Settecase Interview

Reformed Rookie

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Hello friends and welcome to the Reform Rookie video podcast. My name is Anthony Vigneault and I'm your

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Reform Rookie host, bringing you all things Reform this evening. The goal of this podcast is to take the deep, rich truths of the

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Reform tradition and help you see the beauty in them and the joy you'll experience in understanding them better.

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Understanding these truths will help us better know the God of the scriptures and help us better appreciate the hope we have in Jesus, His plan of salvation.

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And to that we say Semper Reformanda. Well tonight I'm very excited to introduce my next guest to you.

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His name is Joel Sedeckes and he's the founder of the Think Institute. I know you're going to be blessed and edified by his teaching.

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He's a careful and serious thinker, yet he also has ways of explaining things that even I can understand.

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So welcome to the show, Joel. Thanks Anthony. Great to be with you, man. Thanks so much.

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Please tell the audience a little bit about yourself and your ministry. Sure. I'm a dad of four kids and you might very well be hearing them in the background right now.

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They're not quite in bed yet. The very grateful husband of Elisa, who's my partner in crime, partner in ministry.

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And the two of us are missionaries with an organization called Crew, or many people might know it as Campus Crusade for Christ.

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And within Crew, we're in the division known as Church Movements. I'm a former pastor by trade, and so I've got a lot of love for the local church.

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And within Crew Church Movements, we started an organization called, as you mentioned, the

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Think Institute. And so the Think Institute exists to equip believers to explain, share, and defend the

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Christian message. And so we're really based on the driving belief that no

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Christian should ever get caught flat -footed when asked what or why we believe.

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And so what we want to do is we want to reach the average, everyday

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Christian who is hungry and thirsty for more knowledge that they can put into action.

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And they're looking for ways to fulfill their piece of the Great Commission. They want to make disciples, they want to evangelize boldly, and they want to know how to be able to answer objections that come.

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Because there's always objections, whether it's coming from an atheist, a Muslim, a Mormon, someone who's woke, someone who's a nominal

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Christian, a Roman Catholic, there's always going to be an objection. And so my passion is getting resources and tools into the hands and into the minds and into the hearts of followers of Jesus so that to the glory of Jesus alone, they can explain, share, and defend the

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Christian message. So that's really what I'm all about. And I'm sure we'll probably get into more as we go.

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But I've got a podcast, website, blog. I do various different things to try to deliver that stuff out there.

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I'm going to call you Octopus Joel. You got your hands in everything. I love the mission statement and the heart behind it because it's so important that we equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

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The ministry is not designed for a few people to go out and do it. It's designed for the people in the pews to go out and just witness to their family and friends and bring the gospel with them wherever they go.

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It's not a difficult thing. If we're faithful, God's going to reward it and we're going to see revival and we're going to see a whole new reformation start in this country, which we certainly need.

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We desperately need. Absolutely. Yeah. So I feel like a kid in a candy store with so much that you got going on.

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I got to narrow it down a little bit. So as a first time guest on the show, what

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I want to know is how did you come to be reformed? Were you always reformed?

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How did it happen? Okay. Well, I have to start by disappointing you because I'm technically not reformed.

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Okay. The reason why I say that is this. When I think of reformed, capital

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R reform, I think of someone who is specifically confessional, meaning that they hold to either the

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Westminster or the second London Baptist confession of faith.

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Now I am a Baptist and I am a Calvinist. But there are scruples that I take with both of those confessions.

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And so what I typically say is I would say that I hold to the first London Baptist confession of faith insofar as it agrees with scripture.

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And there's a few other statements and like the Chicago statement of biblical inerrancy, I gladly hold to that.

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But I'm not capital R reformed. Although to like the average everyday person, when they hear reformed, they think

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Calvinist and like a hundred percent, like absolutely all five points and give me some more points and I'll subscribe to those.

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But I hold to new covenant theology, which so I adopted new covenant theology right around the same time

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I became a Calvinist. So there was a period of time where I called myself reformed or reformed Baptist. But and the church that we go to is reformed

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Baptist. Like they're very well known for being a reformed Baptist church. But for me,

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I grew up in a church that really didn't address the question between Calvinist, Arminian.

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We didn't really hear those words. So I didn't know those terms. But the big debate was predestination versus free will.

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That's kind of how we are predestined or do we have free will? That was kind of the big debate. And then the other big question, of course,

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Anthony, is can we ever lose our salvation? Sure. So I would debate these things with my friends, but I didn't realize

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I was talking about Calvinism and Arminianism or all the different five points, four points,

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Amaraldianism, the different streams that are out there. I just thought I was talking basic kind of Bible questions.

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So it was actually when I went to seminary. I started seminary in 2011. And by that time,

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I mean, I'd heard of some of your entry level, young, restless, reformed pastors like your

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John Pipers, your John MacArthur's, those kind of guys. And when

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I first realized that I actually believed Calvinism, like strong God's sovereignty in all things,

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I was actually in a seminary class taught by an Arminian, like a pretty avowed

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Arminian, a pretty strong Arminian. And I was learning about compatibilism, which is the belief that human choice is real and we are responsible for our choices, but God is also sovereign.

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So those two truths are both equally true. And as my Arminian professor was talking about Calvinism and he was presenting it in this horrifying way, like a dad who locks his kids in a tree house and then sets the tree house on fire that only saves one of them or something.

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And I'm listening to this and I'm like, well, I don't believe that. But then he starts talking about, and I could tell he was not being faithful to what he was, you know,

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I'd heard enough Piper and things like that where I'm like, no, I don't think that's what they really believe. And I don't think that that's the implication of what they believe either.

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But then when I heard him talk about compatibilism, I didn't realize that he was describing something he didn't believe in because the way he was teaching it, it just sounded so correct.

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I'm like, well, yeah. So I actually raised my hand in class. I ask a lot of questions in class. I raised my hand and I'm like, well,

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I believe that. What is that? That's what I believe. And he started getting real flustered and he's like, oh, no, no, no.

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Well, you see, that's not that's not right. And then I realized, oh, wait a minute. He's teaching something right now that's an opposition view.

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It's not what he actually believes. And I started putting the pieces together. Well, I do believe that. So I don't believe. So what is he?

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And then what is this other view? And I sort of put things together. The seeds for this were laid down years earlier when

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I had a good brother in the Lord, a mentor, Hector Colon, who laid out he actually brought

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I was going through a dark place in my life and he led me through Ephesians one, which talks about how God predestined us to be in Christ.

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So when I was hearing by the time I heard Calvinism and compatibilism laid out,

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I was already I was like a Ephesians one man. So, oh, you want to give me a name that's called

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Calvinism? Yeah, that's what I believe. That's what the Bible teaches. I already love that.

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Just give me the name for it. So I remember it was so that was like 2011, 2012. I started learning.

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And then by I think like 2013, 2014, I was talking with my wife. And this was like really at the apex of the

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Young Restless Reform Movement, which I was in. I was a part of.

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I didn't fully know. I didn't know if I was Calvinist or not. But I'm talking with my wife and I'm talking about Armenians and this.

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And I go, but, you know, we Calvinists, we believe this. She pauses and she looks at me and she goes, you just described yourself as a

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Calvinist. I go, oh, I guess I did. I had been thinking of myself as a

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Calvinist for probably a few months by that point, but I hadn't articulated it. And you know what, Anthony, it felt good to own that label.

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And, you know, shortly thereafter, I went through the cage stage, didn't know I was in the cage stage, but I started debating everybody, man.

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I'm like, you know, I'm restless to the core. I'm still pretty young.

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I'm in my early thirties and I'm like, let's go. And I mean, I used to, I was working at a church.

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I was a pastor and I'd get in these arguments and debates with my boss, which that didn't go well.

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But man, by God's grace, I think I made it through the cage stage. And, you know,

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I'm at the point now, I love God's grace. I love the doctrines of grace. And I call them the doctrines of grace.

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And they're, you know, not everybody likes, well, what, you know, they don't like when Calvinists kind of own that term doctrines of grace, but guess what?

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I mean, that's a technical term for the five points of Calvinism. And so I love talking about them.

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I love sharing them with people. And they've really become the background programming for how I process, not only like theology in books and theology when

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I'm reading the Bible, you know, biblical theology, systematic, but also life. So like, you know, my wife gets sick, my son gets sick.

