could have been less offensive? There is a fundamental dividing line there.

36:29

There really is. And I'm not trying to bring the name of the program in at that point. There's a dividing line there. And I do not believe that apologetics is meant to defend a generic theism.

36:43

Generic theism is idolatry, because God has revealed himself definitively in Jesus Christ.

36:52

So I cannot embrace an apologetic methodology that's going to force me somewhere down the road to have to apologize for having lied to people earlier on in the process.

37:03

Remember back there when I pretended we actually, you know, I didn't really mean that back then. Now I'm trying to get you to believe that Jesus is truly who the

37:10

Bible says he is. And so, you know, I realize I compromised on this earlier, but I'm hoping now

37:17

I've sort of friendshipd you into this. No, I can't do that. Can't do it. Even though the society, you know, again, evangelicals, well, you just don't understand.

37:28

The society is really, well, you know what? It really takes us back to finding out, do you really think that it's your arguments and your pragmatism and you that makes a difference?

37:38

Or is it the Spirit of God? And that's going to come up in this discussion as well. Develop this, as you say, Scott. And I know you've got a few questions on the back of what

37:46

Scott's saying there, Kurt. Yeah, I mean, much of what he said here about what Paul's doing, I don't think many, you know, classical apologists or cumulative case folk would disagree with.

37:55

In fact, I think they would. I really do think they would. I think that Kurt just doesn't get the fundamental issue here, and that is we are approaching man in a completely different fashion.

38:12

We have a completely different view, not only of the overriding sovereignty of God as creator of all things, but we have a very different view of what man is doing when he encounters the truth of God.

38:26

And so I think a large portion of those apologists would disagree with what

38:32

Dr. Oliphant's saying. In fact, I would say, yes, that's right. He's citing General Revelation. He's saying even the Greeks have noticed that maybe we're all like children of God.

38:40

And so what Paul's trying to do is convince them, well, it's this God. He says, you know, look, you're worshiping the unknown

38:45

God. Let me tell you about who he is, because— Look, if Paul was trying to convince them, Paul never would have said anastasis.

38:53

Never would have said it. Anastasis means resurrection. And as soon as he said it, they laughed him out of the room or building.

39:02

If he was trying to convince them, if he was trying to grant to them, give them the right to make these decisions, then he never would have said those words.

39:12

But he said those words. I know about him. So I guess this kind of leads into the question that I've got for Scott.

39:19

What he said earlier was that we're basing this off of the idea that if Christianity is true, then anything opposed to it is false.

39:26

That's what he said when he was quoting Van Til. So I suppose the question I have for Scott is when— perhaps talking to a nonbeliever, how would you convince them that Christianity is true?

39:35

You would do that in the same way that you convince people of the gospel. See, the situation in Athens was not simply that Paul was saying, this is the

39:47

God that I know, but Paul was also saying to them, this is the God that you know, and yet you suppress this knowledge, and evidence of that suppression is in the idols that you've created.

39:56

So one of the things that we have to recognize is Paul's teaching in Romans 1, that all people, by virtue of being image of God, know the true

40:04

God truly. Now here it comes. Like I said, you've got to start there. You've got to go to Romans 1.

40:10

That's got to be the foundation. I cannot conceive of any place else in Scripture that goes more in depth into the nature of man in rebellion against God than Romans chapter 1.

40:23

And if Scripture is your ultimate authority, not polls, not psychology, not pragmatism, you've got to go there, and you've got to deal with the fact that man is suppressing the knowledge of God.

40:37

And given what Kurt's going to say here about this, I remember exactly where I was this morning.

40:43

I was on a pretty sharp downhill, and I lost control because I was like, you've got to be kidding.

40:56

But when you look at Romans 1, 18, the ones suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, present participle.

41:09

It's literally the, the truth in unrighteousness suppressing ones. It's that common

41:17

Greek form where you put the article for the participle at the beginning, then you put the description in between, then you put the participle at the end.

