How Biola Made Her a Presupper!

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

I have another guest. I've been doing a lot with guests and I've been putting out a lot of short videos just to kind of make good use out of a lot of the content that I have and that I've been involved with.

And so I hope you guys are enjoying that. But today we have another guest and we have a bunch of interesting guests in the lineup in the near future.

And I'll just share that with you guys in just a moment. But today I have Scarlett Clay with me to talk about her experience at Biola University taking the apologetics program there.

But before we get into the details of that, I want to give folks a heads up. On June 11th,

I'm very excited to have Anthony Rogers on to talk about how we could apply presuppositional apologetics to Islam.

So one of the things that we hear from folks who are very critical of the presuppositional approach to apologetics is that, yeah, maybe a transcendental argument, that presupp kind of apologetic works great with the atheist, the metaphysical naturalist.

But how do you use that method against someone who believes in a

God who apparently has a grounding for logic and morality and things like that? And of course, the presuppositional apologetic methodology, you know, it is very relevant to that question.

Indeed, Bonson himself, Van Til spoke about the different ways that you can do this and it can be done.

And so I'm very excited to have Anthony Rogers to kind of walk us through that. Also on Monday, if all goes well,

I'll be having the one minute apologist on, Bobby Conway. Perhaps you guys are familiar with his, well, his one minute videos where he does very brief interviews with some noted

Christian apologists. And so we may have him on on Monday. I'm just gonna double check in terms of the schedule there.

All right, well, with all of that out of the way, I would like to invite onto the screen with me, Scarlett.

How are you doing? Hi. Hi, Eli, thanks for having me on. I'm doing well.

Well, it's a great pleasure to have you on. We were, I didn't tell folks this, but we were having some technical difficulties towards the beginning there, but right there at 8 .59,

things just came together, right? Right on time. That's awesome. Well, for folks who may not know who you are, who are you?

And then I'm gonna share people, I'm gonna share with people why I have you on because it's pretty cool, but go ahead.

Who are you? Yeah, my name is Scarlett Clay. I'm an apologist, blogger, and artist.

I'm also a mom. I've been homeschooling. This was my 18th year that we just finished up.

So we're longtime homeschoolers. Yeah, I have a lot of different interests. I especially love art.

I love theology. I'm still a student. I've been in seminary now for six straight years and went from Biola, getting my master's to getting the

MDiv at Southern. And so, yeah, when I'm not doing my responsibilities around the house,

I'm usually studying for class. So basically, you're just accruing thousands of dollars in debt?

Thankfully, thankfully, no, not any debt. Hey, we're Dave Ramsey fans around here.

Okay, very good, very good. Well, it's a pleasure to have you.

For folks who don't know, I don't know Scarlett very well, but I've seen her on Facebook.

I've interacted and read some of the posts and interactions. And so I kind of was aware of who she was generally speaking, but she had written an article that really captured my attention that I, Scarlett's gonna read a portion of it here in just a moment, but it really captured my attention and it deals with the topic that we're gonna be addressing today.

And that's the issue of her experience at Biola University and the apologetics program and how that led her to presuppositional apologetics.

So it was interesting because what she covers in that article, I think is something that's so important to apologetics and presuppositional apologetics more specifically.

And this is the idea of having God as our foundation. I mean, it's very simplistic in the way that it sounds.

It's not as philosophically fancy if we were to use all of the terminology, but just in a basic sense, having our apologetic and not just our apologetic, all of life grounded on the firm rock of God's word.

And with her mindset going into school and learning apologetics, this basic assumption seemed to be challenged by the way apologetics was being taught.

And so what she wrote there, I highly recommend folks take a look at and perhaps in a moment, she can tell us the website there and could walk people through as to how they might find that.

And then I want her to read a short portion. So Scarlett, why don't you tell folks how they might find that article, your website and things like that.

Yeah, my website is bluepurpleandscarlett .com. And I guess

I've had it up for about 11 years, almost 12 years or so. For the first eight or nine, it was just an art blog.

But then when I started studying apologetics, it became an art and apologetics blog.

I think that's super creative. That's super creative. And I think someone like Greg Bonson would be very proud.

I don't know if you follow David Bonson, his son. I do. Well, he's a very big in the financial world, right?

And every now and then he'll talk about the importance of just doing what you do, whether it's art, whether it's finances, whether it's, to the glory of God, being all in.

And that doing, if you're learning from Greg Bonson and Van Til, the emphasis wasn't only apologetics, but rather it was all of life.

And so to live to the fullest as Christ is your foundation in these areas that we don't usually think of, like art,

I think that's super cool. And so I think that's a wonderful, consistent application of a presuppositional way of thinking about things.

So I appreciate that. Yeah, thanks. All right, well, why don't you,

I might as well share the screen actually, cause you're just gonna read a portion here, but I want folks to follow along cause

I think it's super cool. Yeah, and if it's okay, I wanted to mention how I came to go ahead and publish it because I had the article sort of in draft form for a good two years.

I'm just sitting there, I'd add to it, edited a bit. I never could quite bring myself to publish it for a few reasons, but one day

I had posted something that was very precept on Facebook, very, very precept.

And I don't know if you're familiar with Vishal Mangalwadi, the author of the book that changed your world.

He's a very well -known scholar and theologian and apologist for the

Bible. Anyways, so he saw the post and messaged me and said, can we talk by phone?

And of course I was like, wow, Mr. Mangalwadi wants to talk to me by phone cause

I've been a fan of his for quite some time. And so we talked, I guess it was that afternoon for a good 45 minutes.

And really what he did was affirm what I was saying and say, keep going.

And he said, have you written anything about this? And I said, you know, I have, but I just haven't had maybe the courage or the, yeah, the courage to publish it.

And he said, well, I think you should. And if you do, I'll share it. And so that was really great to, the apologetics field can be really intimidating even when you've been through a program like Biola.

And so you hesitate because you know what's gonna come. And so to have that affirmation by him and encouragement by him, that's why

I went ahead and I finished it up the day after that and published it. So I'm very thankful to him.

And yeah, so then that's why I love you and others that are trying to get this method out there because there are a lot of people that I think if they'll just have a little bit more encouragement, right?

To follow maybe their conscience or scriptures where they're leading in their own personal

Bible study, then yeah, they'll come to some different conclusions. Yeah, well, that's super cool.

And yeah, sometimes we just gotta step out in faith and courage and speak our minds.

And I know you are 100 % correct. Even for seasoned apologists, the apologetics field can be intimidating, not just externally because we're interacting with unbelieving intellectuals, but internally we can be intimidated by others within the fields.

We tend to bite each other's heads off, unfortunately, discussing different methods and theological differences and things like that.

So it can get pretty ugly, unfortunately. But before you read that portion, let me kind of preempt it with asking you.

So when you enrolled in Biola, what was your expectation?

I mean, you're a believer, you're telling yourself, hey, I wanna learn how to defend the faith. And so you enroll in the apologetics program.

And folks who are listening, I highly recommend Biola University and I'm sure Scarlet Wood as well.

So this is by no means bashing Biola. There are some great men of God there. Yeah, I was appreciative of the fact that you even mentioned that in your article.

But there is this key little thing here that we do need to pay attention to. And I think you hit it right on the nail.

So what was your expectation going into Biola when you enrolled? Well, I went to Biola and entered the program to study the problem of evil specifically because my youngest son had died at age three and a half from a genetic syndrome.