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I'm processing these events through the lens of God's goodness, his sovereignty, you know, the five solos of the

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Reformation, and then the five points of Calvinism, knowing that I'm safe and secure, also knowing that his ways are higher than mine, knowing that how

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I respond is meaningful. I'm responsible for how I respond, but also ultimately knowing that he's totally in control.

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And I got to tell you, God brought me to Calvinism at just the right time in my life, right before I went into some major trials.

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And it was what I needed. It was, you know, just God's word strengthening my backbone and getting me through a lot.

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Praise God. That's actually what was going to be the next question I asked you, you know, how has it changed or affected your Christian walk?

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Obviously, you know, knowing God's sovereignty and his providence and provision in the midst of everything, knowing that his hand is completely in control and he has a purpose for whatever it is that happens is just such, so comforting, you know, to know.

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And I can see why you're able to get so much done because you don't, you don't rest on the Sabbath. That's right.

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Well, you know, technically that's not true. So many things going on. Technically, that's not true because Jesus is my

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Sabbath. So, so I'm always resting. I'm living that seventh day life every day.

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Praise God, I'm with you on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do take, I take, I take weekends off, but I don't,

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I'm not legalistic about it. I mean, if I need to do work, and I, and not to mention, I used to be a pastor. So, I mean, I'm working

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Saturday night, Sunday morning. I'm working, you know, I'm working, I mean, I'm working when you're a pastor, it's like, man, give me any, any day off during the week, anything

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I can take. And for kids and a wife, my goodness. You don't have a, you have a lot of things going on,

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Joel. Yeah, I, I do by God's grace. But Elisa, my wife, she's in the, like, like if there's two columns, one that makes life more challenging, one that makes life less challenging.

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She's in the less challenging. She's a helper. She's, she's, you know, she's my right arm, man.

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I mean, earlier today I was talking about ministry and I'm like, oh, you know, all the stuff that we're doing. And she goes, oh, you know, it's nice of you to say we're doing it.

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I'm like, what are you, what are you talking? Like, we are doing this. I don't, I can't do anything if you're not there doing what, you know, what you're doing.

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I mean, she is my right arm. She's like the right half of my body. I mean, I can't, you know, my right arm is my strong arm too.

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So, I mean, you know, like she's, she's just an incredible, incredible woman.

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I'm so blessed to know her. That's awesome. That's awesome. Me too. I got a wife that just handles things at the house and takes care of it.

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She allows me to do things like this, you know, so it's, it's, it's a real blessing.

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He who finds a wife finds a good thing. That's for sure. So one more question with regards to your Calvinism.

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Do you ever get opposition to these things or feel like going back to maybe not being so Calvinistic?

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Yeah, sure. I mean, it's been a while since, since, let me, let me say it's been a while since I've been really directly challenged that I can remember.

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I mean, most of the, most of the conversations I have now, if they're going to be like contentiously theological, they're with unbelievers, straight up unbelievers.

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I don't do a ton of debating with Christians of different stripes because I mean, right now that's not really where the battlefield is, you know?

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But I will say, you know, six, seven years ago, five, six years ago, there really, there was a lot of, that was a major battlefield, you know, like the whole young restless reform movement and, and new

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Calvinism. And, and, you know, the thing is like, sadly, a lot of those new Calvinists have now gone off and they become the new woke, the new communists, you know?

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So it's like, that's where the battle line is now. It's with the guys who were watching Mark Driscoll five, six years ago.

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Now they're following, well, I won't, if we can be, maybe we can name names later. But so, so I don't get a ton of pushback now, but like I said, it has led to conflict at work in the past.

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And I'm very blessed now that within church movements, crew church movements,

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I don't really have any opposition there. My, my supervisors are just really, really solid theological guys.

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I mean, they're, they're just really wonderful. I've had them on my show. We've talked about, we talk about theology and stuff.

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And so do I ever think about going back? You know,

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I wouldn't say going back, but you know, I'd be lying if I said there's never times where I questioned nuanced aspects of it.

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I mean, you know, God's sovereign and like, can I, one question I've been wrestling with relatively recently is okay.

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I, I do believe God is sovereign over every little detail. R .C. Sproul talked about it. There's even one errant, you know electron in the universe molecule.

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Yeah. Maverick molecule. That's it. Right. Then, you know, there's big problems. My, so I believe that that's consistent within the system, but the, the challenge that I've had is, well, how do

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I show that biblically? I can show how God uses evil. I can show how God has ordained trouble, evil disaster, but, you know, that's still one step away from saying every single thing is, is part of that plan.

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Again, I believe that, but it's sort of the, I really want to be precise in how

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I articulate things. And I want to be, I want to have an answer for every little minute point. So that's, that's not me wanting to go back.

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It's just me wanting to be consistent and, you know, making sure I can get biblical support for every, everything.

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Cause again, I'm not confessional, so I'm not going to be like, well, the Westminster divine said this. It's like, well, okay, but what is, you know, show me, show me in scripture.

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Sure. So stuff like that. Yeah. No, I, I have some very, very dear friends who, you know, who don't hold a

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Calvinistic position and, you know, we go back and forth in such a loving way. It's such a blessing to have, you know, guys who see things differently, who press me on my position and it makes me hone in on the scriptures and examine things from a different perspective because you can get real comfortable in what you believe and sloppy.

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And these guys hold me accountable and they're asking me questions and it makes me go back and then I'm able to go back to them. And it really is iron sharpening iron.

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And although we don't, you know, hold the same theological viewpoint, that's my brother in Christ. And I love him.

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And I always tell, you know, for Calvinists, they, they tend to look down their nose at other people.

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And I, and I warned them, I said, listen, you hold to the doctrines of grace. Don't ever be outgraced by an

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Arminian. You lose the argument. You lose. If you hold to the doctrines of grace and then are not graceful, what good is it to them to see something like that?

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So just another tidbit of information. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you with regards to logic.

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I listened to your YouTube video on six reasons that logic is not a human conception.

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So did you remember going through that? Yeah, I do. And I have it pulled up here.

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It's just so, so I don't forget anything. So could you, could you just give a quick, you know, list the reasons and a sentence about each of them?

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Sure. Yeah. So I've been doing apologetics, AMAs, ask me anythings on discord, which is this it's a social app,

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I guess, where there's a lot of chat rooms and voice chats and things like that. And there's a good brother who runs one of the channels on there, one of the servers.

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And so I've been, he's been real gracious and allowed me to do these, these AMAs. And one of the little debates that I got in one of the questions that was, that came across, you know, my, my, my, that was shot across my bow, if you will, was, could logic just be a human convention?

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Meaning, look, there's nothing ontological about logic. There's, there's nothing, logic doesn't exist out there.

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It's just, it's, it's a convention. It's, you know, it's like speed limits or something, you know, we all sort of agree, but there's nothing like, there's no law of the speed limit that's out in the universe.

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Unless you count the speed of light, that probably is one, you know what I mean? But, you know, there's no law out there that says you can only drive 65 on the highway or something.

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So, so this, this came out and what I did was I went back and I think actually maybe somebody messaged it to me.

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So I had some time to go back and think about it. And what they said, what this person said was, what's the best way to prove to people that logic is not just a human convention.

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So very good question. And I think as Christians, especially who want to engage in presuppositional apologetics, which, you know,

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I know you're good friends with Eli Ayala and, you know, he's Mr. Presupp, right?

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You know, I mean, he's like he's got presupp you and he's just all got all this great presuppositional apologetics.

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But one of the hallmarks of presuppositionalism is if you, if you believe in logic, if you believe logic is, is a real thing, then that presupposes

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God, that's actually impossible without God. It only makes sense within the Christian worldview. But so what if logic is a convention?

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Okay, well, so six reasons why logic could not be and is not a human convention.

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Reason number one, a world where logic wasn't real would actually be an incoherent world.

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Because if the laws of logic are not ingrained into the universe, then that is to say that if they're just conventional, then those laws aren't governing in the universe.

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And metaphysically and epistemologically, so the way things are and the way we know things would actually be illogical.

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Because logic is just something we impose on the world, not something that's actually there. So that would mean out there in the universe,

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A can equal not A. There is no excluded middle. A thing is not itself. And that's actually an incoherent world.

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That's not an intelligible world. You literally could not make any sense whatsoever in that world.

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And even me saying you can't make sense of the world, that wouldn't be true either, because its opposite would also be true.

