Van Til & Gordon Clark Roundtable Discussion

Revealed Apologetics

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All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today

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I have for you guys a very special and super interesting quote -unquote roundtable discussion on a very fascinating topic relating to presuppositionalism.

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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.

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Gordon Clark, which I called that video, Gordon Clark the Other Presuppositionalist. Some might even argue that Gordon Clark was the original, the

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OG presuppositionalist, as the name or the nomenclature presuppositionalism was first applied to Gordon Clark, I believe by J.

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

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But there is definitely a difference between the apologetic methodology, the presuppositionalism of Van Til, and the presuppositionalism of Gordon Clark.

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And so hopefully you guys will find this discussion beneficial and interesting.

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So I have two guests that I have had on before, Jeremiah Nortier, the apologetic dog, and Sam Frost.

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I had him on to talk about, I think it was full preterism or something relating to eschatology.

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And so my guests are kind of returning guests, although Sam has not been here for a while.

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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.

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So we'll definitely be returning to that topic with more focus in the near future.

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Just by way of a couple of announcements, on December 1st, this is a date change, okay? December 1st,

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I'll be having Pastor Jeff Durbin on to talk about some more presuppositional related issues.

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So you know this channel, I'm really trying to push this channel as the go -to source for presuppositional methodology, and hopefully

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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.

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So hopefully things are being accomplished with respect to some of my goals there in doing this.

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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

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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

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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.

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Now that we have kind of some viewers here, I would like to mention this at the beginning, okay?

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

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I'm getting positive feedback. We've got perfect five -star review on iTunes, the podcast, which

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I highly recommend. If you like the show and you've been benefiting from the content, please write a review.

03:31

That helps a lot. But while there is success in the

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YouTube channel, there is not much success by way of funds. And so I'm kind of running low on funds that actually

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I need to keep my website going. A lot of the backend stuff, subscriptions, to some of the things that help me maintain my website.

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And so in an attempt to raise money, I have asked some friends of mine to help me put a conference together.

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And so I will be hosting and participating in, alongside others, the

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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

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Revealed Apologetics, please sign up for this course. It is an online course, and it is going to be epic.

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Epic in two regards. Number one, epic in terms of my guest speakers, and epic in terms of the topics we're gonna cover, and epic in terms of the time frame.

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I mean, this thing is going to run from 10 a .m. to 4 30 p .m., with short breaks in between each speaker.

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And so real quick, I just want to kind of summarize for folks what the conference will entail.

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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

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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

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PresupU, and sign up for the Epic Online Presup Conference. So I would greatly appreciate that.

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But I'll be a speaker, of course, and I'll be covering an overview of the presuppositional method.

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I have Dr. Jason Lyle, who is a PhD astrophysicist and noted presuppositional apologist.

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He's going to be talking about how we use evidence within a presuppositional framework.

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So sometimes we have people say, hey, I like presuppositionalism, but I also like evidence, like from what

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I know about presuppositional apologetics, presuppositionalists don't use evidence. You know, that's not true. Dr.

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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.

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So that's going to be super awesome. I also have Dr. Chris Bolt, 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.

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So that's going to be really helpful in kind of knowing the history behind transcendental arguments in general, and then what makes

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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I have questions about presuppositional apologetics. Joshua Pillows has been a good friend and a very helpful resource.

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He's going to be walking us through how to answer some of the common and even more sophisticated objections to the presuppositional method.

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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

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Epic Calvinism Conference, in which I'll be inviting some really good, good speakers.

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I already have my speakers somewhat confirmed, but I want to wait until I kind of get certain things in motion.

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But the Epic Calvinism Conference I'm hoping to do early next year. I want to do an

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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 reform, theology, and all that jazz.

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All right. Well, without further ado, thank you so much for putting up with kind of those announcements here. And without further ado,

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I would like to invite my guest, Jeremiah and Sam Frost.

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Not Jeremiah and Sam Frost, like they're married or something like that. That's a different episode.

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No, I'm just kidding. It is Jeremiah Nortier. I keep, I always mess up on your name.

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Hey, that's the French version, Nortier, but Nortier is how we say it in the South.

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Okay. All right. And Sam and Samuel. Okay. I've never called you Sam. Samuel Frost. First time

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And that's everywhere I go. I'm like, if there's a bookstore, I'm lost. So I very much connected with you.

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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?

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Maybe someone, they're just coming onto the channel and they haven't seen the past episodes where you guys were on individually.

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Sam, why don't you go first since it's been a while? Well, let's see.

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I recently finished up my doctorates, I guess, for this particular show. One of my mentors was

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Dr. Kenneth Talbot, who was a student of Gordon Clark. Also, I worked with W.

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Gary Crampton, who wrote The Scripturalism, the book The Scripturalism of Gordon Clark. And, you know, got to talk to John Frame a while because he was working with Whitfield Seminary.

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So those were the three introductions. But I was introduced to Clark much earlier on in Bible college, actually reading footnotes.

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I'm the nerd that reads the footnotes to make, you know, and then I'll go out and search.

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So it was reading, I believe it was reading Dr. Gentry and those guys. Way back in the late 90s, and they would footnote

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Clark and Bantill, you know, I'm from Foursquare Gospel Church. I've never heard of these, any of this stuff.

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And so I started reading Clark and immediately like the clarity, just the sheer clarity, the logical clarity.

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I'd never heard anything presented that plainly, yet so destructive towards other world views.

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And it just immediately hooked me. And fortunately, another mentor of mine,

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Dr. Dal Robinson had worked also with Rush Tooney and Clark. And so he was, you know, pushing a lot of Rush Tooney stuff and of course,

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Bantill and Clark. So this was back in again, 89, 90, 91. So I've been reading them ever since just devouring everything.

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And I got them at the Evangelical Theological Society conferences for three years.

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I got to sit with John Robbins at his booth, Trinity Foundation. And I would just pick his brain, you know, he didn't sell a lot of books because I was just picking his, trying to get clarity because I had never got to sit under Clark or Bantill.

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That's one of great regrets, right? So, you know, he's kind of passed away in our generation. But, you know, there's some lecture tapes and cassettes and stuff that I'd pick up and now they're on YouTube, I think.

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And then Dalma, you mentioned Doug Dalma. He's the old one, see?

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I still do all that. But you mentioned Doug Dalma. Here's another great, perhaps one of the best.

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I told Doug and he worked with Ken Talbot. Yeah. And I'd have that book.

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Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This is my Cornelius Bantill signed copy of The Fates.

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There you go. I had an old syllabus of his that I had found if Dr.

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Richard Gamble or somebody had let, I'd gone through some old boxes and found an actual, but I don't have it anymore.

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I think Dr. Talbot has it. But Dalma has done such a wonderful work. I would actually use that book.

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I told Doug this, I said, Doug, that actual book is actually a good introduction to the philosophy of book and art.

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It's just wonderful. I would like to share something. People were asking me, Eli, why don't you get

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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

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Doug on? I did have him on before. And I actually asked him if he wanted to join us tonight as our special guest.

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No, I'm just kidding. He's not coming. And here he is. He would have come on. It's just that the date we were doing this conflicted with something going on.

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So Doug, I haven't spoken to Doug in a while, but we have had some correspondents in the past. And when

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I read this book, The Presbyterian Philosopher, an authorized biography of Gordon Clark, I could not put this down.

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Now, I am a die -in -the -wool Vantillian, but I highly recommend people pick this book up.

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And I highly recommend people read Gordon Clark because when I read Vantill, regrettably,

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I end like this. What did I just read? And then

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I have to go back and I search, and then you pull out the golden nuggets that I think

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Vantill has. However, when you read Gordon Clark, whether you agree with him or disagree with him, there is a unique clarity of thought.

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I mean, the logical rigor and structure of his writing is so clear and refreshing.

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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,

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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, being sure that we're able to test things and evaluate things scripturally and philosophically and so on and so forth.

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But all right, well, Jeremiah, what about you? Who are you? Why don't you reintroduce yourself?

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You look like more of a Calvinist than all of us because of that beard. It actually has like a wave.

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You actually look like you're Babylonian. You know those Babylonian beards? That's what my wife tells me

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I need to trim it back. I'm like, babe, I can't. Just look at the wave. That's a

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Babylonian beard. That's totally a Babylonian beard. Yes. Well, hey, once again, my name is

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Jeremiah Nortier. You can find all of my content at my YouTube channel, The Apologetic Dog.

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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.

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So I've had Dr. Frost on a few times now. We're really trying to show the cultic nature of hyper full preterism.

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And so it's been so wonderful getting to team up with on these endeavors. My channel has a ton of content that has many debates that I've done at Marlon Wilson's channel,

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The Gospel Truth. And so one of the major areas of emphasis for The Apologetic Dog is

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I'm wanting to show people the Church of Christ movement, the restoration movement. I wanted to show them how there's a danger because they also have cult like tendencies.

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Eli, a while back, I came on to your channel. That's something that we talked about, the dangers of the Church Christ cult.

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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.

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So I have a lot of content about that. I have a number of interviews that I have planned to get into soon.

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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.

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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

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Church of Christ. So be looking forward to that. And all that content will be coming out on my

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YouTube channel and cultish and all the rest. And so that's the area I do the most apologetics in.

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I also serve as a pastor and elder at Twelve Five Church in Northeast Arkansas in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

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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

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where we have a teaching series. And those are all the ways that you can connect with me, mainly on Facebook.

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So feel free to send me messages anytime. Excellent. All right. Well, so we have an awkward situation.

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We have two Vantillian presuppositionalists and the old guy, Clark. By the way,

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I used to be a Clarkian. I was on Doug Pinecrete, the atheist, his

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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.

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So there was a time where I was very heavily influenced by Gordon Clark. And again, I don't mean this as just kind of a hand -waving tip of the hat.

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I greatly appreciate the work of Gordon Clark and the clarity with which he was able to express his views.

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But Sam, what is Clarkianism within the context of apologetics?

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And why are you a Clarkian? First off,

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I'm dealing with this guy in your comments section, Aaron Mize. I don't know if you know him or not, but he's...

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No. Okay, good. I can't multitask. So I have to like, and then

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I have to look at the comments. Whoever he is, he's already started in on me. So I laugh at this stuff, right?

