Bahnsen vs Sproul: Deep Dive Debate Review

Two powerhouses coming together to debate methods. Greg Bonson in one corner and R .C.

Sproul in the other. In this video, I'm going to look at the debate and I'm going to break down what is being said, who is making the better arguments.

To do so, I've invited my friend Eli Ayala of Revealed Apologetics to join me. Why? Well, because Eli is a presuppositionalist and I am not.

As a matter of fact, walking into this discussion, I think I'm definitely more on the side of Sproul.

What is going to happen? Who will prevail in this discussion? Get yourself a bowl of popcorn or better yet, get out a notepad and a pen because we're going to go super deep into apologetics, theology, and philosophy.

So let's go. First, Eli, welcome back.

Thank you so much. It's an honor and a pleasure to be back on with you. I'm so happy to see you because it's been,

I don't know, how many months since you were on and I certainly picked a great time because you're not feeling too well.

A little under the weather. I literally have the flu and I'm on medication.

So I have Advil cold and sinus right now. So I'm actually able to do this right now.

When it wears off, the show will be over by then. So it's all good. What's so great is you're so knowledgeable about presuppositionalism that you can do this with both hands tied behind your back blindfolded and have the flu.

So I figured... I got to pull an MJ with the flu game. That's what I wanted to challenge myself.

Can I do this show with you without throwing up or passing out? So we're going to see what happens.

Oh man, this is going to be a great evening. I can already tell. So Eli, the debate,

Greg Bonson versus R .C. Sproul. Do you know anything about this debate? When it originally took place, where it took place, stuff like that?

I don't know that. Although I have listened to it a while back because the topic of the debate was really interesting to me because I was kind of at a crossroads as to where I thought

I landed. I already was exposed to the presuppositional approach and I found it very attractive and very powerful.

But at the same time, as with most people who get into apologetics, I mean, my access point was through that more classical methodology.

And I thought it was interesting that presuppositionalists tend to be Calvinist, but R .C. Sproul was a

Calvinist and a classicalist. So I always thought that was interesting. I don't know the background of the debate, but I'm very familiar with the actual discussion itself.

So I was actually probably going to bring this up later, but you already did. So we can talk about it just for a brief moment, then we'll jump into the discussion.

But I do get the sense that a lot of Christians, maybe a lot of Christians on YouTube, they really do think that that's where the breakdown is.

If you're a Calvinist, then you must be a presuppositionalist. If you're not a Calvinist, you must be everything else.

You must be an evidentialist. You must be a whatever. And I guess that's not the case because R .C. Sproul was a classical apologist.

He was an evidentialist along the lines of like B .B. Warfield. Yes. Yes.

You can be a Calvinist and a classicalist. I think the debate here and this is where R .C.

Sproul and Vonson disagreed, who is applying Calvinistic theology consistently, right?

One of the concerns that R .C. Sproul raises in his opening statement is he says, here's one of my concerns,

Sproul says, he's concerned about the loss of the purity of Calvinism by an intrusion of Neo -Orthodoxy within Calvinistic methodology.

And so he believed presuppositionalism brought to the table something very anti -rationalistic and anti -Calvinistic.

So he thinks that a consistent outflow in terms of methodology from a Calvinist theology is a classical approach.

And of course, Vonson is going to sharply disagree with him there. It sounds like the debate was recorded on the surface of the moon.

I mean, that's how bad the audio is. So I actually tried to touch it up a bit with some of my software.

So this is the best I could do. I included some sound effects in case we hear something interesting. So check this out.

And what about this one? Let me see. Warning, theological error.

Yeah, theological error. There we go. And then finally, let's get ready to stumble. Yeah. Game on.

I love it. I love it. You got all these cool special effects, man. On my show, I have to actually just do a voice.

I don't have all the cool little bells and whistles there. You have the flu, so I'm not going to ask you to do your impersonations, although you do have some, and they're excellent.

Okay, well, I appreciate that. Okay. Maybe that'll come later. Let the spirit lead.

We're going to jump into the discussion right around the 39 -minute mark, because I think that's where the back and forth starts to get good.

What I had originally prepared for tonight, but which time did not permit to do, was to give a brief historical reconnaissance of the historical rise of Fideism as an alternative to natural theology.

So this is Sproul talking, just so we're on the same page. Method, metaphysics, philosophy, theology.

What I was having in mind there was that from a methodological perspective, Neo -Orthodoxy is noted, particularly

Barth, for its very stringent rejection of natural theology, and by its replacing natural theology with a fideistic approach or defense of the

Christian faith. I am very much afraid of that method's broader implications.

I don't know how exactly I said that in enumerating my concerns, but to state the differences as sharply as I can, in terms of a statement of concern,

I have to guard my words carefully here. So I feel like I should stop right here, because this is super inside baseball, and I'm barely keeping track.

The sound is better, but it's still not good. It sounds like Sproul is saying that the rejection of natural theology by Christians in history has led to presuppositionalism.

And maybe that's too reductionistic to say it that way, but I think that's what Sproul is saying, is out of this rejection of natural theology came fideism, which fideism, you know, we mentioned it.

It's kind of that, you know, Kierkegaardian form of faith, it's a blind leap in the dark kind of faith that is disconnected from reason, which again links kind of arguably back to the moment that Kant severed the noumenal from the phenomenal.

I don't know if we want to get into that. But anyway, it sounds like that's what Sproul is saying. So then if that's the case, then the only thing that Christians can do at this point is just have faith, and that's

Sproul's problem. What do you think about that? Right. I think you nailed it right there on the head.

He thinks that presuppositionalism stinks of neo -orthodoxy, and the particular brand of neo -orthodoxy, which places emphasis upon fideistic subjective opinion based upon a dogmatic assertion, you know, you believe it because I say it, right?

But again, that just misses the whole point. It's not fideism.

It's so not fideism. It is more not fideism than R .C. Sproul's own position.

