Van Til & Gordon Clark Roundtable Discussion

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today I have for you guys a very special and super interesting quote-unquote roundtable discussion on a very fascinating topic relating to presuppositionalism.

If folks are interested, I actually did a video with Doug Dauma, who is an expert in the history and theology and philosophy of Dr. Gordon Clark, which I called that video, Gordon Clark, the other presuppositionalist.

Some might even argue that Gordon Clark was the original, the OG presuppositionalist, as the name or the nomenclature presuppositionalism was first applied to Gordon Clark, I believe, by J. Oliver Buswell.

So he kind of had the name first, but of course, it's come to be known and associated with Van Till, and of course, like many other positions, theological, apologetical, there are different branches and different flavors of what that looks like.

But there is definitely a difference between the apologetic methodology, the presuppositionalism of Van Till, and the presuppositionalism of Gordon Clark. And so hopefully you guys will find this discussion beneficial and interesting.

So I have two guests that I have had on before, Jeremiah Nortier, the apologetic dog, and Sam Frost. I had him on to talk about, I think it was full preterism or something relating to eschatology. And so my guests are kind of returning guests, although Sam has not been here for a while.

It's been a while since I covered eschatology, but don't worry. We're gonna be covering some eschatology. It's an important and fascinating topic and there are so many different areas of application and importance that we can cover with respect to that.

So we'll definitely be returning to that topic with more focus in the near future. Just by way of a couple of announcements, on December 1st, this is a date change, okay? December 1st, I'll be having Pastor Jeff Durbin on to talk about some more presuppositional related issues.

So you know this channel, I'm really trying to push this channel as the go-to source for presuppositional methodology, and hopefully I am doing an okay job promoting this method. And I've been getting some wonderful feedback by people who are not presuppositionalists, who are now considering presuppositionalism as a solid and biblical approach to apologetics.

So hopefully things are being accomplished with respect to some of my goals there in doing this. But anyway, we have Jeff Durbin. I'm getting Dr. Lane Tipton back on. I highly recommend that folks take a look at that episode, just a I think it was my last episode or an episode before the last one, where I had Dr. Lane Tipton of Reformed Forum, who is an excellent Vantill scholar, knows Vantill inside and out.

We had an excellent discussion. He'll be back on in the near future, and so I'll let folks know about that as well. Now that we have kind of some viewers here, I would like to mention this at the beginning, okay?

And I've been sharing this with people, but the YouTube channel, Revealed Apologetics, is doing wonderful, and things are, it's growing. I'm getting positive feedback.

We've got.

Perfect five-star review on iTunes, the podcast, which I highly recommend. If you like the show and you've been benefiting from the content, please write a review. That helps a lot. But while there is success in the YouTube channel, there is not much success by way of funds, and so I'm kind of running low on funds that actually I need to keep my website going.

A lot of the back-end stuff, subscriptions, some of the things that help me maintain my website, and so in an attempt to raise money, I have asked some friends of mine to help me put a conference together, and so I will be hosting and participating in, alongside others, the Epic Presup Conference.

If you take a look at the flyer there, and I did put in the comments, if you're wanting to support Revealed Apologetics, please sign up for this course. It is an online course, and it is going to be epic.

Epic in two regards. Number one, epic in terms of my guest speakers, and epic in terms of the topics we're going to cover, and epic in terms of the time frame. I mean, this thing is going to run from 10 a .m. to 4 .30 p .m. with short breaks in between each speaker, and so real quick, I just want to kind of summarize for folks what the conference will entail, and then before I invite my guests, just to throw it out there, if you've benefited from this channel, and you value what what I'm doing here, I would greatly appreciate your support by going to the website right now, and click on the the drop-down menu, PresupU, and sign up for the Epic Online Presup Conference, so I would greatly appreciate that.

But I'll be a speaker, of course, and I'll be covering an overview of the presuppositional method. I have Dr. Jason Lyle, who is a PhD astrophysicist and noted presuppositional apologist. He's going to be talking about how we use evidence within a presuppositional framework.

So sometimes we have people say, hey, I like presuppositionalism, but I also like evidence. Like, from what I know about presuppositional apologetics, presuppositionalists don't use evidence. You know, that's not true.