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The older I get, the more I laugh. I know you're old, but we got to focus. Just kidding. This guy's already started.

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He doesn't even know me. No, for me, Clark, you know, as Ronald Nash noted in his

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Fetz strip that he did for Clark, his work. And Ronald Nash is another great apologist, has written fantastic work on defense of the faith.

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And he didn't agree with everything with Clark. None of these guys agree. Here's the thing. None of these guys agree with everything with each other, but they all cut their teeth with each other.

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And so you're dealing with such... When you get into the material level where they were at, toothpicking every subtle aspect of syntax.

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Yes, that's a great book. Yeah. By Dr. Nash. That's a wonderful book. Again, had the pleasure of seeing him.

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He was at Reformed Theological Seminary for a while there in Orlando. Any slight turn of phrase or what do you mean by this phrase, it gets very minute.

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

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And so when you go through Clark, Bantill, and what is going on with them back in the day, a lot of that has been resolved.

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Some of the fault being on Clark's, some of the fault being on Bantill, who didn't originally,

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I don't think, read over the complaint as it was issued about there being no point of contact between...

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Bantill actually comes out, DOMA points this out in the 1948

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General Assembly that met where they revised that and Bantill signed on to that.

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But Bantill states, yes, there has to be a point in which our knowledge and God's knowledge coincide.

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There has to be a point. So that got clarified. A lot of those things over the years got clarified.

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But these guys were talking at each other with such fine points that most people don't.

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And then what happens, and John Frame laments about this, what happens is they begin to separate into Bantillian and Clarkian, when actually

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I'm neither Bantillian nor Clarkian. I'm presuppositional and I use Nash, Gerstner, I use anyone,

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Jason Lyle, who you're going to have on your show. You're a Clark -tillion. I'm drawing off of so many things, but the thing about Clark, and I'll let

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Jeremiah I guess for, I read, I started reading him in Bible college and through seminary before I started reading

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Bantill. And what it did for me was introduced me to the whole academic world out there that Christianity is just doesn't, they don't read.

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So in the 1960s, Clark, 50s, Clark's dealing with people like AJ Ayer, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, name a

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Christian apologist dealing with in depth with Ludwig Wittgenstein. And now this was back in the day when

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Wittgenstein's not really well known. Today 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,

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Thomas Kuhn and this wonderful book here, Scientific Revolutions.

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This book is basically the philosophy of Gordon Clark's science, but this guy's not a

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Christian in any stretch of the imagination, but he is saying that science does not give us absolute truth.

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The very nature of science is inductive. It cannot give. So I thought, well, this is the argument

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I've been looking for. This is fantastic because even the atheists and the critics, that's what they're saying.

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And so why are they so dogmatic when they themselves admit their own skepticism?

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And I thought that's just brilliant. Yeah. So now, okay. So what about the, well, actually

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I'm going to save this part. Let's bring Jeremiah in. Jeremiah, I don't have to explain why

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I'm a Vantillian. I think people who watch my channel know why I'm a Vantillian, but how were you introduced to Cornelius Vantill and why do you adhere to his form of apologetics?

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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 saw a lot of the resources, things

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I was looking into. I started seeing that presuppositionalism was just sola scriptura plot, right?

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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.

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And so I picked up Vantill first and it was along with Greg Bonson and John Frame.

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And so they kind of had the benefit of influencing my thinking first. And so those things are starting to make sense.

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And Gordon Clark came a little bit later and I honestly couldn't distinguish between the two of them for a while.

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And then I noticed the transcendental argument that was seeming to be the distinguishing factor.

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And as I started studying transcendentals, thinking and reasoning transcendentally,

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I started thinking, okay, how do you prove something to necessarily be the case, right?

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Well, there's a lot that goes into us because we're talking about transcendentals, what must be the case, what has to exist in order for something else to be the case.

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And then when Vantill brought the idea of the impossibility to the contrary, he has logic in mind.

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The law of non -contradiction is in play. And I remember listening to you one time,

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Eli, talk about if you're going to argue against air, then you have to take a deep breath in order to make your case against it.

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So there's some type of transcendental necessity going on there. And I got a hold of Jason Lyle's material as well.

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The ultimate proof of creation. Wonderful, wonderful resource. And so I started thinking about transcendentals and we get all those in there.

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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.

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And so I started thinking in worldview paradigms about the Christian worldview being a necessary precondition for the human experience.

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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.

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And I found presuppositionalism, especially in the Vantillian transcendental formulation things. I was like, you can't unsee these things, right?

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It's just so beautiful and awesome. And so mainly a Vantill because I was first acquainted with him.

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And then I started seeing the nuanced differences when Gordon Clark came in because I would like to talk with Dr.

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Frost a little bit about axioms and how we prove things. But I want to add this to Eli is

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I have such a deep appreciation for Gordon Clark as well. Like you said, he's such a clear thinker and how he explains things.

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He's probably the best of presenting internal defeaters for secular worldviews.

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And one example, and this kind of goes back to me and Dr. Frost, we've been warring against hyper -preterism.

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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.

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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.

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And I read that and I realized that it was the internal critique of the hyper preterist worldview.

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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 hyper -preterism.

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Yeah, excellent. Well, I just want to read two quotes from Gordon Clark, just to show like there are some really great points of agreement that I would say right on.

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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,

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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.

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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.

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And so what Vantillian presuppositionalist hears in that is the denial of the blockhouse approach of apologetics.

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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.

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So we argue systems. Again, Clark says in How May I Know the

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Bible is Inspired? Can I Trust My Bible? page 28. He says, because God is sovereign,

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

29:23

All right. Well, Sam, what is the Clarkian apologetic argument?

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What is the Clarkian apologetic? And why do you think it's a powerful apologetic from your position?

29:36

Well, just quickly 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.

29:47

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.

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So it's one of those books, but Rush Stooney was one of the that wrote about Clark's philosophy.

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And then Clark didn't respond to Rush Stooney, but this is a couple of things of Rush Stooney. And we know

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Rush Stooney is a Vantillian. Just a little. Just a little bit.

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But here Rush Stooney says, Clark's position therefore is not only theologically Calvinistic, but it is also philosophically very extensively presuppositionalist.

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He's not, it says Clark is not a rationalist with a capital

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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.

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Despite the family quarrels and divergences in other areas, Clark's position is basically presuppositionalist.

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That's unquote. That's Rush Stooney. And I really want to emphasize, because I consider you two wonderful brothers in Christ, and what you're doing is wonderful.

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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.

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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.

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Because when I read Defense of the Faith by Van Till, which I use quite a bit, brilliant.

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I'm like, this guy has just destroyed every, you know, appeal to facts or brute facts he's just done.

31:30

But what's interesting having read Clark more is that he sounds like Clark and Clark sounds like Van Till.

31:37

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.

31:49

Sam, if I could interject, I'm with you there. Now, again,

31:55

I'm going to make my qualifications, of course, as we normally would. But I think, in my opinion,

32:00

Clark's critique, his internal critiques of unbelieving worldviews was more clearly laid out than what you'll see in Van Till.

32:10

For that, if someone's like, I'm a Van Tillian, I don't agree with Clark, but how can I benefit from Clark?

32:15

Read Clark's refutations of competing worldview perspectives. They're brilliant. They're brilliant.

32:21

And so I highly recommend people check that out. A Christian View of Men and Things, his philosophy textbook from Thales to Dewey.

32:29

I mean, get it. The philosophy text alone used to be a standard philosophy text in even secular universities.

32:36

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.

32:44

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.

32:52

But go ahead. I interrupt. As to his methodology, the difference would be that Clark does not, would not affirm any of the ontological teleological proofs of God.

33:02

He doesn't appeal to any of those. He shows involvement. They involve an assumption within them for them to work.

33:09

And so they're circular. Now you can use circular arguments. We all do all day long. Just don't call them proofs.

33:15

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.

33:31

His other problem with, I guess, with where they would run into issues with transcendental argument would be

33:37

Clark's methodology. He says this in Christian view of many things, his methodology is choice.

33:44

And so he sees that each system that's out there operates within their own world definitions, whatever it is that they're doing.

33:55

And he would critique them on that basis. That's, that's, he would go in and critique them on their consistency.

34:02

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.

34:11

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.

34:40

And so far, none has arisen that has done what Christianity has done. Is that a proof that God exists?

34:46

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.

34:53

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

35:06

Now, now I want to, I want to go to Jeremiah, but maybe if folks are, are wondering, well, why did, what was

35:11

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.

35:21

And I think this is a good summary. If Clark heard this quote, he would say, yeah, that's my position.

35:27

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.

35:34

He had a very stark rejection of empiricism. Okay. He was against any sort of empirical knowledge whatsoever.

35:44

When my physical hand touches the table, there is no content in the physical hand touching the physical table.

35:52

What is needed is kind of an intellectual framework to contextualize the sensation that I'm experiencing.

35:58

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.

36:09

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

36:17

Clark's position, it is impossible to prove the existence of God or the truth of Christianity.

36:23

For example, the cosmological argument, Clark says, is invalid. Aquinas, Clark points out, insisted that in the sentence, quote,

36:31

God is the cause of the world, end quote, the word cause must be taken analogously rather than literally.

36:39

But the cosmological argument requires that God be the literal cause of the world, or it is of no use.

36:45

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

36:56

God of the Bible transcends experience. If the theist, theistic proofs are limited to their proper sphere, then they prove at most a

37:06

God within experience that is a finite God. So Clark did not believe the cosmological, the teleological, or any argument that is predicated upon any sort of empirical data was enough to prove the sort of God Christians are trying to prove when they employ those arguments.

37:23

All right, so with that said, just to kind of give that context, why don't you, Jeremiah, share your thoughts on anything that Sam just said, or anything

37:32

I just said? I had a lot of thoughts go through my mind. I was almost like, this is just the

37:37

Eli revealed apologetics episode, and I was just soaking it all in there. That's a nice way of saying,

37:43

Eli, you talk too much. So this intrigues me,

37:51

Dr. Frost, about Gordon Clark talking about choices, right? We have to make a choice at the end of the day.