41:28

So it's wrapping it all up. That's everybody. That's everybody.

41:34

They do it in all sorts of different ways. Religious ways, atheistic ways, scientific ways. Man's capacity for depravity is incredible.

41:45

But this is the description of mankind. And what Kurt's going to say here in a moment left me breathless.

41:53

And they suppress that truth in unrighteousness. So whenever we communicate the truth, as in evangelism, so also in apologetics, where we communicate the truth, that truth resonates, because God has already communicated and is communicating his truth of his own character to every person, because made in his image, in their day -to -day lives.

42:15

So the point of... Now let me emphasize something here, that most of you who've read Van Til, you already know this, if you listen to Bonson, etc.,

42:21

etc., you already know this. But there is no neutral ground. The myth of neutrality, you must understand, there is no such thing as neutral ground.

42:29

If God created everything, if Jesus Christ, the creator of all things, or in heaven, earth, visible, invisible, etc., etc., there is no neutrality.

42:35

The connection point is the fact that man has made the imago dei, made the image of God. That's the connection point. That's what

42:40

Dr. Olyphant is pointing out here. The persuasion is there has to be a connection point between what I say and what somebody takes from what

42:48

I say. And the point of connection, as we say in reformed thinking, following Paul and Calvin, the point of connection is the sense of deity, which is knowledge of God that all people have by virtue of being image of God.

42:59

So in that way, there are not just five ways of proving the existence of God, there are 5 ,000 ways, or 5 ,000 ways.

43:07

It depends on what a person is... Yeah, interesting way of seeing things, though. Kurt, I'd just be interested in your response there to this idea that someone will only...

43:17

Well, that all people have the knowledge of God, but they're suppressing it. This is a very, I think, foundational idea in the presuppositional view.

43:24

Justin, it's a foundational idea in the biblical view. I mean, it's right there, right?

43:31

Right there, Romans 118, suppressing the knowledge, it's right there.

43:38

And listen to Kurt's response. Is that one that you can kind of affirm, or is that not something you'd be quite as willing to...

43:46

Yeah, partly. I would certainly agree with Scott that there are some people suppressing the truth out there, and in various ways and in various degrees.

43:54

Some people? There are exceptions? I mean, here, again, is where...

44:05

Many of my apologist friends are not good exegetes. They don't start there.

44:11

They're not preachers. They're not teachers of the Word. They spend way too much time in apologetics and not enough time in the

44:17

Word. And here's a good example. What do you mean? You mean there are some people out there that are not suppressing the knowledge of God?

44:23

Where do you find them? Show me. I mean, Paul is going to... This whole argument,

44:30

Romans 1, Romans 2, Jews, Romans 3, bring it all together, all of mankind stands before God responsible.

44:38

That's the argument. And we just had that overthrown by saying, well, yeah, there's some.

44:46

But, well, what that means is that must mean that there are others. And one thing that I don't think anyone would argue with me for a second about is that in this discussion, the quote -unquote natural theology position never gave a single argument for itself.

45:02

It was just sort of assumed and just all the questions were toward Dr. Oliphant and there was no exegetical foundation given at all for this quote -unquote natural theology argument at all.

45:16

But here you've got a statement that just left me going, what? Only some people are suppressing the knowledge of God?

45:23

Really? Wow. So, I mean,

45:28

I like much of what he said, though I'm not convinced that this is the full sense of at least...

45:36

I know that when I've seen some of these discussions going on between atheists and Christians who are taking a presuppositional approach, that very often is met with a lot of hostility by atheists who say, for goodness sake, this idea that I really believe in God, I'm just sort of suppressing it, you know, is just ridiculous.

45:53

I don't believe in God. I don't see the evidence. I just don't believe, you know, and they would see this as a very patronizing sort of view.

46:02

Yeah, I understand that. I understand that. The natural man finds the entirety of the gospel to be offensive.