And again, you can disagree, someone could disagree with presuppositionalism, but what the presuppositionalist is trying to do is argue for certainty.

We can make a distinction here, Nate. There is a difference between psychological certainty and epistemic certainty.

These are big fancy phrases. They mean very simple things. So psychological certainty is our mental state.

I'm pretty certain, psychologically speaking, my wife is in the next room. She's sleeping. I could be wrong about that.

I could be wrong about the things I'm psychologically certain about. But when we speak of epistemic certainty, we're talking about the sort of certainty that I cannot be wrong about.

And a transcendental argument, at least within the project of what Vantill is trying to do and Vance is trying to do, he's trying to give us an argument that gives us epistemic certainty.

Now, it's not arbitrary. Fideism is arbitrary. If he's going to compare presuppositionalism with the neo -orthodox

Kierkegaardian kind of argumentation in which we just assert by faith and dogmatic assertion, yeah, that's arbitrary.

But what does it mean for something to be arbitrary? To be arbitrary means that you don't have a good reason for the thing you're asserting.

But when you push the presuppositionalist, well, that's arbitrary. No, I have a good reason for asserting the truth of the

Christian worldview, and here it is. When you reject the Christian worldview, you lose the foundation for knowledge, science, history, philosophy, logic, and anything meaningful and intelligible because all of those things require a context of interpretation in which they're meaningful.

And that's where we argue for our worldview. Our worldview perspective gives meaning to those things, and we're willing to argue about those things.

But in the way that we do that, we are not going to grant autonomous and neutral assumptions.

And so that's where, I think, R .C. is mistaken. It doesn't lead to Fideism and neo -orthodoxy and things like that.

Yeah. No, it's good. All right, let's keep going. I am not saying, I'm glad you asked that question, that anybody who's a presuppositionalist is neo -orthodox.

I don't think there's a neo -orthodox, crypto -Kierkegaardian or crypto -existentialist.

I don't mean to say that at all. I want to make that very, very clear. But I am afraid of the implications of the method for these reasons.

I think that, first of all, the presuppositionalist approach gives the pagan an excuse for his rejection of God because the pagan is sharp enough to see the fallacy of circular reasoning upon which presuppositionalism is established.

Okay, so there it is, right? And I'll give you a moment to comment here. Is the admittedly circular form of argument that presuppositionalists employ in apologetics a fallacy?

No. We have to make a distinction between circular reasoning and circular argument. Circular reasoning is not the same as circular argument.

You can engage in circular reasoning, and I think everyone does this at the ultimate level. Bonson says, even in this very discussion, he says, all chains of argumentation will trace back to starting points which are taken as self -evident.

Circularity at this level will be unavoidable. And that's just a fact. If you're going to start with reason, well, give me a reason why we should start with reason.

Bonson points out in another lecture, he says, we do not correct our eyes when there's an issue with our eyes with our eyes closed, right?

We correct our eyes while using our eyes. We don't correct our eyes by closing our eyes, right? So when we're dealing with chains of argumentation that go back to a starting point, there's going to be an element of circularity.

But circular reasoning at that ultimate level is not a fallacy. What's a fallacy is circular argumentation in terms of which you have the conclusion of an argument in one of the premises.

But as I showed you when I gave the transcendental argument in a deductive form, for example, if knowledge is possible, the

Christian worldview is true. Knowledge is possible, therefore the Christian worldview is true. There's a level of circularity there in terms of my reasoning because I believe that the

Christian worldview is the necessary precondition for the very meaningfulness of that argument itself.

But the conclusion is not stated in any of the premises. So it's not fallacious in that argumentative sense.

And of course, it's not fallacious in the reasoning sense because you have to reason with circularity when you're dealing with ultimate commitments.

So I'm tracking what you're saying. Now I'm trying to get into the mindset of Sproul, which probably isn't possible.

But so then why he essentially sounds like an atheist interlocutor at this point?

Is it that the issue is that the starting point for the

Christian presuppositionalist is not the starting point that a nonbeliever shares? Because that's where the nonbeliever—I'll leave

Sproul out of it—that's where the nonbeliever starts to say, well, this is arbitrary. Is that what's going on, you think?

Well, when the unbeliever points out the fact that we have presuppositions, the presuppositionalist doesn't recoil and say, oh my goodness, he found out that I am presupposing the truth of the

Christian worldview. The thing is, we lay out our presuppositions. These are my commitments.

I put my faith—and this is the language of the Christian, right? I place my faith and trust in the

God that I know and his revelation. Those are my presuppositions. And the nature of those presuppositions is that they are self -attestingly true.

Why? Because they're ultimate commitments. You do not demonstrate the truth of your ultimate commitments by appealing to something more ultimate than they.

Now, theologically, they are self -attestingly true because they come from God. When God swore to Abraham, with respect to in the

Old Testament when he's making a covenant with Abraham, the Bible says that God swore by himself because there was none greater than to swear by.

And so if that's true, we have in Scripture this idea of the absolute ultimate God who speaks with authority and what he speaks is self -attestingly true.

Well, that's arbitrary. You can't just assert that. I know, and that's why I'm not merely asserting it.

Here is the other half of the coin—that when you reject the revelation of this absolute sovereign

God who gives meaning and context to everything, then your position is reduced to absurdity.

Here's how. And then we interact with their worldview that is based upon a denial of the

God that we're arguing for. So we don't run away from the facts. We can say, you know, tell me one thing that you know, unbeliever, and I'm going to ask you what are the necessary preconditions?

What must be true in order for that thing that you think you know to be meaningful? And so what we do is we critique the unbeliever's framework with which he makes sense out of the things he thinks he knows.

And this is where you get into what we call internal critiques. Abraham Kuyper is correct.

I have a worldview. The unbeliever has a worldview. There is no neutrality. Everything that the unbeliever is going to say is going to be filtered through the lens of my ultimate commitment.

And like fashion, when I tell the unbeliever, you never believe what happened. The Lord was so faithful. I was sick and they prayed for me and I'm healed.

