The Hunter/Pritchett Insult Fest, Kwaku El Concluded, Jared Wilson on George Whitefield’s Soul

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It is a Tuesday and we're back at it. We've got some dangerous stuff to be talking about today. Let me before I... There were developments in the Kwaku L saga over the weekend while I was gone and so I had said on the last program when Brother Jeff had joined me that I was going to finish up that we didn't have all that much more to cover from the original video that Kwaku had had posted and there's some church history stuff.

I like to get to the church history stuff especially because I think it is important to mention the fact that Mormonism does try in a very surface-level fashion to provide a very very pick-and-choose style apologetic from early church sources.

They get away with it because so few Christians read any of the early church fathers and don't really know where to look to check things out that it would be useful to give that kind of a warning and to look at that type of information.

So we will we will be doing that. Then I've got a just extremely dangerous subject to deal with toward the latter half of the program. But at some point recently I gave in to the promptings of people online to review methodologically as I have been doing for years, at least 15 years, the interview that Ben Shapiro did with William Lane Craig.

And anyone who has listened to this program for any period of time would know that over the years I have played clips from Craig's encounters with numerous people with Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris and just answers on Molinism that have been given by reasonable faith and issues regarding time, the sovereignty of God, almost any time he says something about Calvinism, I'm immediately overrun with people sending me examples and saying, really hope you'll address this, etc etc etc.

Methodological Critique of William Lane Craig and Presuppositional Apologetics

And so for a number of years we have attempted to try to help people to understand why there are differences between Christian apologists as to how we address the issues presented by atheism, secularism, all forms of and why we answer objections differently.

Why, for example, over the past number of years there's been the development of sort of a, I'm not sure what terminology I would use, but it's derived from embarrassment at the actions of God in the Old Testament in bringing judgment against particular nations, Amorites or Gibeonites or whatever.

And there have been some books published that basically try to in some way insulate God, move God away from being considered to be the terrible, horrible, guilty, bad God of the Old Testament. And we have criticized these things because we are very firmly convinced, as one of the reasons we oppose Andy Stanley's seeking to get people to embrace Marcion's position on the Bible, basically, we feel that fundamentally this is dishonoring to God, it is destructive of sound Christian orthodoxy.

Once you get somebody into the church, you have to disciple them, and when you disciple them, you'll end up teaching them, if you're teaching the whole Council of God, something different than you use to convert them.

And this is a fundamental problem. What you win them with is what you win them to, and we've seen the results of utilizing a sub-biblical apologetic methodology. And so, there was nothing new about my responding to Craig's assertions and his methodologies.

This is, anyone who found that to be unusual or anything else just hasn't been listening very much at all. Just doesn't seem to listen to the program or really care about what it is we've been saying and all we're doing.

And if you think that is an attack, well, it's an attack upon a methodology. And Dr. Craig is the leading proponent of that and he has lots of opportunities and so that's what makes it interesting for people and that's what raises the question, why is it that when, well, for example, if you listen to the debates I've done with Shabir Ali, got another one coming up later this year, if you listen to the debates I've done with Shabir Ali and listen to the debates William Lane Craig has done with Shabir Ali, because we've debated some of the same people, if you're an intelligent, thoughtful person, you're gonna go, you know, they're both Christians but they are really answering a lot of the key questions in a different fashion.

Why is that? Well, we happen to think that it's important to address that issue and to explain those things, but some people seem to think that that's terrible, you're just not allowed to do that, you're attacking the greatest living Christian apologist in the world today and who do you think you are and you're mean and you're nasty and oh, wow, I mean.

And, you know, from the time we started doing this, we would see comments on the internet, we would see people, you know, saying things like that, but it's sort of like, where are you, where are you getting this?

Why can't, why can't there be a discussion of these things? And so I'm pretty used to the imbalanced followers of William Lane Craig, and by the way, I don't blame him for his own imbalanced followers.

I get blamed all the time for somebody who says, I like James White and then does something stupid and I get blamed for it. Well, that's, it's irrational, it's stupid and so I'm not gonna turn around do the same thing somebody else.