And I had a very difficult time with his diagnosis and his death. In fact,

I was able to publish a little bit of that story on desiring God. If anyone wants to check that out, it's an article called kicked out of church because I actually got so angry at the

Lord for my son's suffering that I stopped going to church and was disfellowshipped from my

Reformed Baptist Church. And the article actually agrees with that decision.

So it's not in any way, you know, trying to oppose that decision. But so when

I went to the apologetics program, I was desperate for some answers. I mean,

I had been a Christian a long time and I had been through some hard things already.

You know, my firstborn had had brain cancer as the baby. So I had already been through difficult things, but there was something different about this particular level of suffering and that I had a difficult time with.

And so that's why I enrolled is I was kind of desperate to find some answers and hear what some other people had to say.

So I didn't have a lot of experience in apologetics at all. I would say my experience was limited to a few

Ravi Zacharias lectures that I had listened to in college. And really when I had heard some of his lectures,

I didn't know a lot of what he was talking about. You know, I knew it was something profound, but I wasn't quite sure what he was getting at, you know, on every point, but I didn't have a lot of experience.

And so I went kind of, you know, like a blank slate, at least as far as apologetics was concerned.

Sure. Okay, and so what did you begin? I mean, when you went, you obviously were a believer.

Yeah. You obviously love the Lord. What was your mindset and what happened in terms of your experience taking the classes that began to kind of, things began to kind of, they didn't feel right.

And you were beginning to say, hey, you know, I don't know what's going on here, but something kind of seems a little off here. Why don't you talk a little bit about how that kind of went through your head?

Okay, so, well, it happened fairly early on because I noticed in, I think it was the first semester where I was taking ethics with Dr.

Smith and he's a wonderful, one of my favorite professors. He's incredible. I love

Dr. Smith, but I noticed on the canvas, you know, we were having to interact with one another and I noticed the way they were speaking about God was just something

I'd never heard. And, you know, and my background is in English and literature and so maybe

I noticed these things more than the typical person, but I began to notice even the verb forms, like the mood of the verbs was in the subjunctive.

And I would think, well, that's odd because Jesus, you know, when he makes claims about himself, it's in the indicative.

There's no doubt. There's not really room for any other option.

Sure. And it's not expressing probability. And so, but hey, I was the new kid on the block.

You know, everyone seemed to know more than me. I was still kind of intimidated at that point. And so I thought this is the way it's done.

Sure. And so I altered my language and I adopted the vocabulary and the way of speaking.

And because I thought that's the way this is done, this is the right way to do this. Well, why don't you unpack that a little more?

What were the ways in which they were speaking about God that kind of seemed like, okay, why don't you express what you said that they were speaking in the subjunctive?

Is that where you were saying? Right. So it would be, you know, a lot of if, you know, probably, possibly, plausibly, you know, a lot of this kind of language that didn't seem to line up with a lot of the claims made in the

New Testament as I had read them. Yeah. You know, and again, I was coming fresh, just, you know, here

I am, homeschool mom, bereaved, you know, wanting to try to get some answers.

But that's something I noticed really early. And it just, I didn't know what it was. I couldn't put my finger on what it was.

Like I said, I just thought to myself, this is the way this is done. This is the new field. I'm learning all this new vocabulary, and this is part of it.

Sure. This is the way you speak and the types of phrases you use.

And so I did my best to follow along. I adopted it and got good grades.

She's like, I mean, I passed. I mean, you know, I mean, I disagree in the end, but I did my work.

Yeah, and to their credit, you know, the one class, of course, that, you know, I was most anxious to take was with Dr.

Clay Jones, who teaches why God allows evil. Oh, okay. Biola, and that was a pivotal class too, because I actually wound up disagreeing at the end for our final papers, because the class was, you know, the gist of the whole class was a free will defense of sorts with, you know, different strains of arguments.

And, you know, I disagreed in my paper and he was so gracious. And I even sent him an email.

I was like, I don't agree with this, you know? And he said, he said, just support your position with scripture.

And he was very fair and I was never penalized. And that wasn't the only class I disagreed in.

I was never penalized for disagreeing as long as I had scriptural support to back it up. And that's the mark of a good institution and a good teacher.

Now that's interesting though, because I too recognize a lot of this language of uncertainty so that when you come, you know, placing your faith in Jesus Christ, reading the scriptures and seeing how

Jesus, I mean, even his audience recognize this is not like any other rabbi. He speaks with authority.

Yes, exactly. It's like, I am not, you know, it's like, it's almost like, you know, if you were to plug in those subjunctives every time he makes the claim, you can see the error.

You know, I am plausibly the way, possibly the truth, probably the life.

No, not at all. Right, there's a, you just don't hear that. Yeah, there's definitely something that's kind of like, especially when you come to apologetics from kind of that very simple saving faith at the beginning and you're immersed in scripture and then you go into apologetics and you confront all of this language that you're referring to, even for myself, it just doesn't seem to mesh.

I mean, even what your teacher says, if you disagree, support your view with scripture. I wonder if those who use this language of probably the best explanation, these sorts of things, do they support that type of phraseology with scripture?

It seems like the language they use to speak of God is inconsistent with what the Bible seems to, how the

Bible seems to describe God. So there seems to be an incongruity there. But while I was reading your article, there was a portion of it that really caught my attention that I'd like you to share with folks.

And let me just get it up on the screen here. And I just thought it was very powerful and I know folks will be blessed by it.

Let's see here. All right, okay, there we go.

Let me get out of Facebook when you have that awkward moment when you have like 50 windows open. Here we go.

All right, so it's that portion of there. Folks might not be able to see it, but that's okay.

I mean, they could, I don't know how big their screens are, but let's see here. You wanted to talk about that awesome artwork right there.

Well, you know what? I'm gonna go all the way back to the beginning and why don't you share a little bit before you share the quote.

This is Scarlet's website, Blue, Purple and Scarlet, which by the way, I think is super creative.

And that's your artwork. You did that yourself, right? Yeah, over time as I was processing through this, thinking about the article, like I said,

I had it in draft form for a long time. Yeah, just thinking about it.

And that's how I processed a lot of things is through art. What does the Hebrew there say? It says man of water.

Hm. Ishmael. Ishmael. And man of water is a reference to something

Cornelius Van Til used to talk about, right? Right, yeah, that's where that came from.

So that was heavily on my mind as I was sort of sketching and water coloring in my sketchbook.

Let's try to find that water quote. Actually, that might be fun to read for folks. Van Til was interesting in that he always had these little ditties to make a point.

It was really good at that. Here we go. Let me just read this little quote here and then you could read the portion.

I'm excited for folks to hear. Here's what Van Til says about a man made of water. He says, suppose we think of a man made of water in an infinitely extended and bottomless ocean of water.

Desiring to get out of water, he makes a ladder of water. He sets this ladder upon the water and against the water and then attempts to climb out of the water.

So hopeless and senseless a picture must be drawn of the natural man's methodology based as it is upon the assumption that time or chance is ultimate.

On his assumption, his own rationality is a product of chance. On his assumption, even the laws of logic which he employs are products of chance.

The rationality and purpose that he may be searching for are still bound to be products of chance.

I thought that was super cool. And here - Yeah, it is. He was so brilliant. Yes, yes.