And what is he going to do? He's going to take that and he's going to filter it through his unbelieving perspective. There is no neutrality.

So the only way to engage in a meaningful critique of the unbeliever's position without simply asserting the truth of Christianity and leaving it at that is through an internal critique.

And an internal critique is when we hypothetically grant the truth of the other position and show that on its own basis, it falls apart.

And at that moment, we can talk about anything. We can talk about facts. We can talk about science. We can talk about, you know, any specific data point.

And we're just going to point down to what are you standing on? What are you assuming? What are you presupposing when you assert any meaningful statement about any of those things?

And then we hear what they say and we interact with gentleness and respect. And this is where a non -believer, you know, says things like, well, the laws of logic are a brute fact.

Which is interesting because in terms of form, they're doing the same thing that a presuppositionalist would do.

It's just that they're not going far enough. Well, Nate, I'm glad you said that. One of my goals when

I do debates, and I don't do a lot of them, I've done a couple of them that people can watch them on my

YouTube channel. Really? I mean, I was green. I think

I did well, but that's when I was starting off. But one of the things I try to do is to show that I'm not the only presuppositionalist debating.

I believe everyone, Nate, is a presuppositionalist. You have your

Bible too, atheist. You have your ultimate commitment that you are taking it self -attestingly true, i .e.

brute, right? It's just a brute fact. Really? Well, if you read Van Till, you said you're reading

Van Till. He's got a couple of interesting little quotes and nuggets you might want to put in your back pocket. Van Till famously said, he said that brute facts are mute facts.

Facts don't speak. Facts need to be interpreted. Okay. Now the fact that he admits that there's brute facts already shows that he's not neutral because the

Christian world, you says there are no brute facts. And so here you go in your assertion of brute factuality, you are indirectly saying that the

Christian position or my position is wrong because I don't believe there are brute facts. Every fact requires

God. There is no fact that has meaning independent of the father of the facts who created them and gives them the meaning that they have.

And so I could argue with the unbeliever like this, and I don't have to step away from the authority of the Bible. I've heard well -known apologists who say, we have to remember this folks, when we argue with the unbeliever, what's one thing we can't use?

And everyone in the audience will say the Bible. And they'll be like, yeah, that's right. We can't assume the Bible.

That's not how I see the scriptures teaching how we should engage unbelievers. We stand on the truth of God's word and we show the folly of rejecting that.

And we don't argue in terms of probability. Bonson was correct. He says, apologetics is not merely dealing with probability.

He says we can know without a doubt whatsoever that the Lord Jesus is the Christ. The gospel comes so that we may know with certainty.

Quoting Luke four, first Thessalonians one five, the Bible speaks of a perfect faith, not marred by any doubt.

Colossians two, two Hebrews, six, 11 Romans four, 19 through 21 speaks of Abraham's certain faith.

Funny thing that I think is interesting, Nate, and I'll stop blabbing here, is that the way the

Bible speaks about the certainty that we can have is not the way a lot of Christian apologists, you know, popular apologists speak.

Right. Uh, you know, the God that we cry and we lift our hands and worship like, oh my goodness, this

God has changed my life. It seems like we're talking about a different God when we're defending him out in the world, the

God that we know with a certainty that we cry when we feel his presence, we then turn around and talk to the atheist.

Well, God most likely exists. Right. Well, what happened when you were enjoying his presence and what happens when you know

God, right? Are you, are you sure you know God? Knowledge requires a justified, true belief.

Is it true that you know God or is it probably true that you know God? I think there's an interesting inconsistency going on there, but go ahead.

Yeah. You're bringing up these other touch points that I do want to talk with you about, but I think that we have space to do this later.

Let's jump back into the, uh, the discussion. I don't like this as a pagan having to have that, uh, excuse to say, hey

God, the reason I didn't believe in you is because all those that were defending you gave me an argument that violated formal canons of logic.

Second of all, when we start our argument by the direct affirmation and assertion of the existence of God, we're in a real dangerous vibe of subjectivism.

I just say God is, that's my starting point. There is a God. The authority by which

I say that humanly speaking in terms of the argument is the fact that I'm the one who's saying it.

Now, if I don't have an objective, evidential basis for that, that we call subjectivism, it's a matter of a decision of faith that is not resting upon objective criteria of, of evidence.

That is what I meant by the intrusion of an existential or Neo -Orthodox method into theology and philosophy.

God forbid that I should ever call Dr. Van Till or any of his disciples existentialists.

Who gets to decide what is the objective standard and criteria of evidence? That's the thing.

Like, yeah, I believe you need an objective criteria. Bonson wouldn't think, wouldn't say that you don't need an objective criteria, but is that objective criteria, neutral criteria?

If it is, the Christian shouldn't be engaging in neutrality. And if it is, neutrality is impossible.

So we can pretend that we can be neutral and talk with the unbeliever as though there are these things we could agree over, or we can just show our hands at the beginning, say, we have commitments, you have commitments too.

Let's see whose commitments can make sense out of these quote, objective standards of criteria for evidence and things like that.

So I think he's, he's misunderstanding the issues here. There they are, you know, by any means.

But I think it's a happy inconsistency at that point. And this is a fear, a concern.

That's why I said it's important for us to, to see what, I know that, that Greg's going to have the opportunity,

I hope he'll take the time to say their concerns. Their concerns are that we're yielding too much to the humanists.

We're going to end up in autonomy of the human mind, end up as Cartesian rationalists and all that sort of thing, and compromise the, the sureness that he's already mentioned about the word of God.

But the only argument I hear so far in, in the priest's apologetics is I start with the assertion of the existence of God, which assertion is precisely the issue under dispute.

And I offer no evidence. I just say, that's the way it is.

That's good evangelism. But I think it's the death blow. It's fatal to apologetics as a reply to the pretenders to truth that Greg is so beautifully described.