Dr. Lyle is going to be sharing with us how we navigate the balance between having a consistent presuppositional worldview perspective and apologetic, and how we walk hand-in-hand with the evidence.

How we present that in the context of an apologetic encounter. So that's going to be super awesome. I also have Dr. Chris Balt, who is going to be talking about transcendental arguments in general throughout history, and the uniqueness of Van Til's transcendental argument for God's existence.

So that's going to be really helpful in kind of knowing the history behind transcendental arguments in general, and then what makes Van Til stand apart from what has traditionally been known as transcendental arguments.

So this is going to be super helpful in terms of a historical analysis and kind of a modern-day application of the transcendental argument. Of course, I'm going to have my good friend Matt Slick over there at CARM .org, and he's going to be teaching us how to apply presuppositional methodology to the cults.

This is an area of Matt's expertise. If you look at his website, CARM .org, Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, he's got tons and tons of articles on Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, Roman Catholicism, all these different perspectives, and he's just a wealth of information, and he's a lot of fun, too.

So he'll be covering that, and of course, I have my good friend Joshua Pillows, who is kind of one of my go-to guys when I have questions about presuppositional apologetics. Joshua Pillows has been a good friend and a very helpful resource.

He's going to be walking us through how to answer some of the common and even more sophisticated objections to the presuppositional method. So this is going to be the Epic Online Presupp Conference, and it's the first in a series.

So I'm looking to do.

An Epic.

Calvinism Conference, in which I'll be inviting some really good, good speakers. I already have my speakers somewhat confirmed, but I want to wait until I kind of get certain things in motion, but the Epic Calvinism Conference I'm hoping to do early next year.

I want to do an Epic Eschatology Conference, an Epic fill-in-the-blank, and hopefully it will be useful to the body of Christ and beneficial for those who really want to grow in their knowledge and understanding of biblical, reformed theology, and all that jazz.

All right. Well, without further ado, thank you so much for putting up with kind of those announcements here, and without further ado, I would like to invite my guest Jeremiah and Sam Frost. Not Jeremiah and Sam Frost like they're married or something like that.

That's a different episode. No, I'm just kidding. It is Jeremiah Nortier. I keep, I always mess up on your name. Hey, that's the French version, Nortier, but Nortier is how we say it in the South. Okay.

All right. And Sam and Samuel. Okay. I've never called you Sam. Samuel Frost. First time I met Sam was on Long Island, where I grew up, Long Island, New York, and I was attending a debate you were having with a full preterist.

Yeah. And we went out to dinner, if you remember this, Sam, and Anthony Yavini was there, and I very much connected with Sam because before we met, we were waiting in the parking lot. I think when we were asked, where was Sam?

He's like, I found a bookstore. I think you were in a bookstore snooping around, and that's everywhere I go. I'm like, if there's a bookstore, I'm lost. So I very much connected with you. We were kindred spirits there, and so that was very enjoyable.

But before we get started, why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself? Maybe someone, they're just coming onto the channel and they haven't seen the past episodes where you guys were on individually.

Sam, why don't you go first since.

It's been a while? Well, let's see, recently finished up my doctorates, I guess for this particular show. One of my mentors was Dr. Kenneth Talbot, who was a student of Gordon Clark. Also, I worked with W. Gary Crampton, who wrote The Scripturalism, the book The Scripturalism of Gordon Clark.

And got to talk to John Frame a while because he was working with Whitfield Seminary. So those were the three introductions. But I was introduced to Clark much earlier on in Bible college, actually reading footnotes.

I'm the nerd that reads the footnotes to make, and then I'll go out and search. So it was reading, I believe it was reading Dr. Gentry and those guys way back in the late 90s, and they would footnote Clark and Bantill.

I'm from Foursquare Gospel Church. I'd never heard of these, any of this stuff. And so I started reading Clark and immediately, like the clarity, just the sheer clarity, the logical clarity. I'd never heard anything presented that plainly yet so destructive towards other world views.