And really he's speaking about the foundation that man sets for himself when he removes himself from the authority of God. His reasoning really is reduced to, it's kind of like a man made out of water trying to get out of the water.

Right. So, well, let's get to that little quote here, right here. I'd like you to read that for folks.

I think that's a powerful little segment there. Why don't you go and read it for us? All right. It says, shortly before graduation,

I discovered a method of defending the Christian faith that presupposed the certainty of God's existence.

Presuppositional apologetics. I also discovered a well -known apologist, Dr. Greg Monson, had taught this method.

And in a lecture posted to YouTube, he said, the key to having an ability to answer anyone who asks you a reason for the hope that's within you, the key to being able to confront any challenge to your

Christian faith is found in 2 Corinthians 10, four through five, by bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

And that was a turning point. And I realized that the thought, we can't be certain God exists, was itself not brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

It conflicted with the certainty declared in the Bible. The idea that God is the best explanation for the available evidence was another thought not submitted to Christ's authority.

And I began to read more about this apologetic method and soon found that the concerns that presuppositional apologists were addressing were the same ones

I had struggled with in my classes at Biola. Yeah, right there.

That is what really got me, is that statement where we speak about these uncertainties, that thought itself is not submitted to the authority of Christ.

Something else is our authority. Why don't you go into and kind of work out for us, in what sense are we not allowing

Christ to be our ultimate authority when we speak of the words of Christ, the truth of what he's saying as probabilities?

The existence of God is probabilities or the best explanation. Why don't you unpack for us, how is it that we are not really maintaining the

Lordship of Jesus Christ even over our thoughts? How does that work? Well, I think it does not align with scripture.

And I think those claims and that method dies the death of a thousand verses when you start looking into it.

You know, we usually go to Luke chapter one, right? Very beginning of Luke where he's writing to Theophilus and he says that you may have certainty or know for certain, right?

The things that you've been taught. And we can go to Hebrews and see the writer of the Hebrews communicates the same thing.

We can look at Paul's writings to the Colossians. My favorite is his letters to the

Ephesians chapter 3, 18 and 19, where he says, you know, he's writing to them that they may have the strength to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge, right?

And to be filled with all the fullness of God. See, when I hear that strength to comprehend, this isn't for the weak minded or those that haven't studied enough epistemology or gone to enough philosophy class.

This is like the strength of the power of God. It's the Holy Spirit.

And so when he says, you know, the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge. And I believe it was

Greg Bonson when he's talking about this particular verse that says, there it is, right?

In Christ, we surpass human probabilities, right? You know, adios, laws of immediate inference, right?

We have gone past that. And I think that's a beautiful verse. And there's many others.

You see it a lot. You see it in Job. I love Job 18, or sorry, Job 19, 25, where he says,

I know, right? That my redeemer lives, right? And in the last day, he will stand on the earth.

And then, you know, you see him contrast that with the unbelievers.

You know, the certainty or confidence of the unbeliever in Job 8. And so I think you see there where when you don't submit to the authority of Christ, that's what you have.

And he says that, you know, the confidence of the unbeliever, it's like it's cut. And then he says, the confidence is like a spider's web.

And I love that in the Hebrew. It's like, ooh, bait, yakabish, mibkato, right? It even sounds negative when you say it.

Sounds like you said a bad word, but it's okay. We know you're good to go here. You're fine. What a shaky foundation, a spider's web, right?

That's nothing you would wanna stand on. So first and foremost, I would say that idea, it's not submitted to the lordship of Christ because it's not submitted to the authority of his word.

The Bible doesn't teach it. It's just not there. What I find interesting is, and I think what highlights the problem for a lot of, for in the apologetic situation, as I see it, is the opening words of Greg Bonson's book,

Presuppositional Apologetics, State and Defend It, where he actually quotes John Calvin's commentary of 1

Peter 3, verse 15, where he speaks of us, you know, not giving due credit, so to speak, to the wisdom of God.

Instead of relying on the wisdom of God, we move so quickly to adopt kind of the standards and elementary principles of the world.

And Calvin's work there in his commentary on 1 Peter 3, verse 15 is not talking about unbelievers.

He's actually talking about believers. Like we move away from it because we don't have the sort of respect for the wisdom of divine, you know,

I don't remember the quote exactly. Yeah, I had the, you know, folks are saying, you know, why does my head look so big when

I had this screen here? People were funny. They were like, see, it's male dominant, something said.

But you have to understand, I actually set all my stuff up by myself. So I can only reach my camera.

So I have to zoom it in so that I can see the focus. But - I love that you brought up 1

Peter 3, verse 15. You know, that was the thematic verse for the Biola MACA program.

We covered that verse in every class, you know, and we would always stress, you know, the point about always being ready.

Yes. And always doing it with gentleness and respect. But what about that first part?

See, that's what I kept getting hung up on. You know, in your heart, honor Christ as Lord. So if we're doing that, why are we speaking as if we don't?

Yes, yes. I think that's the key right there. There's an incongruity with how we speak of God in church and how we speak about God when we're doing apologetics and speaking with the unbeliever.

I think it was, I think it was Saiten Brugenkate used to always bring this up. He's like, we'd lift our hands and we'd cry on Sunday, worshiping the

God we know exists. And then when we share our faith with unbelievers, what are we doing? We're speaking of God as a hypothetical.

I think that - Right, yeah, I remember him. Yeah, I remember hearing that when I, the first time

I watched how to answer the fool. And yeah, that really hit me too. I was like, yep, that's, that felt like exactly what we were doing.

Yeah. Well, why do you think people, I suppose believers who hear about presuppositional apologetics and some of the claims that we make with respect to all men knowing

God and are without excuse, why do you think Christians are hesitant or maybe intimidated or afraid to simply just speak about the unbeliever, the way the

Bible speaks about the unbeliever as one who has a knowledge of God? We tend to be kind of timid to use that language.

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I tend to kind of look at the bigger picture, look at the world we're in, look at our culture.

Wow, our world hates certainty. Yes. I mean, they don't like that at all.

When you claim certainty, you're considered dangerous. Right, you're the kind of person that starts wars.

Yeah. Right, when you're certain. But certainty is not the problem. The certainty of false beliefs is the problem, right?

The certainty of true beliefs and the true living God is not the problem. But yeah, so I think a lot of it could be that our culture is so opposed to anything that says this is absolutely true and this is absolutely false because, hey, we know if the

God of the Bible is certain, which he is, and his son is certainly the only way to heaven, then we also know there's certainly going to be a day of judgment.

Okay, and that's really where I think the certainty points to, and a lot of people don't. They just don't want to be,

I guess, clear on that point. Sure, sure.

I also think folks who are more philosophically inclined, who know the whole debates within epistemology, they'll say, hey, listen, we've tried all of the models that try to get to certainty.

It can't be done, you can't do it. The problem is the only model they're not relying upon is the model that most of the people throughout the history of philosophy are ignoring.

And that's the philosophy of standing upon God as that firm foundation and the necessary precondition for intelligibility itself.

And I did an episode with a gentleman and we talked about transcendental arguments and something called the

Stroudian objection, where - I'm not familiar with that. No, no worries. But the point of what the critic of the transcendental argument tried to show that the transcendental argument didn't give us the sort of certainty about the reality of the argument that we're making.

The problem is that the critic of the transcendental argument was criticizing transcendental arguments in general, the sort of transcendental arguments that do not rely upon God, but are presuming autonomy with respect to man's reasoning.