He's correct. Nate, he's correct. That would be the death knell, but that's not what the presuppositionalist is doing.

There is a bit of talking past each other. Well, so Bonson hasn't had a chance to talk yet, so I guess we'll let him, we'll let him say some things.

Well, and also, let me back up. I went into, when we talked about doing this kind of a video, let me bring you back up here on the screen.

We're too small. I can't, there we go. When we talked about doing this kind of a thing, I was like, why don't we just do a debate reaction in the vein of videos that we've done before?

And as I started looking at this conversation, because I had to listen to a bit of it to try to find out where to start and stop it, and where to find where the real clash was.

This isn't really, there is no, hmm. The trick that I do with debate teacher stuff is

I try to squash down formal rules on top of more informal style debates.

And I get away with it because they do at least track the ones that I've looked at more along the lines of formality.

These kinds of, this kind of discussion with Bonson and Sproul, it feels like more like an unbelievable episode with Justin Brierley, you know what

I mean? And so this is not a cross examination by any stretch, you know? It sounds like more like a first rebuttal or something.

So that's the issue. I want to say something nice about Sproul. I like how he frames the discussion, because he's done this a couple times in the entire thing, where he says, basically, look, what's going on here is fideism versus evidentialism, you know?

Or this way he says, I'm hearing a lot from Bonson, but I'm not hearing a clear argument. That's what he just said for his methodology.

Then he includes these rejoinders from Bonson in his own little speech, I saw you nodding your head, you know?

But what he's doing is he's setting the table, so to speak, for how everyone listening is supposed to understand this discussion.

And I've said this before, and I'll say it again, but the framework that you lay down as an opponent, more often than not, whoever lays a better one wins.

And I'm not saying that that's the right thing or the good thing, I'm just saying that's the way it is. But anyway, what are your thoughts on Sproul?

Well, I like how you said that, laying the framework. I've seen so many episodes of your show, I knew that's where you were going.

I think R .C. Sproul is doing a good job in laying a framework, it's just not the correct framework.

I mean, he just doesn't understand the nature of the presuppositional argument. And that would be true if I was on his side in apologetic methodology.

If I knew what I knew about presuppositionalism and I was a classicalist, I would say, nope,

R .C., you're wrong, that's not what they're saying. They're wrong, their argument doesn't do what they think it does, but that's not what they're saying.

And so I think he's laying a framework, but it's not landing, especially with people who know the issues.

It's not landing because if you know, I mean, a transcendental argument is an argument. When you say you don't give evidence, you're just saying, there is evidence.

Here's the evidence. Reject the Christian worldview and look what happens. That's evidence. That's a form of evidence at least.

That's the impossibility of the contrary or something, right? Right. And you can demonstrate the impossibility of the contrary by bringing up various illustrations of the point of what you're trying to get at.

You see this in Bonson's debates with Gordon Stein and Edward Tabach. They were two very different debates, believe it or not, that in the debate with Gordon Stein, Bonson is heavily relying upon the laws of logic, that the

Christian God is the necessary precondition for logic. And when he's debating with Edward Tabach, he's using transcendental reasoning, but his focus shifts from the laws of logic to induction.

You could shift to anything if you want to talk about beauty. What are the necessary preconditions for beauty? So he's not avoiding the evidence.

He wants to look at the evidence, but we do not look at the evidence independent of our presuppositions.

I don't think that, and I get this all the time, when I hear debates between people who use the traditional arguments, cosmological, teleological, these sorts of things, and then you listen to a presuppositionalist.

Notice the type of things they talk about. On the one hand, the classicalists will argue over science and the evidence and this study over here and that study over here.

When you listen to the presuppositionalists, they're talking about the very fabric of reality itself. What does it even mean to say that something is meaningful?

I think that's one of the benefits of presuppositionalism. It gets right to the root without spending too much time on the surface issues because the issue isn't the evidence.

The issue is we're looking at the evidence differently. You see this in evolutionary debate where you take a look at fossils and you see similarity between the fossils.

You see what's called homological structures where there's a similarity. You can see through the fossils that there seems to be some kind of evolutionary relationship.

But why is it the case that an atheistic evolutionist who is looking at the fossils sees homological structures, these similarities, as evidence for evolutionary relationship?

Then here comes along the Bible -believing Christian who believes that God created all things. He sees these same homological structures and says, oh man, look,

God created these creatures with similar physical features. How on earth do two people look at the same thing and come to completely different conclusions?

The issue is not the evidence. The issue is the presuppositions that we bring to the evidence. I think

R .C. Sproul is missing that. What do you think about his comment about subjectivism?

Again, I'm trying to get into his mind here a little bit. He talked about subjectivism, and I guess

I think the concern that Sproul has is that by starting off with God's existence, accepting

God's existence, which I take it he would mean on faith in the presuppositional scheme, then you are not beginning in objectivity.

That's where the word you had already clashed with that. You're not beginning there.

You're beginning in subjectivism because faith is subjective. There is no objective argument for a

Christian's personal trust in God, but there is an objective argument for the existence of God. One is subjective, the other is objective.

How do you respond to that? Yeah, this is the claim that the presuppositionalist is confusing ontology with epistemology.

We are starting with ontology, and then we're confusing ontology with epistemology.

I'm starting with God, but I haven't demonstrated how I know that's the epistemology aspect. So you have to start with yourself,

R .C. would say. You don't actually start with God. You have to start with your thinking process. But again, the presuppositionalist is not confusing the two.

We recognize that the ontology, one's metaphysical assumptions about the nature of reality, and the epistemology, our theory of knowledge, which for the presuppositionalist is revelational.

We believe all knowledge is revelational. It is not an either or. You either start with yourself or start with God.

We say we start with both. You cannot meaningfully speak of epistemology without presupposing metaphysical commitments.

You cannot presuppose metaphysical commitments without already having an epistemology or theory of knowledge connected to that.

So we're not confusing the two. We hold them in tandem. It's a false dichotomy to say you either start with yourself or you start with God.

