Is Presup Stupid???

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today I am going to have a friend of mine,

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Joshua Pillow, a fellow presuppositional apologist, take a look at a video, it's a pretty old video, entitled

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Five Stupid Things About Presuppositional Apologetics. Very interesting content.

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I'm looking forward to kind of digging in and interacting with the content along with Joshua and getting his insights on the content.

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And Solomon was correct, there is nothing new under the sun, and it's pretty bad.

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Some of these arguments that people lodge against the presuppositional approach, not only are they pretty bad for the most part, sometimes people raise up some interesting and important points that we need to deal with, but for the most part, these are a lot of recycled sorts of arguments that would be answered,

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I think, if someone familiarized themselves with the literature. But, of course, not everyone has the time to do that, and so we will engage with charity on that point, but I do think that going through this video is going to be a good opportunity to use as a teaching tool.

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So hopefully folks who are listening in will benefit from this. Alright, well, today is

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October 25th, and so my guest today is Joshua Pillow. However, on October 27th, which is

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Wednesday, that's right, Wednesday, I'm going to be having Dr. Douglas Gruthias on to talk about the spiritual formation of the apologist.

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How should the apologist who engages in a lot of this intellectual argumentation, this sort of stuff, how should he engage his personal spiritual life?

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Because we want to make sure that when we're defending the faith, it's not simply just this argument sort of deal.

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We're also looking after our own spiritual upkeep. And so there are plenty of examples in our modern context today of people who engage in apologetics, but in the background, spiritually speaking, there's not a lot of good stuff going on.

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And so we're going to be talking about that with Dr. Douglas Gruthias on Wednesday. If you don't know who

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Dr. Douglas Gruthias is, he wrote, let's see if I can, do I even have it with me? Oh, it's somewhere.

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He wrote a super thick book called Christian Apologetics, which unfortunately, I don't know where it is.

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It's somewhere in the back there. And so you guys want to check that out, Douglas Gruthias, Christian Apologetics.

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He's not a pre -stopper, but it's OK. He's got some good stuff in that book. And I think he's coming out with an updated version of it with some new content.

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So looking forward to that. Also, I don't have the dates in front of me now.

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Maybe I do. Let me see if I can get this up. OK, so I don't have the dates up with me now, but I think

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I announced it on a previous episode.

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Oh, here we go. OK, so October 27th, we've got Douglas Gruthias. And then

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November 3rd, I have Toby Sumter to talk about some more presuppositional apologetics issue issues.

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Jason Lyles coming on November 18th to talk about the historical Adam. And I have my guest today,

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Joshua Pillows, coming on with David Paulman, who is a very outspoken opponent of the presuppositional apologetic methodology.

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We'll say that and we're going to have him and Joshua interact in a respectful yet, I hope, engaging dialogue over the issue of apologetic methodology.

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All right. Well, without further ado, I'd like to introduce my my good friend, Joshua Pillows. How are you doing,

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Joshua? I am good. How are you? I'm doing well. What is going on?

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Is there anything new going on? Anything interesting you want to share with folks? Some big news coming up, but I'm not going to expose it yet.

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Very good. Well, I mean, I can identify as anything nowadays, but this is true.

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I have some big news coming up for presuppositional camp and well, for those not presuppositionalist as well, because everyone will benefit from it.

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And that should be coming hopefully within the next week or two. I'll make an announcement in the presuppositional

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Facebook group about it. And yeah, that's really all that's new so far. So, cool. Well, thank you for that, folks.

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Also, I made this announcement a couple of episodes ago as well. I am currently putting out my my online apologetics course.

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So if folks are interested in learning presuppositional apologetics with me as your instructor, you could sign up for my online course at RevealedApologetics .com.

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The course is called PresuppU, Presupp University, Introduction to Biblical Apologetics. The sign up information can be found on my website.

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So if you're too poor to, you know, to do seminary, then perhaps for a reasonable price, you could sign up for an online course.

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It's five weeks, actually. We'll be meeting on Mondays at 9 p .m. to have kind of a

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Zoom class, kind of a live interaction. So I've done it a couple of times before, had some really great students from really across the globe.

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There was one guy who who signed up. He was meeting with us from Norway. So when we were meeting, it was a completely different time where he was.

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And it was it was pretty awesome to see how dedicated he was. But looking forward to folks are signing up, it helps out the ministry financially, as well as it provides some structured education for those who are interested.

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All right. Well, without further ado, let's take a look at kind of the main topic for today.

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And so I'm going to put up a screen here. And what we're going to do is we're just going to play the video, the audio here.

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And I'm not using kind of fancy technology or anything like that. If you guys kind of saw my setup, it's it's pretty.

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It's pretty good. Pretty good. People think like, man, you know, the lighting looks good.

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Kind of that that fuzzy kind of like portrait mode thing going on, you know. But in reality, my laptop is on top of 10 skinny books.

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I have lights that are balancing just on a razor sharp edge here. A bunch of books.

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If I just if I sneeze, everything will come tumbling down. So it's pretty ghetto.

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So all that to say in the video, there is one use of profanity. And so it is at the two minute and 42 second mark.

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I'm going to try my best to catch it. If not, we'll just keep this episode PG -13. So so let's take a look.

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Is presuppositionalism stupid? Let's take a look at five stupid things about presuppositionalism.

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And then we're going to stop at certain points. Here are five stupid things

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I've noticed about presuppositional apologetics. The truth of its first premise cannot be demonstrated.

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The most commonly proposed presuppositional argument these days is the transcendental argument. Stated in logical form, it goes something like this.

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Without God, knowledge is impossible, but knowledge is possible.

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Therefore, God must exist. I'm going to stop right there, Josh. Do you notice that the argument that he says with his mouth is different than the argument that's posted in the back background?

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The argument posted in the background seems kind of bunk. And the argument that he says out loud seems to be a solid deductive form of the argument, as I've seen presented in James Anderson's work.

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So if knowledge is possible, God exists. Knowledge is possible, therefore God exists, which is a logically valid deductive formulation of the argument.

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What's up with that argument in the background? Why do you think that's a proper representation of a presuppositional form of argumentation?

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No. I mean, you could kind of interpret it in an accurate way, but I've never seen anything look like that before.

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And it doesn't match what he's saying either. We give a transcendental argument, and he said just now most presuppositionalists that he knows use the transcendental argument.

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I'm like, most? What do you mean most? That's the only argument we use. We use a reductive argument to prove the absurdity of other positions.

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But we solely use a transcendental argument. So right off the bat, he's kind of just not doing a good job.

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But yeah. Okay, let's continue. Let me zip back here. There is no reason to believe that knowledge or the ability to know things or reason or use logic or any of the other variations of this argument are at all dependent on God.

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The goal of the argument is to establish the existence of God as a necessary condition to the comprehensibility of reality.

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But unless that first premise is true, the argument is not compelling at all. And most apologists who use this argument make no attempt whatsoever to demonstrate the truth of that first premise.

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They simply state it as though it should be self -evident. But it isn't. And that's only one reason why presuppositionalism fails to persuade.

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All right. Let's take a look. So there are a couple of things going on there. Is there something that sticks out to you that you'd want to engage with?

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Yeah, he keeps going back and forth between presuppositionalism and presuppositionalists. Because the video is supposed to be about the apologetic itself.

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And so he's already criticizing what presuppositionalists argue to him or whatever he's seen online.

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So it's like, OK, well, pick and choose, man. Is it the order? What are you trying to critique here? The apologetic itself has its orthodox put put orthodoxly.

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Or is it the apologists that are doing it? Because apologists can be wrong. So it's kind of going back and forth between the two.

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He doesn't understand transcendental reasoning because we can demonstrate it. It's just not in a traditional way of doing things directly.

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We do it indirectly from the impossibility of the contrary. So you show that the Christian worldview is true or can satisfy all the preconditions for intelligible experience and then reject it.

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You're reduced to absurdity, but also to reject it. You have to assume it. And so the whole foundation of transcendental reasoning or van

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Til's is indirect. It's not a practical approach where let's go out into the world and let's look at some evidence or give me a deductive argument in a direct way.

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It's purely indirect. And that's where I think his confusion is coming in. Yeah, I think it's interesting, too, when someone says, hey, they never make an attempt to demonstrate the truth of the argument.

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What they mean because unbelievers are so wedded to the presupposition of neutrality and autonomy.

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What they mean when they say you haven't demonstrated it is that you haven't demonstrated it with the assumption of autonomy and neutrality.

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You haven't demonstrated it in a way that we can look at it as a hypothesis and kind of toy around with the idea and follow your line of reasoning.

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No, as you said before, it's not a direct argument. It's an indirect argument. And so we don't assume the very things that they think we have to assume in order to demonstrate something.

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Which I think is an important point to keep in mind. Also, I don't know who he's talking about.

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Maybe he's talking about Sai Ten Bruggencate or whoever. I think he did this video as a result of engaging

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Sai. Yeah. I think we do seek to demonstrate it. And part of the demonstration,

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I think, goes over some people's head because they don't understand what we're trying to do transcendentally. So the demonstration, the way

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I see it, to demonstrate the transcendental argument is twofold. Number one, part of the demonstration involves showing that the opponent cannot provide the necessary preconditions for intelligibility or knowledge.

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So when we say that the proof for the truth of the Christian worldview is that if it were not true, you couldn't prove anything at all.

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One way that we try to demonstrate it, one of the steps, is to show, you don't believe me,

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Mr. Unbeliever? Try to ground intelligibility and knowledge. The fact that you are unable to do it and survive the internal critiques that are offered shows that,

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A, you can't provide that necessary precondition. Okay, that's step one. And step two, we say, hypothetically grant the truth of the

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Christian worldview and look, it actually can meet those preconditions. Okay? Now, you might disagree with that.

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You might say, hey, but I have some questions. But that is an attempted demonstration.

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Also, folks might say, well, the presuppositionalist, just because he shows that the unbeliever that he's speaking with can't provide those necessary preconditions, falsifying the unbeliever's position doesn't automatically make the

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Christian position true. And I agree with that. Any presuppositionalist worth their salt would say refuting the atheist doesn't prove my position.

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But what you've mentioned before is that we say, well, let's hypothetically grant Christianity and actually it meets those very conditions that are necessary for, you know, the preconditions of knowledge.

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It is the only ultimate transcendental foundation for intelligible experience and knowledge.

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Now, before we go to the next point, I do want to read a quote because I think Van Til and Bonson more specifically addresses this very point of why there must be only one transcendental.

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Okay, so here's an objection that's lost. Again, Van Til and Bonson. Here's a quote here.

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This program of transcendental proof cannot be successful because no matter how long you live, how much you write, how good your arguments are, you will never have refuted all the alternatives.

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Okay, and it's recognized here that this is someone who assumes, who understands the reductio ad absurdum form of the argument.

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They're trying to reduce the argument to absurdity. But Van Til says, and correctly, that you either assume

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Christianity is true or it's not. Similar to this first point, how do you know there isn't another possible worldview out there that would work?