46:10

We are a stench of death in the nostrils of those who are perishing. And when we try not to be that, when we try to put on the deodorant of the philosophy of the world, then we are no longer functioning the way that God intended us to function.

46:31

I think that's vitally important to understand. We are a stench of death.

46:36

Those who are perishing. Yeah. It is offensive to tell people that you are under the wrath of God.

46:44

But Jesus is, well, he's the stone that people stumble on. And when they stumble, when they are crushed by that stone, then and only then are they ready to hear about a merciful

46:56

Savior. But you see, if we don't view man the way the Bible views man, well, I don't know why we're even bothering with apologetics in the first place.

47:05

We know best. You do really believe in God, it's just you're suppressing it. Now, is this a problem? Is this a sort of... Well, I think my chief difficulty is, even if you want to try and use this method...

47:16

Try and use this method. Kurt, this is not why...

47:24

For us, it's not a matter of trying out methods. This is simply being consistent with the

47:31

Word of God. That's... I'd be interested to hear Scott's reply.

47:38

What makes, say, the atheists think that then, therefore, the Christian God is true, why not the Muslim God or, you know, the

47:44

God of maybe exclusively Judaism without Christianity? What gets us to Christianity? How can we know that Christianity is true?

47:51

Now, here, Justin's trying to get Kurt to sort of defend his position, and all Kurt does is return to another question to toss the ball back for Dr.

48:01

Olyphant, who, you know, at least on one level, got more time to talk that way. But I'm not sure that meant for, you know, really good dialogue.

48:13

Well, fortunately, I don't have to make up an answer on that, because Reformed theology has been clear about it from the point of Reformation and then back to Augustine and back before that.

48:22

What convinces us is the testimony of the Holy Spirit, and what He uses, the Holy Spirit uses, is the truth of God in order to bring people to Himself.

48:30

So there's no convincing outside of that testimony. But let me also make clear here, because I don't want you to hear me saying that what

48:38

Paul's teaching us in Romans 1 is the foundation or the substance of our apologetic argument. It is the theology that drives our apologetic, but we don't, you know,

48:48

I mean, we had Christopher Hitchens on campus a number of years ago, and I had a chance to chat with him, and you don't go into a discussion like that and say, by the way,

48:56

Christopher, you know God, you just don't agree that you do. And that's not part of the argument. That's the theology behind the argument.

49:03

And my point was, one of the reasons that Paul is giving the argument that he does at the Areopagus is because Paul understood that the idolatry in Athens was owing not to ignorance, but to suppression of the truth and unrighteousness.

49:16

So his communication of the character of God gets through, because God's natural revelation has already gotten through to each and every one of these people.

49:23

It's not the case that some people do this some of the time. Paul's point is, in Romans 1, you can show this exegetically, is that it's a universal condition of sin, both

49:32

Jew and Gentile in Paul's context, in which all of us, if we remain in Adam and not in Christ, all of us, all the time, suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

49:42

And as Paul says, then in the end, that renders every man without excuse before the judgment seat of God.

49:47

So you will never stand before God and say, if I had only known. Now let me stop right here just for a moment.

49:53

And Saitam Birgenkeit's in our chat channel, and he's asked a question. Unfortunately, it has scrolled way, way, way back here.

50:00

I suppose I could probably try to find it, and it was a ways back. But basically was asking—there it is.

50:10

Dr. Oliphant said that the fact that the unbeliever knows that God exists is our theology, but not our argument.

50:16

He had said that we don't go to Christopher Hitchens and say, I know that you know that God exists. While I agree that it is not our argument,

50:22

I think it is essential to tell the unbeliever that we know that they know that God exists.

50:28

Thoughts? And question mark after that. I hear both what

50:35

Dr. Oliphant is saying and what Sai is saying as well. I think that I would have at some point—in fact, there is absolutely no question, most

50:50

And I think it was six weeks prior to our scheduled debate on Long Island, he got his cancer diagnosis, and of course, we never had the opportunity of doing that, and I really, really, really, really, really wish that I had.