But Dr. Craig has some very effusive followers, shall we say. And so, I forget when it was, but it may have been shortly after the last program, a video started circulating that was put out by two men that I did not know.

Hunter and Pritchett. The names did not ring any bells with me at all. I had never seen anything, never heard of any debates they'd ever done, books they've written, nothing. I didn't know anything about them.

And people started listening to it and telling me about just how nasty it was and mockery-filled and condescending and just, you know, I'm like, okay, this is interesting. And then someone points out that Dr. Pritchett was Layton Flowers' debate partner in the debate with Zachariadis and Hernandez.

Was that early last year? I think it was maybe early last year or late the year before, I don't remember which. And I'm like, oh, okay. I hadn't thought much about that gentleman. I guess at some point in my review I had said I wasn't impressed because I wasn't.

He really wasn't central to debate as far as I could tell. I had focused primarily upon Layton Flowers' comments in responding to that aspect of things, even though most of the commentary had been directed toward the wild misbehavior of the other side, the Calvinists who were attacking me as well.

Anyway, so I was like, oh, okay. I don't know. Don't know anything about him, but fine. So, oh, great. See Twitter? Carly is watching, but she has pink eye. Have you tested to see if... You haven't tested?

Got nothing. Because that is really, really contagious stuff. So should I not look at the picture? Look away. Okay, all right. We're sorry that you're feeling ill, Carly, and pink eye was really bad. Anyway, you know, you've got that camera all messed up.

We shouldn't say that much of the enterprise. It needs to go the other direction, so... What? I'm way over on the left-hand side of the screen. What do you want? Durbin was in here, and in order to get him in the frame...

But you swung it back too far the other way. I have to totally redirect that camera. It's a mess. You swung it back too far the other way. Well, anyway. Okay, so yeah, don't look at pink eye pictures.

That's Ryan's suggestion. So, okay, good. Conjunctivitis coming for Doc. Here we go. All right. Anyway, needed to take a small, brief break from it. So I guess you had listened to it before I did, and I just didn't...

I was going down to Tucson. I had packing to do, and I just didn't have time for it. And so, unfortunately, I had to listen to that thing while riding on Mount Lemmon. Yeah, it was... See Mount Lemmon?

Yeah, see, there's Mount Lemmon. Which is a beautiful place, by the way. Summerhaven. I could live in Summerhaven. I really could. I mean, other than the forest fires. It's a great place up there. But that's where I listened to this thing.

And so, I had heard Rich talking about this stuff. But I guess you... Did you listen to the thing I posted this morning or last night? I haven't had a chance to listen to that one. I thought you did. I thought I saw some comment.

I listened to a portion of it, not the whole thing. So I haven't had a chance to give that a listen, but it was... What I did get was, wow. I thought the initial one was bad, but when you take all that and put it together, I'm amazed.

I am honestly amazed that you came up with 11 minutes. I knew there was a lot there, but 11 minutes. Wow. Yeah, so it was a two-hour video. And I do want to eventually respond to it because it, as normal, gave a strawman view of presuppositionalism, plainly sought to misunderstand what I was attempting to say.

Attributed to me, for example, I, in passing, because I had just been reading articles and stuff regarding Fesco's book and the nature of presuppositionalism and stuff like that, a book that they couldn't even remember the name of, but I'm the dumb person.

I mentioned in passing Acts chapter 17 as if it was supposed to be a paradigm of something. And they took that and ran with that and, oh my goodness, over and over and over again. The funny thing was, I'll just mention this in passing, the funny thing was there were three times when I made very important philosophical points in response to Craig.

Two of the times they sat there as if they did not even hear what I was saying or did not seem to understand the significance at all. Just, you know, right over the top. And once I mentioned, because of Feinberg's excellent work on this subject in regards to the cosmological argument, the issue of the principle of sufficient reason, PSR.

And I've, a number of times, I think even in response to Craig in the past, I've addressed PSR and how it is a, not a bridge, but a connection between the assumptions of presuppositionalism and certain of the theistic arguments, which demonstrates that those arguments are valid in a theistic world, which can ground meaning because the acceptance of PSR.