And it just immediately hooked me. And fortunately, another mentor of mine, Dr. Dal Robinson, had worked also with Rush Tooney and Clark. And so he was pushing a lot of Rush Tooney stuff and of course Bantill and Clark.

So this was back in, again, 89, 90, 91. So I've been reading them ever since, just devouring everything. And I got them at the Evangelical Theological Society conferences for three years. I got to sit with John Robbins at his booth, Trinity Foundation, and I would just pick his brain.

He didn't sell a lot of books because I was just picking his brain. You're trying to get clarity because I had never got to sit under Clark or Bantill. That's one of the great regrets, right? So he's been passed away in our generation.

But there's some lecture tapes and cassettes and stuff that I'd pick up. And now they're on YouTube, I think. And then Dalma, you mentioned Doug Dalma. He's the old one, see? I still do all that. But you mentioned Doug Dalma.

Here's another great, perhaps one of the best. I told Doug, and he worked with Ken Talbot. Yeah. And I've had that book. Wait, wait, wait, wait. This is my Cornelius Bantill signed copy of Defense of the Faith.

There you go. Listen. I had an old syllabus of his that I had found. Dr. Richard Gamble or somebody had gone through some old boxes and found an actual, but I don't have it anymore. I think Dr. Talbot has it.

But Dalma has done such a wonderful work. I would actually use that book. I told Doug this. I said, Doug, that actual book is actually a good introduction to the philosophy of book and art. It's just wonderful.

I would like to share something. People were asking me, Eli, why don't you get Doug Dalma on the show? And I actually asked him. I did have him on before. So if anyone's like, hey, why don't you get Doug on?

I did have him on before. And I actually asked him if he wanted to join us tonight. Oh, I was going to. As our special guest. No, I'm just kidding. He's not. And here he is. He would have come on. It's just that the date we were doing this conflicted with something going on.

So Doug, I haven't spoken to Doug in a while, but we have had some correspondents in the past. And when I read this book, The Presbyterian Philosopher, an authorized biography of Gordon Clark, I could not put this down.

Now, I am a die in the wool Vantillian, but I highly recommend people pick this book up. And I highly recommend people read Gordon Clark, because when I read Vantill, OK, regrettably, I end like this.

What did I just read? And then I have to go back and I search and then you pull out the golden nuggets that I think Vantill has. However, when you read Gordon Clark, whether you agree with him or disagree with him, there is a unique clarity of thought.

I mean, the logical rigor and structure of his writing is so clear and refreshing. Even if you disagree with him, you're like, man, I understand where he's coming from. And for that purpose, among other things that perhaps we'll get to, I highly recommend people read Clark.

But of course, as a Vantillian, I would say, read him with caution as we should read anyone with caution, you know, being sure that we're able to test things and evaluate things scripturally and philosophically and so on and so forth.

But all right. Well, Jeremiah, what about you? Who are you? Why don't you reintroduce yourself? You look like more of a Calvinist than all of us because of that beard. It actually has like a way that you actually look.

Like you're a Babylonian beard. It's a Babylonian beard. That's what my wife tells me. I need to.

Turn it back. I'm like, babe, I can't just look at the wave. That's a Babylonian beard. That's totally a Babylonian beard. Yes. Well, hey, once again, my name is Jeremiah Nortier. You can find all of my content at my YouTube channel, The Apologetic Dog.

And so I have a lot of cool projects in the works. I'm actually about to have Dr. Frost on next week to debate a full preterist. So I've had Dr. Frost on a few times now. We're really trying to show the cultic nature of hyper full preterism.

And so it's been so wonderful getting to team up with him on these endeavors. My channel has a ton of content that has many debates that I've done at Marlon Wilson's channel, The Gospel Truth. And so one of the major areas of emphasis for The Apologetic Dog is I'm wanting to show people the church or Christ movement, the restoration movement.

I'm wanting to show them how there's a danger because they also have cult like tendencies. Eli, a while back, I came on to your channel. That's something that we talked about, the dangers of the church, Christ cult.

And so that's one of those areas of evangelism that I have a big heart for is just showing them that we can't add our works to the gospel of grace. So I have a lot of content about that. I have a number of interviews that I have planned to get into soon.