You said something in your article where you said, if you start with, oh man, now I'm gonna forget it.

You said something about starting with ourselves or something like that. I don't remember where it was. But as you, you know, thinking in terms of Bonson and Bantill, they spoke about the disadvantages of speaking, of starting our thinking with ourselves in the sense that we are the ultimate foundation, the ultimate authority.

All right. And see, and this little piece of artwork behind me is

Bantill's circles, right? Done in a little, with a little bit of artistic flair. My head's gonna look big, but I wanna see.

Oh, is there a way to move your camera or bring it over? I wanna see what it looks like. I don't know. And let me see if I can get it.

Oh yeah, I can take it out. You know, so it was, of course, he was making the creature creator distinction.

But I love looking at this because it reminds me of how we escape that vicious circularity, right?

That we're so often accused of, you know, we're not confined to this level of being right here in the created universe, right?

We go out, right? And we refer back to that, which is necessary to explain everything.

And so I, you know, did this so I could remember that. That would look cool on a t -shirt, just saying.

I'm just saying. Nobody would know what it meant, but yeah. You could just put it in a t -shirt and just hashtag that precept.

People will know. Yeah, but that's helped me think about that a little bit, a little bit more that, you know, human autonomy is a dead end.

Yes, yes. And the history of philosophy has shown that, I think quite clearly.

Okay, so I wanna kind of, so you went to Biola. You began to notice that, you know, the way people were speaking about God with terms of uncertainty and things like that.

What did you do? Did you accidentally come across, you know, Greg Bonson and presuppositional apologetics?

I mean, how did presuppositionalism come into play while you were at Biola or didn't it?

Maybe it happened later on. Well, yeah, the straw that sort of broke the camel's back was the class, the defense of the resurrection.

And I think I mentioned this in the article. That was the class where I felt like I had to make a choice.

I had sort of two paths I was going to go down because in that class, and that's taught by Dr.

Sean McDowell, we've read Michael Lacona's, you know, Resurrection of Jesus, the historiographical approach.

And that book was challenging for me, you know, in a lot of ways, because we had just come from philosophy of religion.

And we talked a lot in that class about the fact -value split. You know, the sacred -secular split of our tendency to always put values and spiritual things in the upper story, you know, as Nancy Piercy would say, following Francis Schaeffer, or we cram everything down into the lower story, right?

And in the physical and material realm. And what I saw happening as we read that book, it seemed like the very thing we were learning not to do.

Because what you do is you set aside the understanding that for the

Christian, the word of God is true and authoritative. You sort of put that upstairs, and then you sort of settle downstairs and say, okay, well, we're going to approach this as a historical investigation using only those tools available to the secular historian.

And that, to me, seemed really exactly what we had just been taught not to do in the other class.

And so that's, and of course he also, you know, draws some of Matthew 27, that the saints rising out of the graves after the resurrection, and to question some of the things that didn't set well with me.

And I know he's a very distinguished scholar and everything, but yeah, I had some problems with that. So that was really the class when the resurrection was being talked about in those probabilistic terms.

That's when I felt like I had to make a decision. And that's where I kind of got on the internet and started like, okay, you know, well, is there anything else out here?

Well, you know, why do I, because I would even look around like, am I the only one that thinks there's something wrong here?

Like, and here's the thing, and I, oh, and you tell me what you think, okay?

Because I haven't said this to many people, but you know, in Matthew 10, Jesus says, if you deny me before I'm in,

I'll deny you before my father in heaven. And my conscience is what bothered me in that class because there was a part of me that thought, okay, in a sense, you know,

I feel like I'm denying him when I speak this way, when

I make these arguments. And I felt like there was a cost to pay for that.

And I'm not saying a salvation. I'm saying that there was a mental or a spiritual price that was gonna be paid if I continued to do that.

I don't know if that makes sense, but it was a fear of God and I fear

God. I fear him like in a Jonathan Edwards, death comes unexpectedly kind of way, okay?

I fear God, but what does the scripture say? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So yeah,

I couldn't continue to do that. So I started looking around and I discovered Greg Monson and wow, what can

I say? You know, I'm sure everyone has had a similar experience when they discover Greg Monson and they hear someone that is just so focused on communicating the beauty and authority, majesty, supremacy of Christ and his apologetic, you're like, wow, this is amazing.

I'm all in, you know, I wanna learn more. Yeah, and I mentioned it a few times on campus and got a lot of pushback and that's okay.

I still do, I'm still accused of sipping the precept Kool -Aid. So I started a little art series of collages called

Sip and Precept just to have fun with that. I didn't know that's what I was drinking. It's a precept

Kool -Aid, it can be purchased by your local precept Kool -Aid stand. That's awesome.

Yeah, I think a lot of folks can resonate with that. There is an authority with which someone like Monson spoke that just put the authority of Christ front and center in a way that a lot of these other, you know, methodologies don't.

I remember Dr. James White compared the opening statement of Greg Bonson's debate with Gordon Stein with William Lane Craig's debate with, oh man, the guy's name escapes me, but there's just a stark difference.

And by the way, I say this with the utmost respect for Dr. Craig and I think God is using his ministry.

God, you know, we don't all got it down perfect. God is using his people, I get that. But there was a stark difference in the way that these two men presented the

Christian faith. And I resonate with what you said, that there was just the kind of authority with which

Bonson presented the Christian faith was the sort of authority that I saw very consistent with how Jesus spoke, how the apostles spoke, things like that.

Right, yes, me too. And yeah, and I mean, as you continue, I continue to listen to a lot of podcasts, watch a lot of debates and I began to see more and more of the professional apologists deny the certainty of God's existence.

And so when I saw that as a pattern, you know, as a recurring theme, I realized

I needed to learn more about that. And so actually I started memorizing all the verses in scripture that say like full assurance, full conviction and certainty.

And yeah, I just started trying to really get a good handle on what the scripture says, because I knew

I was gonna have to have some discussions about it with a few people. But I will say there was one of my classmates when

I published that article, one of my best friends in the program, he sent me a message and he said,

Scarlett, that was my experience too. But see, he had never said anything either, right?

Because you know, you didn't wanna, you just didn't wanna come all out and say, this is wrong, you know, or let's don't do it this way, let's try another way.

But so that was really encouraging too. So one of my classmates had had the same experience and felt the same way.

And so we've talked about that quite a bit and it's been great. Sure, that's so awesome. So now when you said you stumbled on the presuppositionalism, was it just, you were just searching stuff on apologetics and it popped up on YouTube or how'd that work out?

Yeah, I mean, it was seriously, I think I remember typing in something like apologetics where God is certain or,

I mean, it was really that basic because I was just desperate to know what,

I can't, am I crazy? You know, you start to think, am I crazy? Because everyone thinks this is fine and I happen to problem with it.

So yeah, it was really something that basic. That's hilarious. And then it was just a flood of stuff, you know, and of course it's been more and more.

And now there's even, there's a lot more than there even was back in like 2017, 2018.

There's a ton of stuff coming out. I think the first apologist I found after Bonson was

Dr. Oliphant. And so I began listening to his stuff. And I remember listening to a lecture of his where he talks about suppressing the truth, you know, from Romans one, and he uses the metaphor of the beach ball, right?