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So every statement could be true and not true in the same sense at the same time.

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That's an incoherent world. Reason number two. So that would mean it would be a world without truth.

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Because I could contradict you and that would be just as good as me agreeing with you. There would be no coherence or consistency in the world.

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That's right. And logic is also one of the necessary foundations for language. And so language would be meaningless as well.

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You know, an easy way to refute this is just that's just self -evidently not the universe we're living in.

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And the fact that we're conversing right now, my mind, your mind, and the words that I'm speaking and you're speaking and the way we're processing them.

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So the interaction between us are self -evidently not incoherent.

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Now, we might make logical mistakes, but like you said, the iron sharpening iron, that's a real thing.

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But even the way that we correct one another's illogicality is done in a way that just assumes that logic is a real thing.

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Otherwise, you know, hair downward, pizza picture, therefore the much.

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That's great. We don't talk that way. That's not, that's evidently not true. Reason number two, then laws of logic that are merely conventions are actually false because the universe isn't that way.

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So if we're imposing logic, see our skeptical friend would have to explain how and why in a universe, in a cosmos that is not inherently logical, laws of logic aren't real.

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So the universe is actually incoherent. How do we suddenly come along and develop laws of logic that are actually false?

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They're not actually true about the universe. So this is not like coming up with your own set of morality.

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This is like a set of morals that are completely diametrically opposed to everything that is moral.

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So it'd be like, you know, like if we had a moral code that said, you must murder, you must steal, right?

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Like those are self -evidentially morally wrong. That's what laws of logic would be if they were merely conventions in an illogical universe in a cosmos that is not logical.

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Human conventions, logic that is human convention only are false.

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And so they would not only inadequately describe reality, they would actually be lying about reality.

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And that kind of goes back to what you were talking about. Truth wouldn't exist. And the very laws of logic that we want to appeal to would actually be false.

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So when an atheist accuses Christians of being illogical, and then they also want to believe that logic is merely a convention, what they don't realize is they're accusing

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Christians of Christianity is problematic according to that worldview because it's not false.

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You see what I'm saying? Like the laws of logic are false. You're not in accord with the laws of logic. Therefore, Christianity is wrong because it's not false.

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It just gets so jumbled and mixed up. It turns into this totally incoherent argument.

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And it's like, okay, so your problem is that my worldview is not false? Well, no, that's not what

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I meant. Well, that's what your argument is actually saying here. Absurdity, right? Yeah, it's total absurdity.

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In fact, not to interrupt you, but in listening to your video, you know how sometimes you'll hear something somebody says, and it'll create a question in your mind.

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As you're going through this, I said to myself, if logic was a human convention and men came up with the laws of logic by themselves, my question to them would be, did you use the laws of logic to come up with these laws of logic?

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Did you use logic in order to come up with it? Because if not, then your illogicalness came up with laws of logic.

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It just doesn't make sense at all. Right, right, right, right. Totally. It doesn't make sense.

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Yeah, that's a good point because if logic is a man -made convention, then that means the human mind and the rest of the cosmos is ultimately illogical, which means that the foundation of logic is illogic, which is itself incoherent.

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Self -refuting, right. Yeah. Yes, yeah, yeah. The atheist who says that Christianity is illogical and logic is a convention.

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Yeah, okay. I'm actually writing this down because I didn't even think of that point. Yeah, no, it was just, I don't want to use the word triggered, but you triggered me.

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Oh, it's good. To start thinking, and I'm saying, if they came up with the laws of logic, did they come up with those laws logically or illogically?

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I also love in talking to people, and I've talked to several people that said the laws of logic didn't exist prior to humans, humanity.

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Yeah, right. So I immediately asked them, I said, was it true that the laws of logic didn't exist?

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Right. And they said, yes. I said, well, that's a law of logic. And if it was true that they didn't exist prior to humanity, then it's false.

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Then it's false. Then it's false. So you can't have it both ways. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. But keep going,

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I love this. No, this is great. So reason number three is that laws of logic that are merely conventional aren't really laws at all.

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They have no teeth. Who's going to enforce that? The police officer enforces the speed limit, but who's going to enforce the laws of logic?

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So imagine a situation where it's not hard to imagine, but let's say a skeptic accuses a

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Christian of violating the laws of logic. Again, that skeptic is accusing the

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Christian of actually being in accordance with the way the universe actually is, because the laws of logic don't actually describe reality.

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So not only can you go to the atheist and go, okay, so let's say Christianity hypothetically isn't logical.

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So what? That's the first thing. Second thing is, hey, Mr. Atheist, if logic is just conventional, you should be rejoicing that I don't follow logic.

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You shouldn't. Not only do you not have any actual authority to enforce this, but actually you don't have any moral authority, moral high ground to enforce logic upon me because I'm actually being in accordance with the way the universe really is.

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And so there's no teeth to it. If logic is conventional and their problem is that Christianity is not logical, you just say, so what?

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And your point is what? Now, you're not, of course, granting that Christianity is illogical. You're just reducing their argument to absurdity, which is...

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Who am I obligated to? Right. That's right. Who am I obligated to? Yeah. And, you know, that's good.

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Who am I obligated to? So reason number four, by proposing the argument, by even accusing the

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Christian of being illogical and saying, well, even by saying logic is a convention, the skeptic is showing he doesn't really believe it.

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Why? Because he wants to be understood logically. He's not saying, he's not making a statement and hoping you'll think he means the exact opposite or even that it would be perfectly acceptable if you thought he believed the opposite.

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Right. And if logic is just a convention, then that means the way, you know, again, to use the background programming, is illogic.

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And so, really, what's really going on in his worldview is if he says logic is just a convention, what's actually true in the universe is that logic is not a convention.

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Like, that's because there's no logic in the background, or at the very least, that's possibly true. If logic is just a convention, it isn't objective.

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It's not real. And if you say that logic isn't real, then you shouldn't hope to be understood logically.

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You shouldn't even think that it matters if the person you're speaking to believe is the diametrically opposed, you know, opposite of what you're saying.

30:28

And this is just sort of like a, it's sort of a common sense piece of the argument.

30:34

It's like, you clearly don't believe that because you expect me to take you logically, as if there's a law of logic that transcends your mind and mine.

30:43

And it wouldn't be morally acceptable or epistemologically acceptable for me to just believe the opposite of what you're saying.

30:50

You know, if logic is just a convention, then it really boils down to preference, human preference, you know.

30:56

And I could change the convention to support my particular view on something, right?

31:03

That's exactly right. That's a great point. Not a big deal. Yeah, maybe Christians have their own convention.

31:09

And who are you to judge between one convention and the other? Right. So when my favorite football team loses by two points,

31:15

I can say, well, if you lose by two points, you really won. That's right. It turned into golf all of a sudden. Who's to say?

31:21

It turned into golf. That's great. That's a great point. All right, keep going.

31:29

All right, all right. So number five, human experience reveals that logic is discovered, not invented.

31:36

So human conventions are useful for organizing things that humans can control, like the grammatical rules of language.

31:44

You know, I studied French in high school, and I remember that there's an academy in France. English doesn't have this, but there's an academy in France that makes rules for the

31:54

French language. And those rules are the rules of the French language. English is a more free -flowing language.

32:01

Our dictionaries record how we use language, but there's no one out there dictating how we're supposed to use it. We've got other societal laws.

32:08

And the French academy that does that, that's perfectly fine. They're coming up with rules, and they all sort of agree we're going to follow these rules.

32:14

That's perfectly fine. But are lots of logic really like that? Of course not.

32:21

Logic is something that, even though most people don't study it, they conform to it all the time.

32:28

It's discovered. You can analyze your own thinking, and you can analyze the way that language is used in general, not just English or French, but just the structures of thought that give rise to language.

32:40

You study those, and you analyze them, and you discover logic. Logic is—our natural bent is not to treat logic as a man -made convention, but as the way things actually are.

32:53

We instinctively think. We instinctively act logically. See, it's only later that we go back and we reflect on it, and then we learn, oh, yeah, this is logic.

33:03

There are these three laws of logic, and they're discovered. They're not invented. So that's reason number five.

33:10

And then reason number six is if logic—and I think you said this very well earlier—if logic is just a human convention, it would not exist where no humans existed.

33:22

So prior to humanity, it didn't exist, but it also wouldn't exist on Mars. Now, this is a problem because we've got equipment on Mars right now, but there's no human being on Mars.