I would say, why is that my only option? I can say we start with both simultaneously. It is only if we start with both that I could make a distinction between what we call our proximate starting point, my mind, and my ultimate starting point, the

God who reveals. There is that. It's a very important distinction. Bonson wouldn't deny that we have to start with ourself.

Of course. I have to utter, God exists. But that's not my ultimate starting point.

It's only my ultimate starting point that can give meaning to my proximate starting point because my ultimate starting point is the necessary precondition for the meaningfulness of my proximate starting point.

That's just to say, Nate, and I'll stop here, that God and revelation is necessary to even understand my intellectual activities in which

I start in a proximate sense, making arguments and making assertions and things like that. Boy, a number of things that Sproul is saying is just talking past.

Bonson, I can even track this. You know, Bonson, I guess, at this point, what

I would be looking for as his debate coach is for Bonson to clearly explain why

Sproul has mischaracterized presuppositionalism or else this would not be a fruitful conversation. Right.

I think Bonson would demonstrate that by quoting from Van Til to show Van Til's not actually doing what

Sproul says he's doing. So that would be one of the ways he can show that R .C. Sproul's understanding of presuppositionalism is off, and so his criticisms fall flat.

But then again, he's going to have to give some kind of argument as well. Let's see what he does. I think we have another problem with confusion, volatility, and epistemology, which

I'm sure this discussion will get at sooner or later, but that's answering your question. Would you wish to say something, Professor Bonson?

Yes. By the way, Bonson is a beast, right?

He annihilated, annihilated Gordonstein. And so I expect an excellent response from Bonson here.

In the first place, I want to make very clear that the position I hold in apologetics and the position advocated for over 40 years by Dr.

Van Til is by no means whatsoever, and it is highly inappropriate to use the word in the same room, fideism.

It is not subjectivism. It is not anti -rationalism. It is not a denial of objective criteria and grounds for belief.

In fact, you will find strenuous statements in Van Til's literature, as you will find in my limited literature, in the fact that there is an objective argument for the existence of God, that it is inescapable, and no man has rational grounds to think that he can reject it.

So that's not fideism at all. Not at all. It doesn't come close to subjectivism.

It doesn't give the pagan an excuse either, because it doesn't say to him that you have one circle here and another circle there, or I guess, you know, different strokes for different folks, take the one you want.

That isn't the presuppositionalist argument. The argument is, you're reasoning in a circle, and it's a destructive circle.

And I may be reasoning in a circle, but it's one which encompasses your thought and everything valid in your thought, as well as all other things.

It gives science a foundation. Now, this word about presuppositional and circular argumentation needs to be expanded just a bit more.

Let us say that I, as a Christian, am dealing with a man who is a committed and exhausted empiricist. He believes that sense perception is the test of all truth whatsoever.

All right. So his ultimate presupposition is that sense perception... Is he writing on a blackboard,

Eli? Oh, yes. Yes. By the way, R .C. Sproul famously taught using a chalkboard, even up until, like, our modern time.

He loved doing it, and it just had an effect of snapping. You could hear the chalk snapping down on the...

He did it even, like, up until, like... To have been in that room and seen this with our own eyes, man, that would have been really great.

...is the standard of truth. Now, consider a man who wants to debate with the empiricist at this point.

And he brings an argument, we'll call it argument A, to bear on the empiricist.

And another man comes into the room, and he uses argument B with the empiricist.

Now, if argument A is, in fact, predicated on an ultimate presupposition which denies that sense perception is the standard of truth, and the empiricist buys argument

A, would you please notice that he can only buy that argument by rejecting his presupposition?

You could stop right there, Nate. Sure. Because I'm thinking my teacher is coming out. I want to make sure people are following.

He's showing, for example, that if someone is an empiricist, which is an epistemological position which says all knowledge comes through sensation, right, and experience.

If someone were to say all knowledge, just to illustrate the point of what Bonson is saying, the irrationality of that position, if someone is saying all knowledge comes through sensation, we can simply ask the question, which sensation did you use to come to that conclusion?

And of course, the very moment the empiricist opens their mouth to give you an answer to that question, he's now going to demonstrate that he's actually denying his standard of the fact that all knowledge comes through sensation.

Well, you didn't learn that through a sensation, okay? So if that statement is true, all knowledge comes through sensation, it's false because you didn't come to learn that through sensation.

And so he's trying to show you that certain presuppositions that we have, it's not meaningful to assert a position and then in your defense of that position, deny the very position you've asserted.

And so he's trying to show the incoherency of an empirical outlook. Right. And in order for two people with two different presuppositions about reality to agree with each other, someone is going to have to deny their presupposition, or at least a component of it, you know?

That's right. So then I take it, what he means to say is, how can a Christian and a non -believer who both start from two entirely different presuppositions agree with each other unless someone denies their starting point?

That's right. Well, let me, okay, so let me try to, okay, I'm a brother now, so let's do this 1

Corinthians 13 style. Isn't that assuming that Bonson's characterization is accurate?

That what's going on when a Christian talks to a non -believer is that they are starting with two different presuppositions?

Because I think I just heard Bonson say that, well, help me, maybe I didn't hear that. What he said was that the non -believer is standing inside the

Christian circle. He said that the Christian circular reasoning encompasses the non -believer's reasoning.

It encompasses their thoughts. Basically, he's saying that the Christian worldview encompasses everything meaningful within the unbeliever's worldview.

So whatever the unbeliever wants, he can't have because of the insufficiency of his worldview, and then he's saying the

Christian worldview can give you everything, even within your own circle. So then, aren't the non -believer and the

Christian both standing on similar ground, but because of the non -believer's wickedness—so now

I'm trying to do a Romans 1 thing here—they refuse to call reality for what it is. They refuse to acknowledge where the evidence of reality truly leads.

They don't want to admit that, and that makes them morally culpable, as Romans 1 .20 teaches. Then isn't that what's going on?