And I have a co-host that I have on a lot, Trey Fisher, and he's a really good friend of mine that we do a lot of stuff together. And he's actually a big reason why we will be on cultish in the near future.

We're going to be talking about hyper preterism and the church of Christ. So be looking forward to that. And all that content will be coming out on my YouTube channel and cultish and all the rest. And so that's the area I do the most apologetics in.

I also serve as a pastor and elder at Twelve Five Church in Northeast Arkansas in Jonesboro, Arkansas. So I would love it if people would go to my YouTube and subscribe. That just really helps with the viewership.

And I would love for people to check out twelvefivechurch .com where we have a teaching series. And those are all the ways that you can connect with me, mainly on Facebook. So feel free to send me messages anytime.

Excellent. All right. Well,.

So we have an awkward situation. We have two Vantillian presuppositionalist and the old guy, the clerk, the clerk. By the way, I used to be a Clarkian. I was on Doug Pinecrete, the atheist, his YouTube channel some years back.

And you could hear some Clarkian language where I speak of axioms and our starting points and things like that. So there was a time where I was very heavily influenced by by Gordon Clark. And again, I don't I don't mean this is just kind of a hand-waving like tip of the hat.

I greatly appreciate the work of Gordon Clark and and the clarity with which he was able to express his views. But, Sam, what what what is Clarkianism within the context of apologetics? And why are why are you a Clarkian?

First, I'm dealing with this guy in your comments section, Aaron Mize. OK, I don't know if you know him or not, but he's no. OK, good. I can't multitask. So I have to like, I can't. And then I have to look at whoever he is.

He's already started in on me. So I laugh at this stuff, right? The older I get, I know you're old, but we got to focus. This guy's already started. He doesn't even know me. Um, no, for for me, Clark, you know, as Ronald Nash noted in his fete strip that he did for Clark, his work.

And Ronald Nash is another great apologist, has written fantastic work on defense of the faith. And he didn't agree with everything with Clark. None of these guys agree. Here's here's the thing. None of these guys agree with everything with each other, with with and but they all cut their teeth with each other.

And so you're you're dealing with such when you get into the material level where they're they were at fine. To picking every subtle aspect of syntax. Yes, that's a great book. Yeah, by Dr. Nash. That's a wonderful book.

Again, had the pleasure of seeing him. He was at Reformed Theological Seminary for a while there in Orlando. That any any slight turn of phrase or what do you mean by this phrase? It gets very minute.

But when you're on that kind of level, you're the disagreements are actually going to increase when when they get into that kind of thing, because you're doing you're defining each and every term that's being used.

And so when you go through Clark, Bantill and what is going on with them back back in the day, and a lot of that has been resolved, some of the fault being on Clark's, some of the fault being on Bantill who didn't originally, I don't think, read over the complaint that was issued about there being no point of contact between God that that was Bantill actually comes out.

DOMA points this out in the 1948 General Assembly that met where they revised that and Bantill signed on to that. But have Bantill states, yes, there has to be a point in which our knowledge and God's knowledge coincide.

There has to be there has to be a point. So that got clarified. A lot of those things over the years got clarified. But these guys were talking at each other with such fine points that most people don't.

And then what happens? And John Frame laments about this. What happens is they begin to separate into, you know, Bantillian and Clarkian when actually I'm neither Bantillian nor Clarkian. I'm presuppositional.

And I use Nash, Gerstner. I use it. I use anyone, Jason, Jason Lyle, who you're going to have on your show. You're a Clark Tillian. Just I'm drawing off of so many things. But the thing about Clark and I'll let Jeremiah.

I guess I read I started reading him in Bible college and through seminary before I started reading Bantill. And what it did for me was introduce me to the whole academic world out there that Christianity is just doesn't they don't read.

So in the 1960s, Clark 50s, Clark's dealing with people like A .J. Ayer, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, name a Christian apologist dealing with in depth with Ludwig Wittgenstein. And now this is back in the day when Wittgenstein's not really well known today.

He's Wittgenstein's all over the place. But Clark was dealing with Langdon Gilkey and all these kinds of guys that were pretty much what's going on today when you get into this guy, Thomas Kuhn, and this wonderful book here, Scientific Revolutions.