33:36

So even if you want to say, well, we've got cameras, and we're looking through the cameras, so logic is sort of there on Mars by proxy, well, that would mean that Mars is totally illogical until we flash that camera on it, and then it becomes logical.

33:50

And then we move the camera away, and then it's illogical again. No, because there's no humans there. And it's like, well,

33:57

I don't think so. And then let's say you went and started your own society on Mars. You know, Elon Musk wants to be the first one on Mars and what have you.

34:04

And God bless him. I hope he gets it, and I also hope he repents and trusts in Jesus Christ.

34:10

That would be awesome. But if he were to go up on Mars and start his own Martian society, is he free to then come up with his own laws of logic?

34:19

I mean, there's Earth -bound logic. Why not Martian logic? Why not? And then on Mars, now you've got a situation where someone says a statement, and it's both true and false, and it's not itself, and it's something in the middle between true and false, and all those three things.

34:39

So Mars is now this incoherent planet simply because we've got humans up there who just started their own conventions.

34:45

I mean, the whole thing is just so absurd that it's really amazing anybody would even make the assertion that logic is a human convention.

34:54

What we have really going on here, Anthony, is this. Human beings want to bend reality to suit our desires.

35:03

It's a sin as old as Eden itself. Yes. It's the pride of life.

35:10

You know, lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, pride of life. And it's us wanting to make God and God's creation bend to our will instead of saying, this is

35:20

God's world. He created it. He's the Lord over it. I have to figure out the way the world actually is, and I have to abide by God's rules.

35:29

And when we function that way, guess what? We get logic. We get a coherent universe. But it also means we're not sitting on the throne.

35:37

But because man suppresses the truth and part of that truth, according to Romans 1, is the eternal power and divine nature of God.

35:45

Part of God's divine nature is he's logical. He's the logos. Jesus is the logos. If we want to deny

35:52

God, it makes sense that we would deny logic as well. The problem is you can't live that way. And so, you know, you can say logic is a human convention.

36:00

I'm very grateful that the people who claim that don't actually live that way. They can't.

36:05

They can't. They can't live that way. They're created in the image of God. They cannot escape God's world as much as they try.

36:12

Like you just said, they're suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. It's a sin issue, not an information issue.

36:19

That's right. One of the things that I usually tell unbelievers, and I think they try to come up with saying that the laws of logic are a convention because I think they're a tremendous proof for the existence of God.

36:34

So you look at the laws of logic, you look at moral laws, you look at laws of physics, right?

36:40

They're all immaterial, right? Which is a problem for some of them. They're objective. They're not subjective.

36:45

So they exist outside of us. And like you just said, they're universal. So immaterial, objective, and universal.

36:52

And just like you, I love alliteration. That's I -O -U, right? So every time they use the laws of logic, a moral law, or the laws of physics, they're issuing an

37:01

I -O -U to God because they're borrowing from our worldview and can't substantiate it with their own.

37:08

I love that. So yeah, I try to break it down so that it'll be memorable for somebody.

37:13

So when I go through the I -O -U stuff, I go through the laws of logic, the moral laws, the uniformity of nature.

37:22

I go through all these things. And atheistic worldviews, all other worldviews, cannot support these things the way we can.

37:30

Right. So here's a question for you based on the laws of logic. Does logic, do the laws of logic necessitate a trinity?

37:41

All right. So I'm sure I'm not the best guy to answer this question, but it is one that I've been thinking a lot about lately.

37:49

And I've been developing an argument here. And here's the thing, you get to the point where you read so much.

37:59

I don't know if this is something that I've come up with or if I got this like from Van Till or Frame, you know what

38:04

I'm saying? So I'm not going to claim originality here by any means, but this is sort of what's been kicked up, churned up by my reading and my thinking about this.

38:15

So according to Romans 1, everyone knows God's eternal power and his divine nature because they've clearly seen them.

38:24

They've observed them in the creation from what's been created. And in fact, from the creation of the world.

38:31

Well, what is God's nature? God's nature is not just that he's omniscient, omnicompetent, omnibenevolent and all the omnis and that he's all powerful and sovereign.

38:41

God is also triune. He's three and he's one. And if that's God's nature, there must be something about that nature that is clearly perceived to us.

38:52

So people say, well, the Trinity is just so absurd, you know, it's just something that's invented.

38:58

But if Romans 1 is correct and it is, then there must be something about God's triunity that is also clearly seen.

39:07

And I think that logic is a place where God's triunity is clearly seen, his

39:13

Trinity is clearly seen. So here's where I've landed on this and you can tell me what you think of this, okay?

39:19

So now this is going to sound like so obvious, it's going to sound like cloyingly obvious, but think about the laws of logic.

39:31

There's three of them. Sometimes you could put one or two, like kind of more like law of rational inference, things like that.

39:39

But the three primary laws of logic, law of identity, law of non -contradiction or contradiction if you're

39:45

R .C. Sproul, and the law of excluded middle. There's three of these.

39:52

Now, which one of those three is logically prior to the other two? They're not.

39:58

Simultaneous. They're simultaneously ultimate. They're equally ultimate to one another.

40:03

Yes. And together, they're not parts of a whole because they all imply one another.

40:12

Yes. I don't want to make like a direct analogy here because once you start making analogies for the

40:20

Trinity, it's going to fall apart. And I haven't seen how this one falls apart, but maybe it does and I don't even want to go there.

40:26

But if you think about logic, there's three of them. They're all equally ultimate. And it makes just as much sense to talk about the law of non -contradiction as being like this ultimate law in the universe as it does to just simply talk about logic.

40:39

We can talk about logic or we can talk about the laws of logic. And you understand we're talking about the same thing, but they're not just the same thing.

40:49

Logic is a whole. The laws of logic is a reference to each discrete law.

40:56

There's three laws. So I can say laws, plural, or I can say logic, one. So there's a unity and a diversity.

41:02

And neither the unity nor the diversity is prior, is more necessary than the other.

41:14

And it's impossible based on what logic is. First of all, logic exists necessarily, which

41:21

I think we just talked about. It's not a convention. And it would be impossible for logic to exist without being three.

41:29

But it would also be impossible for those three to be in opposition to each other in any possible way.

41:34

So there's this equal ultimacy and there's this unity and diversity. And specifically, there are three.

41:42

So what worldview then could possibly explain logic like that?

41:49

Could a monad account for that? So if you want to say, well, God is a monad and the

41:56

Unitarian view of God, I don't like to say

42:01

Unitarian. I'm fine saying Unitarian, but I like to say monad because a monad is a thing.

42:09

It conjures like a single point in my mind. Whereas a

42:15

Unitarian kind of sounds, I don't know, it sounds like unity. And there's not unity in a monad.

42:23

It's just a bare monad. It's just one, ultimately one with zero diversity.

42:31

So how do you get logic, which necessarily exists in three laws and one abstraction or one truth?

42:45

I'll come up with a better word for that. But how do you get that? If all that there is prior to God creating the universe, if all you have is a monad, how do you have logic that is diverse within itself?

43:01

That diversity could not exist in that God. Now, unless you want to say that that God is absurd and illogical, which if he's illogical, what laws of logic was he violating?

43:14

Because that's what illogical means. So there must be these laws of logic, but those laws of logic are logically prior to any monad that could have existed.

43:29

What that means is any monad, monadic God or Unitarian God, if you will, could not be the explanation for those laws of logic.

43:40

If you want to assume for the sake of argument, God is a monad, that God does not account for logic.

43:46

So in that worldview, what you have a problem, what your problem is then is either logic is not a real thing or logic only seems necessarily to exist in three laws and those three laws are actually an illusion and you're being deceived.

44:04

But that's sort of self -evidently not true. You know what I'm saying?

44:10

I guess we'd have to find out if the monadic believer believes that. We could refute that,

44:15

I think. But or in that worldview, you'd have to say, well, there's a higher

44:21

God who is above that God. Well, what God could that be? He would have to be triune.

44:28

So now look at this. This is interesting, right? Even in this possible world, even in this worldview where there's a monadic

44:35

God, the triune God is still above and higher in the background, lurking, ruling even over that false worldview.

44:45

Why I like this and I'm unpacking this even as I think right now, I like this because I'm a big fan of the ontological argument, which says that God exists in all possible worlds.