37:57

I remember coming across that. Now, this is where you can correct me and my understanding of this, because like I said,

38:03

I see the overlap. There's so much overlap with Gordon Clark and Van Til. It's not even funny. That's why I love how we can all get together.

38:10

But something that Jason Lyle brings out in his book a lot is we run from arbitrariness, and so if we make a choice,

38:20

I'm just saying that, you know, 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, is there a chance that that runs up into kind of a nature of arbitrariness, 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.

38:48

But what do you think about that? So like I said, I say that delicately because I just want to make sure I understand Clark's position.

38:55

Yeah, well, inductive reasoning is what it is.

39:05

There's no getting around that. If you see 99 black crows, you can infer that the next crow is going to be black, but you can't demonstrate it.

39:19

Right. Likelihood, you know, these are the things that we have. What's interesting,

39:26

Clark came out of University of Pennsylvania and then went to Sorbonne in France, and then he came back and taught

39:31

University of Pennsylvania and got his Ph .D. in the Greek classics. So he's classically trained, never went to seminary, never went any of that.

39:38

So all of his training was classic Greek, French, German, you know, all of that kind of stuff.

39:44

And then he was quite at home with the Greeks. So more of the people that were agreeing with him were the university academics who were not

39:50

Christians. They understood actually what he was doing, especially the scientists. They said, oh, yeah, that's you know, we're not we don't we don't look at things as absolute truth.

40:02

That's scientism. That's a that's a scientism is not the stuff of just lab work.

40:09

That's a philosophy. What's the quote? Only Siths, Dill and absolutes. Right.

40:15

So the scientists in the lab coats doing the work, the inductive work, which is all that it is, it's inductive work.

40:23

They know that that could be challenged at any that could change tomorrow. That's the question.

40:29

Yet they still work within that system. So he that's he wasn't inventing that. He was just wanting

40:34

Christians to see that. However, that does if that's the case with science, then that leaves room open for God created the heavens and the earth in six days.

40:44

You can raise no objection to it. You can. And overwhelmingly they do.

40:50

And on empirical basis, they've taken over every institution because they have such a powerful argument that can fill equations, fill whole chalkboards up with numbers and equations that maybe six people can understand.

41:05

Well, where does the Christian where how do I argue with that? I'm not Richard Feynman. You know,

41:11

I'm not Philip Kitchener or or any of these scientists that are a handful of guys that are that are brilliant.

41:19

Their equations are are gigantic. I can't. How do I argue?

41:24

And that's that's a proof. They don't call it a proof. So how do how does a

41:29

Christian argue with that? See, that's where Clark was. He's like we. But but if God saves and God reveals himself, flesh and blood didn't reveal that to you, that your father in heaven revealed that to you.

41:42

That's how you're saved. Not through arguments and persuasions, which are great.

41:48

God can use those as means. But again, we're back into operational aspects of it, not into, oh, boy, your argument really got me.

41:57

I think I'm going to start going to church now because two plus two equals four and therefore God exists. So I wish

42:03

I could be fantastic. But if I could interject, if we can get Jeremiah to kind of offer some pushback or maybe some questions that he had,

42:11

I think he was trying to to get something in there, but go for it. So would you say the induction presupposes a firm foundation?

42:20

So real quick by analogy, hopefully we get a little bit more into way of analogy, analog, things like that.

42:26

But I've often thought of a dice like representing induction, which is a totally chance.

42:33

But when you roll the dice, it's always on a firm foundation. And I've always thought induction is presupposing something.

42:39

Would you say that it presupposes something that's a firm foundation? Oh, yes.

42:45

Like the problem is the foundation, I don't know because I don't know tomorrow.

42:53

So I can only I can only have prediction. But we know the one who does know tomorrow.

42:59

Well, he does, but I'm not him. So that creates that problem. Here's where I would bring

43:04

Van Til's creator creature distinction and where I love going around telling people

43:10

I'm not God. But I get some interesting responses when people are saying, well, what does

43:21

God do? Why isn't he answering my prayers? Why are you asking me?

43:26

I'm not God. I tell them it's for their sanctification. Yeah, that's really the only answer

43:33

I can. I'm sure he knows what he's doing. He's bringing you to his glory.

43:39

Sam, but if we have revelation, can't we trust what God says about the fact that we could expect tomorrow to be like the past and that, you know, that there is a solid foundation for the knowledge that we have that we could.

43:55

So it seems it seemed like what you were saying is like, well, beats me. Well, no, see, that's where Clark that's where his presuppositions kick in, because he believes that the

44:05

Bible is the word of God written. Does he know that the

44:10

Bible is the word of God written or he only knows that by faith through the Holy Spirit, which has convinced him of the case?

44:17

Clark would not argue that by opening up a rice with ink marks on it.

44:23

Yeah. All of a sudden convinced him that Joshua existed and conquered Jericho. But Gordon Clark would say that he could be wrong about that.

44:32

No, because then I'm confused. So if he starts. The Holy Spirit provides such a conviction of himself, but I can't demonstrate the conviction of the

44:42

Holy Spirit at work in my heart to you. It's only demonstrated to me. So I can't demonstrate that I can only profess it or confess, hey, the

44:52

Holy Spirit's in my life. But how in the world would I go about demonstrating that the

44:57

Holy Spirit who hovered over the waters of the universe at the beginning of the creation is in my heart?

45:03

Yeah, I can only do that by appealing to the written revelation. But if you may or may not agree with it, because it's been sampled in so many ways, it's.

45:13

If he knows through revelation of the Holy Spirit, I mean, how does he know that's the Holy Spirit if he's not deriving that from the

45:21

Bible, if he's choosing an axiom? And the axiom is the Bible is the word of God written.

45:26

I mean, it seems like he's making a choice of an axiom. You could have chosen another axiom. And for all we know, another axiom unbeknownst to him could be true.

45:33

And the axiom he's operating under is false. So I don't see how he could move from. I believe it's the

45:39

Holy Spirit telling me, giving me witness of of God and the truth of Christianity. It seems to me all he can say is

45:45

I believe that because his. Based on the based on the scripture, based on the movement of the everything is described in scripture.

45:56

So why am I all of a sudden in love with the Bible? And I just everything about the

46:02

Bible because you just don't see people. Well, because that's the holy that's the work of the Holy Spirit. It's not the work of anything else, but the

46:09

Holy Spirit drawing you to himself. And the Bible actually tells you that that that's what's going on.

46:15

So you have this could be wrong. Clark would also use the idea of circularity that's going on there, which which for him operates great in your operational understanding, but try proving that to somebody else.

46:29

That's not going to happen. Well, but but he could. But he could be wrong. Oh, no, he doesn't think that he's wrong.

46:37

No, no, no. I know he doesn't think he's wrong, but that's because of the holy. That's because if God reveals himself to you, he's going to reveal himself in such a way of conviction that only he can provide that conviction that will come from nowhere else, except an operation of God himself.

46:53

But he couldn't know that if he's starting with an axiom that he's just choosing an axiom.

46:59

He believes that axiom to be adequate, because as you mentioned before, Gordon Clark thinks that the Christian worldview provides the most consistent answer to the tough philosophical questions.

47:09

But consistency does not demonstrate that a position is true. Right. Well, he wouldn't.

47:15

Let's say that I'll take, you know, my own experience. You know, I grew up in church. Right.

47:20

So, you know, I can't remember a time really where I gave my life to the Lord or whatever. It's just, yeah, just the way

47:27

I was always brought up. But I have heard people of these wonderful altar calls, and I've seen them, you know, over the years being in church, you see these altar calls, people come to Jesus and their lives are changed immediately.

47:43

You go back and see him five years from now and they're completely fallen away off into something else or whatever. So what's what is going on there?

47:50

How can I account for for all of this? Well, the Bible talks about people fall away, good seed, bad seed or seed that sprouts for a while.

47:58

So it's giving me all of these things that I can use to describe this, that and the other. But I really I can't make there is still this hiddenness that's there that I can't make these absolute judgments on people's lives.

48:10

I don't I don't know. And I that's because that belongs to God, only

48:16

God. It's his. And so I think this is where Paul and Jesus is saying don't judge.

48:22

They're playing around in that realm that you can't really make that full judgment on that whore that's had five wives or five husbands.

48:30

Don't make so much of a harsh judgment that she's going to hell. You may not know that the

48:36

Holy Spirit may be working in her life and you just missed that opportunity. So those those kinds of things.

48:42

And it does leave you with a more area of empirical uncertainty. But it's it but it does leave you with the scriptures.

48:50

But the only reason I believe in the scriptures is because God has moved me to believe in the scriptures.

48:57

I could say that the scriptures, on one hand, if I was an empiricist, is the most ridiculous books that's ever come down the pike.

49:05

People floating up into the air and walking on water and talking snakes, talking donkeys, red seas floating.

49:12

The archaeology has disproven it. Science has disproven it. No one reads hardly the Bible and takes it literal anymore.

49:19

You can't even find a Christian out of one out of 10 that doesn't take Genesis as mythology or something because it's such an overwhelming thing.

49:27

So what makes sixth day creation? See, you enter into these issues and the debates become so large.

49:36

I don't have time to go through all of that kind of material. I believe that the Bible is the word of God written.

49:42

I'm convinced of that. No empirical proof can possibly show me that God didn't create the heavens and the earth in six days.

49:51

Try as they may. Wonderful theories. Some of it is quite, you look at it and think, yeah, how did the sun get here?

50:01

Did the sun stop? Did Joshua make the sun stop? Because physically, if that happened, the whole equilibrium of everything would just spin out of control.

50:14

Or maybe that's just myth. Right, right. Well, let me just cut in real quick. No, you're fine.

50:20

So Jeremiah, I would like to invite you in just a few moments, but I just want to interject with a reminder of the conference.

50:27

If you have any questions, by the way, if you have any questions, please feel free to send them in and preface your question with question.

50:33

If you don't preface your question with question, I'm not going to see it in the chat and I'm sure

50:38

I'll be accused by someone for dodging the question because we couldn't answer usually what happens.

50:44

Send me that link. I want to promote that too. I'm kind of like, oh, I didn't see it. Oh, you deleted my...