This book is basically the philosophy of Gordon Clark's science. But this guy's not a Christian in any stretch of the imagination. But he is saying that science does not give us absolute proof. The very nature of science is inductive.

It cannot give. So me right in. And I thought, well, this is the argument I've been looking for. This is fantastic because even the atheist and the critics, that's what they're saying. And so why are they so dogmatic when they themselves admit their own skepticism?

And I thought that's that's just.

Brilliant. Yeah. So now, OK, so so what about the. Well, actually, I'm going to save this part. Let's let's let's bring Jeremiah in. Jeremiah, I don't have to explain why I'm I'm a Vantillian. I think people who watch my channel know why I'm a Vantillian.

But how are you introduced to Cornelius Vantill and why do you adhere to his form of apologetics? Sure. So a couple of years.

Ago, I really started delving into the realm of apologetics and I was captivated by Reformed theology beforehand. And so a lot of the resources, things I was looking into, I started seeing that presuppositionalism was just solo scriptural plot, right?

You're just thinking God's thoughts after him in terms of his revelation in his word. And so I was very intrigued from the very get go about how we can stand on the word of God, even in our apologetic methodology.

And so I picked up Vantill first and it was along with Greg Bonson and John Frame. And so they kind of had the benefit of influencing my thinking first. And so those things are starting to make sense.

And Gordon Clark came a little bit later and I honestly couldn't distinguish between the two of them for a while. And then I noticed the transcendental argument that was that was seeming to be the distinguishing factor.

And as I started studying transcendentals, thinking and reasoning transcendentally, I started thinking, OK, how do you prove something to necessarily be the case? Right. Well, there's a lot that goes into us because we're talking about transcendentals.

What must be the case? What what has to exist in order for something else to be the case? And then when Vantill brought the idea of the impossibility to the contrary, he has logic in mind. The law of non-contradiction is in play.

And I remember listening to you one time, Eli, talk about if you were going to argue against error, then you have to take a deep breath in order to make your case against it. So there's some type of transcendental necessity going on there.

And I got a hold of Jason Lyle's material as well. The ultimate proof of creation. Wonderful, wonderful resource. And so I started thinking about transcendentals and another library. Yeah. We get all those in there.

And so, Eli, another example was the law of logic itself. If you're going to argue against the law of logic, you have to use the principles of logic to make your case, therefore proving the necessity of logic.

And so I started thinking in worldview paradigms about the Christian worldview being a necessary precondition for the human experience. So I'm just saying that I fell in love with that. I love how people say once you discover the doctrines of grace or they discover you, it's like being born again, again.

And I found presuppositionalism, especially in the Vantillian transcendental formulation of things. I was like, you can't unsee these things, right? It's just so beautiful and awesome. And so mainly a Vantill because I was first acquainted with him.

And then I started seeing the nuanced differences when Gordon Clark came in because I would like to talk with Dr. Frost a little bit about axioms and how we prove things. But I want to add this to Eli is I have such a deep appreciation for Gordon Clark as well.

Like you said, he's such a clear thinker in how he explains things. He's probably the best of presenting internal defeaters for secular worldviews. And one example, and this kind of goes back to me and Dr. Frost, we've been warring against hyperpreterism.

And so I listened to y 'all's interview that y 'all had about a year ago. And I started messaging Dr. Frost, asking him questions. I'm like, all these full predators around me are asking these questions.

What would you say? And then he recommended his paper on the problem of infinity with full preterism. And I read that and I realized that it was the internal critique of the hyper preterist worldview.

So I would like to talk about that a little bit, Eli, if you wanted to, because this is a practical application of apologetics of where Vantill and Gordon Clark can actually come together to show the internal inconsistencies of hyperpreterism.

Yeah. Excellent. Well, I just want to read two quotes from Gordon Clark, just to show there's some really great points of agreement that I would say right on. And I think he even explicates better than Vantill in many areas.

Gordon Clark says in Miracles, History, and Natural Law, which is part of the evangelical quarterly written around 1940 or so, page 23, if anyone wants to look up the reference, quote, Clark says, in a war, a general does not willingly abandon half of his position to the enemy in order to protect a few central points.