We're suppressing the truth, we're holding it down. You know, and we had just in class, we had just been talking about Charles Darwin and we had been reading some of his writings.

You're talking about arguments against evolution. And we had come across his letter to William Graham, which you're probably familiar with, 1881, where it's a letter he wrote to his friend, where he says, you know, with me, that horrid doubt always arises, right?

That if man's convictions, you know, have come from or evolved from lower animals, are they of any value or trustworthy?

And I thought, what did he just say? The horrid doubt always arises.

That was the beach ball. Yes. You know, it was popping up for him. Yeah. And he just kept pushing it down.

So things like that kept affirming, okay, I'm going the right direction. This makes sense. I see this truth in a lot of different things.

I'm reading in class. And so it started to pull together, but it's taken some time. And I am not by any stretch an expert.

I'm still learning. I learn every week on the Reformed Teresa page on Facebook.

I'm like, wow, there's just so much. You know, there's so much to learn. And yeah, it's a process.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, folks who are kind of curious about presuppositionalism kind of, you know, maybe

I'll buy a Bonson book or something like that. The Bonson of his books is a different Bonson of the classroom.

In other words, he's saying the same thing. I mean, the books are going in much more depth, but there, I mean, when you listen to Bonson's lectures, which there are,

I mean, I want to say more than hundreds, probably. There's a lot.

Thousand lectures available. By the way, they're all available for free, by the way. If you go to Sermon Audio, I'm telling for folks who are listening,

Sermon Audio and type in Bonson Project, the rights of all of Bonson's lectures were purchased and now are made available for free.

And so folks can check that out. They're all categorized there. 99 .9 % of what I've learned from Bonson is through countless of hours of listening to audio.

So you will be very, very blessed. He was a gifted teacher. And the way he teaches and speaks, it plants itself into your mind in a much more powerful way than if you're just reading it.

By the way, Bonson is B -A -H -N -S -E -N. Someone in the chat's asking

Bonson, the Bonson Project, B -A -H -N -S -E -N.

So get yourself in the weekend or if you're in your car, download some of those things. And that's where I've learned most of it.

Now, granted, I've also read the books and things like that, but the audio is definitely a blessing.

All right, well, what I wanna ask you here, my next question, I think is important to touch on because when we're talking about apologetics, we tend to be very narrowly focused.

How can I respond to my atheist friend or my Muslim friend or my Mormon friend? And we'll study presuppositional apologetics for the very purpose that you express, that there's this confidence certainty about it.

But how does presuppositional thinking affect your life as just an overall

Christian? In other words, we can see it as an apologetic methodology, but it's a lot more than that, isn't it?

How does presuppositional thinking affect other areas of our lives as Christians? Maybe you can speak to that.

Yeah, well, I mean, like I said, when I look at the bigger picture and I see how chaotic everything is,

I know I need certainty. And I consider it's like a gift, right?

It's a blessing. I think it was Colossians 2, to where Paul is saying that he wants their hearts to be encouraged and be knit together in love and to reach the riches, all the riches of full assurance.

And when I read that, to reach all the riches, the full assurance of understanding. To me, I really like that it says riches because it does seem like a treasure, something you can stand on.

I was raised in the church of Christ and we sang hymns. And so a lot of times hymns will come to me that remind me of certainty.

I don't know if you know the one, we have an anchor, right? I don't remember the lyrics, but yes, it's familiar.

We have an anchor that keeps the soul steadfast and sure while the billows roll fast into the rock, which cannot move, grounded firm and deep in the

Savior's love. And see, that's what I need to get through a lot of the stuff that's going on.

Our family has been through a lot. I need the certainty. And really when it came to my son's death and the problem of evil,

I needed to know that that was God's doing. I needed to know that it was

Him and part of His plan. I needed that certainty, not the certainty of my own free will or the ability for me to make choices.

I needed to know that He had ordained that and that because He had ordained that, my son's life had meaning and his death had meaning.

So, wow, yeah, I could say a lot about that. But yeah, the certainty is really important.

The certainty on a few things, we know we can't be certain about everything, but that God exists and that He has spoken to us is to me, without that, you've got nothing.

Amen. Yep. And just, I know for folks who are more philosophical -minded, argument -minded, people who are able, perhaps you know what

I'm speaking of, they're able to detach their emotion and just look at what we're saying from a purely logical way.

And so someone could take what you're saying and say, yeah, well, psychologically speaking, the only reason why you hold to presuppositionalism is because you needed this certainty.

And so you think by appealing to this view, it kind of just comforts you and things like that. But that's not all of what you're saying.

I think - Right, no, and actually I've checked myself and the way I've done that is by, seeking the wisdom of those who know more than I do, as specifically my professors.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was emailing with Dr. Tom Schreiner, he's my New Testament professor, and I was asking him about this very thing.

We had at least half a dozen emails back and forth, and I really wanted to try to get a handle on like, what do you think?

What would you say on this? Because I really respect him as a New Testament scholar. And I actually printed out his response and I don't think he would mind,

I'll read to you exactly what he says. So this is Dr. Tom Schreiner, New Testament professor at Southern.

And I was asking him about our ability to have certainty. And he said in one of his lectures, okay, he was translating

Calvin. He said that Calvin argues that finally we know the truth by the witness of the spirit, but sometimes that witness is quenched.

In other words, rational certainty isn't reached apart from the witnessing work of the Holy Spirit in the heart.

But we can give absolutely coherent arguments, but people will still disagree, not because the arguments are wrong, but only because we only know the truth, finally through the spirit.

So I was very encouraged when I got that email from him, because you look at Acts 5 and you see

Luke saying, we were witnesses of these things. And so is the Holy Spirit, whom he has given to those who obey.

So I would ask the evidentialist or the person who disagrees, does the Holy Spirit have certainty?

I think they would agree. Well, God has given him to you, right? You have the one who has certainty living inside you, bearing witness to that.

We have the mind of Christ. Right, right. So, and that's part of it.

You know, in 1 Thessalonians 1, 4, and 5, you know, they're saying, Paul is writing, he's saying, you know, brothers beloved of God, we know he's chosen you because our gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the

Holy Spirit with full conviction. So you see those two together, in the Holy Spirit with full conviction.

So we, you know, it's not a crutch. It's not emotional. It's what the word of God teaches.

And I've been able to affirm that. I also was able to affirm it with Dr. Greg Allison, who was my systematic three teacher.

Okay, he's the one who wrote the historical. He wrote historical theology. And I think I posted that quote once.

I have it here too. And this was a great quote from his historical theology text. He says, the witness of the

Spirit goes beyond all human ability to authenticate scripture. And as his testimony is sealed upon the hearts of believers, they obtain the certainty needed.

Well, and I say, amen, because I need it. Okay, I need it. And it's the teaching of scripture.

So I don't think it's emotional. I understand how someone would think that, but I've tried to be diligent in seeking the wisdom and guidance of those that have studied the

Bible and been studying scripture longer than I have. And I also want to point out too, that it is the

Spirit that gives us that certainty, but even that is not a mere claim. So the presuppositionalist is not saying simply that we could have certainty because the

Spirit bears witness. Yes, we believe that, but we also are provided with a powerful argument to show that certainty.

And that's where we get the transcendental. I mean, we could use the philosophical language, but basically we would argue, and you would agree with me, we'd be arguing biblically.

