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00:01

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

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Facebook PreSuppers livestream, okay? I have some really awesome guys here who are active on a super cool and super helpful

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Facebook page. I think they just recently changed the name. So what was the name of it, man?

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I don't want to say it wrong or open up the show and get the name wrong. Ricky, you're the resource, man.

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Ricky, search the comments rolled on. What's the page called now?

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It's still Reformed PreSuppositional Apologetics Vantillion.

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Oh, Vantillion. Okay. All right. My bad. So Reformed PreSuppositional Apologetics Vantillion. This is an awesome

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Facebook page if you're looking to get a question answered or to really get some thoughtful responses to some issues that you might face online and things like that.

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It's a super awesome resource. There's even a section where there are a lot of documents.

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You can kind of search documents, and there's some really cool essays that people wrote, especially I know Josh and Arne.

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I think you have some stuff on there as well. And I highly recommend folks check it out if you want to get to know more about all things presuppositional apologetics.

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So totally check that out. Now, before I introduce my guest, I want to throw it out there that on January 15th, the premium version of my course, the

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Introduction to Biblical Apologetics, will be offered. Folks can sign up for that on revealedapologetics .com.

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If you click on the PresuppU, that's short for Presupp University. If you click on that menu, you can

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RSVP. Classes start January 15th and already have folks signing up.

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And once you sign up, you will get five recorded lectures, all of the PowerPoint presentations, the outlines and notes, and the premium edition or premium package.

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You get to meet with me five times a week or five times, sorry, once every week for five weeks where we meet through a private

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Zoom call, and we go much deeper into the content. And I could address specific questions you have on the content or anything else.

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And those private Zoom meetings go for sometimes an hour, an hour and a half. And so totally, I mean,

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I hear people who've taken it. They've enjoyed it greatly. So if you're looking to learn presuppositional apologetics in a more structured format and you want to support

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Revealed Apologetics, then I highly recommend you sign up for that before the spots are all filled.

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That's January 15th is when we'll start, and folks can sign up right now if they wanted to.

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All right. Well, without further ado, let me get my brothers on the screen with me. Well, first,

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I'd like to introduce my friend Ricky Roldan. Ricky, why don't you tell people who you are and where they can go to listen to your podcast?

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You have a podcast, and so folks might be interested in that. Yes, sir. Like you said, my name is

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Ricky Roldan. I have a podcast called Urban Reform Podcast.

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I've been in the urban ministry for the last 25 plus years, and it's a ministry dedicated to the urban culture.

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That's the term the name says. And, yeah, you can find a lot of shows on there on eschatology, on apologetics.

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I did a four part series with some great brothers and sisters in India through Zoom.

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They were very hungry when they came to me for this class. They were like, I really want to know what this apologetics was.

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And so that was an honor to do that with them. Of course, they are also being persecuted over India.

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So there were some things that I was warned that I couldn't say because people were watching and they could get in trouble.

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So that, you know, and I have a blog also, urban reform dot com articles on there written on several different topics of theology, eschatology.

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And like you said, the group reform, presupposition, apologetics, slash Vantillion. I did that to distinguish people, understand that it is a dirty

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Clarkian. Right. You're trying to distinguish from the dirty Clarkian. I'm just kidding. Yeah, actually, from the

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Clarkian. Clarkian or, you know, classical people get confused on the what to make sure they understood.

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They won't be surprised by the posts on there by the admins.

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I have great admins, by the way. Yeah. Arne and Jimmy, Slim Jim, Slim Jims and a few others that are just great guys.

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Brothers that I've been able to fellowship with the last several years, actually.

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Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you for that. Yeah, guys, definitely check out urban.

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What's it called again? Urban what? Urban reform podcast. Urban reformed podcast.

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That's awesome. I actually had Ricky on a while back and I don't remember the title of the episode, but if they could find your face,

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I know you're on the thumbnail. They should totally check it out because you have some really all you share some really awesome stories of your experiences with just stuff on the streets and interacting with people.

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What I enjoy about Ricky is that he is very good at simplifying. If Bonson grew up in the hood, you know,

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I'm saying like he'd be Ricky. I'm just kidding.

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But partially not. You got some really good insight and you know how to break it down. So I appreciate that. All right. Well, our next guest is

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Arne. Arne. Is it Verster? Is that I pronounce that right? It's Arne Verster.

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I can't say it like that. That sounds much cooler. All right.

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Well, Arne, why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself and about your website? You got a really awesome website, really awesome blog that covers a wide range of presuppositional apologetic issues.

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So why don't you share a little bit about that real quick? Yeah. So like I said, my name is

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Arne Verster or in English they call me Arne Verster. And you mispronounce it.

06:46

You call me what Eli just called me at the beginning. Okay. Yeah.

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And my first language is Afrikaans. I live in the southern point of Africa, in South Africa, in Pretoria.

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Best country in the world. Best city in the world. So if you're watching this and you're in the

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United States and you want to have like an African safari, just reach out to me and I'll organize all of you up.

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But yeah, so quite, quite far away from the other people on the stream. But it does feel like I know them quite, quite closely, all of them on here.

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And yeah, I do run this website called

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Apologetic Central. I've been running it for approximately 10 years now. When I started getting into apologetics, that's when

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I got started with Apologetic Central. Took lots of roots of it, you know, started off of the evidentialist, classicalist apologetics and then moved over to presuppositionalism approximately four or five years ago.

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And yeah, I think my view of the website is I usually have questions myself, things that pop up and then

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I'd essentially tackle it and I'd attempt to write an answer that is satisfactory to me, you know.

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And then I'd publish on the site and then it seems like people also enjoy reading it and getting lots of nice traction there as well.

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My main influences are Wendell himself and I would say to a large extent,

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Brant Bosserman as well. Not as much Bonson, actually. I feel like I would first want to completely, well, if that's even possible.

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Don't blaspheme now. Let us not blaspheme, sir. No, no, no, nothing against Bonson.

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I just found myself being drawn more to the works of Wendell himself than Bonson.

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So that's where I spend a lot of my time. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you for that. And next up, we have

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Slim Jim, who's got an awesome beard. I love your beard, bro. Time out.

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Arne, are you Presbyterian, Arne, or are you Baptist? What are you? No, I'm a member of the

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Gereformeerde Kerken in South Africa, which is, I must actually, the translation isn't as direct as that.

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I think there are two churches, but it is the Reformed churches in South Africa. And that is

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Presbyterian. I thought you might have been a Baptist because you don't have a beard. So, you know, I guess

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I'm the only Reformed Baptist here. All right. Okay. All right,

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Slim Jim. Why don't you share a little bit about yourself? And then we'll move on to Josh.

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And then we'll jump right into these questions. I like to take a little bit of time here at the beginning of the stream so we can get kind of people listening in.

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And then we'll jump right into the good stuff. But why don't you share a little bit about yourself? Yeah, I am

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Reformed Baptist. So just a guy that loves the Word. But also

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I really love, you know, our fellow Presbyterian and even Joshua, I think, is a

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Lutheran. Brothers for the contribution. And I seek priests up and formal apologetics as a team effort.

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The blog I run is Veritas Domain. I think my gifting is more with exegesis, exegetical matters.

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So one ongoing project is answering Bible contradiction. That's an ongoing thing I'm doing with refuting.

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But once in a while I'll jump in just probably same like what Arne said. Just want to learn it. Just think through things myself of answering certain things.

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And I thought I would just have that as notes on the blog for my own sake. But then realizing, hey, that could maybe hopefully benefit others.

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And maybe even others springboard and improve on things way better. So that's my story. Awesome.

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Well, I have Apologetics Academy I put in the comments. And I'm going to put the

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Veritas Domain in the comments as well if people want to check that out. Highly recommend. I'm not just saying that to be nice.

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Some really good resources there. So as you're listening in and you're like, you know what, I want more of this stuff, the links are there.

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You should totally check it out. All right. Lastly but certainly not least, my good friend Joshua Pillows who has been on the show multiple times.

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And I moderated an awesome debate with him and David Paulman on apologetic methodology.

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So that's on the channel. You should totally check it out. I thought that Joshua did an excellent job showing the difference and biblical nature of precept over a more evidential presentation.

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But Joshua is a sharp guy. Why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself, and then we'll jump right into our questions.

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Yes, I'm the organist, pianist, music director at a Lutheran church. Slim Jim, I'm not sure if I'm completely

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Lutheran. If my pastor caught wind that you said that, he would be jumping for joy.

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He doesn't know that. I am not. But I have my Lutheran sympathies, of course, being here for years as an organist.

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But my embodiment in Reformed theology came from Bonson. And Van Til was kind of the extra spice of apologetics because you're supposed to start with Bonson before Van Til unless you're just crazy or you're a genius like Arne.

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Crazy or genius. Genius. Of course.

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So, yeah, just I'm an organist at a Lutheran church, have Lutheran sympathies, but I still lean

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Presbyterian. Yeah. Awesome. Well, let's jump right into our questions.

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So I actually found a collection of questions slash objections to the presuppositional method.

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And so if folks don't like introductions or don't care about who we are, you could in the future for future reference, you could skip the 12 minute introduction.