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Okay, so when we say the Christianity provides those necessary preconditions, well, how do you know only

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Christianity provides those preconditions? How do you know there's not some other perspective out there? Well, first I want to say, and then

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I'll read this quote, and then I'll continue on and let Josh comment. Number one, if Christianity does meet the necessary preconditions, then it follows that it is the only perspective that can reach those conditions because you can only have one transcendental necessary foundation for the preconditions of intelligible experience and knowledge.

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Bonson says, the first answer to this is that in the nature of the case, there can only be one transcendental.

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There cannot be two ultimate authorities. Why? Because if there are two systems of truth, you've then lost unity, coherence, continuity, and therefore intelligibility and truth.

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If you have two transcendentals, you'd have to ask what the relationship is between the two systems, what unites the two, meaning what makes sense of these two in the first place.

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What's further is that in order to make sense of the claim that there are two systems by which facts can be made intelligible requires another system in terms of which you're saying that about the other two.

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But you see, if these two transcendental systems are by hypotheses, we can't get behind them to have the one that unites the two.

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To even talk about there being two, there needs to be one perspective in which you talk about the two. But these two that you're talking about are by definition ultimate, and so there can't be a one that unites the two even to talk about their relationship.

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Now there's a lot to unpack there, maybe you can go back and listen to this, but you can only have one transcendental. And if Christianity is a transcendental, and it's sufficiently defended and demonstrated that it provides those necessary preconditions, then it follows it can be the only one.

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That is how you proceed, of course more has to be unpacked, that's how you proceed to show that Christianity provides that foundation without having to refute every single worldview out there.

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That's a mouthful, are there any things you want to comment on what I said there Joshua? I'm pretty sure

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I got goosebumps when I first came across that because I was in such a rut, how do you answer this criticism?

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I've seen it on Facebook before, and of course 20 years ago, Bonson already had the answer. He just never wrote it down anywhere that I know of.

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But anyway, yeah, you can only have one transcendental, it's a necessary precondition. You can't have two transcendentals conflicting with one another.

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So when we talk about there can only be one transcendental, we're talking about in the nature of the case, there can only be one ultimate reality, which is the existence of God and the creation of the universe out of nothing.

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And so to say, well, you know, that's good and all, but there could be another one is basically to say that, well, there could be another reality out there.

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And if you're willing to grant that, then you would have to be open to the law of non -contradiction.

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Because then at that point you're saying, well, okay, the Christian worldview is true, but so is the atheistic worldview is true.

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Or the moon revolves around the earth, but the moon also doesn't revolve around the earth. And those are both true. I mean, that's just absurd.

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So in the nature of the case, there can only be one ultimate reality to speak of. And then Bonson's other point was, well, what if there is another one?

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Now I have two here, but I can't have either of them intelligible to me unless I have another one in a context in which

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I can prove. You need to be standing on a foundation when you're evaluating those two worldviews. Right. And so now I have this teepee, if you will.

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And so now I have another context or area to stand on. But what if someone says, okay, well, what if there's another one here?

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Okay, well, now I got to go up again, don't I? And then someone keeps doing it and I keep going up and up and up and it just, it never ends.

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So there can only be one transcendental. There can only be one necessary precondition and there can only be one ultimate reality.

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Right. You cannot evaluate competing worldview systems independent of a worldview foundation while you are actually critiquing those other options.

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You have to be standing on a foundation. Yeah. All right. Very good. All right, here.

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Let's move along. Its proponents excuse themselves from the problem of perception.

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Due to our unavoidable reliance on our senses and our brain's impressive but imperfect ability to interpret the information gathered by those senses, we can never have true, absolute certainty about anything that we see or hear or taste or touch or smell, let alone about things that can't be perceived by our senses but are nonetheless claimed to exist, like God.

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Some prominent proponents of presuppositionalism, however, and here I'm mainly talking about noted e -baker

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Eric Hovind and the lovable imp Sai -Ten Brueggenke, claim such certainty for themselves.

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God, they say, has directly revealed the truth to them in such a way that they can be certain of it.

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But even this claimed certainty is negated by the problem of perception, because even if there is really a

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God who is feeding them information via divine revelation, there's always the possibility that God could be lying to them.

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God would be capable of crafting an impenetrable deception, one would assume.

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And if everything that Christians know about God is ultimately derived from divine revelation, everything they know could be lies told them by people.

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Unless you yourself are omniscient, how could you possibly prove otherwise? God could be deceiving us, okay?

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Now, this is an important point. I'm just going to say a little because I was talking a lot in the previous one.

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But this is where the idea of internal and external worldview critiques become important.

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Why don't you define for folks what an external and internal critique is and why, when someone engages in an external critique upon the

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Christian worldview, that doesn't work? Why don't you unpack that for us? Yeah, an external critique would be more of a— well, it's bringing in your assumptions, basically, into another system to critique it, rather than doing an internal critique and critiquing it on its own assumptions, on its own grounds.

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And so that just is a recipe for disaster happening. If you want to refute my worldview, then fine.

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But stand in my worldview to show me where it goes wrong. You're incorporating impossible hypotheticals that apply to me.

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God deceiving everyone so that we couldn't know anything isn't my worldview. So come on, my worldview.

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Let's play the game, and we'll go against one on one on another and then show that way internally that it contradicts itself.

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But if you're going to come in externally with neutral assumptions and say, well, hypothetically, it's possible that we could be deceiving—

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I mean, you can say that, but you're not doing anything to my position. You've got to show how it's internally inconsistent to refute it.

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All right. So I don't know if he holds to the position or if he was just explaining that the problem of perception makes it impossible to be certain of anything.

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Yeah, that was really weird. Yeah, I don't know if he believes that position. I'm not sure, because then it seems that he would be, on the one hand, saying we can't be certain of anything, but on the other hand, telling us what our brains are and are not capable of discerning.

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So that seems to be a self -refuting position. But if we were to think of it in a more charitable light, I think he might have just been explaining what the problem of perception is.

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Yeah, if he held to that, it would sound like empiricism, which has been refuted for a while now.

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Hume just obliterated it. It does make it sound like he's saying everything we know, we know by a sense of perception, and that's the only way we could know anything, which is obviously absurd.

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That's not true. But I'm willing to see this in a charitable light. Sure. Another thing

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I noticed that Steve, his name is Steve Shives, he tries to challenge the certainty that the

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Christian can have via God's immediate revelation. That's really when he mentions what Psy says, that God can reveal things to us such that we can be certain.

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Psy is, in his own kind of popularizing way, appealing to what we believe with respect to the immediate knowledge of God.

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Why don't you tell us the difference between the immediate knowledge of God and the immediate knowledge of God?

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So there are, well, off the top of my head, two contexts. When we talk about mediated knowledge of God, we talk about knowing him through nature and scripture, because we have to go to scripture and get truths from that as well.

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The immediate would be the fact that we're all made in God's image, and there's nothing you can do about it. I mean,

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Bantle says you can't efface that knowledge of God. And so that would be an immediate example.

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But when we look at the mediated evidence through nature, it's also interpreted immediately.

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And so now I have an equivocation. I'm using the word immediately in two different ways. So immediately, internally would be like, you know, absolutely.

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But when I look into nature, and it's like, you know, your wife coming in through the door, and you see her, and then there's that split second of, you know, making the connection into your head.

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That's also what we mean by immediately. And mediated revelation, we come to it like that.

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But we also have this inescapable revelation internal to us, despite any natural revelation.

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All right, very good. So again, what I found interesting is that, as I said before, he tries to challenge the certainty that the

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Christian can have via God's immediate revelation, that innate knowledge of God, by appealing to the possibility that God might be deceiving us.

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He says there is always the possibility that God could be lying to us. I found that interesting because how would he know what is possible or impossible?

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It's almost like he's putting himself in a position to know what is possible or impossible with respect to God. If we're arguing worldview systems, which the presuppositionalist is, as you guys have heard me say in the past, that we're not arguing specific facts about Christianity, we're arguing the system of the

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Christian worldview. And so we are, as Greg Bonson says, we're arguing the whole enchilada, right? If we're arguing worldview systems, then a proper internal critique, which he's not giving, he's giving an external critique, a proper internal critique would not allow such a possibility because given the hypothetical truth of Christianity, one,

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God is the standard of what's possible and impossible, and two, if Christianity were true, it's impossible for God to lie,

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Hebrews 6 .18. So while he's presenting these as kind of possibilities, if you grant the truth of Christianity, those aren't actual possibilities.

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And just one last point, there are people who would say, but wait a minute, given the truth of the Christian worldview, the

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Bible gives us examples of God deceiving people, okay? Well, without getting into the details of,

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God doesn't directly deceive people. He does allow certain things to occur in which people can be deceived, but that is still an external critique, right?

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Universal deception is not possible in the Christian worldview, okay? I had a friend back in the day,

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Steve Hayes, folks who are familiar with Steve Hayes' work on the Tri blog, he used to write some really great articles there.

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He passed away maybe a couple of years ago. And I asked him this question about the deceiving

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God objection. He gave me a kind of a short, but I think helpful answer. He says this, with respect to whether God can be deceiving us, we can't extrapolate from examples of God deceiving the wicked in scripture because they carry no presumption that God deceives humans in general.

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Those passages are confined to a subset of humans and not a random sample, but humans who are punished for impiety.

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So not every human being meets the necessary conditions, that is the necessary conditions to being deceived.

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As such, scripture provides no justification for belief in universal divine deception. While it's true that from within the

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Christian worldview, God can allow for deception, and we have examples of that, it does not follow that it's consistent with the

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Christian worldview for everyone to be deceived, such that we would have no justification for knowing anything whatsoever.

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So I think, again, this is a good example of an external critique, not a genuine internal critique.

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Any thoughts on that? Or is that sufficient? Yeah, no, that is sufficient. You will definitely hear a response from that to the effect of, well,

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Eli, you're begging the question because in giving that answer, you're already assuming you're not being deceived, and that's the very thing in question, so how do you know?

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And then again, that gets us back to, we're defending the system, we're defending the worldview. My worldview states I'm not being deceived, either in general or in particular, because I have this knowledge of God, I'm in contact with the external world.

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And so again, this just brings us back to, I would love an internal critique, but you're not giving me an internal critique here.

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You're just giving me external critique. So yeah, get into the Christian worldview and dismantle it that way.

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Otherwise, I think it's just... And what you just said there, I want an internal critique, not an external critique.

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You might have someone say back, well, Mr. Preceptor, I'm not playing by your rules. I'll say whatever

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I want to say. You're not cool, nor are you logical. You're not cool, nor are you logical when you try to critique someone externally.

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You have to realize that when you offer an external critique, you're not even landing punches, right?

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You know who is a good presuppositionalist? You're actually going to be talking with him in November, I think.

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Okay? No. Tom Jump. Oh, December. That's December.