50:50

I was like, okay. But anyway, I just want to give people a heads up. If you have a question, send in your question. And just a quick reminder for the conference that I mentioned before, the

50:58

Epic Online Presub Conference. Myself, I'll be presenting Dr. Jason Lyle, Dr. Chris Bolt, Matt Slick, who

51:05

I believe is in the chat and Joshua Pillows. Again, this is going to be an excellent conference.

51:11

Very useful for people who want to kind of dive a little bit deeper into presuppositional apologetics.

51:17

And it is a great way to support Revealed Apologetics. I really do need the support. So I would greatly appreciate any support that can be given.

51:26

And I hope that this channel and the content that we've been discussing throughout the past few years have been beneficial and useful to you.

51:33

So let me remove that here. Just wanted to make sure everyone was reminded of that. And Jeremiah, why don't you chime in on anything that Sam said that you would take issue with, perhaps you'd agree with or anything along those lines.

51:45

I do have a couple questions that come to mind. But here in a little bit,

51:51

Eli, I want us to talk about a practical issue of apologetics where Dr. Frost and I came together to do an internal critique that both

51:59

Vantil and Clarkians can really, you know, unite together on. But Dr.

52:04

Frost, before I ask you a couple more questions, do you have any big questions for Vantilians? Yeah, I'd like for both of you,

52:19

I hear different, and I've heard Eli's, but just the definition of what your transcendental argument is.

52:25

I hear different ways of approaching it. And there seems to be within that, that there's now this, as anything, different ways of expressing this one argument.

52:35

So it seems like, you know, what initially Bonson was doing can now be better. Can you state it any better?

52:46

BA Bosterman had a really kind of complicated one in his book, which by the way, Eli, you'd be proud of me.

52:52

I got Dr. Frost to agree to get that book and check it out. Nice. So just my rough sketch.

52:59

We'll convert him one Clarkian at a time. By the way, here it is.

53:06

There you go. Eli, you like that hardcover I got? That's fancy. That's not fair. I need to get an autograph.

53:13

Well, I have, I have Brant Bosterman's cell phone numbers.

53:20

We're friends. No, we haven't spoken in a while, but he's a great guy. And we've had him on,

53:26

I think I've had him on twice. So people can check that out. Very great episodes, but go ahead. All right,

53:32

Dr. Frost. So the sovereign triune God is the necessary precondition for a human experience.

53:38

A denial of the sovereign triune God is a human experience. And therefore the sovereign triune

53:44

God exists. So that would be a type of formulated transcendental argument.

53:49

Eli, I can't remember the disjunctive way. I don't remember the disjunctive, but Sam, I have a deductive argument with a transcendental premise with a deductive argument in support of the transcendental premise.

54:02

So premise one, if there is intelligibility, then Christianity is true. Premise two, there is intelligibility.

54:09

Three, therefore Christianity is true. And the transcendental premise is defended with this next deductive argument, which goes something like this within the worldview of Christianity, intelligibility can be justified.

54:21

Two, all worldviews that we've been confronted with cannot justify intelligibility. Three, since we cannot deny intelligibility, and since only the

54:29

Christian worldview so far can justify it, then the Christian worldview is true. Now the conclusion the

54:35

Christian worldview is true is based upon the idea that you could only have one transcendental foundation.

54:41

So if Christianity is one, it follows it must be the only one, which eliminates the necessity of inductively refuting every possible option.

54:52

So that would be my version of it. The defense of the first premise would be laid out simply by explaining the

55:01

Christian system, the Christian metaphysic, the Christian epistemology, and the

55:06

Christian ethic, and how this all grounds intelligible experience. And so basically, you're just explaining

55:12

Christian theology at that point, and the unbeliever is going to say, well, I don't agree. Explaining your

55:17

Christian theology doesn't prove your position. I'm like, well, now what we need to do, because like Clark said, we're not arguing piecemeal.

55:25

What you need to do now is part of my proof of my first premise involves inviting the unbeliever, because I'm not going to do it for them, showing me where the presentation of the

55:37

Christian worldview falls flat in terms of its ability to ground intelligible experience.

55:43

Jeremiah? Yeah, so that's like with my first premise, the sovereign triune God is the necessary precondition for human experience.

55:52

So premise two, the denial, so this is kind of the impossibility of the contrary coming in, but the denial of the sovereign triune

55:59

God who has revealed himself is a human experience. Therefore, that transcendental claim is supported in the conclusion that it's necessarily true because,

56:10

Dr. Frost, we're all made in God's image. You can't escape thinking in these unified and diverse categories that reflects the

56:18

Trinity, that transcends the problem of the one and the many, which by the way, this book again just really gets into the depth of why

56:25

God must be one in three. Dr. Frost, you and I, we talked about this a little bit on our last show together, because God's omniscience is not just a limited omniscience from the beginning of end of history, but it's a self -contained eternal knowledge, one of the

56:42

Father, Son, and Spirit for all eternity in this perichoresis, beautiful, harmonious relationship.

56:49

So yeah, what do you think so far? No, again, there's probably aspects where we would agree.

56:57

I think it was Ron Nash that tried to construct, and Clark really didn't object a whole lot to it, but Clark would argue if there is such a thing as absolute truth, true today, and he would define that as it's true yesterday, true today, true tomorrow.

57:15

In other words, it cannot change. Propositions that cannot change. So they're absolute, they're truth.

57:21

There's no situation or circumstance that would change them. If you have that as an idea or belief, then you must posit revelation from a being that created the heavens and the earth and all the things therein and this, that, and the other.

57:37

Clark would argue with that. He would say that if you're going to have that, because his problem - We would say it's necessary.

57:44

Well, he wouldn't say it was necessary. The reason why he doesn't do that, and what

57:50

I find interesting is bringing up like this guy here, this guy,

57:57

Herbert Marcuse. And then you've got this guy here,

58:02

Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno. In this massive book right here by Theodore Adorno, this is just a critique on music.

58:15

These guys that they're following, or rather this guy is following them, and this is the archaeology of knowledge, and that's

58:26

Michael Foucault. Now, if you read the opening chapters of Michael Foucault, he's destroying everything, including his own work and his own words.

58:39

They are ripping apart the entire seams of anything intelligible whatsoever. There is no intelligibility.

58:45

In fact, that's our problems with society, is that we think that there is. And once we remove the idea of intelligibility, of order, of decency, all these things -

58:57

It's interesting. When you read what, Eli, you guys probably have experienced this, so you're reading books on maybe secular hermeneutics or interpretative theory or whatever it is that these guys are writing on, like Gadamer or somebody.

59:16

And so I've read this before when it's called Christian hermeneutics.

59:22

We've been wrestling with the text for 1900 years doing this kind of stuff. And it's like these guys out in the academic world are trying to - are like catching up with us or something.

59:31

The same thing is also true with epistemology. We've been talking about epistemology for hundreds and hundreds of years, about God as the ground of being.

59:40

And it's like these guys have - they're starting to catch up, but you don't - you can't have any foundation or structure without there being some sort of being with a capital

59:49

B. But if there isn't, Nietzsche, if there isn't, what do you have?

59:55

We have nothing. The problem today is that there are philosophers that are saying exactly that.

01:00:04

There is nothing. And Clark would say, and I'd love to hear your response to that, but Clark would say, okay, that's your choice, but don't tell me evolutionary theory.

01:00:20

There's nothing. See, you have nothing. You've just defeated anything that you would have to say in terms of telling me how

01:00:27

I am to believe and not to believe. You've just destroyed it. You've shot yourself in the foot. You're self -contradictory.

01:00:33

So I am perfectly free to deny that evolution is a viable idea and is absolute truth.

01:00:45

It's not. It's a man -made theoretical truth racked through with contradictions, inconsistencies on every level, biological level, physical level, inductive level.

01:01:01

If I could jump in, Sam, so for me, the key difference between a

01:01:07

Clarkian apologetic and a Vantillian apologetic is that a Clarkian apologetic does not think that the

01:01:14

Christian worldview can be demonstrated. Okay. I'm going to read a quote here. This is, again,

01:01:21

I think this is frame on Clark, but I think it's accurate. Maybe you can let me know if I've got it.

01:01:26

So here's a quote. Clark has rejected traditional theistic proofs as invalid and historical evidence as irrelevant for proving, not that they're literally irrelevant, they are practical.

01:01:37

Clark insists that we must defend the faith holistically, I agree, as a system of truth analogous to geometry.

01:01:44

Okay. So he starts with axioms just like you do in geometry. That means that apologetic arguments are essentially arguments between competing presuppositions or axioms.

01:01:53

Ultimately, says Clark, no demonstration is possible since presuppositions are prior to demonstrations and govern them.

01:02:01

But as in geometry, it is possible to choose one set of presuppositions over another on the criteria of logical consistency and richness of content.

01:02:09

So is it your position that the Christian presupposition cannot be demonstrated?

01:02:17

And if so, what's your problem with the transcendental argument, which tries to do that?

01:02:22

It tries to prove our necessary starting points. I would say,

01:02:27

I don't think that it can be demonstrated in a syllogistic manner because you're presupposing something even to fill out the syllogism.

01:02:38

So for me - Can I interject real quick? Okay. So that seems to have an implicit bias against transcendental arguments, which don't typically follow a syllogistic formulation.

01:02:52

So for example, transcendental argument is by definition an indirect argument. So because it's an indirect argument, it can be formulated in a deductive form, but it doesn't have to be.

01:03:03

So I'm having a difficult time understanding why the lack of deductive formulations, which

01:03:09

I think they're there. I just gave one before. But even if we lacked a deductive formulation, why would that be a strike against the argument as an indirect argument?

01:03:18

Well, because it's what would be called its persuasiveness.

01:03:24

So it's because the items that you're using have to be defined. And one of the biggest eye openers for me studying logic,

01:03:34

I grew up with... I'm old, right? 55. Is that old? I'm going to say 55 is the new 30.

01:03:45

So I grew up with Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek was on television. So I love Star Trek.

01:03:51

I'm a Star Wars guy myself, but it's okay. So Spock would always talk about logic and this, that, and the other.

01:03:58

And if you just watched that show, you would think that logic supplies itself with its own definitions and its own meanings and its own kind of things.

01:04:07

It was an eye opener studying logic, my first class in logic and then going at it from there.

01:04:13

And was that logic gives you no definitions. It supplies nothing.