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That's perfectly fine. There's no no insult there. And you can go right to the juicy, the juicy stuff.

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So let's take a look at our first question and then I'll throw it out to you guys and anyone could share their thoughts.

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Please do not hesitate. You don't have to raise your hand if you just want to jump in.

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Go for it. And I'm sure everyone else will respect whoever is jumping in first. So don't be too humble. Otherwise, it'll just be awkwardly quiet as everyone waits for the other person.

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So question number one. What's your strategy with talking to militant atheists more like an on street scenario and not something online?

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How would you guys address that kind of on the street situation? Anybody feel free to jump in.

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Do you. My experience is that atheists are more militant online than in person.

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That's fair. That's fair. Yeah. So I actually I like in person conversations more than than online conversations as people tend to be less keyboard warrior.

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But I guess, you know, I've had my fair share of conversations with unbelievers in general in person.

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And you'd be surprised how far you can get by just asking them questions and continuing pointing out some things that you might perceive to be internal tensions in their worldview and stuff like that without sticking your own neck out too much.

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You know, just ask questions. It's a good conversation starter and it allows you to place the person in front of you in a nice context and facilitates further conversation as well.

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And then it just flows. Absolutely. Awesome. Yeah. Anyone else have a take on that? Yeah, well, my experience dealing with different like false religions, especially my earlier years dealing with Islam and 5 %

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Nation of Islam and the Holy Tabernacle Ministries, Malachi York as their leader.

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That's an interesting cult of the Muslims.

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But that's for another another show. But basically, you know, when they're asking questions, they usually they parrot a lot of things they heard.

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Sure. Don't really have no proof for they just say stuff or sometimes they're genuine questions that pop right out of the blue.

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Sure. Very basic, you know, and it always goes to what's the proof?

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What's the evidence? What's the proof? What's the evidence? And in a very simple way, like I always me, you guys know,

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I go transcendental immediately. I go right to the scriptures and says what the

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Bible says about knowledge and evidences and those things that without God, they're your questions about evidence and proof really makes no sense.

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And then they size. But what do you mean by that? Then jump into that. You know, stay away from the very technical terms.

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Sure. But the conversations have been fruitful. You know, they get it.

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Let me go research that or talk about that's interesting how you say that, you know, only the

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Bible can justify the fact that we even know things for me to even ask for evidence and proof in the first place.

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Sure. So, you know, again, the key there is, you know, just trying to stay away from the big philosophical terms and bringing it into a street level layman's understanding, you know, it kind of speaking to them.

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You might find somebody who's who's into philosophy. Sure. All bets are off.

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It kind of reminds me of the discussions on like Molinism. So like when we talk about Molinism and Calvinism, a lot of Calvinists will, you know, point out that the

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Molinist often uses philosophical language and their light on biblical argumentation.

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But one of the reasons why Molinists tend to use philosophical argument and not so much biblical argument is that the primary way that people learned about Molinism are through philosophers like Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig.

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And so they haven't been able to contextualize the language to speak to the average reformed person if that's the person they're trying to convince or the average person on the street.

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I think it's so important that we learn to contextualize our language. And unfortunately, we'll learn the fancy language in Bonson and Van Till and then go out in the street and act like that's appropriate on the street context.

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So the way I answer this question, I suppose, is context. And it depends on the context or nature of the discussion.

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I think the principle of Matthew 7, 6 is appropriate where we need to be careful not to throw pearls before swine.

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Right. But if you decide to engage in discussion with a militant atheist, I think it's important to not try and match their aggressiveness.

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That's very important. You don't want to compete in that sense. Okay. Their militancy can be used against themselves, especially if others are watching.

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And you stay calm. You stay firm in your position. And you continue to direct the discussion to the key and important issues at hand.

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Don't allow someone's aggressiveness to derail your presentation of the gospel. Remember, anger is often a defense mechanism.

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Right? Your words can still make an impact in ways that you don't see. Just because the person looks angry and they're aggressive doesn't mean that you are not planting the seeds that God can water in his own timing.

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So don't give up. Don't judge a militant discussion based on externals.

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Know that when you are speaking the truth, the word of God does not come back void. Those are simple biblical truths, but they're true nonetheless.

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So that's my two cents on that question. Eli, can

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I expand on that? Of course. Yeah. Go for it, brother. Just for a minute. It's an interesting analogy that I heard from Brant Bosserman.

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He did a lecture at the South African Theological Seminary about two years ago. It's available on YouTube.

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Oh, okay. Brilliant lecture. And he points to the passage. Now, this is where I guess my biblical knowledge is going to fail me.

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But it's the passage where you have two women, and one of them has lost their baby, and they are challenging who this living baby belongs to.

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And then they bring it towards King Solomon, and he then needs to resolve this issue.

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Now, the Bible says that you can only convict someone on the account of two or three witnesses, right?

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And now in this situation, you have two women, each of them witnessing to a separate view of reality or a separate fact.

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Like this one is saying, this is my baby, and the other one is saying, no, it's my baby. So what does Solomon do?

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He asks particular questions, and he, for the sake of argument, actually says, we're going to cut this baby in half.

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And in doing that, the actual mother immediately steps back and says, no, don't do it.

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Just save the baby. And the false mother immediately says, yes, cut it in half. And in doing that, she has become a witness against herself, which witnesses together with the real mother that the baby actually belongs to.

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Bro, I never thought of it that way. That's interesting. Okay, awesome. So that's the interesting thing, right?

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So in a one -on -one conversation with an unbeliever that is also militant, what you should then aim to do is almost what

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Solomon aimed to do, is to take that person's militancy and then asking key questions to then essentially expose them as a witness against themselves and their own worldview.

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And that's an interesting way to view presuppositionalism as well. That's an awesome biblical example.

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I never thought of it that way. Thank you for that. Appreciate that. Let's jump to the second question. So here's the second question.

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I've heard an argument that I'm not sure how to address, okay? I didn't list the names of the people who asked it, except in some cases.

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But I've heard an argument that I'm not sure how to address. It goes something like this. Because God is so transcendent, so totally other, he must therefore be unknowable or it would make him not as transcendent or holy.

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And he made some allusion to Immanuel Kant. How would you answer? And the allusion to Immanuel Kant, no doubt, is probably related to Kant's what we would call in philosophy his noumenal, phenomenal distinction.

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Does anyone want to tackle that more philosophical sort of question and kind of break down a possible response to something like this?

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Yeah, I think I'll take a stab at it. I think it is a theological question. First and foremost, the nature of it is still theological.

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There's a theological dimension. First and foremost, one of the things in that question was how to, like God being unknowable, does it make him now somehow not as transcendent or holy?

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I would actually say holiness, looking at the Greek and Hebrew word, has the idea of separation, especially for a special purpose or purpose of God.

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In the case of God, he is set apart. He's unique. So I would actually say by that definition of holiness, this is an issue where it's not an issue when

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God is holy does not mean he's unknowable. The other thing, point number two, is when we say

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God is transcendent, we do believe that God is unique. He's different than any other creatures out there.

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But that does not mean there's no room. By definition, there's no room for doctrine or revelation. So if God can reveal himself, of course, we cannot imagine him by our own finite mind of what he's like because he's so totally different than who we are, so totally unique as the

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Bible teaches and transcendent in that sense. But I also think because God has revealed himself, he does.

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That doesn't mean. So I guess to me, the big key is that the definition of God being transcendent, if we go by a biblical definition, does not mean that God cannot reveal himself.

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I do think in my view of right now, looking at Immanuel Kant, I think he was actually critiquing mainly autonomous thoughts and philosophy.

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My view has probably shifted from Presbyterian and Reform publishing when they published a great thinker series.

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The one volume that's with Immanuel Kant, I think that's probably the newest interpretation of Immanuel Kant.

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He's not critiquing. No knowledge, revealed knowledge, is unknowable. But if we're going to go by autonomous thought, this is where we end up with this division.

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And then you guys can jump in. Someone can apply the Kant's. Well, let's explain here.

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So if someone's alluding to the noumenal phenomenal distinction, there's no relevant analogy with the

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God of Scripture. Right on Kant's understanding, man is locked out of having knowledge of the noumenal reality as it is.

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Right. And man is only stuck within the experience of the phenomenal, where man is relegated to imposing his own mental categories upon his experience.

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Right. So he doesn't see the thing in itself. Rather, he sees his own perception as he imposes categories of his mind.

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Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's not the Christian position. The noumenal, this transcendent reality, is not an impersonal, non -revelatory reality.

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Within the Christian worldview, there's revelation. So God who exists in the noumenal is able to interact and reveal through the phenomenal.

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So, again, to understand within the context of Kant, he's dealing, I think Slim Jim accurately points out, within the context of autonomy.

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Right. Whereas we are coming from a revelatory perspective. So does anyone have any thoughts on that?

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Well, before I let Aron go, I know he's written some good stuff on this. And theology, you know, to simplify it, that's that will be the distinction the

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Christian worldview makes between God being transcendent. But he is also eminent, see, as opposed to, let's say,

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Islam, where God is so transcendent and above that he's unknowable.