51:05

I can guarantee you that while the first words out of my mouth to Christopher Hitchens would not have been, you are suppressing the knowledge of God, that at some point during that conversation,

51:19

I would have said that as an explanation for why it is that he was dealing with the facts of science, history, that he was reasoning in the way that he was.

51:35

And so I do not believe it is the first element of our argumentation, but I do think that there is something appropriate in bringing to bear the moral responsibility that the creature has before God.

51:55

And, well, I've told the story many times in my encounter with Eric up in Chicago, and I had spoken with Eric for quite some time before I got around to making that statement, in essence.

52:13

I had spoken with him, I had laid a foundation, I had allowed him, in essence, to open the door for me to say, you are stealing from my worldview, you are suppressing the knowledge of God.

52:24

And so it was a part of my argument, but only after enough personal interaction that I could make it personal to that person, if you hear what

52:33

I'm saying. So I would say that not only is it the theology that drives the argument, but when you're given sufficient time to discuss the argument fully with someone, it will become a part of the argument, just simply because you have to be able to express the entirety of the worldview that you're presenting to them.

52:54

Paul Just like you're describing there, I've heard you time and time again, when we're out in Mesa witnessing to Mormons, sometimes at length, talking about the nature of man, the nature of God.

53:05

Eventually, as you're presenting this information, you have to come back around to that passage, and as you're holding them accountable for the information that you've put before them, you're pointing this out.

53:15

Look, you're suppressing the knowledge of God right here, right now, as we're talking, as we're speaking, because look how you've handled the

53:23

Scriptures. David Yeah. Well, not only that, with a Mormon, I will simply say, you know that there is an unchanging eternal

53:29

God. You know that God's not a big man who lives on another planet, and this is why you're handling the

53:35

Scriptures the way you are. So, I wanted to stop and answer Sai's question, even though I don't think he heard it.

53:42

He's going to have to go back and listen to it. Paul You have knowledge sufficient to give thanks and honor him, and you don't do that, and so you're held accountable because of it.

53:50

David Well, I think many proponents of these other apologetic methods would agree, especially with the last of what you said, how everybody's going to be held responsible.

53:58

But I did have a question about when you said that the way we know Christianity is true compared to other theistic worldviews is the testimony of the

54:05

Holy Spirit. Now, I think that certainly plays a role in bringing certainty, but I suppose

54:12

I'm not convinced that that's the only way. It seems that, at least on the presuppositional method, that even someone like yourself would think that the reason why you're giving the argument to someone, a non -Christian, is because that person can think rationally and logically about the beliefs that they currently hold, and the beliefs that they could hold if they were to think differently.

54:33

So it seems like, in the presuppositional method, you're trying to guide people through their thinking very much in the same way as these alternative methods.

54:41

What do you think about that? Paul Before Dr. Oliphant knocks that one out of the park, allow me to take a swing at it,

54:51

Brother Jarosz just doesn't get it. He's not hearing what Dr.

54:56

Oliphant is saying. That is not what we're seeking to do. I know he's trying to build bridges, trying to bring the two positions close, things like that,

55:06

I understand that, but, Dr. Oliphant, I certainly do not believe that I can teach someone how to think in such a way that I'm going to change their hearts.

55:19

I am simply, I believe that it's the preaching of the Word of God that is used by the

55:25

Spirit of God to bring God's people to salvation. That is the methodology. That is the apostolic way, and anything else other than that is sub -biblical.

55:35

Can God use sub -biblical outreach? Well, he certainly has, but it should never be our desire to force him to use it, should it?

55:45

And so, it is not that he is simply saying, well, I'm just trying to reason with people just like everybody, all

55:55

Christian apologists, we're just trying to reason with folks, trying to teach them how to reason right. No, Dr. Oliphant's already said,

56:00

I'm dealing with a rebel sinner against God, and I am not going to grant to that rebel sinner the autonomy he demands.