01:04:19

All that it is, is form. So if you're going to have definitions, if you're going to have facts or talk about something, you're going to plug it into these forms, but you can plug into anything.

01:04:32

So you can be logically correct, factually wrong. That was a gigantic, yet exploding moment for me.

01:04:41

Sam, what definitions do you think we don't have? If I were to give a translation... I mean, I wouldn't be,

01:04:47

I mean, is it the God of Abraham, Jacob, and Isaac? Well, we would have another God, another type of God.

01:04:53

Well, you and I, you and I and Jeremiah, I was going to call you Jeremy, sorry. Yes, it's a short for Jeremiah.

01:05:01

You and Jeremiah and myself agree that God has spoken.

01:05:07

You believe that's true, Sam, as an axiom. We believe that's true as a necessary starting point.

01:05:14

And we think we can go the extra mile and demonstrate it. But why couldn't we, starting with a

01:05:20

Christian worldview, have a proper definition of God? The triune God who's revealed himself in scripture.

01:05:26

I don't see what the problem would be in terms of defining myself. I mean, did you come at the feet of Jesus because of these arguments or was this developed after you were apprehended by Jesus?

01:05:38

That seems irrelevant to the point. I agree as a Calvinist. Well, I mean, for Clark, it wasn't. Well, as a

01:05:44

Calvinist, I would say that I didn't come to Christ because of the arguments, but that doesn't make my argument not work.

01:05:52

We can still have arguments even though I didn't come on the basis of that. As we know, God can use arguments as means.

01:06:01

So that fact would be irrelevant because whether I came to God or not through the argument, that doesn't touch whether the argument is a valid argument.

01:06:10

Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it does. And I think here's where we're really entering into the discussion, because Clark most definitely brought his

01:06:19

Calvinism into the apologetics. Well, Manfield as well. Yeah, absolutely. Certainly.

01:06:24

They certainly did. Jeremiah, you were going to say something. I mean, both of these guys were Westminster confession of faith guys.

01:06:30

I mean, they both You said a key word for me, and I think we're either really close on the same page or we are, but you talked about persuasion.

01:06:40

Well, you talked about persuasiveness, right? A second ago? Persuasiveness.

01:06:47

So like in my mind, and Romans 8, where we talk about the spirit bears witness with our spirit.

01:06:54

So for me, it's like the Christian worldview can be demonstrated by its necessity, but that's not necessarily going to convince a person.

01:07:03

That is a work of the Holy Spirit. And so Greg Bonson has demonstrated persuasiveness and having those sound, robust arguments are kind of different categories.

01:07:14

And so maybe we're really close on the same page. The persuasiveness, as far as the will and the heart and the volition, that belongs to the

01:07:22

Holy Spirit bringing someone that's dead in their sins to newness of life in Christ.

01:07:29

Yeah, I have flirted, and I'm so glad you're friends with Dr.

01:07:36

Lyle, Jason Lyle, because I've really, this young guy, I'm just so like, man, if we could have 500 ,000 more of these guys, where are they?

01:07:47

That's a lot of Jason Lyle. I'm just going to make a thumbnail. It's just a bunch of Jason Lyle faces.

01:07:54

You know what I mean? That's a maximally good world. Because what used to be a creationism was a foundational aspect in Western, you could see it.

01:08:11

It's all over the place. Prior to 1800s, it was just one of these foundational issues.

01:08:18

And you guys know in the philosophy of history or history of philosophy, that the 1800s is where everything went, it just, it changed.

01:08:32

And you had empirical inductive, you had the success of science that was answering all and gradually squeezing the relation of God out because he was no longer relative.

01:08:46

I don't need to know God to understand how an automobile works. Why do I have to have God? I don't even know.

01:08:52

I don't know what - I'm still unclear on your problem with the transcendental argument. The operation of it is, and what's interesting is that you came to the

01:09:01

Lord because of something the Lord did, and then we developed these arguments. And what caught me was

01:09:07

Boss, in his book, Biblical Theology, states, the only people arguing about the existence of Adam are those that already believe in the existence of Adam.

01:09:17

It's like, oh yeah. You don't hear evolutionists talking about the existence of Adam.

01:09:23

I believe that the Bible teaches that faith is granted to us, Philippians 1 .29.

01:09:29

It's a gift of God, Ephesians 2 .5 -8, right? That these are gifts. Yet in 1 Peter 3 .15,

01:09:35

we're told to always be ready to give a reason for the hope that's in us. In Jude 1 .3, we're told to contend earnestly for the faith.

01:09:42

Now someone could say, well, how do I contend for the faith? Well, we give arguments and evidence for our position. Well, what's the point if that's not how you come to faith?

01:09:49

Well, these are the means by which God has commanded his people to engage the unbelieving world.

01:09:55

I like how, I think it was Dr. Scott Oliphant who defined apologetics as an application of Christian theology to unbelief.

01:10:03

Absolutely. Right. And someone asked me, why do you do apologetics if you believe in election?

01:10:08

Well, it was a question there. I had a question at the end. It was leading up to a question. Oh, okay. That's right. My question then is, why would the fact that someone comes to Christ through a regenerative work of the spirit be a strike against the transcendental argument's ability to demonstrate the truth of the

01:10:25

Christian world? That was my question. Well, and that's where I meant to go into the Jason Lyle thing. Because I flirt with this when you look at, for example, the stratification of the rock formations, right?

01:10:38

So go to the Grand Canyon. Okay. And you very clearly see this laid down, and they can't, the secular worldview has a very difficult time explaining what is in their own textbooks of rapid water laying down, just rapid.

01:10:55

And they demonstrate it everywhere else, except here when it comes to the flood. All of a sudden they just go haywire.

01:11:01

And to me, there's a part that wants to flirt with that and say, you know what? I think we can, I think

01:11:06

R .C. Sproul Sr. in evidentialism, I think the evidence is proving the logical case that there was a flood that massively happened.

01:11:17

These guys can't, they're breaking their own rules to explain away the empirical evidence that's right in front of them.

01:11:24

It's the layers are right there. And I flirt with that, but then again, it's inductive, it's empirical, and you can turn it.

01:11:33

I would agree. And I thought, I gotta have a better presupposition than this. I agree that empirical evidences will not do the job.

01:11:44

That's where Vantillians and Clarkians can agree. So we obviously are going to interpret the data differently because we have different worldviews.

01:11:55

The question I'm asking is why don't you think as a Clarkian, we can demonstrate the truth of our paradigms?

01:12:03

I think a transcendental argument can do it. I'm curious. I'm still kind of curious as to,

01:12:09

I don't see what's wrong with using the argument. A logical demonstration, right?

01:12:15

That has no internal inconsistencies, right? Persuasive per se, but demonstrate it logically because we would say all these other paradigms can't logically demonstrate their position.

01:12:28

Yeah. I can say you can reason Christianity logically, you know, Socrates or all men are mortal.

01:12:34

Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal. That's perfectly a valid argument. The problem is you have to define what mortality is.

01:12:43

Right. And there's an assumption of an entire metaphysical worldview that goes into that. And so the

01:12:49

Vantill system argues the worldview paradigm. You can't get any more broader than the worldview. Right.

01:12:55

And to me, the aspect of regeneration has to be, and for Clark, it has to be brought in.

01:13:01

That's he loves using the verse flesh and blood did not reveal that to you, but your father, he loves, he goes to that.

01:13:10

Amen. Amen. And so if that's the case, if that means that flesh and blood, do I not argue or do

01:13:16

I not give demonstrations or proofs, which is the phrase that's used in scriptures, demonstrations and proofs.

01:13:23

Would I not go to the synagogues and argue with other Jews from the scriptures, persuading them of the kingdom of God?

01:13:28

This is what Paul does. He does it all over the place. Why is he doing it? And then Peter says, give an answer.

01:13:34

I would say, because God commands you to because that is the means that is a means by what she, but that doesn't justify my means.

01:13:43

He could save me at a Billy Graham, but Billy Graham's theology is, you know, you know, out the window as far as a lot of this stuff, he could save you.

01:13:51

He could save you at a Joel Osteen. Certainly. I don't know about that. That's pushing it.

01:13:58

Hey, I was, I'm, you know, I was in the charismatic, you know,

01:14:06

I still have a lot of friends back there and they they're still hardcore Bible believing, following Jesus, working in hospitals, old folks, homes and doing the work of the

01:14:16

Lord. Yeah. They speak in tongues, but what am I going to do about that? So to me,

01:14:24

I think you can demonstrate Christianity. I think you can demonstrate these things, but I don't think you can demonstrate it to such a degree where like two plus two equals four, which we all agree on.

01:14:40

So I can talk to an atheist or anybody. Yeah. They make assumptions that are inconsistent with their own worldview.

01:14:46

You would say, well, you'd have to have a God to have two plus two. We'd say you need the Christian worldview to justify.

01:14:52

And I guess that's from everything I've read on Bonson. And I've read, this was going back in the nineties, his book, when it came out, the one you handled, the one you had that I, I just, it wasn't,

01:15:05

I was like, it sounds good, but it's, it's not. The persuasiveness.

01:15:13

Oh yeah. That's, that's, that's obviously. So sign me up.

01:15:19

When can I start going to your church? It's like, all right, Jeremiah, why don't you share some of your,

01:15:25

I know you had a question or something you wanted. And you guys are wonderful by the way. This is, well, you guys are making me think.

01:15:34

So that's. Hey, praise God. Iron sharpens iron. Yeah. We're at an hour, 15 minutes.

01:15:39

And I kind of had one more question, but I also want to talk about how Sam and I have been able to come together to really utilize presuppositionalism to show massive internal critiques to heresy that's attacking, attacking the

01:15:52

Christian faith. And I know you probably want to do that. I do want to, I do want to let people know that after we get to this last question and interaction, we're going to start going to the audience questions.

01:16:01

So I just want to throw that out there. Okay. Sorry for interrupting. No, you're good. So I'll ask the question first, and I do want us to talk about some of our experiences together.

01:16:11

Off air, after the last time you came on Dr. Frost on the apologetic dog, we were talking about kind of some of the, the, the nitty gritty of the, the differences of knowledge with Clark and Ventile.