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He's he doesn't share qualities. We're not made in his image. Nothing. You know, it's all he's so above which self -refutes their own religion.

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But just wanted to make that that theological, like Jimmy said, is a theological issue.

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So that's the God is transcendent. But he is also eminent. Yeah, I really appreciate

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Slim Jim mentioning it's a theological issue because the way you address this argument or rather this objection or question is through having an accurate understanding of God.

26:27

Right. So in the Christian worldview, God is both transcendent and eminent. So we believe in a God who is both, in a sense, transcendent and unknowable in his fullness.

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This is why we have within Christian theology the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God. God cannot be known fully, but he can be known in as much as he reveals himself.

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But he also is personal and has the capacity to interact with his creation. This is something that Muslims can't comprehend.

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It's like, well, if God is God, can he interact and incarnate in the creation that he's made?

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And Muslims don't have categories for that. But within Christian theology, this again, we have the incarnations, literally what we celebrate

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Christmas for. Right. In Philippians chapter two, verse five through eight, we read, have this mind amongst yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form.

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He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. We have the eternal, the noumenal, if you want to use that language, coming into the phenomenal and acting in time, making atonement for sinners.

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That's a beautiful picture of the gospel and I think a powerful apologetic to some of these more philosophically oriented objections.

27:46

Joshua, do you have any comments on that? No, I mean, Jim hit it on the head.

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For Kant, God is nothing more than a limiting notion or a limiting concept. He's sort of a placeholder that you have to believe in to kind of fit into the grand scheme of things to make everything make sense.

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But we can't really know this God, hence the divide. For Kant, we can only know the ding on zik, the thing in itself, or we can't really get to the thing in itself.

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And so to equate or to apply this as an objection, if it were to be an objection to a

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Christian theology, is just apples and oranges. Kant's a deist, we're theists, we're tritheists.

28:27

And so it's just an apples and oranges scenario of not all deists are the same.

28:33

You mean Trinitarians, right? Both deists and Trinitarians. I think you said tritheists.

28:38

I have Mormons that are listening, they're going to be like, I texted you 20 minutes before.

28:46

I just got to the church, it's been nonstop today. It's okay, I'm just messing with you, man. But yeah, so no, but it's just talking past each other because it's actually a complete antithesis for Kant.

28:57

God is a placeholder. And for us, God is anything but a placeholder. Right. So it's just a matter of defining terms.

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And some Jim hit it on the head there. Yeah, excellent. Arnie, any thoughts? Anyone else? Yeah, I'd like to weigh in on this.

29:12

As Ricky mentioned, of all the questions that you had prepared for us,

29:17

Eli, this one was the one that tickled me the most. I definitely point people to Van Til's Introduction to Systematic Theology, Chapter 13, where he specifically speaks about the incomprehensibility of God.

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And if you haven't read Van Til ever before, then Chapter 13 won't be of any help to you because Van Til is super difficult to interpret.

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But he actually addresses it quite directly. And then Brant Bosserman, in his doctoral dissertation, also has a subsection on the vindication of objective analogical knowledge of God, which also touches on this issue directly.

29:58

And I think the first thing to say,

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I mean, like Slim Jim and Joshua alluded to, the

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Kantian picture is already the opposite of the Christian picture. Right. Because it already negates the fact that God is the creator of all that is not

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God. And as such, everything is revelational of Him, every fact. So it's not that you've got this autonomous realm over here where you can comprehensively understand everything in independence of God and His revelation.

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Because if that's the case, then Kant's critique applies. Because that means you've got this exhaustive understanding of creaturely reality in independence of God.

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And then there's no space for Him. So everything you say about Him is completely meaningless. That's for me the

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Kantian critique. But you undercut that by just negating the starting point that we aren't autonomous over here.

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Things like space, time, logic aren't more ultimate than God Himself. So God is the ultimate reference point in predication.

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Every fact is an analogical fact. Every fact is revelatory of God to a certain extent.

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So I think that's the first point.

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And then going on until in chapter 13 actually presents a critique of how non -reformed

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Christians actually can't answer Kant's critique. Because in a certain sense they fall into some kind of rationalistic pit.

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So all non -reformed Christians, when you look at their epistemology, they to a certain extent don't treat

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God as the ultimate reference point in predication. As they believe that you can know some truths without recourse to revelation.

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Independently of God, whether you're a Christian or not. And if that's the case, then again human autonomy enters the picture.

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And knowledge becomes something that you do as an autonomous creature. And then the picture then of man is that they know facts or like atomistic discrete facts comprehensively without the need for revelation.

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And if you can see that, then any revelation that God might give you in scripture becomes what

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Van Til calls like an irrational assertion against your rationalistic picture of reality.

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Because the words that God uses can't mean anything more than what you as an independent autonomous creature have already determined them to mean.

32:57

Which then at once means that God becomes unknowable. So it's interesting then that it's only the reformed or Calvinistic scheme that protects objective analogical knowledge of God.

33:13

And that doesn't fall into the spit of making God unknowable as the creator.

33:20

And now as a recent father myself, I think there are lots of analogies that you can draw from just observing children.

33:31

And I think this is the closest thing that I was able to get you to kind of bring this together into more understandable language.

33:40

So I've got a baby daughter and she knows very little. She certainly doesn't know anything comprehensively.

33:47

But she is being raised in the context of a loving family home.

33:54

And what she knows, although very little and not comprehensive, is true.

34:02

And that is something about warmth and love and the care that she is receiving.

34:08

And then she grows in that knowledge. Right. But even though her knowledge isn't comprehensive, it is still true.

34:15

And in that same sense, because we are living in this world, which is a

34:21

God, how can I say this? God contains creation as his finite reflection.

34:28

Like everything around us is in God. We live and move and have our being. Right. So he is our ultimate context in which we live and move and know and do our things.

34:41

Which means that we do attain knowledge of God, analogical knowledge.

34:48

It's not comprehensive, but it is nevertheless true as far as it goes.

34:54

Yeah. That can only be the case in the reformed system. The way you explain yourself reminds me of Van Til, uses a little analogy like that.

35:03

Don't he look like him a little bit? Yeah, I was going to say, he looks like Van Til Jr. with his glasses.

35:08

You read so much, you're going to turn into him, bro. Hey, I love this comment here.

35:15

Immanuel Kant, but at least Immanuel tried. That's awesome.

35:21

Hey, I like this comment here and I agree. I think that argument about non -reformed

35:27

Christians need more specificity or put into a syllogism. I'd like to see it in syllogistic form myself.

35:32

I'm a non -Calvinist Christian and I don't buy the argument. Yeah, that's fair. I see where people are coming from when they don't buy it.

35:39

I do agree that that line of thinking needs to be fleshed out more. I know for sure that Van Til purposefully developed this system within the context of a reformed doctrine of God and reformed theology.

35:51

But to pull that out more and be more specific, I think is something worth exploring in more detail.

35:58

So thank you, Rook and Pawn. I totally agree that it's something to explore in more detail.

36:04

So maybe that'll be something we can focus on in the future. So let's jump on to the next question.

36:09

Thank you so much for that, Arne and everyone else who chimed in on that. If you want to see more in detail that by Van Til himself,

36:18

Calvin's Calvinism. Calvinism? Van Til, his defense of the case for Calvinism.

36:28

Oh, OK. That explains in detail why it is the reformed

36:37

Calvinistic theology that only accounts for the preconditions of intelligibility.

36:43

For the predication and things of that nature explains the why. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

36:49

I don't. That's I don't think I own that one. Holy cow. Well, I'll get Amazon anyway. OK. Here.

36:55

This one is from our team. One thousand dollars. You can get it to me in the kingdom when we get to heaven.

37:02

Well, you got that book, bro. Let me check it out. This is from our dear friend and complete and absolute lover of all things presuppositional

37:11

Sam Cotty. And he's got he's got a question here.

37:18

I like this one. I like the example he used was actually pretty funny. I laughed when I when I read it.

37:24

So thank you, Sam. Time to use your imagination yet again. He always starts with those fun introductions to his questions.

37:32

I can envision an imaginary being with all the

37:37

Omni properties and is triune. And here are the three members of this trinity, the dude, the bro and the invisible guy.

37:47

And this can account for intelligibility, rationality, morality, and can solve the problem of the one in the many.

37:56

What is the argument that only the Christian God can do these things and not some other alternative with the same properties, but did not have a physical son born of a virgin in Bethlehem?

38:11

Anybody want to take a stab at that one? And when you do so, use your imagination yet again.

38:19

There we go. Thanks, Sam. I'm just joking around. But thanks for the question, Sam. I had that conversation with him in the group and I'll keep it simple.

38:29

I'll let the other guys get into the deeper weeds of that. But real simply, all he did was describe the

38:38

Christian God and use in different terms. And for me, my opinion, when they do that, that shows the absolute nuclear power of the

38:51

Christian worldview, that they have to mimic it to such a detail. In order to try to refute it.

38:59

So all they did was use our worldview, change a few words and just said, ha ha,

39:08

I got you. Now, what are you going to do? Ain't nothing to do. All you did was prove our point.

39:15

Ain't nothing to do. All you did was prove the strength of the Christian worldview by changing a few terms.