56:09

I won't do it. And so, when I use evidences and reason,

56:15

I am not granting to him his autonomy, I am simply desiring to be used as an instrument in the hand of God, or the

56:22

Spirit of God, in, if he's working in the heart of this individual, to show them their inconsistency.

56:27

I've been in many a situation where the Spirit of God was not working in that person's heart, and they did not see it.

56:33

And I could have been talking to the wall, for all the good it did me, but I also believe,

56:41

I also believe, that whenever you present the truth of God, God blesses that,

56:48

God is glorified in that. Now, we're going to go to 4 .15, our time, so that means we've got about 19 more minutes.

56:56

That'll get us through a good portion of this, but we will pick it up, Lord willing, if I can make all the technology work by myself tomorrow, we'll pick it up tomorrow.

57:07

But here's Dr. Oliver's response. Yeah, well,

57:12

I think that is a good way of showing our basic theological disagreements. Now, you've got to understand, he's being restrained here by his being a well -known scholar at Westminster Seminary.

57:26

This is where he has to be careful, and I don't have to be nearly as careful as he does. Yeah, that's the very—see, most people are just a lot nicer than me, okay?

57:38

And that's his nice way of saying, yeah, Kurt, you and I are not on the same page in our basic theological assertions here, and he then lays that out.

57:49

Yeah, well, I think that is a good way of showing our basic theological disagreements.

57:55

The unbeliever is not rational. Anyone who holds a view that God didn't make the world and that he's not a creature of God does not think rationally, but is thinking irrationally, and is doing that in unrighteousness.

58:05

That is, it's an ethical problem. So we have to reckon with what rationality is. The only rational view to hold is the

58:11

Christian position, and anyone who doesn't hold it is by definition irrational. I know that at this point, you having said that,

58:17

Scott, and we do have quite a few atheist listeners to the show who will be picking this up, they're going to be probably throwing their iPod across the room and saying, how dare he say that I'm an irrational person?

58:26

Now, what makes what you just said there, Scott, not just you? Now, that caught my attention.

58:34

Yes, the atheist is going to be offended by the entirety of the message of the

58:40

Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yes, that's going to happen. And you've just got to make a decision.

58:48

What's more important to me, offending atheists or offending God? And can

58:53

God use that offensive message to crush the self -righteousness of a rebel sinner?

59:03

What do the apostles say? Making a statement about things, what makes you right that the only rational way to look at the world is that we are creatures of God?

59:11

Well, you know, thanks for putting it that way, but again, it's not what makes me right, it's what is right, and do

59:17

I believe that? And what I've always said to people, and I've had a number of occasions to say this to atheists, is, um...

59:24

I'm not sure if that's so much a problem with justice theology is the fact that he's British. The Brits are just always, well, for you, you know, and Dr.

59:34

Alvis is saying, no, for everybody, which, again, is that offensive thing. Let's think about what you actually hold to be true, and let's see if what you hold to be true is able to be sustained in the world in which you and I live.

59:48

And so, you know how the arguments go. I mean, how can it be, as Hitchens was here and others said, how can it be that you can have a moral compass at all, given that we are just, you know, slime that's oozed up in a particular way from the pit, and really, in that sense, have no more real value than any other thing in the world?

01:00:09

How do you produce morality out of that? So you begin to ask questions, and I actually have some mock dialogues in this book

01:00:16

I have coming out to try to show how this works, but you begin to ask questions. So you start to ask these questions about what foundation they have their own beliefs on, and you start to show them that they're actually holding those on essentially a

01:00:27

Christian worldview, they're just not acknowledging it. Is that the idea? Well, they have their own assumptions.