If you reject the principle of sufficient reason, then you can accept the existence of brute facts. If you can have brute facts, then the cosmological argument falls apart. Feinberg went through all of this.

That was one of his primary arguments against the cosmological argument and then bringing in PSR and saying, this is why we can't know, because can you really ground PSR and stuff like that? I assume these guys, they're both PhDs, they know this kind of stuff.

When I mentioned it, they feigned, well, no, they weren't feigning. They were just, what did he say? What? I don't know. What? Do you understand that? I don't know. Right on by. It's like, okay, these are the same guys who, when I mentioned the teleological argument, are going, do you even know what that is?

So you might wonder, how is this relevant? Well, we've tried when dealing with the other side on these things to allow them to speak. We play Dr. Craig's comments. We're not afraid of people hearing what the other side has to say.

We just want to be able to point out where we feel there are inconsistencies. But man, the other side just won't go there. So I have the recording and I only posted it on Facebook, and the reality is, that could disappear tomorrow.

And I'm really not, I don't have a whole lot of confidence that that couldn't happen tomorrow. I think that's a, if it did, I would not be shocked type of a situation. So... But before you do that, I would like to chime in on one theme.

And when I reviewed the Romans 9 debate, this was an assertion that I made then, and I believe that this event actually dovetails into that point. And what I was realizing yesterday, as I'm posting a whole stream on this thought about one's work product stems from one's training and abilities...

Yeah, it's skill set, I think. Skill set, yes. The point of all of this really does, if these guys can go back on our website, that we posted, you posted this back when the internet was very young, in 1997, okay, when you announced that you had gone, you'd changed course and you'd gone the way of Columbia Evangelical Seminary for the purpose of the Church.

The education is for the purpose of the Church. That far back there, isn't it? Well, they need to be. They need to read your rationale, because there's a case being made there. The case being made about the sufficiency of the educational system.

And I think we're seeing the roots, or not the roots, we're seeing the actual results of the argument that you were making then. I'll be honest with you. I think, well, for example, and it may be in this file, I'm not sure.

I think it is. At one point, Pritchett says that Layton Flowers beat me in our debate because he provided an exegesis of Romans 9 and I did not. Now, you simply have to be self-deceived at that point.

I mean, you're just, you're looking at something that is read and you're screaming that it's green. You just, it's so completely self-deceptive, upside down. I mean, I would invite any fair-minded person to observe that debate and they're going to come to the same conclusion.

So, what can cause a person to have that level of self-deception? Well, there is a commitment. There's a, it's the team. It's, it's, this is, these are my people. And so, I'm going to see what I need to see and hear what I need to hear.

We're all subject to this. We are all subject to this. It is not a lack of training because in some other area, they'd probably see very clearly what the reality is. But your personal connections can produce inconsistencies and incoherencies as it does in that situation.

And so, when Layton Flowers watched that video where he is, of course, lauded and said to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and so on and so forth, he actually says that there's no difference between the level of invective.

Pejoratives was the word he used. Pejoratives in their video than what I use all the time in talking about him. Right. Again, self-deception. It's just, it's just so, it's black and white day and night wrong, but he doesn't see it because of that deep prejudicial tradition, commitment to a movement or a certain group of people or whatever else it might be.

And we all have to be careful that we can, we can all fall into the exact same, exact same trap that they have fallen into, but they don't see it and are not willing to do it. So folks, these are two PhDs in apologetics to our attempted interaction with what you watched before in my response to William Lane Craig when he was on Ben Shapiro.

And so what I did is I just went through it, used Audio Notetaker, marked. Now this wasn't all I could have pulled out, by the way. There was stuff embedded within other dialogue that I didn't pull out because you wouldn't have understood what was being said and how it was an insult if it was just isolated.

So I, this isn't actually all of it, but this is the kind of stuff that we have challenged the other side. We've said, okay, you say that this is tit for tat? Prove it. I mean, how many thousands of hours worth of audio do you think we have posted?

Audio and video we have posted. You'd think it'd be pretty easy, but the reality is what you've got here is not, they want to interpret my disagreement with Craig's methodology as a personal attack upon him.