39:23

Yeah. And the second point is as Barnard showed, is that we have an actual revelation of God.

39:35

And this is what I told him in the in the in the discussion that he lacked a revelation that we have.

39:44

Right. We want to make up a revelation. And all you did was add to the power of the

39:50

Christian worldview by adding some revelation. So, yeah, someone said this.

39:56

They told me, oh, well, what if the God revealed is all is the same as the Christian God, except that he's giving me private revelation of this other stuff?

40:03

I'm like, well, he's not the same as the Christian God because he's giving you private revelation that we can't test.

40:09

And the Christian God, which is an essential part of the Christian worldview, is that the nature of the revelation he's given is public.

40:15

It's public revelation. So once you appeal to private revelation, then you get into subjectivism and other issues.

40:22

But this reminds me of the spaghetti monster analogy. Well, I don't need God. You know, the spaghetti monster created the universe.

40:29

Well, what's the nature of the spaghetti monster? Oh, well, he's transcendent and beyond the material universe. Oh, is is he material?

40:36

Well, no. Well, then he's not spaghetti. Oh, no, this spaghetti is immaterial transcendent spaghetti. Oh, OK.

40:42

So now you have to tweak the definition of what it means to be spaghetti so as it fits the exact attributes of God.

40:48

It's a silly argument, and it's a bad analogy, and it doesn't take seriously the metaphysical nature of God.

40:57

And the fact that the nature that he has is actually necessary to make sense out of the very notion of transcendence and materiality and relationship between those.

41:06

But anyone else have any thoughts on that one? I do want to jump in a little bit on this.

41:12

I think when it says time to use your imagination, building on what Ricky says, I think the analogy, if we use our illustration and using our imagination, what he's doing is almost like this is a guy coming over and saying, hey,

41:24

I don't believe that the U .S. dollar that you're holding actually exists and have value and everything that you said.

41:31

So I'm going to draw here my little picture of what looks like a U .S. dollar. Why is my

41:36

U .S. dollar not better than yours? So what he's doing, all of us would say, that's kind of strange to argue with a counterfeit, to argue there's no such thing as something that is true.

41:47

So I would answer number one with that. Number two, doing an internal critique. A big theme of Greg Bonson, presuppositional apologetics, is internal critique.

41:55

From what he has written, I thought it's interesting that he's not very fully Trinitarian as the way he thinks he says, because in one of his question is, what is the argument that only the

42:05

Christian God can do these things and not some other alternative God? Remember his false trinity of the dude, the bro, and the invisible guy.

42:12

With the same properties, and I want to point it in attention because theological terms matter. When he says the word properties, we would use the term

42:21

God has attributes and not property. Because God is not a composition of all these things because we believe in the doctrine of divine simplicity.

42:30

That when we say God is love, God is not 50 % love ingredient and mixing everything else with all these properties.

42:37

We would say that's his attribute, that's who he is in the doctrine of divine simplicity. So right away, you already see his version is not the fully biblically

42:46

Trinitarian because within the doctrine of the Trinity, we also have embedded with it is also doctrine of divine simplicity.

42:53

That when we say Jesus Christ is God, he's fully God. He's not one third God, one third

42:59

God, as if he's made out of property or composite parts. So I would actually point that out. Number one, it breaks apart because if God is made out of parts and properties, then we have to ask what brings all these properties together?

43:11

Who compiled, in other words, who's the creator of this God, so to speak? So number one, the critique is problematic because he's already a contingent being with property.

43:20

Number two, he mentioned, let's just say we give the benefit of the doubt to be most charitable. He means the term attribute in the sense that we mean of it.

43:28

So God has love. God have righteousness in the same way with the key word. He says same as a

43:34

Christian triune God. And then it says the exception is this with this version that he has.

43:40

There is no physical son born of a virgin in Bethlehem. In other words, there's no

43:45

Jesus who's savior. So my second internal critique would be in light of this is to say this is where you have the problem, the dilemma.

43:52

How could God be someone who's a redeemer and showing grace and mercy and love and yet also be holy, just and righteous?

44:01

We're in the book of Romans. We've seen the Bible argues that all these attributes is compatible.

44:08

And actually, if you do a biblical study exegetically, you'll see that the book in Romans, one of the word that appears a lot is the word righteousness is trying to say, how is it that God could be righteous to redeem people and yet judge and all these things?

44:22

And it comes together with this beautiful, glorious doctrine of salvation by grace, justification by faith, and Christ, what he has done for us.

44:31

And included in that is embedded that Christ is actually incarnate. If you see the beginning of Romans chapter one in the first four verses.

44:39

And then on top of that, it's interesting. He goes after a physical son born of a virgin in Bethlehem.

44:45

And that's actually a prophecy, kind of like what we said earlier, that what we believe in Christianity is not private revelation, but it's objective revelation.

44:53

That is a prophecy from the book of Micah, chapter five, verse two. And part of presuppositional apologetics, we believe scripture is self -evidencing.

45:00

But I don't think scripture is self -evidencing in a cartoon way. That is only just because it says it. And that's true.

45:06

The more we read it, it should be relevant to us that we know more compellingly. It's true. But it's not something that's flat.

45:12

It's also the fact that there's messianic prophecies. That in Micah 5, 2, hundreds of years before Christ was ever born, there was this prediction already.

45:22

So even the thing that he brings us up shows even the superiority and the compellingness of Christianity versus his.

45:30

So the internal critique and also the two internal critique argument that I bring up. And also the fact of messianic prophecy shows why this is different than his mere imagination.

45:41

So I'll let the floor go to others. Thank you for that. Yeah. When I read this, I was like, yeah, he's just kind of ad hoc defining this deity.

45:51

And, you know, I was thinking of Shakespeare, right? A rose by any other name smells just as sweet. Right. You're just talking about the giant

45:57

God, bro. Right. So the counter worldview that he just presents here is going to have to be fleshed out more, too.

46:03

Right. He's given bare minimum. There's nothing. I mean, he's got to give us more details. Right. Does this God reveal?

46:09

Has he revealed? Is this revelation public? If so, where is it? Right. Remember, the God of Christianity is for us the metaphysical basis for reality.

46:17

And his revelation is our epistemological link that's required to know accurate information about the created order.

46:23

So the more you press this hypothetical worldview, it ends up being a cheap carbon copy of the genuine article. Right. If you if you press.

46:31

OK. But again, here's another interesting thing that I that comes to mind, that if you're positing this one competitive worldview.

46:38

That is a transcendentally necessary world is a necessary precondition for knowledge.

46:44

Do you hold to that worldview? You reject the Christian worldview and then you're making up a hypothetical, which apparently you don't you don't believe.

46:52

Where are you standing when you put put forth this counter counter example? Are you standing on a worldview that provides the necessary preconditions for the meaningfulness of you to even give us this hypothetical?

47:03

It presupposes that you are neutrally and autonomously floating in between the options to have an objective perspective.

47:11

And again, that is an assumption that is fallacious and is not a sufficient foundation to provide the context and adequate preconditions for the very intelligibility of the objection itself.

47:22

So those are my my two cents on on that. Any any anyone else before I move on to the next one? Shout out to Robin.

47:28

I think he responded to Sam directly, I think, to this question. Mm hmm.

47:34

Yeah, I remember something like, congratulations, Sam. You discovered Christianity about 50 years later.

47:42

But by the way, Josh, you've been on my show and we covered the very topic of Christianity.

47:49

And so folks can check that out as well. I think it's a picture of two Jesus is looking at each other is like there's a one

47:55

Jesus and then one that's supposed to be. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was that was a good one.

48:01

And again, I want you to notice. That with all due respect, that the atheists view worldview, whatever they want to call it, their basic presuppositions, a lot of them claim it's not a worldview.

48:17

Fine. Whatever you want to call it. It's so foolish and weak that they have to abandon.

48:27

Their position in order to, you know, become temporary theists in order to try to argue against Christianity.

48:39

Again, it shows the strength of the Christian worldview and God's revelation.

48:44

God's word is supreme and there is nothing. Nothing that can come against it, because when you do, it's foolishness.

48:53

Hmm. Yeah, I agree. All right. Let's jump to this next. This next one can be answered pretty quickly.

49:00

Did God create logic? Go. Anybody? No, no, no.

49:06

But wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, Joshua. What are you saying? So there is something that exists eternally alongside

49:14

God. This abstract notion called logic. I thought God exists.

49:20

I say, bro, he's independent of anything else, right? You know that we have the threat, the scary threat of abstract objects.

49:27

Can you explain a little bit about what Christians believe about God and logic, Joshua? Well, actually,

49:33

Jim already kind of alluded to him. He was talking about the difference between a property and an attribute. And logic is not a standalone entity.

49:42

And then as well, also alluded to it and that there's nothing outside of his control. Everything is revelatory of his nature.

49:49

Everything depends on his creation. And so it's just like a false dichotomy to put the two together.

49:56

Logic is a reflection of the way God thinks, the way God ordains, how he has ordained in the past, how he will ordain into the future, how we structure the universe and so forth.