01:00:34

You know, planning has done a marvellous job, I think, of deconstructing some of those assumptions and just showing that given, say, evolutionary naturalism, there's no way to affirm any reality to knowledge at all.

01:00:44

So then how do you account for knowledge, given that worldview? So that's a kind of deconstructive approach.

01:00:50

But at this point, haven't you then at this point moved into essentially appealing to their reason?

01:00:56

Because this is essentially an argument that you're making with them at this point, Scott. So it's like, you know, you seem to cross from saying this is right, whether you believe it or not, but I'm going to try and persuade you via your faculty of reasoning.

01:01:09

Now, this is where, if I was going to make any criticism, this is where I, anyways, would have much more strongly emphasized what

01:01:21

I emphasized an hour ago now almost, and that is the fundamental issue here is not that Dr.

01:01:33

Oliphant is saying we should appeal to their reason, grant to them autonomy, give them the right to sit in the chair of judgment and judge

01:01:44

God. No, we're not doing that. We have denied that from the start. And when you, in your mind, have that as a presupposition, as a starting point, as a firm element of conviction, then how you present things, what you present, the order in which you present it is going to differ fundamentally.

01:02:08

If you have the idea that this person has the capacity in and of themselves to stop suppressing the truth, to see the truth, to change their way of thinking, to, in essence, bring about their own conversion, then you're going to argue with them differently than if you believe that the gospel is the power of God and that they are in the valley of the dry bones.

01:02:32

You argue with dry bones differently than you do with people sitting at a table.

01:02:38

Okay? And so the fundamental issue is that what we're saying is you do not grant to them the autonomy which they do not have.

01:02:48

You have to allow them, you have to force them to see themselves for what they are, the creature of God, in rebellion against their creator.

01:02:58

That this is the correct way of saying it. Well, absolutely. See, I think it's a myth. This is where the discussions just get bogged down, because let's go back to evangelism again to take it out of a controversial context.

01:03:09

Who in the world thinks that when you communicate the gospel to an unbeliever, that that unbeliever is not even able to think about the concepts that you're communicating?

01:03:18

Nobody's ever thought that way, and nobody's ever thought that way in terms of apologetics. The question is not whether you use reason, whether you use logic, whether you use air to breathe in order for all these things to happen.

01:03:27

The question is, what is the foundation that provides the rationale for these sorts of things? And that's really the question you're trying to get at.

01:03:34

So obviously when I was talking to Christopher Hitchens, I recognize that he understood the words I was using and saw something of the ideas that I was communicating, but he didn't want to have anything to do with any of them.

01:03:44

And of course he didn't, but it wasn't because his worldview was so tight. It was because all of us are this way apart from Christ.

01:03:51

He was suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. But I guarantee you, whatever truth is told and was told to him, got through in the way that God's natural revelation gets through.

01:03:59

Special revelation gets through to the same place that natural revelation does. Now, did you catch that? Special revelation gets through the same place that natural revelation does.

01:04:06

I thought that was an interesting statement. Yeah, I'm trumping it a bit here to come in. Yeah, so I've got a question. I mean, here you're saying that Hitchens can understand these concepts, he can think about them, he's suppressing the truth.

01:04:18

I mean, I would agree with everything you've said. I would probably add that I think the Scripture's message is that the reason why we don't believe is because we will it not to be the case.

01:04:26

I think there's ample biblical support. I agree with that. So... Now, did you catch that? Now, when

01:04:33

Dr. Oliphant says, I agree with that, yeah, he agrees with that, but I think in a very, very different way than Kurt Jarosz meant it.

01:04:45

I think Kurt Jarosz is saying that not only did Hitchens, to use the example, will to suppress that knowledge, but he could have stopped willing to suppress that knowledge.

01:04:57

And Dr. Oliphant is saying, no, he did will to suppress that knowledge. He is responsible for that. But that doesn't mean he has the capacity of stop doing that.

01:05:07

And that's where the, well, ought implies can argument has to be addressed, which has to be addressed all the time.