It's not. But what you're going to hear, especially from Pritchett, I need to be fair. Pritchett does 85%. Hunter only does about 15%. And Hunter said some nice things, but he also said a bunch of nasty things and untrue things and just sat there and let Pritchett rip and snort and said, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I'm sorry, you're just as guilty as he is, even if you're not the one that was doing the primary stuff. Despite this, we're still going to review the material. Not today. Let some time pass. Maybe let some emotions dissipate a little bit.

But I'll ask other people. I'll probably ask Cy, because Cy's name came up. Jeff's name came up. They even, did you catch they even attacked Jeff and Luke and Zach? Based on a lie. But again, one thing that you guys' credibility as far as researchers and being honest about other people was severely damaged by this, severely damaged.

Pritchett doesn't care, but I think Hunter would. So here are quotations directly from, taken straight out of the two-hour response from Hunter and Pritchett. Let's see what they.

Have to say. As he confuses literally everything he says about William Lane Craig. James White confuses everything? Still would have been a true cynic. I don't think that's happened since he's been over.

I think that he's been at this for a while. And I don't think that he's a very competent apologist. I don't think that he's a competent exegete. An expert on Islam like Dave Wood says he's not the guy to listen to a lot of times.

So, you know, I know that it's, it's customary before you rip somebody a new one for saying dumb things that you want to try to say a bunch of positive things. I have nothing positive to say about James White except that he needs to repent for being ugly to Layton Flowers.

How many times has James White been on Ben Shapiro's show? None. How many times has he tried to evangelize Ben Shapiro? None. Publicly anyway. Okay, so basically we have a guy here attacking another brother in Christ for sharing with someone that there's good reason to believe that Jesus was dead, buried, rose again, and that the guy needs to repent and trust in Jesus for his salvation.

Here it's going to be a bit looser than that because James White doesn't really say too much that is of substance. It's more or less just look how silly this is. But he does go for a full hour. And notice what we're doing.

We're doing exactly what James White does. Play a fragment of a sentence and then talk for an hour. I don't know if that's lost on James White. A lot of things get lost on James White. I don't know. I don't appreciate most if not the overwhelming majority of presuppositional lists because they're horrible and they're jerks.

Excellent. I was impressed with that. I wonder if James White will be impressed with that because so far he's you unimpressive. Well, yeah, but that seems to be fine. James White's not impressed with anybody but himself.

Even though he's not the best resource of this, when he's talking about other things, James White is tolerable. Out of all of his debate losses, which one was the least he got? No, even the debate that everybody cringes at, which is the Bart Ehrman debate about manuscripts, I thought he held his own pretty good.

He got his butt kicked so bad that he abandoned his plans to get a Ph .D. in Islamic studies to go get a Ph .D. in textual criticism. I thought it was pretty good. No, I don't know if that's really what he did.

I don't practice.

Divination like he does, but I'm guessing that's what happened. I need to find a little sound thing. Give me a second to get the witching rod put back in the closet. I need to find a little ding. Every time Pritchett lies because you almost not get to hear anything because the ear of the man is just utterly clueless or he's just willing to pop off anything pops into his head.

He'll just fire it out there because what he just said there was just laughably absurd, just laughably absurd. If you'll recall the word that I kept posting to you when you were driving to Tucson, this man really, these guys just despise you.

Oh, well, he says that. Just despises you. Oh, yeah. He actually says that, but I'm not going to comment on this. I just wanted to say I need to find a little ding sound to play just for all the really crazy things.

He's taller than all other things, but he shoots himself in the foot any time he talks about Romans 9 or any time he talks about John 6 or any time he talks about Ephesians 1 or any time he talks about Genesis 15 -20 or any time he talks about the Bible, he's typically bad.

I call him a fake-a-jeep. You know, he's a fake-a-jeep that pedals his backward jettix. I have my own lexicon, so you'll have to join the forum and talk to my keeper of the dictionary of the lexicon, that's Drew McLeod.

Yeah. He keeps all these things. But James White, I might not impress him, but he's not impressive at all. Works for Strobel. Works for Hunter. Works for me. Works for the Apostle Paul. But forget all that.