Yeah, he's a truth suppressor, right? He's denying the truth that he has.

He's suppressing it. Yeah, that's exactly what he's doing. So then, how do we get to the issue—I don't know if it was

Bonson or you, because I'm listening now—how do we get to the issue of no neutrality? Because I think

I'm probably confusing categories, but it seems like the non -believer—

I think I could say something that's helpful here. Hopefully, I apologize. We want to make a distinction between common ground, between the believer and unbeliever, and neutral ground.

They're not the same. So neutral ground is impossible, because there is no neutrality, for the reasons we've just expressed.

But there is common ground. If there was no common ground, then all of the criticisms of Van Til would be correct.

We'd have to go on the side of Abraham Kuyper—apologetics is useless. If there's no point of contact, then what's the point of talking?

We can just pontificate and say, glory be to Jesus, he is the king of all the facts, and then we can't really argue about it, right?

So in Van Til's writings, he makes a distinction between common ground and neutral ground.

There's no neutral ground, but there is common ground. There is a point of contact. But the thing is, that point of contact is not neutral.

The point of contact is that the unbeliever is made in the image of God. And so we have the capacity as Christians to appeal to the image of God within the unbeliever.

It's kind of like the knowledge of God. If the unbeliever can be envisioned as a sponge that has absorbed liquid, and the liquid is the knowledge of God, okay?

I have knowledge of God as well. So I have liquid in my sponge, he has liquid in his sponge. My job as the apologist is not to add liquid to his sponge, but it is to press the sponge and show that when

I press it, the liquid is coming out, the knowledge of God that he's suppressing is there.

So that when I'm engaging in the apologetic interaction, I'm not assuming neutrality, but I am assuming that as an image bearer of God, this person can be reasoned with because he has a knowledge of the very

God I'm talking about. And how is that brought out? By asking questions, calling him to account for the things he takes for granted and showing him that the reason why you know that fact to be a fact is because you know the

God that is calling you to account, but you're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. And that's where we pivot from argumentation to calling the unbeliever to repentance.

So we're always within that sphere. It's just the way we go about exposing the knowledge of God that they're suppressing.

It may look different depending on who we're speaking with, how hardened the person is, things like that.

Right. So you're helping me here. And so for somebody who's watching this video, Eli and I have been talking, corresponding, boy, for a year or something, or longer.

It's been a little while. And Eli is a presuppositionalist, and I have been somebody who, just full disclosure,

I cut my teeth on Schaefer, who arguably was a presuppositionalist.

Maybe not. But you know, and then I kind of shifted and really was influenced by Sproul.

Not so much just Sproul, but you know, Warfield, even. And so I feel like this discussion is really us standing on two different sides of the fence here with this kind of discussion.

But I am open. So Eli has got me reading Van Til, and I'm learning a lot, and I really enjoy it.

And I love R .C. Sproul, too. And that's not just paying lip service. I absolutely love

R .C. Sproul. I love his style of teaching. I love how he can bring complicated issues to a point of simplicity that the average person can understand.

So I mean, I still listen to R .C. Sproul a lot. So I don't, I mean, we just disagree over this issue, but I mean,

I find him super helpful, and I greatly respect him. Well, just so everybody understands, you know, and I'm trying to,

I don't know where I fall into all of these details, but I'm just trying to be transparent about where I'm coming from, how

I grew up as a young baby Christian, where my thought process has been. So I say all of that to say, it sounds like then, if we can press into knowledge as characterized by Romans 1, then maybe it just comes down to what that means and what that looks like.

Because the method, again, zooming out, the methodology is in question. Is it really presuppositionalism, or should it be evidentialism?

That's also a false dichotomy, because they both agree that you can utilize both, you know? Well, here's the thing,

Nate. I think it's important. It is a very important distinction between Bonson and R .C. Sproul, and they'll probably bring it up later.

I'm not sure how much of the recording that you have. They are at a disagreement with respect to the knowledge of God and how it is attained.

They're going to make an attainment between immediate knowledge of God versus immediate knowledge of God.

So is knowledge of God, if I can use my glasses here, is it a look -and -see knowledge, or is it a knowledge that we have in light of the reality that we are imago

Dei, that we are image -bearers? Along with Calvin, that you cannot know yourself rightly without also simultaneously knowing your

Creator and whose image you were made. So all men have a sensus divinitatis, and that sensus divinitatis is necessary for truly knowing ourselves as creatures.

So I didn't plan this very well, but I am a professional. Let's just do this, and then we'll move on. We'll just kind of leave it out there as a seed, and then we'll move on, maybe circle back around on this.

This is going to be a four -hour video, by the way. I love it. Romans 1, verse 18, this is what it says,

For God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about God is evident among them because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made.

As a result, people are without excuse. And by the way, YouTube, this is what people on YouTube want.

They want us to read the scripture, amen. So the question, though, is what does it mean by clearly seen, verse 20, but also,

I would add, what does verse 19 mean, because God has shown it to them? There's a key.

Notice it is God who has shown it to them, not me by my argument.

A lot of people think this is teaching natural theology. I don't think it is at all. I think it's teaching natural revelation, and there's a difference.

I know enough about Sproul – so I'll say this last part and then we'll jump back in – but I know enough about Sproul to say that he doesn't think that what's going on is that God made the universe, and then people are basically looking at it and making inferences to God unaided.

What Sproul would say is that God is actively revealing himself. Why does God do anything? Because he's revealing his glory.

He's glorifying himself. And so, what God is doing, verse 19, is he's actively revealing himself in what's called general revelation.

And whatever happens out of that, because general revelation never takes us to the resurrection, that's special revelation.

But I think Sproul would say – I've never heard Sproul say this, so I think Sproul would say that general revelation is a form of special revelation, because the active person that's revealing in that sense is not the person doing the inference, but it's

God. And so, how does this inform or connect to knowledge and all that stuff?

I don't know, but I would just add that clarification. I think that's very important.