01:05:14

Um, the biblical teaching, John chapter 8, slaves, if you continue my word and are my disciples, you know truth, you free, need to be set free.

01:05:25

No slave just simply wills himself to stop being a slave.

01:05:31

So, yeah, we agree that man wills to do that.

01:05:37

But that doesn't mean that man then has the capacity to just stop willing himself to do that whenever he jolly well feels like it, as if being a slave.

01:05:46

Well, I'm just because he's being a slave right now. I'm no longer under the tyranny, dominion of death or sin.

01:05:51

Right? That's those things. Hearts of stone do not vote to be removed and replaced with hearts of flesh.

01:05:58

Hearts of stone like being hearts of stone. That's the problem. But so it's interesting how you said here that Hitchens could reason with you.

01:06:05

He could think. But but just earlier you said that nonbelievers are irrational. So I'm wondering how you can reconcile those two claims.

01:06:14

Yeah, easily in terms of the terms. Irrationality is a state with respect to reason and doesn't automatically assume that reason cannot be used.

01:06:23

So here's the irrationality of it. Hitchens, here's what I say. He listens to it. He knows in his heart of hearts because it's

01:06:29

God's revelation. He knows that it's the truth of the matter. And yet, because of his sinful propensities that all of us have, apart from Christ, what does he do with the truth?

01:06:38

He suppresses it in unrighteousness. In other words, he doesn't submit to it, but he either rejects it or tries to incorporate it into his otherwise irrational system of belief.

01:06:46

So that's using reason for the sake of irrationality. And there's no contradiction of that. Oh, just sort of like, not much to add to that.

01:06:57

Yeah, succinct, direct, straightforward. We've got about six minutes left on the program today.

01:07:04

I'm going to try to get through this one little section here. That'll leave a pretty reasonable chunk left to deal with tomorrow, because I've got other things

01:07:14

I want to get to tomorrow as well. So we'll see if we can get through this discussion of reason and rationality, and then we'll wrap stuff up.

01:07:22

Yeah, okay. So I see what you're doing there. I just think sometimes in our terms of the use of rational, it can come across as if we mean that people aren't thinking intelligently.

01:07:30

Nobody's ever said that in writing that I know of. So you would say that Hitchens is thinking intelligently, right?

01:07:36

That he's, or sorry, was a rational individual, though he...

01:07:43

See, I think, again, we've got to define our terms. If rationality means that they have negotiated and understood who they are and what the world is, no, they're not rational.

01:07:53

I mean, a lot of people... But that doesn't mean they don't use the reason. I mean, a lot of people will turn to you at this point,

01:07:59

Scott, and say, look, you seem to just be making assertions about the fact of Christianity being true, and you have to come at this as sort of from a neutral standpoint.

01:08:08

You know, you have to build a case for the reliability of Scripture and for the divinity of Christ.

01:08:14

We can't just... Can we really just assume all of that is true from the outset, from the nonbeliever's perspective? Now, this perhaps also ties into the criticism that's sometimes levelled against presuppositional apologetics, that it's circular in some way, begging the question.

01:08:30

You know, the truth of the Bible is made on the argument that the

01:08:35

Bible is true sort of thing. What do you say to that, that ultimately the presuppositional approach boils down to an assertion on your part?

01:08:43

And can't the atheist just as equally assert, well, my view is correct and your view is not? Yeah, well, you know,

01:08:49

I think to be fair, you can take any apologetic book out there and say, when it's all said and done, you're dealing with people's assertions.

01:08:58

So the assertive point is the point that everybody's trying to make, whether I'm talking to Hitchens or anyone else.

01:09:04

We're making assertions, and then we're arguing those assertions. And so I think both of those have to be included in the discussion.

01:09:12

And again, the point I'm trying to make here is, not everything that I know biblically and theologically is a part of the actual...is

01:09:20

necessarily a part of the actual argumentation that I would use, but it's foundational to the argumentation that I would use.