James White is speaking. Yes. And again, if you think about it, do you understand the teleology? Let's start there. This makes no sense. No, it makes perfect sense. What it is is a bunch of sanctimonious pseudopiety bladder is what it is.

He's just cloaking himself in a... Are you flattening it out, Jonathan? No, he's cloaking himself in a potty cloak in the way that he cloaks himself in Technicolor dreamcoats, you know, or dream ponchos.

That's all this is, is just pseudopious ranting. Yeah. Rhetoric. Yeah. Don't let him judge God. Well, that sounds pious, right? Yeah. But it doesn't mean anything. No. He'll be drunk and need correction from...

Okay. Okay. I said it wasn't going to interrupt it because it's the cumulative of effect that is absolutely destructive of these guys' credibility. But I just have to explain that one. I had made reference to a key apologetic issue between classical, evidential, any man-centered, synergistically-based apologetic methodology and presuppositionalism.

And that specifically is that in the very approach that we want to take to the rebel sinner, we do not want by our own actions to communicate to that individual that they have the right to judge God, but that God has the right to judge them.

Now, their response was, well, they're already judging that. They're already doing that. I know. The point is that in our approach, in the presentation of our argumentation, we do not want to communicate to them anything that would encourage them in their autonomous rebellion against God to judge God.

But this goes back to our soteriology and our anthropology. These men believe that man is autonomous and has the capacity to exercise autonomous choice to choose Christ. And so they can't even begin to grasp hold of the fact that apologetically, I would want to be consistent between what I believe as to their relationship to God and what I'm saying to them and how I would say it.

So that was what the judging God, and this is pious blather, et cetera, et cetera. No, it was actually key to an apologetic methodology and approach. These men do not understand what they are denying.

They gave no evidence of having any meaningful first-level reading in Van Till or Bonson or Oliphant or whoever. I don't see any evidence whatsoever of any first-level reading in those areas. And if they have, then they didn't bother to read very well.

His fellow elders who drink a lot of beer. Oh, okay. There was the lie. Just a shot, just slander, just simple slander that needs to be repented of. Direct forward slander. But this was part of the milieu.

This was just a constant element of everything. It makes me wonder what kind of atheists he talks to.

He doesn't. I talk to him all the time. He doesn't. The first words out of their mouth after I don't know and neither do you is, what does he do on this show? I haven't watched much of this. Does he basically just whine about other people?

A lot of times. And sometimes he gets into, like I used to watch the show years ago until I realized how ridiculous and uninformed and uneducated he really is and how he's a terrible exegete, a fake egete, doesn't really know much about the ancient world or much about the Bible in its own historical and sociocultural context, which was why he butchers every text in the world.

If you want to, there are competent Calvinists, by the way, like G .K. Beale is an excellent Calvinist, Daryl Box. These are the type of theologians that would laugh James White out of the room if James White started spewing his horrible misunderstanding of Paul's use of the Old Testament.

G .K. Beale and Daryl Box were like, here's the construction paper. Carry on. Let's go sit in the corner, James White. You don't know what you're talking about. Layton Flowers is awesome. Yeah, Layton Flowers.

James White. You got a problem with it, with us talking this way? Like, you need to understand, this is a man who is attacking, without question, the most prominent debating apologist on the planet right now.

And this guy was evangelizing Ben Shapiro, one of the most prominent conservatives on the planet right now. And it's completely unnecessary. Evangelism and apologetics work like I really think God's called me to.

I'm glad other people are doing that. But listen, James White can sit around and gripe about the way that William Lane Craig evangelized Ben Shapiro. All he wants to do, the rest of us are going to actually go out and do evangelism.

Yeah, no, let's make this personal. The Christian apologists who are not listening to presuppositional whiners. This is why presuppositionalism is not only ineffective, but if that's your main thing and that's your only tool, it's not only ineffective, but it's lazy.

Yes. I was thinking that as I was listening to him speak a while ago. It is lazy apologetics. It's lazajetics. It's backward jettix. Yeah, backward jettix, lazy jettix, lazajetics. Yeah, I don't. This whole thing is James White's a train wreck.