50:08

All the propositions in the Bible, he can't deny himself and whatnot. So sure, if you're a good

50:14

Kantian, maybe you could say logic's a limiting notion and there's also some God out there and whatever they might spew, who knows.

50:21

But for a Christian God, logic is the way in terms of what he thinks. It's a reflective way that we could describe it,

50:29

I guess, in human language. Does anyone agree, disagree? By the way, if someone says something, your fellow pre -sub brother who says something, if you disagree, feel free to share.

50:40

Hey, I have some different thoughts on that. That's perfectly fine as well. We won't boot anybody, but we want to hear the wide variety of views even within the

50:49

Vantillian tradition. So if there's any point of disagreement, feel free to express that.

50:54

It's perfectly fine. I see in the comments, the sire is throwing me under the bus there.

51:05

This for me is particularly an interesting question. I don't disagree with anything that Joshua just said.

51:14

I'm not entirely sure if I'd go as far. Maybe then

51:20

I do believe that God created logic. But just in the sense that we don't know and think as God thinks.

51:31

So the logic that we use here is a finite reflection of God's internal consistency.

51:38

And whether that means that logic is created, which I think it does, doesn't I think in any way detract about the attributes of logic or make them completely useless in speaking about God insofar it as long with all other facts are reflective of God.

51:57

And it's not something that's above God, right? Yeah, excellent.

52:02

Thank you for that. Just a quick shout out to Reform Disciple 1689. Thank you so much for your $5 super chat.

52:08

That is greatly appreciated. Reform Disciple asks, when will Transcendental Arguments by Bonson and Butler come out?

52:15

Also, I love you guys. You've been such a blessing. Well, thank you so much for those kind words. And I would assume that that question is for Mr.

52:22

Pillows. Yeah, I am currently in the final proofreading of it.

52:28

It's been a long time. But we have everything finished. I typed in indexes of names and of subjects and had to get the appendix in there, get some block quotes restructured, pages restructured.

52:44

Table of contents restructured. So it's been a huge work to take on.

52:50

But I am going through the last proofreading of it now. Probably, I mean, ideally before the holidays, before Christmas time, you know, but I'm not entirely sure.

52:58

Are you going to find it in your stocking? Yeah, I mean, you know. But yeah, so it's in the final proofread as of right now.

53:08

And I will send it to Gary probably this week, the end of this week.

53:13

I'll send it up to the publishing house again. At this point, it's nothing more than just typos and maybe word changes or spacing issues and so forth.

53:23

But the book basically is done. It's just I'm going through it one more time with one clean sweep.

53:30

Very good. Well, thank you for that. And thank you for the Super Chat, Reformed Disciple. We got another $5 Super Chat from Richie Torres.

53:36

Thank you so much, brother. I really appreciate that. He says, how do you respond to the atheist who claims they can make sense of logic given their materialism?

53:44

Yeah, you got some people like this where when we talk about logic, we think of logic often as an abstract notion.

53:51

You have people who are nominalists who would deny kind of universal categories and abstract notions.

53:57

What do you guys think about this question? Can an atheist make sense out of logic materialistically?

54:02

I mean, what are his options? What are the dead ends that one finds when one pursues those options?

54:09

Any thoughts? I would say go for it. Yeah, go for it.

54:14

Let's see it. That's what we've been asking for decades. That's right.

54:20

So if you can, let's see it. And let's see you be internally consistent with materialism and accounting, ultimately justifying logic and also without being self -refuting.

54:39

Right. Someone says here, and I think this often is what they'll say, they will say logic is just descriptive as opposed to being prescriptive.

54:48

How would you interact with that? Says who? According to what? Whose description? Should we follow fuzzy logic,

54:55

Western logic, some Eastern logic? Like whose descriptions? It's the according to what standard just reformulated into a different context.

55:02

I'll make my own descriptions. Yeah. All right. If the laws of logic are laws of thought, there is a prescriptive nature to that.

55:10

And the question is, if it's totally materialistic, I think first and foremost, if everything that is is material,

55:17

I think first and foremost, where is it physically? You know, geospatial, but if they see is just processes of how things relate.

55:26

I think the next question is in order to make it prescriptive, like in the other side of Pluto, the side that we don't see.

55:33

The question I often ask is, does the law of logic still apply there? Could there be someone that in the other side of Pluto where we have not empirically verified?

55:41

Could someone be half pregnant? Could, you know, could a half alive cow exist? Things like the nature of people say that.

55:48

They identify that way. I identify as half pregnant. I'm sorry.

55:55

I didn't throw that in there. This is the crazy world we live in. Yeah, the crazy world we live in. And if it's the case that they take that,

56:01

I think they'll take the bite, the bullet. The laws of logic is not prescriptive in any way. Let's see how people live that world.

56:09

Yeah. Thank you for that. Here's another one more question from the comments. We're going to jump it back into our main questions here. How's everyone doing on time?

56:15

You guys are OK? OK. OK. So Davinsky Makalensky.

56:22

I think I got that right. Oh, my goodness. OK. I've said it really fast. It'll sound like I'm speaking in tongues. I apologize. Davinsky. There we go.

56:28

That sounds really – I love that name. It sounds awesome. So Davinsky asks, who would you suggest as a new or upcoming presupper for books to read?

56:37

Like who is the next Bonson or Clark? Has any of you identified an upcoming Bonson or a

56:42

Clark or anyone along those lines? I'm just going to release another

56:48

Bonson book. And now you're looking for someone after Bonson. We've still got more Bonson, bro. Like I put years of work into this book.

56:57

All right. Yeah. That's a good question because usually what we're reading is a lot of just different explanations of what we already know and things like that.

57:11

I would say Bosserman. Brent Bosserman.

57:19

Sheesh. That's actually writing books. Yeah. That's hard.

57:27

I guess Bosserman isn't really an upcoming guy. I mean – Yeah. If we're talking about up -and -comers,

57:33

I would say – How do you say Danny's last name? I could not tell you. Akande?

57:39

Yeah. Is that how you say it? Yeah. Dude, let me tell you something about Akande. Okay. Kid Preso. Mike Weaver and Daniel Akande.

57:46

And Arne is an up -and -comer. So, yeah. He looks like Van Til, so he's probably the next Van Til. Let me tell you something about Daniel.

57:53

I had Daniel on. He actually wrote a book. He wrote two books. That's Kid Preso. Yeah, that's right.

57:59

I don't want to take too much time looking for the book, but let me tell you something. I was talking to that guy, and he said that he wrote that book on his cell phone.

58:09

Yeah. Like, he did. The whole thing like this. The boy wrote a book, and it's good.

58:15

It's solid stuff. Man, if you could write a presuppositional book with some solid philosophy and good argumentation on your cell phone,

58:24

I mean, that makes you up -and -coming in my book. What else can you do? Daniel is like some kind of anomaly, because he's been discussing these things like really deep philosophical

58:39

Van Tilian stuff since he was like 16 years old.

58:45

There it is. There it is. When I met him, he was 16. That's why I started calling him

58:51

Kid Preso, because he would come up with stuff. I'm like, how old are you again? Oh, I'm 16.

58:58

This book was written via text. It even got emojis right here when it says, like, don't be a fool.

59:06

It has the foolish emoji. I'm just kidding. What do we got? I wrote this on my phone myself.

59:13

213 pages of a book written on a cell phone. That's pretty gangster in my book.

59:21

All right. Let's - If I could just mention just two names real quick. I think Chris Bolt is another one, and also

59:27

Lane Tipton, who's someone that's one of the students of Bonson with Reformed Forum.

59:35

Yeah. If you want to learn Reformed Theology or Presuppositionalism today, you need to go to the

59:43

Reformed Forum website and look at those courses. Absolutely. They're ridiculously good, man, and free.

59:51

Tipton's on there a lot. Tipton, Cameron Posey is one of the hosts.

59:57

Yeah. I've had Lane on the show, and it was an excellent episode. I mean, it's pretty deep, so it's not, like, introductory stuff, but if you want to dive deep,

01:00:06

I mean, Lane's got some good, good stuff, so definitely check

01:00:11

Lane out. Richie Torres, thank you so much for your $2 Super Chat. He says, Daniel has three books, and he's a beast. Yes, I think he's got some really good resources, and I always get his emails when something new is coming out.

01:00:20

So I'm super excited about what he's putting out. Let's kind of jump right back into our questions then. Our next question is about simulation.

01:00:29

How do you apply a presuppositional apologetics to the notion that perhaps we are in a simulation?

01:00:35

Anyone have thoughts on that? I wouldn't mind you start chipping in here.

01:00:40

I don't know. Jim wrote on it in preparation. Okay. So when I researched the question about the nobility of the incomprehensible

01:00:50

God, it immediately took me back to the creator -creator distinction and some fundamental reformed principles, right?

01:01:01

The simulation hypothesis essentially is just a fancy way of negating that.

01:01:06

It's just a fancy way of saying God isn't ultimate, but things like logic, time, space, chance, those things are ultimate, not

01:01:23

God, right? Because what is a simulation? A simulation is something that runs on a computer, right?

01:01:29

What is a computer? A computer is a system that runs humongous amounts of ones and zeros and computes things on electricity and processes logic that takes up space that processes things in time.