01:09:26

So again, I wouldn't approach someone typically and say...someone who's not a believer and say, oh, by the way, I know that you know

01:09:31

God, and you're not going to admit to that because you suppressed the truth, so now what do you want to talk about? It's not that sort of thing. I've been trying to say that what we do, it's a two -step approach, to put it as simply as possible.

01:09:40

We want to deconstruct their own position, whatever that position is, and show its futility and its irrationality, and then take those things that they want to have in their position and attempt to show how only

01:09:51

Christianity is able to provide what they actually want. So it's not in that way just simply saying, here's who you are, and this is the problem.

01:09:59

But on the other hand, again, like evangelism, I mean, what do you do in evangelism? You talk to people about their own sinful condition, you talk to people about the needs in their own lives and the things that they see, you begin to show how those needs cannot be met based on a secular worldview or whatever it is, or their rebellion, and then you begin to offer

01:10:17

Christ as the only solution. Well, that's an assertion. That's an assertion. And you argue that assertion, and you want to show how that meets the need, and that alone can meet the need, and that's what you're doing.

01:10:25

Okay, let's have Kurt answer some of that. Now, listen, and this will be probably the last section that we'll get to, but listen to how

01:10:35

Kurt heard what Dr. Oliphant said. This is fascinating.

01:10:43

Yeah, I would agree with that two -step approach that you mentioned. However, my concern is that in that second step, when you want to show people about Christianity, that what you're doing then is you're taking borrowed capital from these other apologetic methods.

01:10:55

Now, he doesn't agree with what Dr. Oliphant just said. His fundamental starting point is completely different in regards to the capacity of the natural man to whom he's speaking.

01:11:08

So he doesn't agree, but he's saying, oh yeah, I agree with that. And then, and this is where it got interesting, saying you're taking borrowed capital from these other apologetic methods as if the evidential method owns evidences.

01:11:28

So in other words, in his mind, if you mention anything from the created world as evidence of the existence of God, the only way you can do that is if you begin by granting to the individual human autonomy.

01:11:49

That's what you're doing. And that's not what Dr. Oliphant just said you do.

01:11:55

He said you deconstruct, you demonstrate the inconsistencies of their position, and then show them that in reality, they've been stealing from your worldview all along, and you show them that as creatures of God, this is how they are to live.

01:12:10

You've never granted them autonomy, and you've never said to them, here, look at this evidence and decide that God exists.

01:12:17

So there isn't any capital to be borrowed from other apologetic methodologies that are unbiblical in the first place.

01:12:27

So he's not heard what Dr. Oliphant has said. So you're using the same arguments there, then.

01:12:36

So what do you think about that? I mean, so essentially, it does fundamentally come back to making evidential arguments.

01:12:42

Yeah, you could talk to someone and present kind of this presuppositional approach at first. I mean, some people do this excellently. I would implement the same method.

01:12:50

But then you get to a certain stage where someone says, well, how can we be certain that Jesus resurrected from the dead, and it's not just a conspiracy theory?

01:12:57

And then you're going to be turning to evidential apologetics, you might be. I mean, no, no.

01:13:04

In fact, that's where I'm going to pick up tomorrow, is right there. That's not what you're doing.

01:13:10

Because all that, again, continues to assume a number of things that have already been addressed by Dr.

01:13:17

Oliphant. So hopefully this is useful to you, not only to listen to the program, but then to have an expansion, shall we say, on the various issues from, well, from one of the two sides.

01:13:32

But obviously, we have more time to do it this way. So thanks for listening. Thanks to even those across the pond that were listening.

01:13:41

Hopefully it was useful. We'll pick up again tomorrow. I will use Twitter and Facebook to let you know when we get started.

01:13:46

I'm going to try to do a jumbo edition when we can make it all work out, and just pray that I can figure out how to make it all work.