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Tom Jump is an atheist, but if you listen to the way he argues, he's a presuppositionalist. And while I don't think he's a good presuppositionalist, he does at least try, although he fails in my estimation, he tries to hypothetically grant the truth of the

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Christian worldview and try to show, in some cases, he doesn't do it all the time, but he tries to show that given its own standards, look, this doesn't work.

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So at least people try to do internal critique. External critiques don't work. It's not that I'm trying to, you know, set up a narrative.

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Presuppers are often blamed for, you know, having a script. Get him off his script so then people come up with these weird responses to what presuppers say.

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Listen, we all have scripts. We're not just randomly talking. We have a line of argumentation points that we want to make.

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All sides do that. Okay? And I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but as long as you're engaging in external critiquing of worldviews, you're not making any genuine, meaningful, logical connections to make a point against the

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Christian worldview in like fashion. I would not be appropriately examining your position if I am engaging in an external critique.

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All right? Hope that makes sense, folks. Let's continue. If its proponents claim to know what everyone else knows, the easiest element of the presuppositional apologetic to refute, at least as it's formulated by the likes of Hoban and Brüggenke, is their insistence that every other human being shares their certainty about the existence of God because God has divinely revealed himself to all of us.

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All it takes to disprove this, at least from a first -person perspective, is an awareness that I lack the certain knowledge that I'm being told

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I have. I want to stop right there. So check this out. This is how you refute presuppositionalism and the

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Christian worldview claim that all men have a knowledge of God. Ready? All men have a knowledge of God.

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Refutation? Nuh -uh. Nuh -uh.

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I don't have a knowledge of God. Right? There we go. Presupp refuted. We can go home now and pack our bags.

30:14

What's going on here? Why isn't that a sufficient response to our claim that all men have a sufficient knowledge of God?

30:26

Well... Well, let me reformulate that. If you could answer that first question, and why is the assertion that all men have a knowledge of God not an empty assertion?

30:35

How would we go about demonstrating that what we're saying is actually true? Okay, so he... To the first one, he has the naivete to assume that he has himself figured out.

30:46

I mean, especially... I'm going to assume he's an atheist and holds to naturalism and evolution. You want to explain to me that you have everything about you figured out from a materialist standpoint?

30:55

And even granting that... If he grants that there are two aspects to man, you know, mind and body, he's still...

31:02

How do you know that you... Or how do you know that you don't believe in God? You know, he's appealing...

31:08

I love that he said from the first -person basis, I can say, Oh, see, this is wrong because I don't believe in God.

31:14

Well, there are first -order beliefs, but we also have second -order beliefs or iterated beliefs. Beliefs about our beliefs.

31:21

It was the whole subject of Bonson's dissertation, you know. So you could hold to dialectical or conflicting beliefs.

31:28

And so the whole point here, what he's missed is that we have iterated beliefs that he's not taking into account.

31:34

So just to say, Well, I don't believe it, so it's obviously not true. Okay, well, that's fine, but you're not digging deep enough into your epistemology here.

31:42

And then what was the second one? How do we know it's not an empty assertion? Yes. Oh, because God says so.

31:50

Well, yes, that's true. But I think there's more that we can do. How would we demonstrate? And I think that's true.

31:56

God has declared. Here's the thing. Here's his objection, okay? Let me get the list up here.

32:03

Okay, so it says, Its proponents claim to know what everyone else knows. Okay, now look at this.

32:11

Internal, external, right? If Christianity is true, what we claim to know about what everyone else knows is through divine revelation, not through a prideful kind of posturing of like,

32:26

Oh, well, I really know what you believe. If God doesn't exist, then it's true. I couldn't know what you know. I couldn't know what truth you are suppressing, as the

32:33

Bible says. But the fact that he just says, Nuh -uh, begs the question, just as much as people say, presuppositionalists are begging the question.

32:42

Also, when we say that the unbeliever has a knowledge of God, what aren't we saying?

32:47

How about that? That's a question for you. What aren't we saying when we say all unbelievers have a knowledge of God?

32:53

Is the unbeliever hiding it? Is he saying, I really know God, but I'm hiding it.

32:59

I'm lying. Is that what we mean when we say that all people have a knowledge of God? Well, we're not saying that they're completely ignorant of the existence of God or of knowledge of the existence of God, but we are saying that they are suppressing that willfully in unrighteousness.

33:12

I mean, God's revelation so pervades every facet of reality of creation externally to us and innately in us that there's just no escaping it.

33:23

I mean, just going through the defense of the faith, Van Til says that at least 20 times. I have that underlined. We're not saying that he's right or maybe he's probably right.

33:34

We're saying, no, he's wrong because God's revelation permeates every area of experience. He doesn't believe that, and we do.

33:41

That's fine. But now let's talk about worldviews from an internal perspective. We're just going to keep going back to the internal consistency and critiquing of one another.

33:52

Right. And one of the ways that we demonstrate that the claim that all men have a knowledge of God is not empty is that we point to, right?

34:02

We allow them to explain their world and we point to the things they are actually assuming that are inconsistent with their professed unbelief.

34:10

That's the key. Right. And so when they start using ideas that don't make sense within their worldview and can only make sense within a

34:18

Christian worldview, that is an example of the knowledge of God exposing itself. Right.

34:23

And so it's not just an empty assertion. We attempt to draw that out. Now, maybe some people don't do it. Well, maybe some people aren't clear in doing it, but it's not it's not a bare assertion, just as when we say

34:33

God is the necessary precondition for knowledge. That's not a bare assertion. There's an argument there. It's just really what you said at the beginning.

34:41

We need to draw a distinction between presuppositionalism and its argumentation and presuppositionalists.

34:47

There might not. There might be presuppositionalists who don't bring those things out and just say God said it. You're refuted, which that's unfortunate, but we need to be willing to go get into the weeds and engage some of these ideas.

34:57

Yeah, be thankful for common grace, Mr. Unbeliever, because that's the only way you could predicate your argument against God.

35:04

That's right. And maybe after we go through the cup, depending on how long it goes, maybe we could unpack that a little bit, like the specific argument maybe in more detail.

35:12

Okay, so let's continue. Claim to know what everyone else knows. The easiest element of the presuppositional apologetic to refute, at least as it's formulated by the likes of Hoban and Brueggenke, is their insistence that every other human being shares their certainty about the existence of God because God has divinely revealed

35:33

Himself to all of us. All it takes to disprove this, at least from a first -person perspective, is an awareness that I lack the certain knowledge that I'm being told

35:43

I have. Such futile, transparently self -defeating rhetoric.

35:49

We could also turn around the deception. How do you know you're not deceiving yourself? I mean, it's so arbitrary.

35:57

It just arbitrarily, flippantly says, yeah, I don't believe in God, so you're wrong. And well, how do you know you're not being deceived?

36:02

And we just talked about that. We have second -order beliefs, and that's in fact what's happening. He's sitting against his better knowledge.

36:07

He knows God exists, and he suppresses it. That's right. And the how do you know you're not deceived being lodged towards the

36:14

Christian, we have an answer. He doesn't. Given his unbelief, he has no idea whether he's self -deceived.

36:20

He makes himself the final authority, and that is just doomed to failure from the outset.

36:25

Making a subjectivistic starting point, your justification for all your problems is never going to go anywhere.

36:32

That's right. Reveal presuppositionalism as being no different than any other form of apologetics.

36:39

Its purpose is not to persuade. Its purpose is to reassure those who already accept its claims.

36:46

How does he know that? That's interesting. So the objection against the presuppositionalists is that we claim to know what everyone else knows, and apparently that's a no -no, but he has the right to claim to know the purpose of every argument that apologists use is really the purpose is really just to encourage ourselves in belief.

37:04

How does he know that people don't use these arguments because they genuinely think that they're valid and that they're good points to defend the

37:10

Christian position? Right now he seems to be jumping into the minds of people, apologists who use all apologetic arguments and tries to kind of determine the motivation behind that.

37:20

I think that was interesting. Yeah, again, he's going back and forth between presuppositionalism and presuppositionalists, and I would love for him to stick to one and we could talk about it, but it's hard to go back and forth and yeah, sure.

37:35

It shifts the burden of proof. Actually, that's not accurate. It doesn't just, it denies that there even is a burden of proof because not only...

37:46

Is that true? We're asking both sides to prove that their worldview is true.

37:53

Well, we're asking both sides. Who has a burden of proof? Both do. And then we're not denying the burden of proof.

38:00

We accept it, right? No, I mean, you'll have the whole, the mindset of, well, the burden of proof is on the positive claim, you know, so the atheist doesn't have to say anything.

38:08

But that, anything could be formulated in a positive way, linguistically. So it's just, there's nothing there.

38:15

So everyone has a burden to prove their position, obviously. We definitely don't deny it.

38:20

Right. Well, again, we give an argument, right? You might not like the argument.

38:26

You might not understand the argument as the argument's being misrepresented here, but the transcendental argument is a form of argumentation.

38:33

People who are, should be aware of the history of philosophy, I mean, apart from the presuppositional transcendental argument, transcendental arguments in general are a known form of argumentation.

38:44

We're not doing anything that different except our foundation is different. So we're not using some kind of alien form of argumentation that no one has ever used before.

38:53

Transcendental arguments are sort of a thing. Can you briefly kind of share with us,

38:58

I know this is kind of a big question, but maybe you can kind of briefly just give a couple of examples of the utilization of transcendental arguments throughout history, even before Van Til.

39:07

Yeah. The go -to one would be Aristotle in ancient Greece, and he argued transcendentally for the law of non -contradiction.

39:15

Basically, you can't deny, if you deny the law of non -contradiction, you're assuming it exists.

39:21

It's impossible for the law of non -contradiction to not exist. And so obviously, I mean, that's so obvious to most people, and you can see there that, look,

39:29

Aristotle's not going out into the world and finding evidence for this claim. He's not sitting in his armchair like this, you know, what are the big questions?

39:36

He's arguing from the impossibility of the contrary. So this goes back to ancient Greece, and then Kant comes along in the 18th century, trying to save reason and leave room for faith because Hume just completely obliterated anything, any hopes for the possibility of reason.

39:53

So Kant utilizes transcendental reasoning in a constructive sense. He says, the mind has these categories and we impose them onto our experience, and that makes experience transcendental to us.

40:04

And so there's a difference of transcendental arguing there. Aristotle's is ontological.

40:11

It's asserting the existence claim or the existence of a law of non -contradiction. Kant's is constructive.

40:16

So he's saying the mind has to work this way in order for us to have intelligible experience. And then transcendental arguments made a resurgence around the time

40:25

Van Til comes along. Van Til came along in the 30s, really. He started just formulating his argument, but then about the mid 20th century, you'll see transcendental arguments.

40:34

However, this time around, they're not ontological. We're not arguing for the existence of something. They're not constructive like Kant, where we have to think in certain, or our mind constructs certain categories.