And in the battle of ideas, it is not only safer, but it is actually easier not to say absolutely necessary to defend the complete position. And so what a Vantillian presuppositionalist hears in that is the denial of the blockhouse approach of apologetics.

We are defending an entire worldview system, not individual elements of that system. So for example, when we speak of the resurrection of Jesus, we do not defend the resurrection of Jesus as though it exists independently of a worldview framework that gives the resurrection of Jesus its meaning.

So we argue systems. Again, Clark says in How May I Know the Bible is Inspired? Can I Trust My Bible, page 28. He says, because God is sovereign, God's authority can be taken only on God's authority. So with the Vantillian, we would affirm that God's word is self-attesting.

There is no greater authority by which to appeal to, to validate God's word. So we both would agree on the issue of the self-authorizing word of God. Where we will disagree is whether or not that can be demonstrated via an argument that gives us kind of like an absolute certainty of the truth of one's position.

Maybe Sam can unpack that when we talk about that in detail. But I thought mentioning those would give us a good idea that there are some good areas of agreement that Vantillians and Clarkians share there.

All right. Well, Sam, what is the Clarkian apologetic argument? What is the Clarkian apologetic? And why do you think it's such a powerful apologetic from your position?

Well, just quickly adding, adding to that with what you read of Clark. So here's, this is out of their, again, this published volume, but the philosophy of Gordon H. Clark, which Nash did, and it had a lot of Clark's critics in the book, and then Clark actually responded to each of them.

So it's one of those books, but Rush Dooney was one of the ones that wrote about Clark's philosophy. And then Clark didn't respond to Rush Dooney, but this is a couple of things of Rush Dooney. And we know Rush Dooney is a Vantillian, but just a little, just a little bit, but here Rush Dooney says Clark's position therefore is not only theologically Calvinistic, but it is also philosophically very extensively presuppositionalist.

He's not, and it says Clark is not a rationalist in the, with a capital R. And then it's not, Clark's Christian philosophy of education and such a philosophy is not consistent with the neutralism of rationalistic apologetics.

Despite the family quarrels and divergences in other areas, Clark's position is basically presuppositionalist. That's unquote, that's Rush Dooney. And I really want to emphasize, because I consider you two wonderful brothers in Christ, and what you're doing is wonderful.

I think you're on fire by the Holy spirit that's in your lives. And we may have, you know, differences and things like that, but I really want to, the more I'm reading is, yes, the differences were there, but I think much has been made out of that because when I read Defense of the Faith by Vantill, which I use quite a bit, brilliant.

I'm like, this guy is just destroyed every, you know, appeal to facts or brute facts. But what's interesting having read Clark more is that he sounds like Clark and Clark sounds like Vantill. I find that often being the case.

And I'm like, boy, if we could ever have a round table like this, where we could note points of differences, but at the same time, the strengths, the strengths are so much better. Sam, if I can interject, I'm with you there.

Now,.

Again, I'm going to make my qualifications, of course, as we normally would, because we, but I think in my opinion, Clark's critique, his internal critiques of unbelieving worldviews was more clearly laid out than what you'll see in Vantill.

And I, for that, if someone's like, I'm a Vantillian, I don't agree with Clark, but how can I benefit from Clark? Read Clark's refutations of competing worldview perspective. They're brilliant. They're brilliant.

And so I highly recommend people check that out. A Christian View of Men and Things, his philosophy textbook from Thales to Dewey. I mean, get it. The philosophy text alone used to be a standard philosophy text and even secular universities.

It was a tour de force of the history of Western philosophy from his, of course, from his perspective, offering his criticisms and things like that. So I want to agree with you, Sam. There is great value in Clark, especially when we're talking about those internal internal critique elements, but go ahead.

I interrupted.

As to his methodology, the difference would be that Clark does not, would not affirm any of the ontological teleological proofs of God. He doesn't appeal to any of those. He shows involvement. They involve an assumption within them for them to work.