Deny the foundation of Christ and his word, you've got nothing. You've got nothing, right. But I really liked how

Dr. Shriners said that that Spirit can be quenched because I struggle with how is it that so many incredibly brilliant people, biblical scholars and philosophers,

Christians, professing Christians can take a different view. And sometimes

I wonder if that's not what's happening because I certainly don't question their salvation at all, but I wonder if it's not quenched a bit to try to follow this method that they've come to, you know, to be persuaded that is correct.

I don't know. That's a thought. Yeah. Well, what I was getting at in my question before is how does it affect other areas of life?

I'm just thinking in terms of the one who seeks to be presuppositionally consistent and is apologetic or her apologetic is one who also seeks to be consistent with the application of that 2

Corinthians passage of bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ in all areas of life, whether it's parenting, whether it's art, whether it's working in politics, whether it's being, you know, if you're playing sports,

I mean, everything is to be submitted unto the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And I would just say, we can get rid of the presuppositional terminology.

Presuppositional apologetics is just an extension of the biblical principle that everything we do should flow out of the soil of Christ's authority.

And so, you know, people can get mixed up in the terminology but that's basically what we're arguing for.

And that's why us presuppositionalists are so passionate about telling other Christians like, hey, you know, we should really get back to the authority of God's word in this specific area as well as you would likely acknowledge that it's the authority of Christ in every area of our lives.

So apologetics is not an exception there. Right, no, and I think we see that too in like Psalm 46 .10

which says, you know, be still and know, right, that I am

God. Yeah. No, that's, ooh, that's the imperative. No, that's a command form.

Right, don't be still and know that most likely I am the best. Exactly, exactly.

For the best explanation. Right, right, and again, you read the whole Psalm. If you read all of Psalm 46, what is it about?

That God is our refuge. He's our fortress. He's a place we go to, you know, for safety, for protection, and so that, it's all tied into that.

You don't have that if you don't have certainty. You're on the spider's web.

That's right. And that's not what God intended for us. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for this.

What I am happy that this discussion took a very biblical turn and you've been quoting a bunch of scriptures and here's one thing that I appreciate about studying presuppositional apologetics because it can get philosophical, but for the most part, when

I'm reading presuppositional literature, I'm also immersed in scripture. And I think that that's how our studies should be.

I mean, you're studying apologetics, you're studying how to deal with unbelievers and the different manifestations that they come, but we're also immersed in a scriptural context.

And I think that's important instead of getting lost in the weeds and immersing ourselves in man's principles without actually standing on the ground of God's principles.

I think that's vitally important. Right, yeah. And I definitely wanna say one more time, how much

I appreciate my professors at Biola, and especially, again, shout out to Dr.

Smith, Kevin Lewis, Clay Jones, they were wonderful. And the way that Biola brought me to presuppositional apologetics is by giving me what

I consider world -class, top -notch education in classical and evidential methods, but then allowing me the freedom to hold those methods up against scripture and coming to my own conclusions.

And they were always okay with that, and I was never penalized with that, and I'm still connected to them.

So I really appreciate them, and I wouldn't change a thing about the program, I would do it again.

Absolutely, that's so cool. I graduated from Liberty, and I was the only presuppositionalist in my classes, and I didn't get penalized for it either.

I think, and this comes more from, in my experience, more from the presuppositional camp.

We have to remind ourselves that the folks who are on the classical and evidential end of the spectrum, they are, for the most part, they are our brothers.

I mean, just agree, we do our fighting every now and then, but ultimately, ultimately, we are on the same team.

And so I appreciate, if someone will be like asking me a question, I don't know, I'll be like, I'll pick up my

Josh McDowell, evidence demands a very, let me get, let me look, read it, that's not it, but that's a different book.

But I find so much value in what my classical brothers and my evidential brothers have had to say.

And it would be silly to think that the only people who have good things to say are the presuppositionalists.

No, we are a big family of believers, and we help each other out, and God uses us broken people.

And he says, as the saying goes, he strikes blows with broken sticks. Presuppositionalists are broken sticks as well.

It's just not as broken. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Yeah, no, that's a great point.

Yeah, no, it's been interesting to read like Greg Koekel's tactics when I was at Biola, and then

I'm having to read it again for personal evangelism. It's a different book. Oh yeah.

It's a completely different book, but it's still good. Yes, absolutely. Still got a lot of good stuff in it.

It's one of the reasons why I like to have all sorts of apologies. I mean, I've had Frank Turek, I've had Greg Koekel, and some other classical apologists, because I value them.

I mean, I don't agree with them on certain things, but I value what they have to say. Even in the points of disagreement, perhaps you've experienced this, even in their disagreements, you can take their disagreements as a way to sharpen how you would respond from the perspective that you're from.

I have, yeah, especially when it comes to the issues of, you know, denying certainty.

Yeah, I've definitely been able to sharpen my skills, you know, in answering those kinds of objections.

Yeah. I mean, thanks to them, I kind of am more prepared than I would have been.

And it's an idea of iron sharpening iron. And that concept goes, I think, even with unbelievers. The great value of unbelieving thought, not because I value it intrinsically,

I think it's the antithesis, right? It's not something that honors God, but in the scope of sharpening our own arguments and the way that we explain things, the attack from the enemy has been a blessing in disguise in the sense that it has caused

Christians to sharpen their arguments, sharpen the focus on how we defend various points.

And so even the attacks play a purpose in God sharpening and molding the church, especially with regards to this, you know, specified topic of apologetics.

Right. Yeah. And hey, that's the way it's been in church history. You know, the heretics got us the creeds.

There we go. That's another good t -shirt. I would totally get it. You can just get like a picture of a heretic, like I'm not that bad.

I'm just kidding. Yeah. All right. Well, this has been a super awesome conversation.

I'm positive that folks are going to be blessed by everything that you had to say. And I encourage folks to get over to your website and check out that article.

I did leave a link to it in the comments so folks can check that out.

And those who are listening, if you have any questions that you'd like Scarlett and I to address, you guys can feel free to ask them.

I already saw a couple of questions. If not, no worries as well. And I was going to say something and I totally forgot.

Oh my goodness. Okay. Nevermind. Okay. So let's go up to the top, the comments here.

I'm going to scroll a little by little here and see if we could find some questions here. Let's see here.

Oh, thanks a lot, Brian. Eli, why does your head look so gigantic? You know what it is?

It's because I'm just so prideful. It is so prideful. It's all that knowledge pouring in, you know, book, book, and you know, now

I got a big head. Maybe that's it. What I was saying before is I set up my own camera so I can't focus and see myself.

So I have to have it close enough that I can reach. So I'm doing this weird thing over here. You guys have no idea what happens in the background here.

So, okay, Brian, back up. Okay. Let's see here.

Okay. All right. So here's a question. And we could both take a stab at it. Might have different answers.

I have no idea where you stand on this, but the question is, can one be a presuppositionalist without being a

Calvinist? Thanks. That's from Slam RN. And thank you so much for that question. You want to take a stab at that or?

Well, let's see. One of the solas is sola scriptura. So if we're going to base our theology on scripture alone,

I think that would be really hard to, yeah. Hmm. I think that would be actually difficult to do.

I'm thinking about the emphasis that we've put on scripture tonight. I think that, yeah. But what do you think?

Yeah. I think it's important to understand that presuppositionalism has a context, right? So if you read someone like Van Til, who is considered the really the pioneer of the presuppositional method, what he was seeking to do was to bring out an apologetic method that flowed out of a consistent reform theology.