01:16:25

And so you and I, we were talking a little bit about analogical knowledge and univocal knowledge. And you, you said something, make sure

01:16:33

I'm quoting you right. You said, well, analogical knowledge seems like no knowledge at all or negative theology.

01:16:40

And so I wanted to talk a little bit more about analogical knowledge.

01:16:46

What do you think? It's a hard topic to talk about because you've, you've got six or seven definitions going on out there from Thomas Aquinas.

01:16:55

I mean, just on and on and trying to get into Aquinas's thought on it. I don't think

01:17:02

Ventile and Aquinas were quite on the same page. No, no. And I don't like the accusation where people say, you know,

01:17:08

Ventile is following Aquinas's, you know, he's not Aquinas. You know, if you read

01:17:16

Gilbert Gilson is one of the premier. So do you think analogical knowledge is negative theology?

01:17:25

Well, see, I would ask you, what do you mean by analogical knowledge? Okay. Excellent.

01:17:30

Excellent question. So, but I know that you're talking about, so we have the Bible here.

01:17:36

I know that the Bible's there as well as God knows the Bible is here, but God has an eternal knowledge of the

01:17:44

Bible being there as where I have a limited creaturely understanding of the Bible being there.

01:17:50

So I'm at the Imago Dei. Everything that I know is a reflection of the creator and the attributes.

01:17:55

My knowledge of the Bible being here is derivative of the creator. So I think I first heard Greg Bonson saying that our knowledge reflects

01:18:02

God's thinking, right? And so that's kind of the bridge that gets us to the creator.

01:18:09

It's not equivocal where we know totally separate things where there's no coming together at all.

01:18:16

It's not univocal as where we both know the same way, like God knows two plus two is four,

01:18:22

I know two plus two is four, that it's identical one in the same way. We're saying, no, we know it analogically.

01:18:28

He's the archetype, right? Being the absolute creator. He absolutely knows this comprehensively, but I know it in a limited fashion.

01:18:36

So like one other example is, you know, my niece, right?

01:18:41

She's two years old. And when she sees me buy something with a credit card, for all she knows is like,

01:18:48

I have this plastic card that gets me stuff every time I swap it. Well, she doesn't understand that I have a job that puts money in the bank account and all this more comprehensive in depth.

01:18:57

But what she knows is true. Every time I use it, I'm able to get stuff in return, but it's just a mere reflection of something bigger that's going on.

01:19:05

Yeah, I would think a lot of that is what

01:19:10

Clark would say. See, that's the problem. You're getting into the really fine aspects of where they would differ.

01:19:19

So say like two plus two equals four, both means the same to Clark or God that it does to me.

01:19:25

I would say at a point it does, even though he could. This is where I agree with you. When I was studying

01:19:30

Clark, he would make claims that seemed univocal, but then he would later on talk about how

01:19:38

God, you know, doesn't have a sequence of thoughts, right? He is an eternal intuition,

01:19:44

I guess. I'm like, okay, well, that sounds qualitatively different than how the creature would know something. God learns nothing.

01:19:56

And so God's knowledge of David as a king of Israel and ruled for 40 years, those two propositions meet at a point between me and God.

01:20:07

But God knows exhaustively everything there is to know about David and being a king in 40 years and what a year is.

01:20:13

And I'm not omniscient. He is. I feel like when

01:20:18

I was studying the terminology, maybe it was just semantics because I did listen to Dr.

01:20:24

Frames say that he thought a lot of the issues, and you and I talked about this, it was really Van Til and Clark coming from different angles or someone's being a little inconsistent.

01:20:34

And I'm like, man, there's so much overlap. It's hard to tell sometimes. I'll read

01:20:42

Doma because on the 1948 complaint, they revised that, the original complaint, which

01:20:54

Van Til did not read. I don't think he wrote it. He definitely didn't write it, the original complaint. He did not write it, but he did sign his name.

01:21:01

But I don't know if he even fully read exactly what the whole fullness of the complaint was. But they said, suppose now that the complainants should try to state clearly in Dr.

01:21:12

Clark's sense the qualitative difference between the divine and human knowledge of the proposition that two times two are four.

01:21:19

They would have to first deny their basic contention with respect to the Christian concept of revelation. It's precisely because they are concerned to defend the

01:21:27

Christian doctrine of revelation as basic to all intelligible human predication that they refuse to make any attempt at stating clearly any

01:21:36

Christian doctrine. So then they changed to this. Since certain expressions used in the complaint have been understood as skeptical in character, and since the complaint cannot disavow all responsibility for producing such misunderstanding of its intent, we gladly affirm when the objects of knowledge are contemplated, human knowledge does have contact with the objects of divine knowledge within the compass of divine revelation, and that within that sphere of revelation, the objects of knowledge are such as the same for God and man.

01:22:11

That's a quote from the complaint of the ministers of the sessions of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, April 26, 1948,

01:22:20

WTS archives. So they went back on that point because they realized when you say at no point is our knowledge and God's knowledge the same.

01:22:31

When you've destroyed revelation, then I can't say anything. You have to have a point, but God's points are impossibly far more.

01:22:45

It has to be. Because I can't talk about David as the king of Israel at any point.

01:22:52

If it's not at some point in God's mind, David is the king of Israel. Sam, if I could just interject real quick, because I know

01:23:01

Jeremiah wanted to ask a question while you were... I know how it is when someone asks a question. I forgot it.

01:23:07

So why don't you ask a question and then we're going to have to move on to the audience questions, but go ahead. Can I substitute this with our interaction, how we came together as...

01:23:17

Yeah, sure, sure. Absolutely. Go for it. ...in Vantillium? So I want to give a little bit of backstory. So I got a hold of Dr.

01:23:24

Frost to help me with hyperpreterism. And so read his article,

01:23:33

Hyperpreterism, Full Preterism, the Problem of Infinity. And so I want to sketch this out a little bit.

01:23:39

And then one of the unicorns, we've been calling it, a hyperpreterist, they came at us and said,

01:23:46

Jeremiah's a Vantillian. Dr. Frost is a Clarkian. They should be fighting against each other on this.

01:23:52

And if anything, it was like, oh no, we're all hands on deck. And this is easy to show that hyperpreterism can't pay the bills in terms of an entire worldview.

01:24:02

Right, right, right. So in hyperpreterism, Eli, when I listened to y 'all's dialogue last time,

01:24:08

I wanted to try to touch on other things that y 'all didn't get to, and this was one of them. So this really piqued my interest.

01:24:14

I want to encourage people, go read Dr. Frost's article on hyperpreterism and the Problem of Infinity. What's your website that people can go read it at?

01:24:21

It's Vigil, V -I -G -I -L .blog. So Vigil, like holding a vigil, so Vigil .blog.

01:24:28

And I want to encourage people, go back to the Apologetic Dog, listen to both of our interviews. And in the show notes,

01:24:33

I have your website posted there. Thank you. Hyperpreterism, they have the new heavens and new earth now.

01:24:41

This is an eternal kingdom that will exist into infinity, meaning that time will continue on.

01:24:47

There's no end in sight. Mankind will continue to procreate. There will be an infinite amount of sin.

01:24:54

And so you start demonstrating the problems with that. It starts to contradict necessary attributes of God, like his omniscience and his sovereignty, because God can't know the elect, not all the elect, because you could always add one more, right?

01:25:09

Not all people will come before judgment before God. You don't get all because you could always add one more.

01:25:14

And so you've got to give up God's omniscience and his sovereignty. And so if you want to add more to that, but we're just showing how you can't have your cake and eat it too.

01:25:22

You're going to have to erode some necessary attributes of God. Yeah, no, I think that what you were doing there was great.

01:25:29

And they actually, and Eli, I think you're familiar with this, or we talked about this on your show, on hyper -preterism, that they literally believe in what

01:25:38

I call infinite procreation. History as we know it now, this will never end and all of the problems with it, this literally infinity.

01:25:52

And you can't wrap your mind around that because you can't wrap your mind around it.

01:25:58

You made a really good point though. So because the hyper -preterist will come back and say, well, you had the same problem because you believe in eternal state, right?

01:26:07

And there's no end in sight. And you made a good point. No, we're talking about quality versus quantity.

01:26:13

Quantity belongs in space -time, redemptive history, and eternity is qualitatively different.

01:26:20

There's not time. It's a state of existence that transcends time.

01:26:27

And so I just thought that was a phenomenal response. And that's how Augustine handled it because a paeron, which is the

01:26:33

Greek for boundless, or what we translate as infinite. The early theologians had a big problem with this as the

01:26:41

Greeks, because it was destroying everything. Infinity destroys everything it gets its hands on. And the Greeks hated it.

01:26:47

And they didn't know how to, because they didn't know how to deal with it. And here comes Augustine and saying, well, we can't apply this to God.

01:26:53

God learns nothing. He knows everything. Dr. Frost, the King James says that God is infinite. How they use the poor word.

01:26:59

We don't use that word anymore, but that was a very, very poor word used there. All right. I do have to interject because we are running out of time.

01:27:07

The problem is solved, but that is how Clarky and Van Til can definitely work together because we do agree that the number of the elect is so certain that it cannot be diminished nor increased.

01:27:20

And both Clark and Van Til would affirm wholeheartedly that. So therefore you cannot have this infinite procreation of souls in the kingdom of God.

01:27:29

It just contradicts the every, you know, and that defeats the whole hyper -preterist argument, even though they are not persuaded.

01:27:38

Exactly. They're not persuaded by it, but it defeats it. So thanks

01:27:44

Eli for letting us get that in there. No problem. That's awesome. Well, folks, if anyone wants to check out, everyone that's familiar with my channel, you know who

01:27:52

Cornelius Van Til is, Greg Bonson. But if you want to check out the other presuppositionalist,

01:27:58

I highly recommend the works of Gordon H. Clark. You can check out his Christian view of men and things and his philosophy textbook from Thales to Dewey.

01:28:09

And he wrote a bunch of other ones as well. A Christian philosophy. I actually have one on predestination.

01:28:17

He was a Calvinist. He held to the Westminster confession of faith and his clarity of writing.

01:28:23

I'll just put that down here. His clarity of writing is helpful, not just in the Christian philosophy area, but in his theology.