40:45

They're conceptual. So now we have a third type of transcendental argumentation. And basically the conceptual one is, well, we have to assume or believe certain things in order to make sense of certain experiences.

40:58

And so there are different varieties of transcendental reasoning. All of them have in common the fact that it's an indirect method.

41:05

I mean, you can't deny what you're arguing for. And therefore all of transcendental arguments are implicitly circular. Not all circularity is the same.

41:13

That's also another naive criticism, but yeah. So transcendental arguments are well -known. They're definitely not popular because we live in a very analytical day and age in philosophy.

41:23

Transcendental arguments are more broad in their scope. Analytical philosophers just want to focus on the minute details of things.

41:29

So they're definitely known. They're different because they're indirect, but they're known for sure. All right. And what's the difference between a direct argument and an indirect argument?

41:38

Like a deductive argument that you gave, or an inductive argument or an abductive argument where I give you a logical formulation of what

41:46

I believe and I have a justification for it. Or inductively I go out and I look for a conclusion in the world.

41:52

And that is going directly from premise, premise to conclusion. Indirect argumentation, you give your argument, transcendental arguments, a syllogism, but then you primarily prove it by assuming it's wrong.

42:05

Say, let me show you what's wrong. Let me show you what happens when Christianity is not assumed or if God didn't exist or whatever.

42:11

And you show that it's absurd and it's actually impossible. And so therefore a Christian worldview is true. Can you give kind of a homey example of that?

42:19

You know, Van Til did that often with kind of the beams under the house. Maybe folks are listening. Some people are listening and being like, what the heck is he talking about?

42:25

I don't really get what this indirect form of argumentation is. Can you give us kind of an analogy, maybe something that Van Til used to show that we have to assume something in order to make sense out of something else.

42:37

And if you reject it, you know, you kind of lose a foundation. Causality would be a good one.

42:43

You know, everyone knows what cause and effect relationships are. And the entire universe operates, excuse me, in a causal fashion.

42:53

Everything I'm saying right now presupposes a causation, right? You cause yourself to say some words to me and the effect is that I'm now answering your question.

43:02

And so the principle of causation is a transcendental. It's a necessary precondition for our intelligible experience.

43:09

So if I want to go about proving that to someone and they don't believe it,

43:14

I'd say, okay, fine. Let's assume the opposite, that there is no principle of causality. And he says, okay. And then he just refuted himself because I caused him to say something.

43:22

The effect was him to say, okay. And so you can't live, you can't think, you can't rationalize, you can't live, you can't walk, you can't drive, but you can't do anything if there was no causal principle.

43:32

I can't, you know, turn the ignition on in my car. I can't put one foot in front of the other when I walk. So every facet of our experience is causal.

43:40

And so causality is a transcendental to experience. If someone wanted me to prove it, I'd say, fine, there is no causality.

43:46

Now look at how absurd, you know, our scenario is now. It's not just absurd, it's impossible. And you're also dealing with kind of subcategories of transcendental.

43:54

So causality, induction, the, you know, the uniformity of nature that the future will be like the past.

44:00

These are all transcendental categories that you could argue kind of and demonstrate their truth by the absurdity of their denial.

44:07

But what we're doing as Christians, as Christian presuppositionalists, we're taking a, you know, if you could put all these transcendental categories, induction, uniformity of nature, causality, and kind of put them in a ball, we're kind of adding a more foundational transcendental category that makes sense out of those subcategories.

44:26

And so we're saying it's these, all of these transcendental categories, uniformity, causality, et cetera, et cetera, find continuity and connection within the coherence of the mind of God himself, who is the transcendental foundation for all those things.

44:39

And that's basically what we're saying. So you might not agree with the argument, but that's what we're doing. And it's not an illegitimate form of argumentation.

44:45

It's just ignorance on folks to say, well, that's just a weird presupper argument. Actually, it's just a presuppositional twist to a form of argumentation that's been around for centuries.

44:56

Yeah. All right, let's continue. Because every reason itself is dependent on the existence of God.

45:08

So any attempt to rationally argue against it is just dismissed out of hand as incoherent and borrowing from a

45:16

Christian worldview. To be a presuppositionalist is to redefine the world in such a way that...

45:22

What's wrong with that phrase, redefine the world? What does that presuppose, Joshua? What do you think? That there is some objective view to the world already and that now we're just going to come in and redefine what's normally the case.

45:35

Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking, when he says redefine, it seems like he's begging the question in favor of his own conception or perception of reality.

45:43

Yeah, it's also really naive because he hasn't thought through these big philosophical issues.

45:48

If you're an atheist, you're stuck in subjectivism. You can't get outside of your own body, outside of your own experience to see what the external world is like.

45:57

We're all in this big egocentric predicament where I'm in my bubble and you're in yours and you're in yours. And ultimately, truth is subjective at that point.

46:04

So he can't have it both ways. If he's trying to be internally consistent, he shouldn't even be saying this.

46:09

That's right. All right, very good. Just a quick... For folks who are listening in, if you have any questions that you'd like Joshua and I to address, just write them in the comments section.

46:19

Just preface your question with the word question so we can differentiate between the questions and the comments and we'll try our best to take a stab at them.

46:27

Also, stop demonstrating the truth of total depravity and subscribe to Revealed Apologetics.

46:32

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46:40

All right, so let's continue on. We're almost... We're moving along here. Let's hear what Steve has to say.

46:53

It's an argument fit for an intelligent, honest person. It's an argument fit for a coward. Well, there you go,

47:00

Josh. According to what standard? Yeah, now we can whip out the presuppositional atomic bomb.

47:07

By what standard? But by the way, what's wrong with being a coward on his worldview? On his worldview, right?

47:14

He can't even utter that statement if his worldview were true. Like it would be impossible. That's right. All right, let's continue here.

47:20

Its proponents favor confusion and... All right, before we get into that, this again is a good opportunity to remind folks of the blurring of the distinction between what you said at the beginning, critiquing presuppositionalism as a methodology and critiquing presuppositionalists.

47:38

There are people who favor confusion and trap -laying over honest argumentation in a kind of disingenuous way.

47:47

But is it always a bad thing to lay traps? No. No, that's what

47:53

I live for. That's right. Laying traps is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes a trap that is laid is for the purpose of showing someone the point you're trying to make.

48:03

Now, we don't favor confusion, of course. I mean, we don't want people to be confused. Unfortunately, that's just the nature of the case when you have two opposing positions arguing there's going to be an element of confusion.

48:14

But what I find interesting is when people accuse presuppositionalists, or better yet, accuse presuppositionalism as being disingenuous.

48:22

A method is not disingenuous. People can be disingenuous, but that's not an essential feature of presuppositionalism.

48:27

Right, right. I've debated Sai Tendulkar, and while I wouldn't say it was at all for me, was

48:45

Sai's complete lack of interest in having a real intelligent back -and -forth discussion with me about the issues we disagreed on.

48:54

Instead, his sole focus was in trying to move me from one talking point to the next so he could make the argument that he makes with everybody.

49:03

And in fact, the only argument that he knows how to make. It wasn't a discussion. It wasn't even a debate.

49:10

It was a rhetorical game of Tetris. And the only thing I find less interesting than a game of Tetris is a grown man who thinks it proves the existence of God.

49:21

The hardest part is only picking five. Catch you next time. All right. He's funny.

49:27

I like that Tetris thing. Good. Come on, man. We got to give credit where credit's due.

49:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nonchalant, kind of like regular guy, sort of, you know. So what do you think of...

49:41

Sai's a friend of mine. You know, we don't argue in the exact same way. I definitely don't use exactly the same types of arguments that he uses.

49:49

But what do you think about his question? Could you be right about everything you think you know?

49:54

You think it's a valid point of using? You know, if someone doesn't want to engage in the more technical language, maybe they don't really know the details of that, but they have kind of this question that they can use under their belt to engage an unbeliever and hopefully make a point.

50:09

What do you think about Sai's approach in your opinion? It's a good approach. It's definitely a different flavor of approach.

50:17

You know, it's a straight epistemology view. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I guess

50:22

I could see his criticisms. I haven't watched a lot of Sai in debates, but when unbelievers ask him something,

50:30

I would have liked for him to flesh it out more. You don't have to, obviously, but I can see the irritation from the other side.

50:36

His questions are valid. Could you be right or wrong about everything you claim to know? I don't remember what it was on there, but just basic things like that.

50:45

How do you know your senses function properly? That's like the base argument. It's only from there that you get to the really more philosophical abstract levels of things.

50:54

Also, I don't think it's a game. Many people think it might be a game because they think, like, wait a minute.

51:00

A lot of unbelievers assume that many Christians agree that some of those questions can't be answered.

51:07

It kind of throws a curveball. Like, wait a minute. This is a trap. It's not a trap, right? We're arguing for foundational issues, and so we're basically just getting right to the foundation and asking these fundamental questions.

51:20

If the questions are so dumb or the questions are not, it's like, man, can

51:25

I be wrong? Then answer the question. Given your worldview, can you provide a foundation for things like knowledge and intelligible experience?

51:33

I think they're perfectly valid. I think things go sour when you use that as kind of just a repetition without moving the conversation forward.

51:41

Remember, when you say, how do you know, to the unbeliever, you shouldn't be beating a dead horse.

51:47

How do you know? How do you know? You want to explain why you're asking these questions so that you're not interpreted in a way of being kind of disingenuous.

51:56

Now, here's a question I have for you, John. Do you have something to say? I'm sorry. No, no, no. I'm fine.

52:02

I was going to, but I'm like, no. Give me your question. Okay. All right. No worries. Just real quick.

52:08

Psy often asks the question, can you be certain, right? Can your worldview provide a foundation for certainty?

52:16

Or can you be wrong about anything you think you know? If someone says, I could be wrong about everything I think I know, then he says, then it follows you know nothing because, you know, you could be wrong about it.

52:26

So why don't you unpack for us this issue of certainty as an element of knowledge?

52:32

There are some people who believe that certainty is not a necessary element of knowledge.

52:38

What do you think about that? There could be some room for it, especially from a perceptual perspective.

52:46

I don't favor that approach. I would argue that certainty is required. For knowledge, of course, we just talked about traps and that's the trap

52:54

Psy is laying. Could you be wrong about everything you claim to know? And you're just waiting to check that yes box and then

53:00

Psy is like, I got you. You know? Yeah. So I hold to the position that certainty is required for knowledge.

53:08

Anything less than certainty you could call knowledge, but not in any meaningful sense, I would say.

53:13

Okay. And why don't you differentiate for us? Because I know folks who are familiar with these sorts of discussions, maybe folks who aren't.

53:20

There is a very important difference between what we would call psychological certainty and epistemic certainty. What's the difference between those two versions of certainty?

53:28

Why is it important to keep those distinct when we're asking the question, can you be certain about anything? Psychological certainty has, well, it's predicated on the fact that you could be wrong about what you believe.

53:41

You know, your psychology says one thing. You could be in some psychological state of mind or whatever, and you could be wrong about it.