I was completely ineffective. I probably made that person even less inclined than before because I was a complete jerk to them. It doesn't matter because they weren't regenerated. Because all I did was make assertion after assertion after assertion and call them names instead of have a conversation like a normal person.

But I stumped on my presuppositions, which is the only biblical, you can't find it, but I was the only biblical apologetic. And so I'll pat myself on the back. That's my consolation prize. Look how sanctimonious and holy and pious I am.

And Van Till will be so pleased when I get to heaven. Yes. James White is just spouting off nonsense. Now I know he's never done much. He can talk about how he spent a lot of time in Salt Lake City 30 years ago, witnessing the Mormons.

Probably hasn't done it since because this is how I know he doesn't spend a lot of time evangelizing skeptics or just, you know, people on the street because you would never talk like that about your experiences.

You would know what they say. And you would also know that they don't care what you think they should believe about it. How would Jeff Durbin sometimes and evangelize since he's your elder? Go do some of that because it sounds like it's been too long since you have these.

Yeah. Do you know anything about historical Jesus studies? That's just logically problematic. No, it's stupid. That's what I was saying more nicely. That's just logically problematic. It's stupid. Same thing.

Yes, it just is good. I think that's the only ground. Yeah, you're a Christian. I'm glad you don't. It is so it is so telling about James White that he so wants to disagree with William and Craig that even on the preeminent, the importance of the resurrection of Jesus.

I got I got I'm not going to dispute that. It's some seem for kind of. But but gosh, I'm trying. Do I have to agree with Craig here? Dang it. Yeah, shut up. It's very common for both Jews and Muslims to misunderstand the nature of what makes the resurrection.

And we like Craig makes that point better than you. Shut up. Actually, what he just said again, I hated this. I agree with what he just said is going to be a lot smarter than what he's about to say is right.

It's a cheaper shot than the ones I take at James White's expense. I do not have much respect for James White as a person, as a as a as a theologian, as a scholar, as an apologist, because of his career of attacking Christian ministers and ministers of the gospel and especially attacking personal friends of mine.

People will argue, well, you're just you just don't like him because he attacks your friends. Yeah, I don't like I'm from Arkansas. We don't like people who attack our friends, especially over dumb things.

And James White has made a career of it. So I hold this man with a certain level of disrespect and contempt. Specifically, I don't hold all presuppositionalists that way. I don't hold all people who are complementarians that way if they disagree with me on that or they disagree with me on Calvinism or whatever.

But with this man, this one guy, I am happy to admit that until he repents of his career of vitriolic behavior towards other Christians and seeking to undermine their ministries and their efforts for the gospel and specifically repents for his vitriolic rant against a personal friend of mine by the name of Leighton Flowers, to whom he lost the debate on Romans 9 because he didn't address the debate question like Flowers did.

I'm just not going to speak kindly of it. And this kind of methodological whining reminds me of the kind of stupid whining that people like David Platt and Paul Washer before him were doing. See, this is, again, he doesn't know what he's talking about as far as this, but you see his little...

So James White thing is, let's not use facts, I guess. This is the most ridiculous kind of attack. This is what people have said that I think is valid. And I agree with this assessment, which is why I'm going to say it.

This is a uh, systemic jealousy and hate parade from White on William Lane Craig that stems from envy. I really think that that's probably true. This is absolutely absurd, and like I said, I would be more respectful to anybody, well, most people besides James White, but he doesn't...

This is emblematic of why he doesn't deserve much. Okay, but...

So there you go. Yeah, it's great to be loved, isn't it? It's wonderful. Yeah, how many times do we hear stupid, dumb, you know, all the rest? It was great. I really don't think that Dr. Pritchett realizes...

Hello? Um, hmm. I thought I turned that off last time. Oh, I have a browser up. That's why. Oops. Do I need to have this browser up? Um, no, I don't. So I can close that so it won't go bing anymore. I'm not going to take the time to talk about the transgender issue today.