01:28:29

We might disagree on some aspects here and there, but you can learn something from the clarity with which he presents his position.

01:28:37

So totally check Gordon Clark out. And of course, Doug Dalma is the

01:28:43

Presbyterian philosopher, the authoritative biography of Gordon Clark. I could not put it down. It's super interesting.

01:28:48

And you get a masterclass on the history of Presbyterianism here in the United States, along with various theological and apologetic controversies that were involved.

01:28:57

So super, super interesting read. Highly, highly recommend. All right. Well, with that said, let's go through some questions rather rapidly.

01:29:08

Caesar Vigil Ruiz, Spanish, that's a very Spanish name, asks, I'm curious if any of you have thoughts on Vincent Kyung, who is sympathetic to Clark's views and has been online for about 20 years.

01:29:21

Are you guys familiar with him? Yeah, I am. I friended him a while back ago.

01:29:26

I haven't talked to him for years, but he basically works within that Clarkian and has published a ton of books.

01:29:34

You can actually just Google his name. He's got really in -depth works.

01:29:40

They're all free. Yes, they're all free. So, but I have not heard from him in years.

01:29:45

I'm familiar with Vincent Kyung. I don't agree with some of the stuff, some of the directions he goes, but in my opinion,

01:29:53

I think he is one of the clearest writers from the Clarkian perspective I have ever read.

01:29:58

When I read him, I'm like, wow, this is super easy to read. And in the areas where I agree with him,

01:30:04

I think it's really helpful. He does not share a one -to -one correspondence with Gordon Clark.

01:30:10

Vincent Kyung also holds to a position known as occasionalism, which is somewhat related to Clark's rejection of empiricism.

01:30:18

So on occasionalism, Kyung holds to the idea that knowledge does not come through sensation so that when we look with our eyes and we hear with our ears,

01:30:28

God conveys knowledge to us via revelation on the occasion that we use our senses, but the senses are not themselves the actual medium through which knowledge is conveyed.

01:30:38

And he would make the argument that when we die, and there's a separation between our body and our soul, we will still gain knowledge in the heavenly state and we won't have physical bodies.

01:30:49

So physical bodies are not essential to the acquisition of knowledge. And so he held to an occasionalism position.

01:30:55

I'm not sure Clark held to that view in the exact same way. But yeah, Vincent Kyung, a very interesting guy.

01:31:02

And yeah, he's got free will to the line. The line of Clark where Moses and Elijah are having,

01:31:09

Clark said, a theological conversation with Jesus and none of them, Moses and Elijah, whose bodies are in the ground, you know, whatever, had brains.

01:31:18

But then again, to think theologically does not require brains. It requires a mind. That blew me away.

01:31:25

And I'm like, ah. Hi, Eli. Yes, sir.

01:31:31

Since we're going rapid fire, I wanted to tell Chris Bolt, yes, the apologetic dog is a

01:31:38

Vantillian. And I wanted to say last time when I was on your show, we were talking about the

01:31:44

Trinity and presuppositional apologetics. And he said, no, Jeremiah left the gold when you asked if what it takes to be a presuppositional, if you have to be a

01:31:54

Trinitarian. And I was basically saying that everyone's a presuppositionalist, but everyone is still made in a triune

01:32:00

God's image. So the only way that a transcendental argument can work is with the

01:32:06

Trinity. So Chris Bolt, I didn't leave the gold, man. I'm living in it. All right.

01:32:13

So it's hard to find questions because apparently while we were having a great time talking about Vantillian Clark, there was a debate that's happening.

01:32:21

So there are a lot of comments here. I'll just pick apart some things that look interesting here.

01:32:27

So Brenda says, there is no such thing as self -attesting. Okay, that's just -

01:32:34

I'm not persuaded. Yeah, I'm not persuaded at all. I just have to respectfully say,

01:32:40

Brenda, that is a very philosophically naive thing to say. T -shirt,

01:32:46

I'm not persuaded. Yeah, I'm not persuaded. Does anyone want to touch on that real quick?

01:32:53

Yeah, so Jesus said, Father, sanctify them in the truth.

01:32:58

Your word is truth. Well, that presupposes a whole theory of what truth is.

01:33:04

And I love the philosophical historical approach, the correspondence theory of truth, right?

01:33:10

But truth is perceived by who? That which corresponds to reality as perceived by the sovereign triune

01:33:17

God that's revealed himself. You can't escape this ultimate foundation, which I would agree with Clark, is scripture.

01:33:24

It's self -attestingly true. It gives you the proper framework of how you understand the world around you.

01:33:30

Now, persuasion is a different topic. But logically, you really can't spar with it,

01:33:35

I don't think. Yeah, and when you're dealing with something that's self -attesting, it really is just your bedrock and your philosophy.

01:33:42

What's your starting point? Everyone has a starting point. To say there's no such thing as something that's self -attesting is literally to say there's no such thing as someone to have a fundamental starting point in their worldview, upon which is not validated by an appeal to something external to itself, but it's just your starting point that you build everything else on.

01:33:59

We all have presuppositions. Oh, Eli, by what standard? That's just your standard.

01:34:04

Well, yeah, I mean, it's the cliche, but it's true. I mean, everyone's got a standard. And so that standard at the fundamental bedrock level is going to be self -attesting.

01:34:14

We're just going to challenge, as Christians, whether your self -attesting foundation is the true one, right?

01:34:20

And that's where apologetics is going to happen. Virtuous circularity versus fallacious circularity, right?

01:34:25

Yep, absolutely. Okay, Nem2jzjz, I don't know how to say that, says,

01:34:32

I'm curious how Clarkians would respond to the problem of Frishtianity. Are you familiar with the problem of Frishtianity?

01:34:38

Never heard of it. Oh, man, you got to watch my... We have an episode on Frishtianity. Frishtianity. It's an excellent episode, by the way, with Josh Pillows.

01:34:46

You should totally check it out. Frishtianity is a hypothetical contender to the Christian worldview.

01:34:52

It tries to show that the transcendental argument does not demonstrate the unique necessity of Christianity, because Frishtianity is similar to Christianity in every single way, except a few minor points.

01:35:04

And so that it claims that this very similar competitor can provide the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience and knowledge, so on and so forth.

01:35:13

So folks want to check that topic out. We have a whole episode dedicated to that. I won't rehearse that there, but definitely worth a listen.

01:35:21

All right. Another name, a rose by another name is still a rose, is all I have to say about Frishtianity. That's right.

01:35:27

Now, let me see here. If I don't see a question in front of the questions, then I'm just skipping over, because man, some people are debating some stuff here, and it's hard to get through.

01:35:36

Can I raise a question? Absolutely not. Now, go ahead. Yeah, go for it.

01:35:43

One of the problems that I have encountered is this quest, and this is a problem that Hegel, or not

01:35:51

Hegel, but rather Heidegger, and then Wittgenstein also comes at it pretty strong, and that's the quest for certainty.

01:35:59

So if I can construct God into an argument, a convincing one, is that giving me some sort of external security that's not coming from God?

01:36:09

It's rather, I believe in God so much, and He's got to be true, because I've sacrificed my whole life for it when

01:36:16

I could be out partying. And so He's got to be true. So I'm going to create this thing in my head where it's absolutely certain, and if you don't believe in God, then you don't even believe in two plus two equals four.

01:36:29

But it's a false creation of certainty. It's an argument that is, because I do remember an old quote a long time ago, and I don't know who said it, but if the

01:36:39

God of Christianity or the God of the scriptures could be proven, then it is not the

01:36:45

God of Abraham that you're proving. And that always stuck with me a long time ago. I don't know where I heard that from.

01:36:50

Can I give a quick? Because he alludes, God alludes that, but if you could just put him on a piece of paper and say, so logistically, yes,

01:36:59

God exists. Yeah, that sounds fancy and pious, but I think it's false, demonstrably false.

01:37:06

It's like, if you could prove the God of Christianity, then that's not the God of Christianity. Well, we believe that the

01:37:12

God of Christianity teaches us that His existence is certain and demonstrable, that man is without excuse.

01:37:19

But go ahead, Jeremiah. Yeah, so Proverbs 1 -7, the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise, right, or are reduced to absurdity, essentially, right, deny wisdom.

01:37:30

And so you have to start with the God who exists and who has revealed Himself. And so I would just say the scripture teaches that necessary worldview.

01:37:41

So, yeah, I just wanted to, you go ahead, Eli, if you had anything else, I think. Well, they didn't argue about it in the scriptures.

01:37:47

I always bring up the fact that the Pharisees and Jesus didn't argue about inerrancy of scripture, whether Moses existed or they didn't.

01:37:55

God spoke, that's it, period, end of story. It was what they say. So when you talk about certainty, 2 plus 2 is 4, seems to be widely accepted.

01:38:06

I would say on an atheist paradigm, they don't have a universal experience to justify a priori knowledge, right?

01:38:12

I would say even though they're convinced in every conceivable world, I'm like, you haven't had a universal experience to actually, you know, postulate every conceivable world.

01:38:22

But on Christianity, 2 plus 2 works because logic reflects the unchanging mind of God who is eternal.

01:38:28

So it's just question begging in terms of the secular worldview that wants to say, no, 2 plus 2 is 4.

01:38:34

We're saying, how do you know that with that exception? And they're going to be begging the question every time. All right,

01:38:40

Sam, this is a question for you. Sam, Gordon Clark wrote in God's Hammer, The Bible and its Critics, very good book.

01:38:45

I highly recommend it. That man is dead in sin, an enemy of God, opposed to all righteousness and truth. Do you agree?

01:38:51

I would say that man's status, another word that Westminster Confession uses, his status, and this is his overall status from womb to tomb, is one that will, or one that can be described in the aorist tense, which is a tense of completed action, completion.

01:39:10

He's dead in sin, unless he dies in Christ.

01:39:16

I love that pause. That was a dramatic pause. So he cannot be prior to Christ entirely dead in sin because there would be no room for him to be made alive with Christ.

01:39:32

And every theologian that tries, this gets to the spiritual death issue, but every theologian that tries to define spiritual death or dead in sin, even

01:39:42

John Calvin himself, and I'll quote him, is, yet there is still that small life that still exists in order to be by.