53:46

But epistemic certainty is a condition where you just could not be wrong. It's impossible.

53:53

You can't fail to be wrong about it, such as knowledge of God or knowledge of self, even. So that is important to make that distinguishment.

54:01

Obviously, the epistemic side is the more potent aspect because psychologically, you could be wrong, and that doesn't really run into any logical tensions.

54:12

What about the criticism? I know when a presuppositionalist, I've talked to some non -presuppositionalists, and a criticism that they have relates to this issue of, well, when you're saying that epistemic certainty is kind of a necessary component of knowledge, what you're doing is you're just kind of adopting a form of Cartesianism.

54:32

Rene Descartes kind of believed that certainty was required, but that's really not typically how knowledge is understood.

54:37

How would you respond to something like that? Well, we could talk about that. Again, I hold to the position that knowledge or certainty would be required for knowledge, but if someone has a differing viewpoint, even if they're a

54:49

Christian, then I'm more open to talk about that. The point being, the bottom of it all is that we are absolutely certain of certain things, like myself, the existence of myself, and God, the external world, my sin, and things of that nature.

55:02

At the very least, there are things that we cannot fail to be wrong about, even if you're an unbeliever.

55:08

All right. We do have a question from... Surprisingly, there's a lot of people watching, but there's not many questions.

55:17

Let's see here. Let's see. There's a question on Calvinism, and I get this question a lot.

55:27

Augerer asks, Is Calvinism necessary for intelligibility, or is mere Christianity, like C .S.

55:32

Lewis articulated, necessary? So presuppositionalists typically are Calvinists.

55:39

I know Van Til said that Calvinism is Christianity come to its own, and so when he is developing presuppositionalism, he is seeking to do so in a way that kind of flows consistently from the soil of a

55:50

Reformed outlook. What is the relationship between Reformed theology and presuppositional methodology?

55:56

Are they necessarily connected? Can you be a genuine presuppositionalist and not hold to a

56:01

Reformed theology, but rather a kind of mere Christianity approach? Presuppositionalism came out of an outworking of Reformed theology, and that's what

56:10

Van Til was aiming to do. I mean, he was a very humble man. He had no antipathy towards Hodge and Spurgeon and Calvin and anyone who wasn't a presuppositionalist, if you will.

56:23

He was just trying to take their method and reformulate it in a consistent way, theologically speaking, in line with Tulip.

56:30

And so I'm not sure what the question is, though. Necessary for intelligibility?

56:36

Like, we all have an intelligible experience because the Christian worldview is true. I don't know if they're asking.

56:43

Does Calvinism's conception of Christianity have to be presupposed in order for this to work?

56:49

Or can you kind of assume a kind of mere Christianity approach? Kind of, you know,

56:55

I hold to the basic contours of Christianity. It doesn't have to be Reformed or anything. It's kind of the bare bones like you have in C .S.

57:04

Lewis's Mere Christianity. Yeah. No, you would have to hold to Calvinism, especially the fact that God preinterprets everything and makes every single fact what it is and puts it into its relationship with one another.

57:16

And this gets into the more philosophical aspects of presuppositionalism, metaphysically speaking.

57:22

But no, you would have to believe, for instance, that God controls absolutely everything that comes to pass. Why is that?

57:29

So that's important. So one of the necessary preconditions for being a consistent presuppositionalist is that you are also holding to Calvinism but more specifically a

57:40

Reformed view of Divine Providence and God's decrees. Why don't you unpack that for folks? Because this question does come up a lot and I don't hear a lot of people addressing it in detail.

57:50

Yeah. So if we assume the opposite, see now we're kind of giving a transcendental argument for the transcendental argument.

57:56

If we assume the opposite that God doesn't control every fact, then that would mean that there's a correlation between Him and the universe that God and facts are on the same plane, if you will.

58:05

So it fails to completely acknowledge the creator -creature distinction where God is on top of the creation and controls everything by the counsel of His will.

58:14

So to say that God and the facts are on the same plane, Bento would say, is to put the facts higher than God or make something higher than who

58:22

God is. And so if God doesn't control everything, then there is a mere possibility of chance in which case intelligibility would be forfeited.

58:31

Hmm. So okay, so what do you mean when you say that God and other facts are on the same plane if you don't assume a

58:38

Calvinist view of divine providence? Can you unpack that a little bit? Yeah. So if you limit God's power,

58:44

His creative power at least, His sovereignty, and He created the universe but He's not really controlling it, it's kind of just a crapshoot, if you will, then there are factors and facts that are the changing flux matters and facts and the way they are operate independently of God.

59:01

And so depending on your theology, if you say, you know, God can't tamper with the facts of the universe, then the facts of the universe are on a higher level than God.

59:10

They turn out to be more powerful, if you will, than God since God can't control it. And then you have some that say

59:16

God can control it, but He doesn't. And again, that kind of leads to the same problem of there being chance happening here in the universe and God's not controlling everything.

59:25

So anyone, a skeptic could really open the door to that sort of worldview and say, well, how do you know this part of experience isn't just chance or your brain or whatever?

59:33

And so it's really an all or nothing matter here. God has to control every fact or He controls no facts.

59:40

All right. So here's a fun question. And there's not many questions coming in. I think people are kind of just watching and there are people who are enjoying.

59:47

There was a nice quote here. Let me see if I can get it up there. So let's see.

59:54

Where is it? I love quotes. I love comments like this.

59:59

Davinsky says, I'm still new to precept, not completely sold on it, but I'm really enjoying this discussion. There's so much arguments against.

01:00:06

I'm liking to hear direct commentary to the contrary. That's good. Again, I'm not looking necessarily to convert people by talking about this stuff, but I do hope that people can kind of listen to what we're saying, understand what we're saying and see this approach kind of drawn in distinction from other approaches and make a decision as to what you think of the, which approach is, is biblically grounded and logically cogent.

01:00:30

So I welcome newcomers who are not yet convinced of the approach. I'm glad, glad you're listening in.

01:00:36

Okay. So here's my, here's my fun question. Let's see here. Molinism.

01:00:44

Okay. Are you familiar with Molinism? Not as well as I should be. Okay. So, so Molinism is a particular view of divine sovereignty.

01:00:54

Okay. Or no, I apologize. It's a particular view of God's knowledge. Okay. So for folks who, who don't know what

01:01:00

Molinism is, I'm going to explain what Molinism is. And then I'm going to ask you a question as to whether a person can be a presuppositionalist and a

01:01:06

Molinist. I think this is a fun question. You know. Okay. So Molinism is a view of God's omniscience and it understands

01:01:15

God's knowledge in three categories. God has what you call natural knowledge, his knowledge of everything that could be.

01:01:22

I mean, all potentialities. God could create any world that he'd like. God has middle knowledge. This is his knowledge of what would happen.

01:01:30

Okay. It's kind of his counterfactual knowledge that exists logically prior to his divine decree. So you have natural knowledge, his knowledge of everything that could happen.

01:01:39

Middle knowledge, his knowledge of everything that would happen. Then you have the divine decree. Once God chooses a world to create, he decrees this world.

01:01:47

And then there comes God's free knowledge. His knowledge of what will in fact occur. Okay. Now, the two important elements of Molinism is that God has this middle knowledge.

01:01:57

He has knowledge of counterfactuals that exist prior, logically prior, to his decree.

01:02:04

Now, whether you agree with that or not, another pillar of Molinism is libertarian free will.

01:02:10

So if someone holds to libertarian free will and this kind of Molinistic understanding of divine providence, could someone hold to a presuppositional approach?

01:02:21

Or does holding to libertarian freedom kind of cancel it out or something? Well, I'm not going to...

01:02:27

That just... I could envision just like a two -hour video commentary of just pure metaphysical...

01:02:34

I'm just curious. I have my own... I have my own view of it. But I was just wondering what you might have thought of it.

01:02:43

I'm going to throw some curveballs. Keep trying to convince me of this thing. I grew up in a church that I believe that's...

01:02:51

They believed not... They weren't Molinists per se, but they absolutely adhere to the sovereignty of God.

01:02:57

But they absolutely believe in libertarian free will. And so they would say something like, God is absolutely sovereign.

01:03:03

You can't thwart his will, but he chooses to let us have our free will. And he knows what will happen, but he...

01:03:11

Personally, I want to write a paper on that. I'm not quite sure how to respond to that because you can see the tension there.

01:03:19

You're trying to save absolute sovereignty and libertarianism there. And they're trying to save it. And I'm sure people have written about it.

01:03:25

But I'm not entirely sure how to respond to that one. Unless you do. Fair enough. Well, I reject

01:03:32

Molinism for a bunch of other reasons. I don't think the idea of middle knowledge makes sense. What does it mean to have counterfactual knowledge logically prior to God's decree?

01:03:40

I don't even know what that means. There are a bunch of Molinists who say they have a response to what's called the grounding objection, which is the most popular objection against Molinism.

01:03:49

What grounds these counterfactuals if they're not based in God's decree and determination? And I listen to responses, but when

01:03:55

I listen to it, I'm kind of just like... I still don't get it. I mean,

01:04:01

I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I don't think I'm dumb. When I hear responses, I'm kind of like,

01:04:07

I don't know. I don't know what that even means. So I guess, I mean, there's some pretty sharp Molinists out there and people who've written some really good stuff.

01:04:14

So maybe I just got to study a little more, but I don't see it as a coherent concept. It's definitely antithetical.

01:04:21

Because, you know, Reformed theology and presuppositionalism would say that the ontology of God is what grounds the possibility of possibility.

01:04:29

Right? So it's not like you have some knowledge out there of what could happen outside of you or counterfactuals or anything like that.

01:04:35

What happens, happens because of His eternal decree, His eternal knowledge. So we don't have to posit hypotheticals and what would happen in this instance or that instance or whatever.

01:04:44

So, yeah, especially from a Molinistic perspective, that's pretty far out there in terms of, you know, contrary views of God and knowledge and apologetics.

01:04:54

Sure. And no ill will towards my Molinist buddies. We love you.

01:04:59

Yeah, we love you. And there's some sharp Molinist people. I'm glad, you know, while we disagree on various points,

01:05:04

I'm glad you're on our team. Ultimately, you know. Yeah, right. All right. Here's a cool question.

01:05:11

Thanks for the response, brothers. Oh, that's not a question. That's a comment. Sorry. It skipped down. Whoopsies.

01:05:17

Let's see here. It was a question about Gordon Clark. Here we go. What do you think about Gordon Clark?

01:05:23

I used to actually be a Clarkian for a short while. Really? If you...

01:05:30

I had a discussion years back with Pine Creek. Doug invited me onto his show back in the day.

01:05:37

It was my first time ever going on the show of An Unbeliever. And you will notice that I use the term axioms a lot.

01:05:45

And I equate them with kind of presuppositions. That was when I was flirting. We were flirting. Me and Clark were flirting over methodology.