And so Van Til most definitely thought that the only consistent presuppositionalist was also one who was a

Calvinist. Presuppositionalism and the reform doctrine of God, who is the one who decrees everything that comes to pass, all of that is assumed in the absolute triune

God of scripture, that everything that occurs happens because God decrees it. And everything that exists has the meaning and definition that it has because God has defined it.

And so the apologetic method and the transcendental form of argumentation does in fact presuppose this sort of absolutistic

God and completely sovereign God that is typically spoken of within the context of reform theology, more narrowly speaking, the

Calvinist perspective. So I would say, yes, but there is room for debate because I do see other people saying, some people are not sure if that's the case but that's definitely what

Van Til was trying to do when he was developing this method. So that's how I would answer it. So that's right.

So if you're an Armenian watching this and you're like, man, presupp sounds so cool. Like, hey, you gotta drink the

Kool -Aid, man. You gotta go for it. I'm just messing around.

Hey, if you wanna be an Armenian and run around being inconsistent by using presupp by all means, I'm just kidding.

What he said. Totally joking, relax. I'm sorry, someone's gonna message me and be like, that was really mean.

Okay. Someone's expressing their like of a phrase that you use here. They say,

I like how some of the phrases she uses, dies the death of a thousand verses. Is there a context to that? Do you remember using that phrase at all?

Oh, I don't know where that comes from. I think sometimes you hear it used when philosophers and such are making all these fine distinctions, right?

That an argument or a point dies the death of a thousand qualifications. I think that might be where it comes from.

I was just alternating or altering it to my use. Yeah. Sounds good.

Here's a question by, actually one second, hold up. Is, do you hear a loud noise in the background?

Does it look like there's an, I do, pardon me. I thought it was

Nancy Piercy presupp. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's the question. Sorry about the background noise.

The volume is like blasting downstairs, but okay, so yeah.

So do you know the answer to that question? I have no idea to be perfectly honest. I don't know. I've read

Total Truth. I've read Saving Leonardo, but I don't recall. I've read Love Thy Body.

I don't recall anything specifically about presuppositional apologetics in those books, but that's an interesting question.

I love her, love her work. I have never read her. So I definitely have to check her out.

Yeah, if you like Frances Schaefer, a lot of what she does is sort of continuing his tradition.

Cultural apologetics, I think is what it would be referred to as. Sure, sure. Here are a couple of cool comments from Liquid Cryo.

I love the names that people. My first exposure to presupp was Sai Ten Bruggen Kate. Person says nine years ago, and I like what he says here, or she, he,

I'm not sure who in the picture. It was as if I looked into a kaleidoscope and seeing color for the first time.

Oh, I love that. Yeah, right? It's kind of when you come to a presuppositional approach, it's almost like seeing things from a completely different perspective.

I like, Liquid says, so much beauty, and I agree with that. There is a beauty of methodology.

Yes, can I use that? Yeah, go for it if you wanna jot that down real quick.

I love that. I love that. That's super cool. Thank you so much for that, Liquid.

I hope I'm pronouncing cryo, Liquid Cryo. Let's see here. Okay, let's see here.

Okay, so Jesus name magnified says, how do we know the scriptures are true by the impossibility of the contrary?

Yes, I would agree with that. I would like to say though, that we wanna be very careful when we use the phrase by the impossibility of the contrary, because by saying the phrase doesn't demonstrate it.

So you do need to do a little bit more work and unpack that for folks. So my encouragement to folks who are doing presuppositional apologetics, you want to move away as much as you can from sloganeering.

They're useful and I use them in certain contexts, but you also wanna unpack that because the person might not understand what you're saying.

So that's an important point to keep in mind. Have you ever experienced other presuppers using kind of these catch phrases and other people really not knowing?

Like, well, how is it true by the impossible? I have no idea what you're talking about. Right, yeah, it's got its own little glossary nowadays,

I think, right? Of these terms and phrases too. And it's easy to start using those, especially when you're in a group and everybody kind of is using the same lingo.

But yeah, I can imagine from someone coming in that doesn't know what's going on. A little unnerving.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know, isn't there, I think, didn't Ricky Roldan put a glossary up today, maybe of John Frame's terms or something?

Well, that's useful because that's really what people need sometimes. They just need a glossary of terms.

That's right, we have to scale the language barrier in a lot of ways.

I'm trying to put out videos, short videos that explain certain presuppositional vocabulary and terminology and things like that.

So there is definitely a need for defining our terms since a lot of these words and phrases kind of float around on the internet.

Okay, I think that, well, let's see here. We have another question here. There we go.

That's not a question, but thanks for the conversation, guys. Love the attitudes as well. Yeah, well, thank you. Yes. Yeah, thanks.

I don't know, Scarlet was a little mean. I don't know, no, I'm just kidding. You know, I'm kind of known on the internet as being pretty aggressive because I am a fire breathing biblical creationist.

It's true, okay? It's true. But I'm trying to tone it down for you.

No, you're doing a great job. Let's see here. There is a question here about, it's a comment.

Sola Scriptura, just to clarify, and I'm sure you would agree with this, Scarlet. If you're not a

Calvinist, you can still hold to Sola Scriptura. Yeah.

I think you can. Just like your professors. If it's okay if you disagree with me, I think, you know,

I have friends who are Protestant. They're not Calvinist per se, but they're Protestant.

They hold to Sola Scriptura. They're just convinced that Sola Scriptura doesn't reflect Calvinist understanding, which is, there lies the disagreement.

So, but I would say they could hold to it. Yeah, it would be Sola Scriptura, a concerning methodology, right?

Yeah, that it's not up to us to decide how we defend the faith. Yes. All right, let's see here.

Ooh, okay. Engaged Truth asks, "'Would you say precept leads to theonomy as well?'

I don't know where you stand on theonomy. To be perfectly honest, I haven't studied it enough.

People, this is surprising, because I've studied Bonson extensively. I just haven't touched the theonomy stuff. So I don't know if there's a necessary connection."

How about yourself? Yeah, I don't know either. And I'm in the same boat. I haven't really studied it. It's the same with eschatology.

You know, I see people posting so much about eschatology lately, and I'm, I don't know, it's just, I don't have time right now to research it.

I think it's really interesting. You know, I'd like to look into it. But yeah, I don't know. It's a great question.

Okay, all right. Engaged Truth asks, how do we respond to the circular reasoning objection to presuppositionalism?

Did you listen to the circle analogy? Come on, Engaged Truth. I have an artistic response.

Yeah, it's, you know, actually, I've had so many different questions about that. And I actually wrote down, because I keep cards.

I don't know if you're a note card person, but I'm a note card person. Okay. So I have all these different note cards on different topics.

And I remember one of them, let's see if I can find it, was Greg Bonson's response to this. See if I have it.

I've got so many cards that sometimes it's hard to. No worries. But when he was talking about circularity, oh goodness, let's see if I can find it.

Hold on, oh, here it is. Yeah, this is, I think this is gonna be from, I don't remember if this is from conversations with R .C.

Sproul, or if this is from a lecture. Sorry, I don't remember. I should have put the source on it. But he says, to the charge of circularity, we're not seeking to explain facts on the same level of being.

And that's what I tried to show in this painting. We're not on the same level. And we're not down here in the little black circle of created things.