But again, if you take the classical approach and the classical understanding of the role of argumentation and things like this,

I think it gets down to the nature of the certainty that people have as image bearers of God and as people who are affected by sin and suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.

Do the arguments of natural theology do justice to the biblical data with respect to what man knows about God and his culpability before him?

Bonson says later on in the discussion – I'm going to say a quote here. This is a good distinction to show what the classical approach will do in terms of that knowledge that all men have versus what a presuppositional approach seeks to do.

And this is Bonson here, quote, God has given a clear revelation which can be defended because it's the only foundation for knowing anything whatsoever.

And that clear revelation in conjunction with the testimony of the Holy Spirit gives us an infallible assurance of our faith.

But here's the thing. He's going to criticize natural theology. But I do not believe that the

Holy Spirit takes probable evidence or uncertain evidence and turns it into certain evidence or certainty.

I think he takes certain evidence and with his infallible moral persuasion turns it into infallible faith in our hearts.

So that we use these arguments based upon revelation that are probabilistic and then somehow that gives us the full subjective certainty.

So God's taking this uncertain evidence that's based on probability and giving us this certainty of knowing him.

And Bonson says, no, he's giving us certainty based on the certain knowledge that we have.

And so I don't think that the classical arguments do justice to the sort of knowledge that I think the

Bible clearly says that we have. And you don't even have to go to Romans chapter one.

I mean, look at the fact that we're made in the image of God. I mean, if all things are revelation of God, that doesn't merely include the heavens declare his glory, but it even includes your very thinking process.

Because as you are thinking, you are engaging within the atmosphere inescapably of revelation.

You are revelation. And so there's you have that innate simultaneous knowledge of self and knowledge of God.

And that's what Calvin was talking about as well. That's good. Everything you say opens the door to something else.

I'm going to hold off on my comments because I think it's good that now we're talking about the Holy Spirit because Warfield had some things to say about the

Holy Spirit and his role in apologetics, which actually is why Warfield was an evidentialist.

But let me maybe that's a tease. Let's get back into the discussion. That is, he can't buy that argument and keep his presupposition because this is predicated on the denial of that as the ultimate standard of truth.

On the other hand, if somebody arguing on the basis of sense perception being the standard of truth goes along with his argument and the empiricist buys it, he buys it because he's already committed to sense perception as being the standard of truth.

And nobody's talking about what has been referred to by R .C. as the elementary logical fallacy of circular reasoning.

Nobody says A is true because A is true. We're talking about transcendental thinking, and that's a very important area of epistemology.

It goes far beyond elementary Greek logic, far beyond Humean empiricism. And in fact, if anything, it has its roots in what is really the continental tradition of Kant of asking about the preconditions of all knowledge, be it logic or sense perception or whatever.

And what the presuppositionalist says is you must recognize that an ultimate standard is just that, ultimate.

And if you have an argument for that ultimate standard that is other than the ultimate standard, then that other argument is your ultimate standard.

Do you understand that you can't establish your ultimate point by going behind it? Because if you could go behind it to find some grounds for it there, that would be your ultimate standard.

And so then the question is, well, how do you argue for this? And the fact is the only way you can argue is in a way consistent with your presuppositions.

And the only way you can establish your presuppositions is transcendentally. And that a circular argumentation has nothing to do with the flatline circularity of begging the question.

Yeah, right. So help us here, Eli. So again, people listening, audio's bad. Let's just keep track of this.

Bonson is saying that the presuppositional argumentative form does not commit the fallacy of circular reasoning because the existence of God is not merely a proposition that entails other propositions in order to be true.

The existence of God is axiomatic. It's necessarily true in order for us to even begin argumentation.

That's right, because that's the nature of ultimate commitments. And that's the nature of the

God of the Bible. Isn't that the case that he's ultimate? There is nothing higher.

His word is not validated by some other standard external to itself. If I were to say some proposition is true,

Nate, you have every right to ask me, well, how do you know that? Well, when God declares something's true, his answer is because I said so.

People don't like that. You don't have to like it, but the nature of God's authority is that it's just that.

It's ultimate. Now, are we left with, I just said so? Of course not. God gives us manifold evidence in the created order.

The heavens declare the glory of God, but I would even argue if you pluck out your eyes and you cannot see, the very fact that you are a rational being will give evidence and conviction of the fact that you still know the

God in whose image you were created. There is no escape unless we posit that the knowledge of God is immediate only, that it's a look and see.

Well, if that's the case, then there is an element of neutrality because I can look and see independent of the presupposition and then come to the conclusion.

But go ahead, you were going to say something? Well, no, I was going to say, well then, is it just that, well,

I know the answer is wickedness, so there is that acknowledged in the heart of the nonbeliever. But is it just that presuppositionalists kind of get some bad press?

They've been hit with some bad soundbite? Because the thing is, I have heard presuppositionalists literally say, the

Bible is God's Word because it says it's God's Word. Maybe they're not the best examples of presuppositionalists out there, but that's what is heard anyway.

And when they say that, the nuance of God being epistemologically axiomatic doesn't come across when somebody says that.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of bad press, and one of the goals that I've been trying to do is to fix that up a little bit.

The reason being is that a lot of people, I kind of make this distinction with like Molinism. We don't have to explain

Molinism, but Molinism as a view that often stands next to Calvinism and Arminianism, I'm not going to go into the details of what it is.

But folks who are familiar with Molinism, they tend to make the assertion that it sounds very philosophical, so it's hard to understand.

And the reason for that is, and I'll kind of go back around as to why it gets presuppositional and gets a bad rap.

Molinism sounds philosophical because the entry point for most people to Molinism is through the works of William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga.

But actually, Louis de Molina had an entire section, and I don't know if it's been translated yet, it might still be untranslated, where he had a large body of his work where he actually gave biblical arguments for his position.