01:05:52

You have a history. Okay. We dated. But I had to dump him.

01:05:58

Yeah. Unfortunately. Okay. Let me stop. Okay. So what do you think about Gordon Clark?

01:06:05

If you could kind of... Let me see. So what do you think about Gordon Clark? Can you explain it? Or can you explain his methodology,

01:06:11

I guess, and comment on its efficacy? Do you know anything about Gordon Clark? Yeah.

01:06:17

I do need to go back and review him actually. You know more about Gordon Clark than you know about Molinism.

01:06:23

I am very backwards in my theology, philosophy knowledge here. Don't mind me.

01:06:29

If you want to answer the question, but I'm actually looking for a book that folks might be interested in about Gordon Clark.

01:06:35

But why don't you answer that question? And I'll see if I can find this book. Yeah. Gordon Clark was basically a fideist.

01:06:41

He acknowledged that we have presuppositions, but we can't necessarily prove them. He favored an empirical approach to things.

01:06:50

Seeing is believing. We have to perceive it in order to know it. But ultimately, we can't really know anything with certainty in our experience.

01:06:57

We can't know that we're saved because we have to read the Bible, but we can't know that our senses are functioning reliably, so it has to be an axiom.

01:07:04

It's just one big hogwash. So you could say it has some limit of efficacy, but it's nowhere near Van Til's.

01:07:13

I mean, he had that dispute with Van Til and Clark back then too. But yeah, Gordon Clark was trying to be consistent, but ultimately, it just resulted in fideism and then subjectivism and skepticism.

01:07:26

So what is Gordon Clark's view? I mean, he's a fideist, but what did he believe about how the

01:07:34

Christian worldview should be defended? Well, we start with an axiom of some sorts.

01:07:40

And for Clark, it would be scripture. And what we're trying to do with our opponent is to find the most consistent worldview that can make sense of everything.

01:07:49

But in order to do that, you have to interrelate all the facts together. You have to get the context of everything. You have to know the meanings of all the words and terms and phrases, anthropomorphisms and all that sort of stuff.

01:07:58

That's a daunting task, you know, and Clark couldn't do it. No one can do that because we can't connect absolutely everything into a cohesive system on our own, let alone perceptually.

01:08:09

And so Clark's position doesn't fare very well in that regard. Okay. I was reaching for this book here.

01:08:18

Ah, there it is. The Presbyterian Philosopher. And it's a book on Gordon Clark. It's a biography.

01:08:24

Let me tell you something. Let me kind of back this up here. If you're interested in Gordon Clark and the very fascinating history of the

01:08:33

Presbyterian Church in America, buy this book. This book, look at this.

01:08:39

This book has over 280 something pages.

01:08:45

I could not put it down. It was so interesting. Even at the end of the day, I don't hold to a Clarkian position.

01:08:51

He was such a fascinating philosopher, logically and rigorously sharp.

01:08:56

This guy has so much to offer. I would highly recommend learning about him, eating the meat and spitting out the bone.

01:09:03

But his life was super fascinating. The controversies that he was embroiled in was super fascinating.

01:09:08

The Presbyterian Philosopher by Douglas Dauma. And if you look back, maybe

01:09:14

I'll put a link in the comments there. I was trying to do it, but then I had to click the video and the sound came on.

01:09:20

It was kind of weird. I actually interviewed Douglas Dauma on Gordon Clark.

01:09:26

It's called Gordon Clark, The Other Presuppositionalist. Dun, dun, dun.

01:09:35

He's a presuppositionalist. But he's a presuppositionalist with a lowercase p. Van Til is a presuppositionalist with an uppercase p.

01:09:43

No, I'm just kidding. A lot of people also wonder what's the difference between Van Til and Gordon Clark.

01:09:49

I did make a video on that as well. So if you search some of the past videos,

01:09:54

I do explain the difference between their methodology. There is a very big difference. Sometimes people who criticize presuppositionalism are unwittingly criticizing a

01:10:03

Clarkian form of presuppositionalism and not a Van Tilian form of presuppositionalism.

01:10:09

Just real quick. Gordon Clark held to axioms which by definition cannot be demonstrated. Van Til held to an ultimate presupposition and he believed you can demonstrate the truth of a presupposition and we can call it an axiom.

01:10:21

He believed that you could demonstrate an axiom presupposition by appealing to a transcendental argument.

01:10:28

So in that sense, Gordon Clark was a theist because you start with an axiom that you cannot demonstrate and you build a coherent system out of that.

01:10:34

Van Til says no. You start with an axiom. He called it a presupposition and you can demonstrate it via a transcendental argument.

01:10:40

That's a key difference making Gordon Clark a theist. You just pick an axiom and go from there and Van Til a non -fideist even though many of his critics claimed he was because he believed you could actually go further and demonstrate the truth of the

01:10:53

Christian worldview perspective. Okay. Check this book out. I highly recommend it and check out my interview with the author some time ago in the past videos.

01:11:02

Okay. Let's see here. We have another question here. We got a couple of questions.

01:11:07

The questions come. They come. People are shy. It's okay. Don't fight hard. I'm just kidding.

01:11:12

Sorry. Wow. All right. Here we go. Let's see here. Let's see.

01:11:21

Question. All right. Here's another question from Arger. Sorry if I can't pronounce your name correctly.

01:11:27

I'm so sorry. He says, what are your thoughts on Alvin Plantinga being a Calvinist who affirms libertarian freewill and Calvinism?

01:11:35

I don't have a clue. I'm not sure. I don't study. I haven't studied Plantinga yet.

01:11:40

I'm not sure how he would synthesize those two things. I'm not sure, Eli, if you've done any research into that. It's important to recognize that when we talk about Calvinism or presupposing

01:11:48

Calvinism, we are speaking in a very imprecise way. Yeah. Calvinism has a wide, broad range of different beliefs that you can hold within the category of say, quote,

01:11:59

Calvinism. The issue is whether the concept that one is holding, whether determinism, compatibilism, libertarianism, if the idea is philosophically cogent and can be biblically supported, then it's something that a

01:12:09

Christian should be within the realm or allowability to accept. I personally don't accept libertarian free will, but then again,

01:12:19

Alvin Plantinga is not a presuppositionalist along Vantillian lines. Right. There are presuppositional flavors to Vantill, and he's often called a presuppositionalist, but he's not holding to the form of presuppositionalism as Vantill, and I think the strength of Vantill's presuppositionalism comes from many places, but more foundationally, that he holds to a conception of God that I think is more reflective of what the

01:12:41

Bible teaches, and given this divine providence, this exhaustive divine providence as Joshua mentioned before, it's linked to the idea that God creates the facts, purposes the facts, defines reality, and that's an important element within the

01:12:54

Christian system of truth. I hope that makes sense. I'm not an Alvin Plantinga scholar. I do agree with everyone's estimation of him.

01:13:01

I think he's one of the most brilliant philosophers of our time, and I say that, notwithstanding my various disagreements with him.

01:13:08

Bonson said that too. Yeah. Now remarkably, Bonson mentioned Alvin Plantiga interestingly enough as woefully, woefully, and embarrassingly misrepresenting what

01:13:21

Vantill was getting at. If I remember correctly, Bonson spoke with Alvin Plantiga for a brief time at a conference, and he asked

01:13:30

Plantiga what he thought of Vantill, and do you remember what Plantiga said to Dr.

01:13:35

Bonson? Yeah, he said, Plantiga said, well, I can't believe in Vantill because if what Vantill says is true, then unbelievers can't know anything, and Bonson's response was like, not to him, but to the class he was teaching, how could anyone come to that conclusion?

01:13:49

Because before that, he's like, Plantiga is a brilliant philosopher, and I think he says, quote for quote,

01:13:55

God has given him a mind to think, and that's what Bonson said of Plantiga back in the 90s, so it just goes to show that someone even brilliant can still get something wrong, and I mean, that's common sense.

01:14:05

No one's perfect, so. Right. And you know what? Ultimately, talking from a Christian perspective, talking to other

01:14:11

Christians, philosophers, Christian philosophers engaging other Christian philosophers, excuse me, ultimately, we're on the same team, we're trying to understand each other, and you're going to have misrepresentations, not on purpose, but people just not understanding a position or not having, giving the time to kind of dig deep into a position, so we give, we engage as in charity.

01:14:30

Alvin Plantiga didn't understand Vantill correctly on that point, but again, that doesn't mean Alvin Plantiga has nothing good to offer.

01:14:37

You know, people might violently disagree with Vantill, but I would hope that people can pick apart some things that they do find very helpful in Vantill.

01:14:44

You can't throw Vantill out entirely. I mean, he said some pretty, some pretty helpful things that I think anyone could benefit from, so while we hold firm to our convictions, we also need to learn to kind of be a little flexible and appreciate some of the contributions of our fellow brothers and sisters from different traditions.

01:15:00

You can do that without compromising your foundation, right? So I think, I think we could do a better job at doing that.

01:15:06

Absolutely. Okay. Someone, Dylan asks, Dylan McPhee, thank you for your question,

01:15:12

Dylan. Dylan says, if it's the case that one must be reformed in their theology to do biblical slash presuppositional apologetics, what are your thoughts on Jason Lyle?

01:15:20

I don't know. Jason Lyle has been on the show multiple times, like four, three or four times.

01:15:25

I think he's coming on again. I don't know where he stands, if he is a

01:15:31

Calvinist or not. I did ask him. I think I put him on the spot. I'm not sure if he's allowed to answer given the ministry.

01:15:38

I'm not sure. I don't know what position he holds, so I can't comment as to what I think about that.

01:15:45

I know he's been, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. No, I mean, I don't know either. I mean, I've read, I haven't had him on a show like you have.

01:15:51

I think that's really cool, by the way. He's coming back on. I'm super excited. I've read, you know,

01:15:57

I've read his books and stuff. I don't know what denomination he's a part of. I know he's with Ken Ham and I think

01:16:03

Eric Hogan as well, and I don't think they're Calvinists. So, I mean, that's when you have to make the distinction between a biblical presuppositionalist and a presuppositionalist.

01:16:13

And I know that's kind of vague and crass out there, but to the point being that, you know, people like C .S. Lewis can argue transcendentally from the impossibility of the contrary.

01:16:21

They could show that on his position, you know, the Christian worldview can satisfy the problems that the unbelievers plagued with.

01:16:27

But I think when you get more and more philosophical, like when we were talking about how God has to interpret all the facts and relate them together and make a mind, that's kind of where there becomes a fork in the road because those who are from libertarian free will wouldn't say that.

01:16:42

They have to grant some sort of chance to the universe. So you can be a quote -unquote presuppositionalist, but I think the point here, the main point is that if you want to be consistent, especially like Van Til, you'd have to be a

01:16:53

Calvinist. That's right. Dylan clarifies this question. He says, will you please give an illustration or an example of using evidences?