01:01:43

So if you're saying you're living in a simulation, it's just a fancy way of saying the world that I'm living in is fundamentally not governed by God.

01:01:53

It's governed by space, time, logic, chance. And then you could take it like any other worldview that would negate

01:02:00

God as the creator. So the simulation hypothesis for me in some initial thoughts that I have don't present any difficulty for me in like a specific challenge against the

01:02:14

Christian worldview that should be overcome with different methods. Right. Yeah.

01:02:19

I debated. I did a debate on the gospel debate.

01:02:37

Marlon Wilson's. Yes. Marlon. I was like, man, I'm about to call him Marcy. I'm like, no,

01:02:43

I don't think he's going to like that one. Marlon. Gee, sorry. I need more coffee.

01:02:48

But yeah, I think it was like two years ago, two or three years ago, the guy didn't even believe it, but he took on the position of the simulation theory.

01:03:03

And yeah, pretty much. I debated him like I would any other.

01:03:10

Yeah. When people use the simulation or like the brain in the vat, they're kind of like, you know, it's kind of those skeptical arguments.

01:03:19

Right. Like, how do you really know? Right. I think simulation analogies and brain in a vat analogy, they press this issue of like agnosticism ultimately.

01:03:28

But I think that on Christianity, God has revealed to us the nature of reality.

01:03:34

And to suggest the possibility that we are in an illusion of some sort is to be arguing from a different perspective.

01:03:41

It is not a question that adequately addresses an internal critique of the Christian worldview.

01:03:48

For me, it's kind of like asking, well, how do you know the God of Christianity isn't lying to you? Well, if he was lying, we're no longer talking about the

01:03:55

God of Christianity. We're not talking about the Christian worldview. And so if we're dealing with ultimate paradigms in comparison of worldviews,

01:04:01

I think simulations, brain in vats, anything that will cut us off from knowing creation in some way, shape or form in any true sense,

01:04:09

I think is an external critique. And all we need to do at that point is say, hey, you're not critiquing the

01:04:15

Christian worldview. What you're suggesting is a hypothetical is literally impossible, given my presuppositions based upon God's revelation in scripture and so forth.

01:04:24

So those are my thoughts on that. Yeah. Just adding to that, I would actually say probably if someone brings that up,

01:04:30

I would also say, are they a computer simulation or are they real flesh and blood? If they are a computer simulation, if all of this computer simulation,

01:04:41

I think the question is, could that question be even ignored that this isn't from an actual person?

01:04:46

And of course, we're a real person. We do have personal relational obligation to interact or respond according to various relational contexts.

01:04:58

But I think if the question, if it truly is that everything is computer simulation, we actually have no obligation to actually respond to that person because I think there's a sense it's a self -defeater also as well.

01:05:09

That this is what was raised before me. It's not a real legitimate question. It's not even really a question from someone, but it's nothing more than mere computer simulation.

01:05:18

So I think there's an absurdity with that. I think secondly, I think also as well, it eventually presses the line a lot of what is real and what is true, because if you say the true state of affairs, it's not what we think it is.

01:05:31

Rather, it's just computer simulation. And that's truly reality. I think there's a tension there of how do we even define what is real and what is true.

01:05:40

I think there's a tension there. I think on top of that, I think it's fair to even ask what's the evidence they have for that there is a computer simulation, especially with such a big global claim.

01:05:50

I do think they have a burden of proof. But I also think this is where our worldview comes in. If we're a

01:05:55

Christian, the answer of how we deal with this is very different than, for example, if someone is a naturalist, where they believe the whole system of the world, nothing is nothing more than natural.

01:06:05

There's nothing outside of the universe. If that's the case, if we ever would know there's a computer simulation,

01:06:13

I think it actually requires outside information penetrating into the system, the computer simulation, to tell us this.

01:06:20

But with the naturalists, built in with their epistemology, everything that is is just only within the universe.

01:06:27

There's no way for anyone to epistemically even know, even to respond, to even say.

01:06:32

They could say, well, maybe I feel like there's a glitch I see sometimes in my eyes. But then we would say, no, it's nothing more than just within your own thing.

01:06:39

So I think epistemologically, your worldview does come into play with that. And I think no matter what, you can never run away fully from this issue, because there's still the question of baseline reality, of why is it there's still ethics within the relations, whether it's simulation or not.

01:06:56

What is our obligation? We're searching. Why is it we're still driven as beings to be truth -driven?

01:07:03

And even the fact that sentences, things like that, have their truth there. Like all these questions of reality is not fully avoided, but now they just push it a bit back.

01:07:13

But then the question, the traditional question of philosophy and theology of the need for God, all of that is still there and is still buried.

01:07:20

But now they're added with the extra layer of just saying there's someone that does the simulation, which they kind of hope it's their main focus instead of on God.

01:07:28

I do want to think it's important to take a step back to realize that while there's worldviews in history that might not necessarily believe in computer simulation, there's worldview that is approximate to that in some ways that's adjacent.

01:07:43

And those are worldviews, especially in Eastern religion, that believe reality is not what you think. The physical, what you see, the physical is not real.

01:07:51

Everything is an illusion with the doctrine of Maya in certain Eastern religion. And I think we also want to press that.

01:07:57

If we really believe that, if worldviews have consequences, then what does it look like?

01:08:03

I think that is a more of a Schaeffer line of presupposition apologetics to say, what is the cultural fruit of that?

01:08:10

I think it's an ugly fruit, which you see is not progress and development, as you see as Christianity in the engine of the historic development of ideas in the

01:08:18

West and where it leads to. So I think that's where my response would be with that.

01:08:23

All right. Thank you for that. Let's take a look at our next question.

01:08:30

What qualifies as grounding something in our kind of common presuppositional conversations online?

01:08:38

We will often say something. Well, how do you ground logic? How do you give an account for A, B or C?

01:08:45

What do we mean by that? If anyone wants to tackle that? I'd say something is grounded if it fits within the

01:08:54

Christian revelatory system. OK. So I think Bosserman speaks about this a bit in his book.

01:09:02

But essentially, when engaging with revelation, specifically that you find in scripture and you go about the world, you start building or reconstructing this worldview as you become aware of things that you might not have been able to articulate before and like the knowledge of God.

01:09:25

Right. So we all know God, even though you can't articulate it as a child. But then as you grow, you can start articulating things.

01:09:33

And then some ideas might arise that just resists being integrated into the

01:09:39

Christian system. And if it can't be integrated, then that is considered as a contradiction and as such can't be grounded in the

01:09:50

Christian worldview. So then if you go specifically and then you think about things like the laws of logic or the ability to predicate, these things can be grounded in the

01:10:03

Christian worldview as the Christian system as a whole. It fits nicely into the system.

01:10:11

And the Christian system can make sense of predicating a universal to a particular and things like that.

01:10:20

Yeah. I think it's important to draw the distinction, too, Arne, between grounding something and accounting for something.

01:10:29

When we account for and we use this kind of popular parlance. I think what we we're not simply because a lot of people will.

01:10:36

I read this on Facebook. I don't engage in a lot of the comments, but I do. I do read them every now and then. And someone will say, well, given account, you mean like to give just a story of what we think?

01:10:46

And that's not quite what we mean. I think when we use that language, we're often referring to providing a justification for what's your justification for some fact that you are asserting.

01:10:58

But I think because we are using sometimes imprecise language, we'll use common language. How do you account for this and what is the grounding for that?

01:11:07

And I think sometimes we use that as synonyms for what's your justification? And they're not the same terms, but sometimes we use them that way and it can be a little confusing.

01:11:17

So I just think that's an important distinction. Any thoughts there, Ricky? Yeah, that's why

01:11:22

I like to use when I'm getting to those discussions about the accounting and all that is, you know, what is your ultimate justification for those things?

01:11:34

Right. So I'd make that distinction between, you know, a temporal justification as humans, but we're finite.

01:11:45

So, you know, that's it's not really an ultimate justification. Our ultimate justification is

01:11:52

God and His Word, God of Scripture. Right. That's what we mean. Because there's a reality to these things.

01:12:00

There's a, you know, understanding that these are real things that we engage in.

01:12:06

It's part of the real world we live in. And there's a validity to these things that we're using.

01:12:14

And there has to be an ultimate justification for those things. And if not, then you're just being arbitrary and fallaciously circular.

01:12:26

You know, that's another term we use to make the distinction again.

01:12:32

See, when it comes to Christian philosophy, apologetics, theology, polemics, distinctions are vitally important.

01:12:45

One of the mantras of the Reformation and the Reformers is we distinct.

01:12:52

Anytime they wrote something, the Reformers had paragraph -long titles to their autographs.

01:13:01

I mean, yeah, their articles and their books, their titles were this big.

01:13:06

On the doctrine of justification and its forensic implications of the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It starts with a question, is this, that, the other, like this, or that?

01:13:13

We distinct. That's the last thing. We make this distinction. There has to be a distinction between things because things get muddy.

01:13:22

There's conflation going on. That's why we have to be clear with our terms and what we mean by them because we just throw it out there thinking the person knows what we're saying.