And so they're circular. Now you can use circular arguments. We all do all day long. Just don't call them proofs. They are what they are. We use them. So they have a utility to them. There's a functionality to them or an operation, as he would call it, you know, there's, there's that going on, but don't call them proofs.

His other problem with, I guess, with Bantill, where they would run into issues with transcendental argument would be Clark's methodology. He says this in Christian view of many things, his methodology is choice.

And so he sees that each system that's out there operates within their own world definitions, whatever it is that they're doing. And he would critique them on that basis. He would go in and critique them on their consistency.

Are they self-consistent? Are they these kinds of things? If they're not, they're not, but no view is because no view is omniscient. The Christian worldview does not know everything. It has its own set of problems, certainly does.

But for him, it answers more questions than it does, you know, the other views, because we have revelation in the written word of God, but trying to prove, indubitably prove or demonstrate that there cannot be any other systems out there, that Clark would say, well, you know, there can be, they're not very good.

And so far, none has arisen that has done what Christianity has done. Is that a proof that God exists? No, it's any more than the rise of Islam is a proof that Allah exists. The rise of Mormonism is the proof that Joseph Smith had a revelation.

You can't argue off those kinds of numbers. That's, I think is probably where probably where a lot of the, most of the differences would be. And I'd like Jeremiah to explain that.

Now, now I want to, I want to go to Jeremiah, but maybe if folks are wondering, well, why did, what was Gordon Clark's position on the traditional proofs? I'd like to read, I read a quote, and this was an observation from John Frame, reflecting upon Gordon Clark's position.

And I think this is a good summary. If Clark heard this quote, he would say, yeah, that's my position. So, so you need to understand something for the listener. If you're wondering, well, what's up, what's, what's one of them?

What's a major aspect of Clark's perspective. He had a very stark rejection of empiricism. Okay. He was against any sort of empirical knowledge whatsoever. When my physical hand touches the table, there is no content in the physical hand touching the physical table.

What is needed is kind of an intellectual framework to contextualize the sensation that I'm experiencing. So knowledge doesn't come through the senses, rather there is rational reflection upon the sense experience.

And then there needs to be some sort of interpretive process and so on and so forth. So he, because of his rejection of empiricism here, here's a good summary quote here from Frame on Clark says here from sense experience, this is Clark's position.

It is impossible to prove the existence of God or the truth of Christianity. For example, the cosmological argument Clark says is invalid. Aquinas Clark points out insisted that in the sentence, quote, God is the cause of the world.

And quote, the word cause must be taken analogously rather than literally, but the cosmological argument requires that God be the literal cause of the world, or it is of no use. Further Clark agrees with Hume and Kant that empirical proves, empirical proofs can only prove at most the existence of things within experience, but the God of the Bible transcends experience.

If the theist, theistic proofs are limited to their proper sphere, then they prove at most a God within experience that is a finite God. So, so Clark did not believe the cosmological, the teleological or any argument that is predicated upon any sort of empirical data, um, was enough to prove the sort of God Christians are trying to prove when they employ those arguments.

Okay. All right. So with that said, uh, just to kind of give that context, uh, why don't you, Jeremiah, share your thoughts on anything that, um, that Sam.

Uh, just said, or anything I said, I had a lot of thoughts go through my mind. I was almost like, this is just the Eli revealed apologetics episode. And I was just soaking it all in there.

Um, that's a nice way of saying, Eli, you talk too much.

This intrigues me, Dr. Frost about, um, Gordon Clark talking about choices, right? We have to make a choice at the end of the day. I remember coming across that. Now this is where you can correct me and my understanding, um, of this, because like I said, I see the overlap.

There's so much overlap with Gordon Clark and Vantill. It's not even funny. That's why I love how we can all get together. But something that Jason Lyle, um, brings out in his book a lot is we run from arbitrariness.

And so if we make a choice, I'm just saying that, um, you know, since, since Gordon Clark didn't go the distance and say that we can't just disprove all worldviews, basically, because we don't have this universal experience.

Um, is there a chance that that runs up into kind of an, an, a nature of arbitrariness? Um, and we're kind of waiting with this principle of induction of, well, maybe in the future, something could really pay the bills as Eli likes to say.