44:56

So look what we've done. We've described a possible world in which the God of that world is a monad.

45:01

But even in that world, the triune God still is there. You cannot escape the triune

45:08

God. You cannot get away from Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Now assume the Christian worldview.

45:14

Triune God. God is one. God is three. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, each equally ultimate, perfectly united, perfectly in perichoresis and circumcensio, meaning they interact perfectly with each other and they're in one another.

45:31

That, man, can you have laws of logic? Can you have logic that's three in one in that worldview? Absolutely.

45:37

There's no way you couldn't, right? Because God is, Jesus is the Logos. God is the Logos. Jesus perfectly represents

45:43

God. So if Jesus is logical, God is logical. I mean, it's just, I mean, you can prove it from any perspective you want, but the

45:51

Christian worldview perfectly grounds logic. A monadic worldview says it can't account for logic.

46:01

And even in the background, even in the background, the triune God is still there because guess what?

46:10

If we are hypothesizing this possible world where there's just a monad, we can only hypothesize that from this world.

46:19

And God is the God of this world and all possible worlds. So I think using that sort of argumentation, you can prove it.

46:30

I think that's excellent. I was mulling it over again after listening to your video.

46:36

It kind of inspired me. I started getting these little thought bombs. And I'm saying, you know, when you think about God's nature, starting with the triune

46:45

God, Father is differentiated from Son. So that's A is not

46:51

B and B is not A, you know? Right. Oh, yeah, right. That's right. You know, and then you have law of excluded middle.

46:59

A is not, how does it work? A or not

47:05

A. Not A. That's, I mean, that's how you, that's A or not A. Right. So the laws of logic are a unity in community.

47:14

Yeah. Unity in unity, which again is a reflection of the triune God who is a unity in community in a community in unity.

47:22

You know, I love what you brought out and the way you think. And I would love to see a video on that or a nice blog article from you once you do that.

47:32

Let me know when you do, because I would love to read it. Okay. I'm writing this down as we talk, because I gotta tell you, man, like this is a great conversation because as we're talking,

47:45

I'm realizing some aspects of, again, this is an argument that I haven't fully fleshed out, but at some point,

47:56

Anthony, I need to have a debate with a Muslim. I've, most of my interactions have been with atheists or the woke, which you can't really debate the woke because they just call you racist and kind of, you know, move on.

48:15

Of course. Oh, okay. I guess I'm racist now. You know, but I've done,

48:21

I've had some interaction with Muslims in, I've actually taught in a

48:26

Muslim school. They brought me into teaching Christianity to their history students. Praise God. And yeah, it was pretty cool.

48:32

I got to present the gospel two years in a row. They haven't invited me back since the second year, probably because of COVID, but I'll blame it on COVID, I think.

48:40

But recently, let's say within the last couple of months, I got into this

48:46

Twitter debate with a Muslim apologist. And it's, you know, ever since then,

48:55

I've really been thinking, man, I've, because I've even debated

49:00

Mormons, you know, in the past. Okay. But I've never really, truly gotten into it with Muslims, except that I will say the teacher and I did debate after I taught the class, but like, like she,

49:13

I wouldn't put her in like the apologist category, you know, she's not going out doing debates. Um, so anyway, uh, because of that,

49:20

I've been thinking a lot about the Unitarian or monadic concept of God and why that, why that must be impossible.

49:28

And so I've been looking for, for reasons why that is. So, so at some point I will flesh that out. I'll put it on a video.

49:33

I'll put it in the blog. Yeah, no worries. Yeah. And I can hook you up with a friend of mine. You probably know him,

49:38

Tony Costa. I know the name. I don't know him personally. He's an apologist in Toronto Baptist Seminary, and he's debated

49:44

Muslims, you know, many, many times over. So if you need a name or maybe, you know, hook them up so that you can set something up, um, going back to the laws of logic and the nature of God, you know, even when, you know, the scripture says

49:59

God is love. Yes. Can't happen alone. Right. I mean, you, you, you have the person doing the loving and the object of the love.

50:09

Right. So a monad could not be, be love. They could become loving, right.

50:16

At some point, but they would, they would be dependent on what they create in order to exercise love.

50:24

Right. Cannot do that, you know, uh, as, as a monad as, but as a triune

50:29

God, they could, it could, that God could be love because there's a lover and an object of the love and it could be love return.

50:37

So again, it's unity and community and community and unity. A mod, a monad cannot do that.

50:43

Right. Yeah, that's right. And even if you want to say, well, a monad could love itself.

50:50

I, I, I don't, I couldn't flesh this out for you right now, but I would like someone to come along and show why that's because that doesn't, that doesn't seem right to me that, that even that a monad could even reflect upon itself.

51:05

There seems to need there, there seems to need, it seems necessary that there would need to be like a three dimensionality to the, to, to the monad in order to reflect upon itself.

51:18

You know, like we can reflect upon ourselves because we're living in this world where there's three, I mean, if you think about there's three dimensions, height, width and depth, right?

51:24

Like, like, and that's true even about our thinking. I mean, look, even the way we write books and we, our language, there's first person language,

51:32

I second person language, we, and, and third person language.

51:37

Uh, oh no, no, sorry. I, you and he, you know, first, second, third person. There's no fourth person language.

51:43

You know what I mean? So, so even, so it's like, you know, try unity is, is ingrained in the universe.

51:48

And I'm, I'm, I think when people think, well, monad could love itself or himself, which even he would need, that only makes sense because there's he and she, but, um, you know,

52:01

I think that they're sort of taking what's true about this world where there is such a thing as self -reflection because it was created by a triune

52:09

God. And I think it's trying to import that into this hypothetical world where there's just a monad. And I don't think you can do that again.

52:16

I can't philosophically prove it yet, but I think a hundred percent, you're right.

52:21

Love requires triunity. Sure. And, and, and as, as a monad, um, anything he does would be selfish.

52:31

Correct. Right. You know, whereas a triune God would be selfless, you know, like we hold to the covenant of redemption where God, the father promises the son, uh, people, the son dies on behalf of the people, the

52:44

Holy spirit brings them to life. Each one is glorifying the other, and they're not doing it for self -centered reasons.

52:51

If it's a monad and he loves himself, then everything he does would be self -centered. Yeah, that's right.

52:59

That's right. That's a great point. That's a great point. And it's, it's amazing how father, son, and Holy spirit glorify each other, glorify each other.

53:08

And, and even, even, you know, Jesus says, father, glorify your name. And he says, I have glorified it.

53:14

I will glorify it. But even, even then, as he says that, how is he glorifying his name? He's doing so in and through the son by the power of the

53:22

Holy spirit. So the father doesn't even act alone. He acts through the son acts according to the will of the father and it's done in the

53:30

Holy spirit. And so even if you want to say, yeah, but the father glorifies himself. Yeah. But how does he do it?

53:36

How does he do it? He does it in community and, and he does it for the glory of the son and, and, and in the

53:44

Holy spirit. And there's never, the father is never self -seeking. The father is never acting purely, as you said, selfishly, it never happens.

53:54

And so someone says, well, God is for God's glory. Yes. And amen. Now let's address that Trinitarian Lee and, and explain how that's not selfish.

54:05

That's not self -seeking. And therefore, when God tells us not to be selfish, not to be self -seeking, he's saying be like me.

54:11

Exactly. Exactly. Well, think about what marriage is, right? Marriage is a picture of the nature of, of God and that relationship you have, you have husband, wife, and children, you know, father, son,

54:23

Holy spirit, the, the children proceed forth from both the father and the mother, the

54:28

Holy spirit spirates, you know, from the father and the son. So it's, it's such a, it's such an unbelievable picture.

54:34

So the two shall become one flesh. And here we have a, a compound unity, again, a reflection of the nature of God, right?

54:45

In day six of creation, you know, God creates Adam. He says, it's not good for man to be alone.

54:51

Well, why not? Right. Because it doesn't reflect the nature of God. God was never alone. He was always in community, unity and community.

54:59

That's why obviously, you know, in this world, relationships are so important. You know, not only, we are a confessional church.

55:08

And one of the things that we talk about is you're not only in covenant with God, you're in covenant with each other.

55:15

So when you become a member of the church, we are now in covenant to each other and we have obligations to each other, right?

55:24

So we're not just obligated to God, we're obligated to each other. And what's the law based on? Love the Lord, your

55:29

God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. It's this covenant community that loves each other and loves

55:36

God. That just, to me, just shows such a beautiful picture of the nature of God.