01:39:51

Oh, and that reminds me of the princess bride where he's only mostly dead. And it's absurd.

01:39:58

You're either dead or you're not. And it's the grace of God that we are not entirely dead.

01:40:06

He can still work and bring us. But all of these categories of life and death for me, and this is a whole other show, but all of these categories of life and death to me do not leave created life and created death and what death and life means to every single one of us.

01:40:19

The death that we hate, the death that we wear helmets and seatbelts and have insurance for and try to avoid every step of our life and our kids to avoid, that death is the one that we're talking about.

01:40:30

That's the one that we spend our whole lives over trying to avoid and certainly protecting our family from.

01:40:38

It's that death that we're talking about. And I'm not dead yet. Jesus conquered death at 70 AD though.

01:40:43

Absolutely. Oh, no. Hey, you don't just have me agreeing. Now, you know what's going to happen,

01:40:50

Sam. I got you saying that. Someone's going to take a snippet of this.

01:40:57

Yeah, they're going to say, see, never mind, I had it convinced. That's awesome. That is awesome.

01:41:03

Oh, man. So, yes, man, his ultimate status prior to Christ is dead and sin.

01:41:12

But that word dead there means what we all mean by death. Things that are dead, you know, they're dead.

01:41:19

I'm not dead yet. So I'm still alive. Very much so. Right. Anyway. All right.

01:41:25

Well, that's the other show. That gets the notice. That's the Aaron Wise guy I was talking about. That's the guy.

01:41:31

Who is that guy? There is some eschatology. I think it's going to take us too far off our topic.

01:41:37

Right, right, right. Unfortunately. So there aren't a lot of questions. There was a lot of activity in the comments section.

01:41:43

And that's a good thing. I think Matt Slick jumped in there and people are interacting with him.

01:41:48

That's fine. The slickest man alive. Yeah, Slick. He's he is slick, man. I've had some interesting conversations with him.

01:41:55

And he's a funny guy. And he is slick. He's very. I remember Matt Slick back in the 90s when we were in a pal talk.

01:42:05

We were in. Yeah, that's right. And this was back in. Ninety nine, 2001, 2002, somewhere around there.

01:42:14

And it was pal talking. I was basically in first grade. Yeah. So Matt's been around for a long time.

01:42:24

OK, let's see here. I think that's all we've got.

01:42:29

I don't see any questions because I've been sucked into it. Well, that's encouraging.

01:42:35

So Alexander, right. Eli, I've been at the gym for over two and a half hours because I've been sucked into this discussion.

01:42:42

Blast you, brothers. Well, you're welcome. You're welcome.

01:42:48

I'm happy to distract you from your exercising or preventing you from from leaving.

01:42:54

Well, real quick, I just want one more reminder. Again, if you're looking for a way to support Revealed Apologetics, please sign up for our epic online presub conference on November 12th.

01:43:04

That would be a very helpful way to support Revealed Apologetics. And of course, to get some really good, solid presub content before we end this episode.

01:43:13

Oh, and by the way, you can sign up for this on RevealedApologetics .com. Pick the

01:43:19

PresubU drop down button and you can RSVP for this event. So RevealedApologetics .com,

01:43:26

PresubU, that's short for PresubUniversity, and you could purchase your ticket there and reserve your spot there for November 12th.

01:43:35

All right. Without further ado, guys, if you want to just make some concluding statements as to where people can find your material, your channel or books, if you've written anything along those lines, now's the time to do that.

01:43:47

Anybody can go first. Yeah, go ahead, Jeremiah. Yeah, I just want to encourage people to go to the Apologetic Dog.

01:43:53

It's my YouTube channel and I have a lot of things coming up in the near future.

01:43:59

Me and my co -host a lot of times, Trey Fisher, we're going to be on Cultish at the end of October at ReformCon.

01:44:06

So we're going to go to Apologia. We're going to have a booth. We're going to get to interview Jorben. I know we would love both of y 'all to be there.

01:44:13

Do you have it yearly? Is that yearly? I've never heard of it. I'm pretty sure. Yep. Everything's on the West Coast, man.

01:44:19

I can't go anywhere. One day. You come into that thing, I'm like, nope, sorry.

01:44:25

All right, Eli, there you go. We'll East Coast something over here on this side. Dude, I encourage

01:44:31

Dr. James White to debate Tim Stratton on my channel on the topic of Molinism.

01:44:37

It was about to happen, and then when the word got out, someone set up a physical debate out

01:44:43

West, and I couldn't even go to the debate. I basically tried to initiate. I never get to go to anything.

01:44:51

It's frustrating. Oh, man, but it's all good. All right. So Cultish coming up soon with the

01:44:59

Apologetic Dog and Parish of the Redeemer podcast with Trey Fisher. We're going to be doing two episodes.

01:45:06

Talking about the Church of Christ cult, and then we'll be talking about the cult of hyperpreterism, how we've found a bunch of unicorns, and they actually exist, and we found them.

01:45:16

So that's coming up. Also, what's coming up next week is I'm having Dr. Frost on the Apologetic Dog to debate a full preterist.

01:45:25

And so I'm looking forward to moderating my first debate. So it's going to be awesome.

01:45:31

So please tune in, like, subscribe, all that. I'd recommend anything by both

01:45:37

Eli and Jeremiah and whatever they're doing. Stay tuned with it. It's mind thinking stuff.

01:45:47

It's encouraging whether agree or disagree. It's always encouraging. It's the way conversations should happen instead of just picking up and throwing things at each other.

01:45:57

That's right. That's right. Yeah, when I met John Frame years back at RTS.

01:46:03

I was part of visiting friends, and I had visited John Frame, and I remember talking to him.

01:46:09

It was so terrible because I was really obsessed with Vonson stuff. So I'm like, Dr. Frame, what do you think about this?

01:46:16

And I'm like, I should be talking about his stuff. I'm bringing in Vonson. But he said one of the things that he regrets the most is how much the church was split over these issues back and throughout the time.

01:46:28

And he's like, it's just a shame. And he didn't say this to me, but I'm inclined to think that that's probably why he doesn't interact anymore.

01:46:35

I mean, he's written all of his books, and he's probably kind of just done with that. And it's sad because the issues that Van Til brought up and the issues that Clark brought up is important just as much as the way in which we interact with one another.

01:46:50

I want to say that again because that's so important. While the theological and apologetical issues that Van Til brought up and the issues that Clark brought up are important as well as the manner in which we interact.

01:47:05

So we cannot say as a Christian who holds to a methodology and another Christian who holds to a methodology and say,

01:47:12

I disagree. And the manner in which we do that is actually contrary to the very scripture we're arguing our method is based on.

01:47:19

There needs to be a consistency both in the content and in the manner in which we interact.

01:47:25

And so hopefully people who are of the presuppositional and Clarkian stripe or the presuppositional and evidential stripe or classical stripe, evidentialist are our brothers.

01:47:35

Classicalist are our brothers. The fact that we have deep disagreements does not give us a right to be jerks to one another.

01:47:42

Be respectful, be gentle, disagree strongly, but we are on the same team.

01:47:48

And so we need to be okay with the fact that in the family of God, not everyone's gonna disagree.

01:47:55

And with respect to some things, it's okay, right? I'm not saying it's not important, but we can still pray for our classical brothers, our evidential brother that God uses what they're doing, even though we have sharp disagreements.

01:48:06

That's kind of my little rant at the end there. I'm sorry. Yeah, that was good. I was gonna say,

01:48:12

Eli, you've always done a good job of emphasizing, hey, we're supposed to give a defense for the hope that lies within us, but you gotta do that by sanctifying the

01:48:19

Lord in your hearts. Gentleness, respect as Lord's servants, we're kind, we're gentle as we hold firm to truth.

01:48:25

So you've always been a big voice for me. When I get ready, fired up, I hear

01:48:30

Eli saying, sanctify the Lord in your heart. That's weird. When you're about to argue with someone, you got this random Puerto Rican guy that plays on your shoulder.

01:48:37

Don't do it. Well, what we're doing and what you guys are doing, and Eli, you and I are getting ready to actually see each other.

01:48:48

Oh, thank you for reminding me. In Heavensville. I have to plug that in. We're at a conference, you know, Rethinking Hell. And so here's some guys that are gonna be talking about soul sleep, which

01:48:56

I vehemently disagree with. And annihilationism, which I can go,

01:49:01

I'm neutral. I'm traditionalist.

01:49:07

I'm gonna hang out in that camp. But again, this is an area that we can debate on in this and the other.

01:49:13

And demonstrating what Brother Eli was just talking about there. But Mike Sullivan, who's a hyper preterist has attempted to divide

01:49:21

Jeremiah and me because Jeremiah might be on the more partial preterist, you know, side of things than I am.

01:49:28

I'm not on that side. And then he tries to show what Dr. Gentry says this and Gary DeMar says this and these guys are all and he tries to divide us and that we should be sharply attacking each other because you emphasize 70

01:49:41

AD more than I would. And it's the same thing with Clark Vantilli. We might have different emphases on things, but we certainly can work together because our divisions are, we shouldn't be distracted by those divisions so much that we can't see that our enemies are so divided with us that in hyper preterism like infinity or Jesus is no longer a human being, you know, these are bad or there's no second coming or resurrection of the dead.

01:50:09

Those are fundamental Vantilli, Clark, John Frame, Greg Bonson, R .C.

01:50:16

Sproul, all agree on. So that bigger picture of what we agree on, which is being attacked.

01:50:26

Those fundamental planks are being attacked. And so basically, Sam, what you're saying is when a

01:50:31

Clark, when a Vantillian is ringing the neck of a Clarkian and a full preterist walks into the room, we both should stop.

01:50:42

Well, let me stop before we'll never end. Guys, thank you so much.

01:50:48

This has been an awesome time of fellowship and iron sharpens iron. I hope that this conversation has been beneficial to those who are listening.

01:50:55

That's it for this episode. Again, guys, please support Revealed Apologetics by clicking the like button, writing a review on iTunes.

01:51:02

And this would be very helpful is if you sign up for that presub, that epic online presub conference on the website, revealedapologetics .com.

01:51:10

Greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for behaving in the comments. I think there's a lot of comments there.