We're talking about what's necessary to understand anything at all, right?

We're not just arguing for another fact of the universe when we say God's necessary. And so I don't know if that helps, but that's the way

I've been trying to learn it on my little card and my painting back there. When we do say, when we argue for the truth of the

Christian worldview, we're not arguing circularly in the sense that we're giving like an argument structure that commits the fallacy, right?

What we're saying is we're assuming the Christian system in order to make sense out of any argument at all. Right. And always pointing out that everyone that's arguing for an ultimate authority is going to be circular and inform.

So some people will say, you can't assume the Bible to prove the Bible. And I'm like, excuse me, sir, you have your own Bible. So when you say that, you're assuming your own

Bible to falsify my Bible. And basically the unbelievers Bible is just their ultimate authority.

Don't let folks get away with this idea that, well, I'm just being open and neutral. There is no neutrality as the popular phraseology goes.

And that's true. Even when people say, I don't know God exists. What you're saying is that God is wrong because God declares that all men know that he exists.

So - That's right. And not just in Romans one, people usually only quote Romans one, but it's in Romans two as well.

And Acts 14 and 17 and Psalms 8, 14 and 19 and Ecclesiastes three. I mean, it's in a lot of different places.

It's not just Romans one. Sure, sure, absolutely. All right. Post -Tenebrous

Lux, I don't know, my Latin is not very good. Asks, can you explain again the difference of epistemology and ontology and why some confuse the two, especially those who are anti -preceptors?

Are you familiar with that question, Scarlett? Yeah, I mean, the way we,

I mean, we studied it in philosophy of religion, ontology is a study of being and then epistemology, the study of how we come to know things.

Dr. Scott taught us in class that epistemology flows from ontology and there's no sharp distinction between the two.

You can't put them into different, completely different boxes that they're going to be inextricably connected.

And so I think maybe why some people confuse them is they don't see that. They don't think that they're connected.

I don't know, yeah, what do you think? Yeah, if I understand the question correctly, I think they are, first of all, wanting to know the difference between the two terms in general.

And then the confusion between the two typically is an objection against the presuppositionalist.

The anti -presuppositionalists often say that we confuse ontology with epistemology and we don't.

We're quite aware of what the terms mean, how they relate to each other. And we just don't.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make a video on that very topic. And I'm going to, for folks who follow Revealed Apologetics on Instagram, I'm actually gonna be posting, and on Facebook as well,

I'm gonna be posting quotes from my Kindle, okay? Quotes on my page where there are exact explanations as to why we don't confuse that.

So I don't wanna get too ahead of ourselves because then we'd have to go a little in depth and talk about proximate starting points and ultimate starting points.

I don't wanna do that now as we're coming to a close, but stay tuned. I will put up information there that I think folks will find very helpful.

Before I continue to scroll down the comments and see if we have more questions, if you have been liking this discussion, do me a solid and press the heart button, the thumbs up button, the like button.

And if you haven't subscribed to Revealed Apologetics, please do so. Very much appreciate the support. All right, let's see here.

We're almost done. Let's see. Okay, here's the last question.

All right. I don't know how to pronounce the name, so I do apologize.

But this individual asks, if presuppositional and classical apologetics are both in defense for the

Christian faith, then what is the minor or major differences between them, between the two?

So what is the difference between the methodology? I mean, both the classicalists and the presuppositionalists are claiming to defend the

Christian faith. Yeah, the difference I learned was that classical apologetics is always going to start with arguments for God's existence.

Like that's step number one. And then they would proceed to make additional arguments for that it's the

God of the Bible, biblical reliability, and so on. Usually ending in a cumulative case kind of argument with a bunch of different lines of argumentation, whereas the presuppositionalist accepts what the

Bible says as far as man already knows. Like Romans one, we were just talking about that God already has given that,

I would say immediate knowledge to man, that he exists and that he's eternal and things like that.

And so we take that as authoritative. And so we don't argue for God's existence as a first step.

We assume they already know and that that truth is being suppressed to different degrees. It's true, we don't know exactly to what degree, but to some degree, that's the starting point is knowing that there's truth being suppressed and that they know

God. And then we try to argue for the preconditions of intelligibility.

I almost don't wanna use that phrase because it's almost overused, that God makes knowledge possible, right?

That we can't know anything apart from him. Right, and don't worry about it.

People have used by what standard so many times that they're afraid to use it. Well, too bad, by what standard is a perfectly valid question.

And if people don't like it, they could, then ask the answer to the question, by what standard? Okay, so we still use it, it's all good.

I think an important, a helpful way to understand the difference between presuppositional apologetics and classical apologetics is the direction in which they argue.

I would say that classical apologetics is a bottom -up approach. We work our way up to the conclusion, therefore

God exists. Presuppositional apologetics is a top -down approach. We begin with God and his revelation and we argue that if you reject it, you couldn't prove anything at all, you have no foundation for anything.

So presupp, top -down approach, classical, bottom -up approach. Classical tends to give you a one -two punch.

One punch is argue for the existence of a generic God and then specify that generic God with arguments for the resurrection of Jesus and the

Bible and things like that. And so they tend to take that kind of two -step approach to get you up to the conclusion.

Presuppositionalists do it the opposite way. So also an important difference is that presuppositional apologetics does not assume the self -sufficiency of autonomous reasoning.

And in a lot of cases, whether they do it implicitly or explicitly or unconsciously, a lot of these other methodologies tend to take for granted the self -sufficiency of human reasoning and autonomous reasoning and things like that.

And that is the key distinction there, right? Someone says, well, I'm a classical apologist, but what if I don't assume the person's autonomous?

I mean, you say, I'm assuming that, maybe I don't. Cool, then you're using evidence like a presuppositionalist. That's basically what you're doing if you're not granting that.

And so I would ask them at that point, are you consistently from that assumption? Because that's what the Bible teaches. So I think that's a very important distinction there.

All right, anything else you wanna add to that or maybe anything else before we wrap things up?

No, I think that was good. Thanks so much for having me on, this has been fun. Well, this has been a huge blessing.

I think you did an excellent job and I really love the tone and direction that this discussion went. I'm sure folks who give it a listen will be greatly blessed.

I'm actually gonna take some snippets from this and share it in shorter clips because I think there are a couple of things you said that are like golden that I think would be great to kind of make in a separate clip there.

So thank you so much. All right, the earth is young. She's like, hashtag young earth.

By the way, if folks are interested in that topic, young earth, old earth, they should take a look at my most watched video, which is the discussion

I moderated between Dr. Jason Lyle, who is a PhD astrophysicist arguing for young earth and Dr.

Hugh Ross, who is a PhD physicist arguing for old earth. And so that is my most watched episode and it was an excellent discussion.

I have not seen that. I'm gonna have to check that out. In my opinion, and I'm biased, okay?

I'm not neutral. I think out of all the interactions that I've listened to between them, the one they had on my show was the best because it wasn't a formal debate.

The whole time was as an informal discussion and I just moderated. So it was very interactive.

So you definitely wanna give it a look. All right, I'll check it out this weekend. Check it out and let me know what you think. Okay. Okay, well, thank you so much everyone for listening in and thank you so much,

Scarlett, for joining me today. This was a wonderful discussion and I'm sure folks will be blessed.

For those who have not yet subscribed to Revealed Apologetics, what's up with you? Press the subscribe button. All right, take care guys.