55:42

Amen. Amen. And you know, it's cool because by the time God says it's not good for the man to be alone, that's

55:48

Genesis 2 .18. We already found out in Genesis 1 .27 that God made man in his own image.

55:54

In the image of God, he created him male and female, he created them. So when we're first introduced to man, it's as a little mini community.

56:05

Right. And that's what's described as being made in the image of God, male and female, he created them.

56:11

And so, you know, by the time we get to Genesis 2 .18, it's not good for the man to be alone. It's like, yeah, no kidding.

56:18

Right. Because we already know that he already gave us like the spoiler alert, like, hey, he's not going to be alone.

56:24

And now let's back up. That's a great point. Yeah. So that's cool. I know analogies for the

56:32

Trinity always break down, because obviously anything in this natural world is not transcended. It's within the world.

56:38

But the one thing I want to run it by you, the one analogy that I do use, and again,

56:43

I qualify and I say, look, it's going to fall apart at some point in time, is time. Time is past, time is present, and time is future.

56:52

The future is not the present or the past. The present is not the past or the future. So you have three things existing simultaneously.

57:00

Okay. Of the same essence, but different within itself. What do you think of that?

57:10

I don't like it. Okay. I'll tell you why. I think it may be because I have a different view of time than you, and I could be wrong about this.

57:25

So what you said was past, present, and future exist simultaneously, but they're different, same essence.

57:34

So that's descriptive of the B -theory of time, which says that all, essentially,

57:40

B -theory, there's A -theory and B -theory. As far as I know, those are the only two theories.

57:46

There might be others, but those are the only two I know about. B -theory says that all the moments of time are all equally real.

57:57

Now, this is where it gets complicated. It's as if time is, let's say, if it's a series of moments, it's like a bunch of photographs that are all spread out all over a table.

58:09

And there's one that's got maybe like a flashlight shined on it, right? And then it goes to the next one, goes to the next one.

58:15

But that moment that was just there still exists. It just doesn't have the flashlight on it.

58:22

It's just not now. It's just not now. So this is sort of the worldview that allows for time travel because, well, you could go back to 30 years ago because that moment is still out there, if you will.

58:35

You kind of have to start using language like locational language because that moment is over there.

58:44

It's just not here. It's then, but it's not now. It's still real, but it's not here now.

58:50

A -theory of time, on the other hand, says that the only moment that exists is right now.

58:56

The past does not even exist. There's no way to go back to 100 years ago.

59:03

And even if you want to say like there's a certain give and take, like there's a certain sort of gray area where maybe the moment as it just fades, it kind of fades away.

59:16

Maybe it's maybe it doesn't. So maybe like if you were to speed up really fast, maybe you could kind of, I read this book by Jason Lyle called

59:22

The Physics of Einstein. And it's like Jason Lyle is great at breaking things down, but this is so over my head.

59:29

But I was trying to kind of mess with my view of time, majorly mess with my view of time. But basically,

59:35

I personally don't hold the view. I hold to A -theory. So I don't hold the view that all the moments are still out there.

59:42

I think the only moment that exists is now, even if God's now is not exactly the same as our now.

59:50

Like, let's say, because I don't think God, I mean, I think I could probably prove this.

59:57

God doesn't experience time the way we do. But I do think that God is temporal, meaning he experiences sequence or duration.

01:00:07

And so for me, I think temporality is something kind of like logic, like you couldn't have a universe without logic.

01:00:18

Like, I don't think like God being atemporal or timeless is a coherent idea.

01:00:24

So that being said, that's why I don't like that analogy, only because it doesn't comport with my own personal, like the view of time that I agree with.

01:00:34

If I held to the other view of time, probably would be more amenable to it.

01:00:41

Like, okay, I see that. I can see that. Well, I'll tell you what, for the layperson who doesn't understand the

01:00:48

A and B theories, it kind of makes them say, hmm, okay, sure. It does give them a thing.

01:00:55

I want to run another. Are you okay with time, Joel? Yeah, I'm okay. You sure? Okay, good.

01:01:00

I'm enjoying this. I really am. Yeah, me too. Me too. So I came up with something called, you know how like Bonson had the toothpaste proof for the existence of God?

01:01:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love it. I came up with something and I call it the butter knife proof for presuppositionalism.

01:01:17

Now, I'm going to tell you that I just landed here from Mars and I don't know what this is.

01:01:25

So Joel, could you tell me what this is? That's a butter knife or a table knife.

01:01:31

Yeah. Okay, well, what's butter? You don't have to answer.

01:01:37

You don't have to answer. Okay, yeah, milk that's been, cream that's been hardened. I'm going to tell you.

01:01:43

Well, you know what? I just landed on Earth a couple of weeks ago and I've been to several houses and I see a lot of guys using it like this and they say it's like a screwdriver, right?

01:01:56

And then I see other guys, they're trying to hang pictures for their wives, you know, pictures of their wives and their kids on the wall and they're tapping stuff in like, you know, a nail.

01:02:06

And then I see some women, they use this like to pry open jars that they use.

01:02:13

Okay. And then I even see some kids, they draw circles on the wall and they throw this and they try to get in into the center of the circle.

01:02:21

So you say it's a butter knife, but I say it's a multipurpose. In fact,

01:02:26

I also see people using it to defend themselves like as in a weapon. So I say this is a multipurpose tool, toy, self -defense device.

01:02:38

Now, I have empirical evidence. I've seen it in action, philosophical evidence, if you want to call it that.

01:02:45

Okay. How could you prove me wrong? Maybe I could go to the box that, you know, that it was sold in and see what it said on there.

01:02:57

Did it say like 12 butter knives or 12 table knives or, you know, something like that.

01:03:03

Or, you know, maybe I could bring you back to those houses where you observed all those things and you and I could together go to those people and say, hey, what are you using to hammer that nail in?

01:03:16

I'll say, oh, I'm using this butter knife. You know, I mean, so I could, I could gather more data or. Right. Right.

01:03:22

You know, I know you're going somewhere with it, but. Yeah, and I don't doubt that, you know, some people probably could use it for butter and call it a butter knife, but how could you know for certain what this is?

01:03:33

Well, I mean, at the end of the day, we're talking about a convention and you'd have to go to the person who created it and you have to ask them, what did you make this for?

01:03:41

There you go. Once you go to the creator and he says, look, I created this as a butter knife.

01:03:48

Sure. You can use it to pry things open. You can hammer things in. You could use it as a screwdriver, but that's not what its intent and purpose is.

01:03:58

So until we go to God, okay, who, who defines his creation and he tells us what his intent and purpose is for, let's say humanity.

01:04:08

I can use humanity as, as slaves. I can use them for power. I can use them for a bunch of different things, right?

01:04:16

Right. But is there a purpose and an intention in God's creation for humanity? Once I know

01:04:22

God's purpose and intention and how he defines humanity, now I can walk in truth and I can say with certainty what something is again, from a presuppositional viewpoint, you know, we start with God.

01:04:34

Okay. We work down towards the evidence. So from an evidential, an evidentialist will never be able to tell you what this actually is because we have empirical evidence that shows it's a pry bar.

01:04:47

It's a screwdriver. It's a hammer. It's a, it's a self -defense weapon. It could be a toy, a dark game.

01:04:54

So we can all look at the same facts. No one is neutral. We're going to come at them from different vantage points.

01:05:01

How are we ever going to settle the argument outside of the word of God? You know what?

01:05:07

That's, I like, I really like that. And, um, you know, when I said, uh, you could go get the box and see what was printed on it.

01:05:14

Well, whoever designed the thing printed the box, you know, so you've got it. You've got, you've got an authoritative word from the maker from the end.

01:05:22

And Hey, don't we have an authoritative word? You know, it's like, exactly. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's, that's good.

01:05:28

You're right. Because if, if someone wants to say, um, okay. One of the common things that you hear from, um, agnostics, atheists, skeptics, when they want to talk about morality, they'll say, well, morality has to do with human flourishing.

01:05:43

It has to do with wellbeing is usually the term. Well, what, when you say wellbeing or flourishing, doesn't that assume that there's some standard that, you know, already that someone has told you what is wellbeing versus what is harmful.

01:05:59

And, and so you can't say, well, harm is evil because harm assumes that, you know, what's good and what's bad.