01:13:33

Then we get frustrated when they ask another question that you just answered, but you didn't make that qualification.

01:13:41

We just got to be clear in what we're saying. And I like to use that term, you know, what is your ultimate justification?

01:13:49

What do you mean by ultimate? Well, I'll explain it. The Christian worldview, my ultimate justification, it's eternally consistent.

01:13:58

And, you know, it makes sense in my worldview. You can reject it if you want to, but you got to convince me otherwise.

01:14:07

Sure. You got to convince me that your worldview is more consistent or internally consistent or can ground, ultimately justify these things without God and his revelation.

01:14:21

Right. And they can never do it. It's impossible. Yeah. Thank you for that.

01:14:28

So arrogant to say that that's impossible. It is. That's why we also have a term in priesthood that Batson made popular.

01:14:39

You know, the impossibility of the contrary. Mm hmm. Yeah. So the

01:14:45

Bible is true about the impossibility of the contrary and the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit.

01:14:50

Sure. Those are two things that go together. Absolutely. Thank you for that. Now, there are a couple of questions that we'll have to draw things to a close.

01:14:59

Let's take a couple of the comments in just a bit. We're going to I have one I want to ask. Maybe Josh can cover this one.

01:15:07

And then we'll wrap those up and move to kind of a few of the comments, questions in the comments, and then we'll wrap things up.

01:15:14

But thank you so much, guys. It's been a lot of fun so far. I'm sorry, Josh. You had some technical difficulties there. So it happens, though.

01:15:21

So I remember if you guys remember, I had Dr. Braxton Hunter and Dr. Tim Stratton on the show to talk about.

01:15:29

This is years ago. Talk about Star Wars and like worldview and apologetics and like movies.

01:15:34

And I had a technical situation where I got kicked off my own stream and they did the whole show.

01:15:40

And I was in the comments. I'm like, I don't know what's happening. I understand. Especially when you're going live.

01:15:45

You know, I'm watching my own show. It was very meta. Felt like I was in assimilation or something. I'm just kidding. All right.

01:15:51

So this one's for you. And, again, this is another one from our good friend

01:15:56

Sam Cotty from Facebook. He says, if I say P is the case and the argument for that claim is that P must be the case,

01:16:07

I am simply restating the claim. If I say the contrary of P is impossible, that's not an argument for the claim either.

01:16:15

This is not difficult. So when we ask you why, I guess from an atheist perspective, when we ask you why it is the case that only the

01:16:23

Christian God can account for X, Y, Z, the argument can't just be to say that it's because the contrary is not possible.

01:16:32

That's just to repeat the claim. How would you respond to that, Josh? The first thing is

01:16:39

P and the claim for P are two distinct things, Sam.

01:16:44

So there's that. And then second, I've done this dance with them many times.

01:16:50

You do not understand what a transcendental is if you think there can be more than one transcendental that connects with another in any one system.

01:17:01

So, you know, that's like saying nature is uniform. Okay. And making the claim for nature is uniform.

01:17:10

That's the same thing. It's like, no, it's not. It's a claim for it. How do you show that it's the case?

01:17:16

Well, you assume the inverse, the impossibility of the contrary, and show that it's not true.

01:17:23

But then in the nature of the case, there can only be one transcendental. So if nature is uniform, we know that because nature is uniform, in a sense, it's a very kind of rustic way of looking at it.

01:17:34

But basically, you are assuming the very thing you're questioning. To begin with, you're assuming the very thing you're denying or arguing for whatever.

01:17:43

Transcendental is a necessary precondition. It can't help but be assumed because it has to be assumed. So the argument for any transcendental is going to be an assumption of it.

01:17:53

And the claim of it is still different from it itself. And this falls back,

01:17:59

I think, to the first question that you brought up before I left to come here was how you know that only the Christian worldview can make sense out of A, B, C, and D.

01:18:07

Because in the nature of the case, there can only be one transcendental, one necessary precondition, holistically speaking.

01:18:13

Otherwise, you'd have to endorse weird viewpoints or contradictions like it's the case that atheism is true and Christianity is true because they both make sense of reality.

01:18:23

And that's another misunderstanding with the argument. The argument is metaphysical. So we're not arguing for the concept of God.

01:18:30

And Bonson oftentimes systematizes things as being an analytic philosopher. But there can only be one – what would you say?

01:18:38

– existent transcendental in terms of deity. And since the

01:18:44

Christian God can make sense out of the intelligibility and uniformity of experience, unless you're willing to endorse contradictions that, oh, another

01:18:52

God could also exist. And then that God doesn't exist. Then there can only be one God. We already have the answer.

01:18:58

Bonson would say we have the blueprint already. We know the answer. We just have to open it and read it. And so in the nature of the case, there can only be one transcendental if we're going to talk about it from a broad perspective, a

01:19:09

Vantillian perspective, because you can talk about multiple transcendentals about any certain scenario.

01:19:15

But, yeah, so the claim for P and P are separate. And in the nature of the case, there can only be one transcendental because – or, yeah, the default would be to endorse contradictions.

01:19:27

All right. Thank you for that, Josh. Appreciate that. Let's move to the comments now.

01:19:33

There are a couple of questions in the comments. We'll take a couple of them, and then we'll wrap things up, guys. This has been a lot of fun. I really do appreciate you guys taking the time to be here with me, especially

01:19:42

Arne being in – what did you say? Where in South Africa are you, brother? The Jacaranda City, Pretoria, South Africa.

01:19:51

And what time is it now there? It's almost time for me to make coffee for my wife.

01:19:58

We've got to hurry up before he has to make coffee for his wife. It's super early in the morning for him. So I appreciate you making the time and everyone else as well, of course.

01:20:06

So let's take a question here from Meg Smith. Meg says, how do we, Reformed priests up, understand all truth is

01:20:13

God's truth while protecting against the dangers of natural theology? It was a book published by the

01:20:28

Westminster Theological Seminary a while ago. It's something called, like, The Infallible Word. And Ventil has an essay in that called

01:20:35

Nature in Scripture, which I think is useful context to start answering that question.

01:20:41

But Ventil distinguishes between the natural theology of the Greeks and the natural theology of the

01:20:47

Confession, which being the Westminster Confession of Faith. And I think if I have to condense it to a single paragraph, there is a valid Reformed natural theology.

01:21:00

And it's not the same as the natural theology that you find in people like Aristotle or Aquinas.

01:21:07

It doesn't presuppose autonomy. Yes, you don't presuppose autonomy. You don't presuppose the epistemology, which is then built on that autonomy, which states that you can know things in complete independence of God, which, again, makes things like logic, space and time ultimate.

01:21:29

And then you try and infer God from that. But then what you end up is necessarily a dependent

01:21:34

God. So the Reformed natural theology would be different in that it is based on the self -conscious submission of the

01:21:46

Christian to the triune God. And then you can, from there, build up a theology from actually from,

01:21:55

I think, it would be from nature and scripture at all times.

01:22:01

I think you can only distinguish special revelation and natural revelation in theory, but not in practice.

01:22:10

So you always have to interpret natural revelation and special revelation as a single organic revelation coming from God.

01:22:19

And I think the best way to illustrate that, I do have an article on this very question on my on my website as well.

01:22:26

The Garden of Eden, right? Adam was not supposed to interpret the facts surrounding him in independence of God's prior revelation about the garden that he is in.

01:22:40

And so God said, you can eat of all the trees except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Why did

01:22:45

God say that? To make Adam self -conscious of his position as creature so that he knows that he is working with God's facts.

01:22:53

And the meaning of the facts are determined by God. And it's the same with us today.

01:22:59

So you can never, you can never go around this world separating in practice

01:23:04

God's special revelation from his natural revelation. All right.

01:23:09

All right. Thank you for that. Appreciate that. Here's another question from XEO. I don't know how to pronounce that.

01:23:17

But how does Christian God account for analytic statements? So analytic statements are statements that are true by definition.

01:23:25

Just thinking about it, a statement presupposes language, right? Language presupposes logic.

01:23:30

And the triune God is the grounding for logic, as we said in an earlier question. So those are my quick thoughts.

01:23:37

If anyone else has any thoughts on that question. Yeah, I think in light of that, that's what

01:23:44

I was going to say. Yeah, things to add with that is, you know, analytical statement in contrast to synthetic is synthetic is often for it to bear truth.

01:23:57

There's things outside of the statement itself, like, you know, empiricism, things we verified.

01:24:02

I think it doesn't know. It's still even analytical statement. We must remember even there's a bigger context of philosophy of language that why we have questions of, like, why does words being symbols and everything.

01:24:18

Why are there statements that are truth bearers? There's all these questions. And I think a good one to look at, because the shortness of time is

01:24:25

James Anderson. You look up articles he's written, various ones, you know, especially with language.

01:24:33

Language really needs God for the precondition for it to be intelligible and meaningful.

01:24:43

All right. Thank you for that. Let's see here. XZO has another question.

01:24:51

How do you defeat a dial? Is it dial? Oh, my goodness.

01:24:58

I know the word spelled wrong, but diathelism. Is that is that a position referring that where they kind of affirm that contradictory statements can be true or something along those lines?