Anyway, most people would probably say there's nothing redeemable in that. But, because... And especially because, um, you know, you heard his theory that I'm envious of William Lane Craig and that's why I do this.

Here's my theory. I think Dr. Pritchett and Dr. Hunter wanted to prove themselves to William Lane Craig as his hatchet men. We'll go out there and we'll attack this guy so you don't have to say a word.

And I think that's why they did this. I think they just want to get in with William Lane Craig. They want to be at more of his conferences and invited to more stuff and just that kind of thing. That's my direct theory.

What else would explain someone going to press with something like this when they clearly didn't do any background material? They talk about Act 17. They never offer a meaningful exegesis of Act 17. They say that I misinterpret every text the Bible have ever addressed.

It's a large portion of the Bible we've done over the years. And I didn't get the feeling that they had actually interacted or even read most of my material. I don't know about you, but I don't get that feeling at all.

Why do something like this? Well, I think the motivation was to get Craig's attention and, hey, look at me, type of situation. Because like I said, I'd never heard of either of these guys before. And so I wonder.

But the point is, their misrepresentation of presuppositionalism, their strawman argumentation of it, and their statement that presuppositionalism can be used as part of the apologist's toolkit. So when it's appropriate, you can use it.

When it's appropriate, you can't. When it's not appropriate, then you don't. No, it doesn't work that way. Because there is a anthropology, a soteriology, and a theology that underlies presuppositionalism that you reject.

Your theology and soteriology, your view of man, is contradictory to the presuppositions of presuppositionalism. And so you may pretend, and obviously there are times I've heard Ravi Zacharias make specific criticisms that sound very much like what a presuppositionalist would be saying.

But the issue is, can you be consistent across the board in that way and without the proper theological, soteriological grounding? And this brings us back to the other issue. Theology determines apologetics, not the other way around.

Not the other way around. And so this idea that presuppositionalism could just be one methodology that you, you know, if you're in one particular argument and it would work well there, great. If not, then you can just throw it out.

That is not a proper understanding of presuppositionalism in the first place. So I don't get the feeling, you know, when I was driving up there, I actually switched out of this for a while. I was listening to Van Til's Theory of Christian Knowledge.

What a huge difference. Listening to Van Til and then going back to that, it was, put the, put the clutch in, burn it out. But I just don't, I just don't think these gentlemen really understand the issues, but they're very quick to say it's everybody else, that I'm the one.

It's just all my fault, I guess, that I don't get it. But like I said, what really struck me was the couple of times I really hit upon a key philosophical issue. They just were like, zoom, went right past him.

They didn't even notice it was happening, which is, which is rather interesting. Okay. Spent more time on that than I expected to by a long shot. Let's get back to, let's get back to Kwaku here. Jeff and I got to a particular point, and I wanted to respond to just a few more things.

And then we've got a really dangerous subject to address. So let's, let's get to it. Well, what happened? Did you turn me off over there?

Kwaku El on Eternity, the Trinity, and Mormon Scripture

Let's talk about eternity. So I know you're thinking, the Bible says God is eternal. He is alpha and omega. He is beginning and end. Now, obviously that has a little bit of a poetic gesture to it, right?

I hope you don't actually believe that God is the beginning and the end. So if you're an evangelical or Protestant or Catholic or non-denominational Christian watching this, I hope you actually don't believe that alpha and omega, beginning and end is literal and not poetic.

Because if it is literal, that means you believe that God had a beginning.

And you believe he's going to have an end. Now, if you feel like we just shifted subjects and weren't with us the last program, I apologize. But we are continuing and finishing up listening to claims made by a Mormon from BYU named Kwaku L.

Now he's not a general authority or anything like that. But what he does represent, and one of the reasons that we engaged him on Apology Radio last year and have done some, some responses to some of the things that he has said, is because he is representational of what I call Neo-Mormonism, the new Mormonism that is becoming popular amongst the young people and hence deeply impacting the direction of the LDS church.

A lot of us are very concerned about the direction that Mormonism may go, and it also represents a widening of perspectives within Mormonism. There was a day when you could sort of sit down with folks and you could, you could really have a 98 chance you knew exactly where they were going to be.