01:06:06

And if you're doing what's bad or what's wrong, you know, we call that harm. So it's really very circular if you start to talk about wellbeing, but if on the flip side, so given, given atheism, given, you know, no maker.

01:06:18

Yeah. You're right. You're right. You'd never know what are people for. Right. Whereas if you start from the, if you start from God, you start from the biblical worldview,

01:06:26

Christianity go, well, here's what people are for. Right. Serve and glorify God. Enjoy him. Exactly.

01:06:32

So, you know, you were talking before about discord and have you ever heard a guy named dark Dawkins? Yeah. I heard of him.

01:06:39

I, I don't, I know very little about him. I just know atheists hate his guts. Yeah. Um, you know, he, he, he can be a little rough around the edges.

01:06:46

Eli interviewed him and it was one of the most, um, I, I, I must've listened to that one probably about four times.

01:06:53

And I took lots of notes. He does a tremendous job at one of his questions and I love it, uh, that he asked atheists.

01:07:00

He says, what is ultimate and fundamental on your worldview? What is fundamental?

01:07:07

Like what is the ultimate point? You know, and you know, most, most, most of them don't know how to answer.

01:07:16

Um, but if they say, well, there's a power that created the universe. And he says, well, is it personal or impersonal?

01:07:22

And they said, well, it's impersonal. He says, well, how do you know? She says, well, I, I don't have evidence that it's personal.

01:07:29

It's like, but you're making a claim that it's impersonal. So if you, if, if you're making this claim and you don't know what the ult what's ultimate and foundational on your worldview, um, that's blind faith, right?

01:07:45

That's number one. Number two, if it's not personal, okay. Only persons can rationalize, right?

01:07:53

So if it's impersonal, then it's not based on rationality. It's irrational.

01:07:59

The base, the ultimate and fundamental basis for your worldview is irrational because it's not a person.

01:08:06

So, okay. Um, but impersonal things can function according to the laws of logic, uh, temp temperature is impersonal.

01:08:19

Um, but you know, the temperature is either going up or down, not up and down in the same sense.

01:08:25

But then of course I would say temperature is not ultimate and foundational. Well, yeah.

01:08:30

Can, can temperature give you the laws of logic? Right, right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Right. No, that's good.

01:08:36

That, that, that's good. Right. Because whatever's foundational is the foundation for logic. Exactly. Has to give you logic.

01:08:43

You know, it's good. You know, logic is a reflection of perfect thinking, right?

01:08:49

Which, which again is, which again is God. So just, uh, so did you start out as an evidentialist and become a presuppositionalist or was this just something that you always held to had it, had it happened?

01:09:03

You know what? I'd love to say I was always a presupper, but you can go to my old blog.

01:09:09

Don't forget to think dot blogspot .com I think is what it is. And, um,

01:09:15

I've, it's, it's loaded up with evidentialist and classical classicalist arguments.

01:09:21

And, uh, so yeah, man, I was, uh, uh, William Lane, Craig groupie. I mean, I loved his stuff. Fanboy might be a better word for it.

01:09:28

Um, and, uh, I, I didn't disc I discovered, you know, here's the funny thing.

01:09:35

I was in seminary studying philosophy of religion. And I had no idea what presuppositionalism was.

01:09:43

You know how I found out about preset? Good. I was listening to the reformed podcast and, uh, which was, uh, it's no longer on the air, but, uh, less than Tanner, the two hosts of that show.

01:09:56

They were, these guys were talking about James white and presuppositional apologetics.

01:10:04

And I'm like, what on earth is presuppositional apologetics? So I started looking up James white.

01:10:10

I started, I discovered sites and Brigham Kate who's, you know, I got who I've gotten to know over the years.

01:10:16

And, uh, and I, I discovered this method and I'm like, man, what, this is incredible.

01:10:23

You know, the cool thing is I was, I adopted

01:10:28

Calvinism, new covenant theology and presuppositional apologetics all within like a, maybe a year, year and a half timeframe.

01:10:37

So I went through like this radical shift. Now, the thing is, um, I, it, it, it felt, it wasn't like this major,

01:10:49

I didn't feel like I was changing religions or something like that because I felt, I felt instead like I was going deeper into scripture.

01:10:56

Uh, I, I think, I know you don't hold the new covenant theology, but the truths that I've discovered within that system, and we're talking about presuppositionalism.

01:11:08

So I'll just talk about that. The more I have gotten into a presupp, the more

01:11:15

I've seen it, not only as being based on biblical principles, which I really believe it is, but what

01:11:22

I'm working on right now is an articulation of how presupp is really, it's the way

01:11:29

Jesus argued. Jesus did not use evidential apologetics. And even if you want to say, yeah, but he did signs and wonders.

01:11:37

Okay. Yes, he did. But those signs and wonders were done within a particular framework.

01:11:43

Sure. They were done to Israelites who, um, and this is one of the reasons

01:11:49

I, I, uh, appreciate Michael Heizer's work. He talks about how, um, the, even though in the old

01:11:57

Testament, it doesn't talk about the Messiah doing exorcisms by the time the, by the, by the first century, it was an expectation of that worldview of, of that culture, that society, that when the

01:12:10

Messiah came, he would cast out demons that, that developed, that, that came up, that, that was a product of that inter intertestamental period.

01:12:18

So Jesus comes up and what does he do? He starts casting out demons and, you know, there's nothing in the old Testament, as far as I know, that says the

01:12:25

Messiah will cast out demons, but Jesus is doing signs and wonders that would have been absolutely irrefutable given the particular biblical worldview and first century worldview that they had.

01:12:37

So what Jesus didn't do, Jesus didn't give them a bunch of scientific evidence to say, and therefore miracles happened.

01:12:46

The miracle itself is the argument. And then he explains the miracle by saying, if Satan is cast out, you know, by the finger of God, then, you know, he has an, or if Satan is divided against himself, then he has an end.

01:12:57

But, you know, if I'm doing this by the power of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and by the way, stop blaspheming the Holy Spirit. And so, you know,

01:13:04

Jesus is arguing in a very presuppositional way and the miracles are part of that.

01:13:10

Evidentialism comes along and says, here's a bunch of evidential arguments that proves to you why miracles did happen.

01:13:18

But then guess what? If you don't start from the biblical worldview, you don't start from God, presupposing

01:13:25

God, you're right back to where your alien is with the butter knife. Okay, but who's to say?

01:13:32

Where's the authoritative word on this? You know, I guess people can rise from the dead.

01:13:38

Hey, hey, hey, what do you know? Yeah, that's right. Strange things happen. Call Ripley's, believe it or not.

01:13:44

Hey, I guess demons really do exist. And I guess Jesus did cast them out. So what? I don't, that's fine, but weird.

01:13:51

I guess ghosts exist. You know, who knows? It's strange world we're living in. So, but if you, if you don't, if you're not doing this presuppositionally, all the evidence in the world is not going to do a bit of good.

01:14:03

It's like Jesus said in his story of Lazarus and the rich man, if they don't, and he has

01:14:11

Abraham say it, you know, which I, by the way, I'm not convinced that that's a false tale. I think that might actually be a true account of something that happened.

01:14:18

I believe it was. Yeah, certainly people call it a parable this year, but who's to say it didn't really happen. I think it probably did.

01:14:25

But Abraham tells the rich man, look, if they don't accept Moses and the prophets, they won't even believe if somebody rises from the dead.

01:14:33

Exactly. You don't start with scripture. All the evidence in the world is not going to change your mind. And so this is where, you know, the more

01:14:39

I've gotten into to presupp, the more I've just appreciated it because it's like, man,

01:14:45

I want to be a good apologist. Well, I guess I better just study my Bible then, you know, be studying anyway.

01:14:51

Right. You know, um, I heard you ever hear a guy named James Jordan. I don't know.

01:14:57

He wrote a book through new eyes. He's, he's an incredible thinker. He went through all the miracles that Jesus performed.

01:15:05

And he points out how each time Jesus performed the miracle, he healed the man with leprosy.

01:15:12

He healed the blind man. Those were all things in Leviticus that would exclude you from being a priest.

01:15:19

Wow. And he's restoring the priesthood. He's restoring humanity back to the priesthood to bring in the new, the new creation.

01:15:26

Does that blow your mind? That's incredible. I was like, Oh my goodness. I never, the shriveled, the shriveled hand.