01:16:59

Oh, sorry. We'll get to that one. He clarified here. He says, if it's the case that one must be reformed in their theology to do biblical or presuppositional apologetics, what are your thoughts on Jason Lyle?

01:17:10

And he wrote, oh, it's at the bottom here. Sorry. To clarify my question, we found the right comment there.

01:17:17

To clarify my question about Jason Lyle, I'm asking, what are your thoughts on his apologetic method? Does he do it wrong because he's not reformed?

01:17:24

Part of my answer was, I wasn't sure if he's reformed or not. If he's not reformed, I would just say he's inconsistent.

01:17:34

Exactly right. I'm sure, have you read, what is this book called? Ultimate Prophecy. And then in the back, he's got like 50 or 100 question and answer examples for the reader.

01:17:46

And he does a great job. I mean, he's fine as a presuppositionalist, but as you said, eventually, if they keep pushing back on his theology, if he leaves open any room for libertarianism, that leaves room for chance and then that gets into who's the ultimate authority.

01:18:01

Facts, brute facts, chance, or God who controls all facts. Well, there's a question here.

01:18:08

It might be our last question unless a couple of questions come in and it's going to be my favorite question so far. But before we get there,

01:18:13

Dylan has another question. Thank you, Dylan, again. Will you please give an illustration or an example of using evidences properly in contrast to with how non -preceptors use evidence?

01:18:23

Now, before you answer that question, I want to point Dylan to an interview that I did with Dr.

01:18:28

Scott Oliphant. Nope, not Scott Oliphant. Dr. Michael Kruger. Okay. So, I'm not trying to name drop.

01:18:35

I mean, everyone's been on the show. This is so good. I'm so proud of you. I really genuinely got them confused.

01:18:44

Dr. Michael Kruger, who is very big in the issues of canonicity, the canon of scripture.

01:18:50

He's a presuppositionalist, but he actually applies presuppositionalism to the specific field of canonicity.

01:18:56

You know, what books belong in the Bible? And he actually uses evidences within a presuppositional framework.

01:19:03

He did this so well, in fact, that I received, after that interview, I received an email from someone saying that prior to listening to that episode, he was an evidentialist.

01:19:12

But after seeing that discussion and seeing how evidences can be used within a presuppositional framework, he's converted to presuppositionalism because now he sees how these things can work together and it's not so much kind of an either -or situation.

01:19:23

So I'd highly recommend you look at my interview with Dr. Michael Kruger on the issue of canonicity. All right?

01:19:29

But go ahead. Why don't you unpack that question for us, Joshua? I already forgot the question.

01:19:37

Use evidence properly. Okay. So from a presuppositional and non -presuppositional use of evidence.

01:19:43

So non -presuppositional uses of evidence assume a few incorrect or pretty bad things to put it that way.

01:19:53

It assumes that when we're all neutral and we can all go to the evidence neutrally and you know what? If we just opened our mind enough, we would get to the answer.

01:20:01

So it assumes neutrality and then second, by extension, it doesn't assume total depravity.

01:20:07

Third, it assumes evidences can be or neutrally are not theory -laden. They speak for themselves.

01:20:16

And then I'll just take those three for now. So basically an evidentialist would appeal to evidences and hopefully eventually convince the unbeliever that look at you know, the archaeology from the walls of Jericho or something or anything like that or textual evidence from papyri or whatever and then say, hey, see this proves

01:20:35

Christianity is true. So it doesn't acknowledge any worldview level considerations. Presuppositionalism uses evidence.

01:20:42

If someone wants to talk to me about the historicity of Christ, I'm all for it. You know, let's get a cup of coffee and we'll talk about it in a cordial fashion.

01:20:50

But at the end of the day, I'm going to say, you know what? Let's think about evidence for a second.

01:20:55

What has to be true in order to make sense of this concept we call evidence in the first place? Because in an unbelieving worldview and a chance universe, there is no such thing as evidence because it's all material atoms in motion.

01:21:06

There are no concepts or anything like that. So we will use evidences like an evidentialist would, but ultimately we're going to argue transcendentally and say what needs to be true in order to make this thing we call evidence intelligible to us.

01:21:19

All right. Thank you. Here's a good question by Scott Terry. When is

01:21:25

Pillows coming out with a soundtrack of pre -sop organ music? That's my favorite question.

01:21:32

I'm writing a prelude and fugue in D major. I've written the prelude already and I'm writing the fugue and I'm not sure,

01:21:40

Scott, how much you know about music, but fugues are just horrible. They're so hard to write.

01:21:47

It's not even funny. It's like masochism. So I'm still working on the fugue, but I will release that probably early next year.

01:21:56

Is this going to be a pre -sop organ? Yeah, I could when

01:22:02

I copyright it or whatever, be like the pre -sop prelude. I would never do that, by the way.

01:22:10

That's so cringe for me. I'm sorry. That's hilarious. Yeah. I appreciate the humor,

01:22:16

Scott. All right. Dominski asked the question, Bonson or Van Till, who would you rather take a call from and why?

01:22:25

I'm going to answer the question and I'm going to get heat for it in the group later. I'm going to I wouldn't say

01:22:33

Van Till because after I get off the phone, I'm going to need Bonson to come back and translate for me what

01:22:39

Van Till is saying. I would obviously I would take Bonson. I have prejudice towards Bonson, obviously, but he's just such a sharp mind.

01:22:51

The things he would say, like how there can only be one transcendental of what you read early on in this video, that transcript, it just blew my mind.

01:23:00

He was a very sharp tool and I would like to talk to him. I'm going to his grave site sometime next year maybe when

01:23:10

I'm in California. Okay, cool. Very good. Let's see here. Got a couple of questions and then we'll wrap things up.

01:23:17

Josh, you're doing a good job. I appreciate it. Dylan asked the question, do preceptors only seek to persuade or do they seek to prove things as well?

01:23:26

Well, I mean, if you're just seeking to persuade you, that's just being a politician.

01:23:32

You know, we're apologists. We want to see people come to the kingdom, you know, so we're proving the existence of God, but we also want to persuade our opponent to see that truth as well.

01:23:43

I mean, he sees it right. He's made in God's image and he can't face that knowledge. But no, we want to prove it as well.

01:23:50

We do prove it transcendentally, indirectly. It's not the traditional direct approach, but it's proven nonetheless.

01:23:57

Right. All right. Thank you for that. And this looks like the last question, unless something pops up at the last second, but Post -Henobruslook says,

01:24:04

Hi, Eli, what do we mean when we say impossibility of the contrary? Well, he said,

01:24:10

Hi, Eli, so. Oh, okay. What do we mean,

01:24:15

Eli? I'm not sure. Well, we would say that Christianity is true because the contrary to Christianity is literally impossible.

01:24:24

And we would we would explain that that is not a simple assertion.

01:24:30

We would invite the unbeliever to, as we've been talking about, we would invite the unbeliever to assume the contrary, assume the contrary of Christianity and see where that leads you.

01:24:38

And hopefully if we've done it correctly, we can show that the contrary to Christianity leads to intellectual absurdity.

01:24:45

So literally, we believe that Christianity is true. Necessarily, it cannot be false.

01:24:53

And to even entertain its falsity is already to adopt neutrality. You know, I was in a debate with kind of a discussion with an atheist,

01:25:01

Eric Murphy, which you guys can check out on my channel. I think it's titled this whole conversation with an atheist.

01:25:07

And he says, Could you be wrong? You know, could you be wrong about the existence of God? And I said, Nope. And he didn't like that too much.

01:25:14

But I mean, if what I'm saying is true, if the transcendental argument is like a thing, admitting that I could be wrong about it is to undermine my own argument, namely that God is the necessary precondition for knowledge and intelligible experience.

01:25:27

So no, I cannot be wrong. It's not prideful. I'm not trying to be prideful. I'm making a truth claim.

01:25:33

And every truth claim is going to, you know, I believe the thing to be true. And so I'm not going to assume that it's not true if it's the foundation of everything else.

01:25:42

So what we mean by the impossibility of the contrary is that the contrary to Christianity is impossible. The way we demonstrate that, we invite the person to assume the opposite and see where it leads.

01:25:52

And hopefully we've done that, you know, correctly. All right. Let's see here.

01:26:02

Let's see here. Okay. So our guru, again, if determinism is true, should you assume you are correct, determined by God or that Alvin Plantinga is correct?

01:26:11

I don't understand the question. I think this is kind of an attempted reductio ad absurdum. It's kind of one of those things.

01:26:17

Well, if you're determined, then I guess I'm determined to believe Alvin Plantinga goes true. Yeah, that's right. If determinism is true, then your beliefs are determined.

01:26:24

The implicit assumption that's hidden in there is that of incompatibilism. The idea that determinism and sufficient freedom for, you know, intelligible reasoning, things like that, are incompatible with each other.

01:26:38

That needs to be demonstrated. The determinist, of course the determinist would admit that if determinism is true,

01:26:44

I'm determined to believe in God or I'm determined to believe Alvin Plantinga's position. What's hidden in there is the hidden assumption of incompatibilism, which

01:26:51

I reject. Okay. Hopefully that was what you were asking. If not, I disregard everything I just said.

01:26:57

It was good nonetheless. All right. Well, that was the last question. This was an excellent discussion.

01:27:03

Really? I always learn something when I talk with you, whether it's over the phone or when

01:27:09

I have... I've actually listened to our past conversations about the Stroudian objection and I had you on...

01:27:18

Once with you and I and then once with Balint. All I could think of right now is, man,

01:27:24

I really sucked tonight. I feel like I just did a horrible job and stumbling on words and maybe

01:27:29

I'm just tired. It's been a long... I don't know. I'm sorry. I think you do an excellent job.

01:27:35

I'm not just saying that to be nice to you. And of course, obviously we all have room for improvement. I talk really fast and sometimes

01:27:41

I'm kind of just like, I don't even know what I just said. I got to think about that. I think you did an excellent job. I've had at least five of those so far in this video.

01:27:49

Well, do the viewers notice? They're going to go back and make sure that...

01:27:56

This guy really is... That's right. That's right. Okay, so we have a... I think there's one more question here.

01:28:03

We'll take this last one if it's okay. It's totally fine. Okay. All right. So this is

01:28:08

JG. JG? Okay. Hi again. Did JG ask a question earlier?

01:28:15

I guess I don't know. Maybe in a previous video. Okay. So how can Paul account for his writings in Romans 13 verses 1 through 5?

01:28:23

His former government that persecuted Christians was still in existence. I don't know what you're referring to.

01:28:30

Let me turn there. I have my... What do you think? I know the Bible by heart. What's your problem, JG? Mike Calvin?

01:28:38

What do you think? I'm an apologist? You think I've memorized the

01:28:43

Bible? Come on. Okay. So Romans 13 verses 1 through 5 says,

01:28:50

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those that exist have been instituted by God.

01:28:57

Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed and those who resist will incur judgment for rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad.