Now that's true whether people like Molinism or not. But because that's not the access point for most people, most people are stuck with the philosophical language they just repeat from, you know,

Craig and Plantinga. Same thing with presuppositionalism. Most lay -level presuppositionalists will learn presuppositionalism from like a, you know, a

Sy 10 Bruggencape video that they watched or someone else. And so they just repeat certain things, not knowing that there's actually much more depth to what they're saying.

I agree on the surface, the Bible is God's word because God has said it. Now that's true, and I would stand by that.

But to say that that's the only thing that we say, that's not going deep enough. It's not, that's not the only thing we're saying.

God's word is, the Bible is God's word, he said it, and he's given us evidence that it's his God, that it's his word.

What is that evidence? Not some neutral data point that can be interpreted by anyone without presuppositional considerations, but the evidence for that is in rejecting that self -attesting authoritative word of God, the person's position is reduced to absurdity.

Eli, you're just making an assertion. No, it's not simply an assertion. The presuppositionalist is willing to show that the denial of that self -attesting authority reduces one's position to absurdity.

How do we show that? Bonson gave the example of an empiricist. He can give the example of a rationalist. He can give the example of any internet atheist who has their particular worldview that they want to.

Bonson had a radio debate with an atheist by the name of George Smith, and in this discussion,

Bonson was talking about the atheist worldview, and the atheist was like, well, wait a minute. Atheism is not just one worldview.

He goes, oh, I'm sorry. Any version, a variety of atheism can't account for anything.

So he's like, if you don't want to define atheism as one all -encompassing worldview, any variety of a

God -denying worldview is not going to be able to pay the bills, so to speak, in providing the preconditions for knowledge, science, logic, or what have you.

That's good. Let's get back into it. And then finally, the objective criteria and evidence of the presuppositionalist is precisely the revelation of God, which gets through.

I agree with R .C. It gets through to every man, and I want to maintain it gets through to every man, whether he's been to college or not, whether he has a junior high diploma or not, whether he knows anything about Aristotelian logic or symbolic logic or knows anything about Hume or any philosopher.

I don't care if it's Sophie the Washwoman. She knows God, and Paul says, is without excuse for her rejection, and I must have a method of argumentation which meets those facts, not simply immediate natural theology, but an argument based upon the clear, perspicuous, and certain revelation of God that comes through to everybody through nature.

Would you repeat that last? I didn't hear whether you said immediate or immediate. The knowledge which all men have is immediate.

And not immediate. And not immediate. You're different with Calvin at that point.

I'm not going to debate the historical exegesis of Calvin, really. I don't think I differ with Calvin, but that's really a question for the church history department.

Oh, I wouldn't amend it to that. You're right. I think you're both wrong on Calvin.

So, I mean, any comments there about the sort of immediate versus immediate thing?

Right. So just to define terms, so to have a immediate knowledge of God, that is a knowledge of God that is a look and see.

It's mediated through creation or something like that. Immediate knowledge of God pertains to a knowledge of God that someone has innately.

It's just innate. And so he's making that distinction.

If the Bible says the unbeliever is unapologetus, literally without an excuse, Bonson is now bringing the point, which method consistently provides argumentation that is consistent with that biblical mandate, or that biblical assertion that man is without excuse?

Is it a probabilistic, natural theological form of argumentation in which you're arguing for probabilities, which is not bad.

I'm not down on probabilistic arguments, but is that what meets the task of leaving the unbeliever without excuse?

Or is there another form of argumentation that's called for? And Bonson would say, that's a transcendental argument.

Now people look at the word transcendental. It sounds really philosophical and difficult. It's like, well, surely the

Bible doesn't speak about transcendental arguments. And I wouldn't pretend that the Bible is talking about transcendental arguments per se.

People ask me all the time, is presuppositionalism and transcendental arguments in the Bible? No, not in the sense that the

Bible is a textbook that's telling us now Jesus is employing a transcendental analysis. No, but the principles that are laid down in scripture, theological principles like the supremacy and ultimacy of God, the fact that there is none greater than he, the fact that the

Bible says something about the nature of man, the nature of his knowledge of his maker, the effects of sin upon his mind, all of these things, what flows out of the soil of scripture,

I think is a presuppositional approach in which you bow to the

Lord, the Lord of the facts, right? And we argue down from his authority, not pretending that we can autonomously and neutrally climb up to the

God that the Bible says we already have a sufficient knowledge of. So it's just an issue of who's being consistent at that point.

They could argue over Calvin's exegesis. He didn't want to, the exegesis of Calvin, they didn't want to get into that, but that's pertinent to what they're trying to do.

You have to understand, Bonson and Sproul are Calvinists, and they want to also affirm that their particular methods of apologetics are consistent with the

Calvinism they both hold so dear. Like what you've seen so far? I've got more video for you coming up in the next one.

Take a sneak peek. Now, the difficulty here is, well, wait a minute, Eli, or Bonson, or whoever.

Well, what does the unbeliever know innately? Give me some tangibles. What is it specific?

And that, I think, is a very difficult question to answer. But Warfield would say that really what we're doing is we're speaking to the natural man, and we're trusting that the

Holy Spirit is working on the natural man, because the Holy Spirit is the one who does the lion's share of the work anyway in regeneration. And the

Holy Spirit is using means, including apologetics conversations, in order to do that work.

But doesn't that make them both a consistent Calvinist? I mean, I think most people would agree something can't come from nothing, but why?

What if the nature of reality is that it's just weird? Things just pop into existence. You're not going to get away with the

William Lane Craig response. Well, then why doesn't anything and everything pop into existence? Beats me, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.

You see the problem. I love this, because what originally started out as this was going to be some kind of a debate -teacher -reacts kind of a thing has actually turned into a class on presuppositionalism, and so this has been...

Is presuppositionalism as airtight as Bonson says it is? Is Sproul setting up a huge problem for the

Christian when it comes to brass tacks? Who really pulled the trigger on JFK, on that fateful day in 1963?

So many of your questions get answered in the next one. Join me and Eli for part two, coming up.