01:15:34

Yes. Hold the issue of blood. Yes. And when, um, you remember when, uh,

01:15:41

Matthew 24, Jesus says he comes in, he, he, he goes into the temple and he walks out.

01:15:47

He says, I leave your house to you. Desolate. Yeah. I'm gonna, you know, there's no, no stone. I'm going to be left on another.

01:15:53

That's right. Well, in, in Leviticus, if somebody had mold in their house, priest would go in, inspect it.

01:16:00

Come back in two weeks. If the mold was still there, tear it down. Yeah. Yeah. He went into the, to the, to the, uh, to the temple.

01:16:08

The first time it took, inspected it left, came back, found it still defiled.

01:16:14

Right. Boom. We're tearing it down. You gotta be kidding me. And you know what else? Is that crazy? That's incredible because there's all this debate about how many times

01:16:24

Jesus cleansed the temple. Did he cleanse it once? Did he cleanse it twice? And, and, um, well,

01:16:30

I, I believe that he probably did it twice. I think he did it at the beginning of his ministry. And then he came back, you know, later, but that would, that would make sense.

01:16:36

If he went there twice because he saw the rot was still there, the decay, man, that is, that's good.

01:16:43

That's really good. You got to look up James Jordan. He's yeah. I'm going to check it out, man. Oh my goodness.

01:16:48

I love, love listening to him. You always learn something new from that guy. And this is why we got, we have to learn, learn to listen to so many different people because we can just get set in our ways and not think past our own heads.

01:17:01

Yeah, that's really good. Hey brother, I want to respect your time. Maybe one, uh, maybe we can set something up to do another one of these.

01:17:08

I would love to talk to you about your worldview training and even maybe get your permission to do some videos, you know, on them and bring them so that, you know, people can watch them and stuff.

01:17:19

I really appreciate that, man. Yeah, I'd love, love to do something like that. So why don't you, why don't you just tell the listeners once again, where they can get you?

01:17:26

I know I'm going to put a link in, um, in the bottom of the, in the little tab over there so that as they're reading it, they can find it, but tell them what, what it is you do or where it is you want them to, to look your stuff up.

01:17:39

I appreciate that. So, um, the way we do our ministry is we do it in three different levels. There's the macro, the mid and the micro level.

01:17:46

The macro level is the podcast, the video channels. You can access all that stuff by going to thethink .institute

01:17:54

or if you're on YouTube, like let's say you're watching this video right now on YouTube, you can go over to the think institute channel and we've got, you know, many, many, many videos up there.

01:18:04

Um, if you're listening on the podcast, our podcast is the think institute network. And so we've got a number of different shows right now

01:18:12

I'm running too. I've got the think podcast and I've got a cat of kids, which I do with my kids. Um, so it depends on where you're watching this, but YouTube, um, podcast, that's all, that's all macro level.

01:18:23

The mid level is, this is where I go into churches and do education training, speaking at conferences, things like that.

01:18:32

I'm working on some things with some homeschool co -ops right now that I've got one that I've been working with this past school year and Lord willing one or two more starting up in the fall where I'm actually going to be going in and actually like regularly teaching at these homeschool co -ops, um, and using that to develop curriculum, uh, that other homeschool co -ops can use.

01:18:51

And back in October, I was actually talking with a publisher about maybe, you know, getting something out there.

01:18:57

Um, so, so let me just say that is a major focus for me right now is, uh, I really believe in the local church, man.

01:19:04

I think the church is the engine that Christ has, has, um, you know, started, has built for societal and cultural and global and individual change.

01:19:16

You know, the church, I don't rip on churches. I don't, I don't say if the church would just get attacked together because you know what, that's the bride of Christ.

01:19:23

I love the church and I want to serve the church in any possible way I can. I'm a former pastor, so I know what it's like to be a pastor.

01:19:31

I know how limited your time is and also how many pastors have a strong desire to bring worldview and evangelism and apologetics training into their church.

01:19:39

I'm not coming in as the expert who's going to correct what you've been doing. I want to come in and supplement what you've been doing and build on what you've been doing and help your church fulfill its piece of the great commission, which

01:19:50

I know pastors, I know you're already committed to, and you're already working hard on that. I want to come along and I want to serve you.

01:19:56

That's what I want to do. And so, um, if you go to the think .institute, I've got a booking, uh, a booking tab on there and I've got a contact tab.

01:20:05

Get ahold of me. Um, you know, I, I don't charge if I come in, I do a talk or whatever.

01:20:10

I won't charge for that. People want to give me an honorarium or, you know, let me pitch my ministry. That's perfectly fine.

01:20:16

But I want to make sure that, um, that churches have access to all the resources we have. And then, um, the third way, that's the mid -level, the, the, um, the third way, the micro level, this is our hammer and anvil society.

01:20:30

So this is our semi -secretive, uh, my buddy calls it a sinister saintly society. And, uh, this is where we, we do extended trainings.

01:20:40

They're not as long as like a college course, probably six to eight weeks. And, uh, they're cohort based trainings.

01:20:46

So like, uh, virtual trainings where you're getting checked in on, uh, we're doing prayer requests.

01:20:52

We're going, we're, we're assigning assignments and things, but then there's the nucleus of it, which is the training where you're getting that really robust apologetics worldview evangelism training.

01:21:02

Um, I've got one coming up that I'm leading called the apologetics of Jesus and Paul, where we're literally going to be going through the encounters of the

01:21:13

Lord Jesus and the apostle Paul, where they did apologetics. We're going to unveil the presuppositional nature of those and talk about, okay, what can we learn from these and really dissect those really looking forward to that.

01:21:24

And then, um, Mark palace, who is a guy I've been working with and, uh, and, um, uh, training, um,

01:21:33

Mark is going to be leading a Bible study through Ephesians using our think method of biblical study, which is a method that I developed, um, which is really based on second

01:21:43

Timothy three, 16 and 17. So I just plagiarized it right off the apostle Paul, but, uh, but kind of put it aloud.

01:21:49

You're allowed. Yeah. Right. Right. I've kind of put my own spin on it and, and Mark palace is going to be leading that.

01:21:55

Um, and Mark is just a great, great dude, great teacher. Um, and, uh, so I'm really excited to get that going.

01:22:02

He and I have co -led a course in the past. Now he's going to be leading this one on his own and, um, it's, uh, but, but all that is accessible through the think dot

01:22:11

Institute. If you've got kids, I've got a book called catechism, which is a catechism, the new covenant catechism for little ones.

01:22:18

And, um, look, I'll tell you what, if you're not NCT, I'll be still want a good resource in modern language. Um, make, make it your own, take it.

01:22:26

It's 100 questions. If there's anything in there, you're like, that's a little too NCT. Maybe I like baptizing my babies.

01:22:31

And this is baptism is for believers. Look, you can change it. You can put your own spin on it, but, but, um, we all know dads need to be discipling their kids.

01:22:40

Moms need to be discipling their kids. And, um, and so I wanted to create a resource for families to be doing that.

01:22:46

And so I was, I wrote it with myself in mind with my own kids, but a lot of dads and a lot of moms have, have, uh, taken that on.

01:22:54

And you can get that on the website as well. The think dot Institute slash catechism, C -A -T -A -K -I -D -S.

01:23:00

And then if anybody has any questions, they can email me at the think dot Institute at Gmail.

01:23:07

And, uh, I'll be happy to answer any questions or if I said all that too fast, or maybe you said, thought I said too much.

01:23:12

Um, but you can email me and tell me that as well. Well, I'm going to put a link to your, uh, website in, in the, in the box so that anybody wants to go on it, they could just click.

01:23:22

So hang up brother. I'm just going to close the show and then we'll just chat on, on the way out. Uh, guys, thanks again for listening.

01:23:28

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. You can see, uh, Joel is got his hands into everything and we really appreciate the things that he does.

01:23:35

I strongly recommend that you check him out. Uh, please also check us out, uh, on the web, www .reformrookie

01:23:42

.com where you find articles, catechisms, videos, uh, this podcast, uh, be sure to like the videos on YouTube and subscribe to the channel as well as the weekly podcast.

01:23:51

Cause we put these up, uh, these up weekly. Uh, thanks again for listening. And remember a life reformed is a life conformed to the

01:23:59

Jesus of the scriptures and to God be the glory. So Semper Reformanda, always be reforming.