01:25:10

Anybody familiar with that? I think it's dial a theism or something. Yeah, it's not in my understanding.

01:25:17

It's not a ubiquitous acceptance of contradictions, but only in certain contexts and scenarios.

01:25:25

And I think one, if granting this is accurate, would be if I'm leaving my room to go into another room.

01:25:31

It is true that I am not in my room and I am in my room at the same time. Of course, it's left on, you know, completely unanswered because it's not you're half in your room and half in the other room.

01:25:42

So it's kind of like an almost a linguistic catch there. But it's not a.

01:25:49

Holistically. Rationally viewed approach anyway, dial a theism. Yeah, that's how you spell it.

01:25:55

But, yeah, my understanding is it's really just limited to certain concepts, notions, situations and so forth.

01:26:02

OK, I would also add real quick. I'm sorry. Go ahead,

01:26:08

Arnie. Go ahead, Arnie. I was going to make a joke. I thought dial a theism is what Sam was doing.

01:26:13

Like you're an atheist and you're in trouble. So you quickly dial a theism to save your world view.

01:26:20

There you go. Go ahead, Slim Jim. Yeah, just briefly,

01:26:25

I do want to mention about there are things that there are paradoxes that Christian worldview could account for.

01:26:32

Things that might be, especially the more exacting we look into matters like exactly like the room.

01:26:38

I think there's questions that might be seems paradoxical, especially when you measure things right.

01:26:43

Like is this three inches, four inches? And then you get more exacting stuff like that. You might have that.

01:26:48

So I don't think it pulls the actual dilemma Christianity. Actually, I think every worldview faces this.

01:26:54

But yet Christianity could still account for that. We still have law of identity of saying what this is. And yet there's we still have excluded middle and we're still having statements.

01:27:03

There's still a contradiction being presupposed law. Like when we say various things that we're not saying, we're talking about Josh going to a room.

01:27:12

We're not talking about Arnie, someone that's non Josh, things of that nature. Sure. Yeah. Thank you for that.

01:27:18

This can be the last one is we're running up on an hour and 30 minutes and Arnie's got to get his wife coffee.

01:27:25

So we got to get him out. We got to get him out so that he does. You know, his marriage is saved. You know, I'm saying presuppositional apologetics don't work on your wife.

01:27:32

Unfortunately, it's not the it's a it's not an undefeated argument because tag don't work with you and your wife.

01:27:42

Just saying. Okay. Anyway, this is Darwin to Jesus. If someone says that we start with ourselves when we decide that God is necessary for these things.

01:27:53

What do you say to that? You guys understand that question? If someone says that we start with ourselves when we decide that God is necessary.

01:28:02

Again, it seems like you're presupposing that the decision is autonomous. Is anyone else getting that vibe from this question?

01:28:11

Thanks. Right. There we go. Proximate starting point. So, yes, we do start with ourselves proximately.

01:28:18

But ultimately, metaphysically, we start with God, whether the person recognizes it or not. In order to meaningfully decide anything, the metaphysical situation of the trying

01:28:28

God must obtain and revelation must be a thing to make sense out of that. Right. Can I can

01:28:34

I can I try to paint a clear picture on this? Yeah, because I recently read on the ultimate proximate starting point distinction.

01:28:42

I know it's a source of confusion for lots of people. And let's again take it back to the picture of a baby.

01:28:51

Right. So for a newborn, I've read a lot about babies and how to raise them.

01:28:58

And the thing that stands out for me the most is that when when a baby is born and even even when they are still in the womb, they they know very little.

01:29:07

They aren't really even self -conscious about a lot of things. You know, I think initially they they they perceive the world as as one big sensation.

01:29:16

And then they they they like refine from there on. And as they grow in their understanding and everything.

01:29:22

And and in that process of growth, what what is causing them to grow?

01:29:29

Essentially, it's their context, right? It's the context of the loving home. It's the parent. It's the mother that's nurturing them.

01:29:35

And then they grow and they become more self -aware. But but but but fundamentally, it's the context that causes them to grow in knowledge and truth and understanding.

01:29:50

Right. And in the same sense, it's the case of us. Right. The knowledge of God is something that each one of us has, even though we not all of us might be able to articulate it in words.

01:30:05

Right. So even if we can't articulate it, we we grow in that truth until we reach a point where we can articulate it and become self -conscious of it.

01:30:18

So in a sense, we do we are our own proximate starting point as we operate in this world.

01:30:23

But fundamentally, it's the ultimate context that we are living in that allows us to grow into this truth and reach a point where we can articulate that we've been standing on this foundation of God's universe and God's revelation since day one.

01:30:42

So I think there's a nice analogy in the way that we grow into the Christian worldview if you compare it with the with the development of a baby.

01:30:51

And that that's a nice way to view the proximate ultimate starting point distinction, I think. Yeah. Thank you for that.

01:30:57

All right. Well, that's the last question, gentlemen. It has been a great pleasure to have you guys on and to have you guys share your thoughts.

01:31:07

You guys are doing some great stuff when you interact and Facebook on the post, providing answers to questions and the

01:31:15

Veritas domain and Apologetic Central. Even Josh has some articles on Apologetic Central, too, that are excellent.

01:31:24

And Ricky's got a slamming podcast. If you want to learn, he's got some great content on his podcast as well.

01:31:31

So are there any last words you guys would like to kind of say to the audience before we sign off?

01:31:41

Well, I want to say, too, that, you know, I believe that. Big ups to.

01:31:50

Eli and his podcast, I think, is the best pre -sub podcast on the

01:31:55

Web, period. You know, it focuses on, you know, the reform presupposition.

01:32:02

Yeah. Reform Forum is they're good, too. They encompass a lot of other stuff. As far as apologetics is concerned,

01:32:10

I think people will benefit from his pre -sub. You sign up for that.

01:32:16

Get on his conferences. Absorb everything you can from this podcast because you learn a great deal.

01:32:24

I'm still learning. Get on here. Yeah, I know some stuff, but I'm still learning every day, you know, with all my brothers here as we fellowship together.

01:32:34

So I would highly recommend this podcast. And I don't just say that because he's my boy. I'm really from our belief.

01:32:42

I've been saying that since it started. This is the best podcast out there. Yeah, I want to say real quick, just want to say thank you,

01:32:49

Eli. I mean, I really love it when it's a group of us doing this together. It's a privilege. It's an honor and a privilege.

01:32:56

But I also wanted to share to those real quick on YouTube. I know there's some that do not know Christ. Our biggest thing is we want you to know

01:33:03

Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior, the one who died for sinners and just to trust in him. And he's the one that only saved you philosophically, theologically.

01:33:11

But we want you to be saved in terms of your salvation by trusting in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Thank you for that Slim Jim.

01:33:18

Really appreciate that. Any last words, Joshua or Arne? Thank you for having me again.

01:33:26

Well, it's a pleasure. You have been a great blessing to me through your writing and your friendship. So thank you so much.

01:33:32

And Arne, my website wouldn't exist without you, man. You were the guy who helped with the website.

01:33:40

So thank you so much, man. My wife talks about you all the time. How's that Arne doing from South Africa?

01:33:46

I'm like, yeah, you see him posing. He looks like he's doing good. So I'm very grateful for your help in that area and your writing, your blogs and things like that.

01:33:56

I really do appreciate that. I've learned a lot recently about websites, Eli. And I was thinking we should do a redesign of yours.

01:34:07

I think we can make some nice improvements. Well, thank you very much for that. I appreciate that, brother. It's amazing to share the stage with people, with you guys.

01:34:16

It's a big privilege. Same here. Well, we definitely got to do it again. And we'll cover some other topic.

01:34:23

For folks who are interested, on December 11th, I will be doing an Ask Me Anything livestream.

01:34:29

Those are the ones that I don't plan anything. I just get on here, and you can literally ask me anything you want, and I'll try my best to answer.

01:34:36

I can't guarantee the right answers, but I will try my best. So that's December 11th.

01:34:42

That will just be literally a Taking Questions livestream. If there are a lot of questions, I'll try to plow through as many as possible.

01:34:48

If nobody's watching, then, you know, I'll just do a magic trick or tell a joke or something like that and then sign off.

01:34:56

So we'll see how that works. That's December 11th at 9 p .m. Eastern. And also, Ricky made mention of the

01:35:02

PreceptU. I put a link in there for folks who are looking to learn presuppositional apologetics in a more structured way.

01:35:11

And if you want to support Revealed Apologetics, I do appreciate support, super chats. They're greatly appreciated.

01:35:18

What I do here also contributes to paying the bills and paying the back -end stuff for all the other things that I'm doing.

01:35:24

So it is a great help. Signing up for a class might be a good Christmas present.

01:35:30

Maybe someone is looking to have some structured learning but doesn't want to pay a bajillion dollars to go to seminary or something like that.

01:35:36

That might be something you might want to consider. But other than that, guys, thank you so much for contributing to this discussion, and thank you so much for everyone who has been watching.

01:35:45

If you like what you see, smash the Like button, as the

01:35:50

YouTubers say, and share the content. Until next time, guys, take care, and God bless.