01:29:06

Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good and you will receive his approval for he is

01:29:11

God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid for he does not bear the sword in vain for he is the servant of God an avenger who carries out

01:29:20

God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore, one must be in subjection not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience.

01:29:27

And so the question is, how can Paul account for his writings in that passage? His former government that persecuted

01:29:34

Christians was still in existence. Yeah, he's saying that the government that's persecuting Christians we should be submitted to them.

01:29:43

Yeah, I don't see the problem. Remember, we are to submit to those in authority.

01:29:49

But of course, we know the broader context of Paul's theology. We know that his ultimate authority is Christ. And so if the government is asking us to do something we should submit except when they ask us to do the things that cause us to compromise our commitments to Christ.

01:30:03

That's not at all inconsistent with his deeper commitments. Being in subjection to the government authority is not inconsistent with having

01:30:12

God as your ultimate authority because our ultimate authority teaches us that we should be in subjection to a certain degree to our earthly authorities because in some way

01:30:20

God has put those authorities in place. So I don't see any inconsistency there at that point.

01:30:27

How does that sound? Did I sound like an idiot when I... No, it was good.

01:30:33

I mean, you're right. If the logic there was we have to submit to our governing authorities on everything,

01:30:39

Christianity might as well just died out in the first century. I mean, Paul was beheaded and disciples were killed and then after that it was just 200 some odd years of persecution by the early church and they would keep worshipping together against edicts and laws and whatnot and they kept defying the government of Rome until Constantine.

01:31:01

So yeah, what you said is right. All right. And the last question here is the last one I'm going to take.

01:31:07

JW Fixit. Are any of Bonson's original students still carry on his work or apologetics in general?

01:31:14

I only know of Butler, Mike Butler who has his masters. I don't remember from where but after Bonson died he kind of fell off the radar and he's in fourth.

01:31:27

Wait, wait, wait. Michael Butler fell off the radar. It sounded like you said Bonson fell off the radar. Yes, he did because he passed away.

01:31:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah. His protege would be, I don't know what happened to him but I think if I had a suspicion it would be that his thesis which was over transcendental arguments got criticized and scrutinized so much and his teacher was gone at that point so he had to fend for himself and he didn't know how to fend for it.

01:31:54

Maybe he just got out of it. I don't know because I wish he would get around.

01:32:01

So I'm trying to, and I told you this before, I'm trying to pick up the slack. I'm listening to every single one of his tapes and taking notes of that thing

01:32:10

I sent you that you've found now. So I'm trying to, I sound really arrogant.

01:32:17

I'm sorry. Well, wait a minute. Not so fast, Josh. I don't think that's arrogant at all.

01:32:23

I mean, you, the beauty of technology, we can be students of teachers of the past by listening to their content as though we were listening to a lecture.

01:32:31

A lot of the questions that will be, that pop up in our head when we listen to a lecture, while we don't have the opportunity to raise your hand and ask him directly, a lot of the questions that pop up in your mind are answered.

01:32:41

So say you're listening to a lecture on presuppositionalism and you're saying, well, wait a minute. How does the transcendental argument, how do you use it against kind of like opposing religious perspectives?

01:32:50

I mean, it seems like it works well with, you know, against an atheist perspective, but what about Mormonism? What about Hinduism? What about Buddhism?

01:32:56

Well, keep listening. Bonson has thousands of, well, a couple of thousand and a couple of hundred. Two thousand and something total.

01:33:03

He's got like two thousand and a hundred and something lectures. In various lectures, he actually shows how you use a transcendental presuppositional argument against other religious perspectives.

01:33:12

So you can still be a student of someone. And so I don't think that sounds arrogant at all. You're right. Yeah. Sorry, because if you asked me, if someone asked me, how do

01:33:21

I know, how am I a presuppositionalist? I can't credit anyone but Bonson. I didn't go to seminary.

01:33:27

It was just his tapes. And of course I've read Lyle and can't think anymore, but you know what

01:33:32

I mean. I've read other sources and I've watched his side, but Bonson's just taught me apologetics. I've taken systematic theology from him.

01:33:39

I've taken history of philosophy from him. I'm taking logic from him right now. Transcendental arguments.

01:33:44

I mean, so he's taught me everything. So yes, you're right. I don't feel arrogant anymore. That's right.

01:33:51

And who's picking up the slack? I think everyone who is following in the footsteps of trying to learn what we think is a biblical approach and a very powerful approach to apologetics.

01:34:01

So all of us are trying to stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us and benefit as much as possible from the content that they were able to put out.

01:34:11

And so all of us popularizers like myself. I'm not a scholar. Just because I wear glasses doesn't mean like I don't got no

01:34:16

PED or whatever, you know. I've done a couple of debates. I teach apologetics at kind of like I've taught apologetics at like middle school, high school level.

01:34:23

I do apologetics, but I mean, I'm a popularizer. I'm still trying to learn. I listen to lectures and I ask questions and things like that.

01:34:30

I think all of us should pick up where folks like Bonson left off and do what

01:34:37

Bonson really wanted to do. When I visited John Frame at RTS years ago, my family went out to visit some family out in Florida.

01:34:47

And so I drove to RTS and was able to meet Frame in his office. And of course, unfortunately,

01:34:53

I had no questions for Dr. Frame about Dr. Frame. I had questions about...

01:34:59

Wow. I had questions about Bonson. And he says that Bonson's heart, really what

01:35:05

Bonson wished Christians could do. And what I'm about to say is something we all can do.

01:35:11

Okay. Is he just believed that we should stop talking so much about apologetics and take it to the streets.

01:35:18

Start using it. That was the heart of what Bonson was doing. The reason he wanted to popularize Van Til is because he wanted to equip real

01:35:25

Christians to engage real live people. Right. And so I think all of us can participate in doing that.

01:35:32

If you feel ill -equipped, take a course. I'm offering a course. You don't want to take an organized course?

01:35:37

Listen to lectures. I mean, there is content out there, but equip yourself and then go out and do it.

01:35:43

I have a friend that I just recently had the privilege of meeting. He's a Christian apologist and an excellent defender of the

01:35:49

Trinity. His name is... Oh, Anthony Rogers. Speak of the devil. Anthony Rogers is here.

01:35:54

Okay. Oh, he's actually saying... What did he say? He says Butler became an agrarian and withdrew from all...

01:36:01

Basically, Michael Butler became an Amish person. So I guess he's not going to be writing a book anytime soon.

01:36:07

What is an agrarian? I don't know. Maybe it has to do with agriculture or something. I have no idea.

01:36:12

I'll look it up afterwards. But Anthony Rogers actually had... And he'll remember, as I'm saying this, he had an interaction.

01:36:19

It's a very brief interaction with someone on Facebook. And he...

01:36:24

Someone said that he had... They had interacted with him over apologetic methodology.

01:36:30

And Anthony said something really interesting. He says, I don't think we've ever had this conversation because I don't spend too much time arguing about apologetics.

01:36:38

I do apologetics. And I love that response. He's a presuppositionalist himself, but he doesn't really use the terminology.

01:36:46

He just goes out there and does apologetics and doesn't waste his time spending his time just arguing about methodology.

01:36:53

Those are important debates. But eventually, you're going to have to get outside and actually interact with people. And really, that's the hope with all of this equipping, these videos and teachings and stuff.

01:37:02

We're hoping that this equips people and people go out, take it to the streets, and honor Christ by defending the gospel. Yeah. Too many feuds on Facebook.

01:37:09

That's right. We need to be guard to those who need saving grace. Yeah. Now, I was going to say that's the last question, but this last question here is so important that I'm not going to skip it.

01:37:19

And I know you're going to agree with me, and I think you'd be happy to kind of engage. I'll let you answer this one, and we'll close things up.

01:37:24

Okay? Dylan McPhee asks, what place does the gospel have in doing presuppositional apologetics?

01:37:31

How do we get the gospel across? I think this question is so important, and I think this is what differentiates presuppositionalism with a lot of the other methodologies, in my opinion.

01:37:41

Why don't you give that one a stab, and then we'll wrap things up. Well, it's at the heart of the apologetic, really, because scripture is at the heart of the apologetic.

01:37:51

And so when we talk about the gospel, we're talking about the work of Christ, but then when we talk about the work of Christ, we're talking about the inner workings of the

01:37:59

Trinity, which gets us to sovereignty. And so now we're kind of back at the sovereignty of God and ordaining everything that comes to pass.

01:38:06

So the gospel is central, you know, and Christ is the deposit of all knowledge in the

01:38:11

Trinity. He came and saved sinners. And I would say how we get the gospel across, well,

01:38:18

I mean, it would be dependent, obviously, on the context and who you're talking to. But really, it's just a matter of, listen, you're standing in absurdity.

01:38:29

Like, you can't save your worldview where you are right now. Now, let me show you how I can on my worldview.

01:38:34

And this is what God says about you. You know, you're a fallen sinner. You have an ax to grind, and you're on a,

01:38:43

I can't talk anymore, the broad path to destruction, right? And so you need a savior.

01:38:50

And that's Christ. And let me show you how Christ fits into my worldview and how He can save you from your sins.

01:38:56

So there are many avenues that you can take to get to that point because Scripture is just so vast, you know.

01:39:02

There's so many things to talk about. But no, the gospel is central, and it should be central in any apologetic you do.

01:39:09

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for that. Where can folks check out some of the things that you've written? I know you don't have a website yourself, but I think you've contributed to a website, and you've contributed something to my website, which

01:39:19

I have yet to post, but I definitely will be doing that soon. I'm very reserved.

01:39:27

I don't like putting my stuff out there. Our investor has a website, and I don't remember the

01:39:32

Apologetic Central, I think is what it is. And I've written some articles there. I have another one on Humanities Commons, I believe.

01:39:40

I don't have any collective works on any particular website.

01:39:45

Part of it's I don't feel worthy yet. I don't feel like I know enough. The only serious work I've really put out there was

01:39:50

Straub's Objection because I've pretty much specialized in transcendental reasoning at this point. So that's the only one.

01:39:57

If you want a compilation of my works or any input that I have, it would be best to just go on the

01:40:03

Presuppositional page on Facebook because I'm not out there yet. I don't feel like I'm quite ready.

01:40:10

Well, I think you do have a lot of good things to say, and I appreciate every time you leave a comment in a

01:40:16

Facebook discussion and things like that. So I do appreciate it. Well, thank you so much, Joshua, for coming on.

01:40:22

Just a reminder for folks, I'm having Dr. Douglas Gruthius on Wednesday, and hopefully

01:40:28

I did mention Anthony Rogers. We were supposed to do an episode together to talk about the philosophical problem of the one in the many, dedicate an entire episode to just that issue.

01:40:38

But he was feeling a little under the weather. So we're kind of trying to reschedule that. So I'll keep folks updated on that.

01:40:44

Also, once again, just as a reminder, if folks are interested in learning Presuppositional Apologetics through an online course, you can sign up for PresuppU, which is a course that I offer on revealedapologetics .com.

01:40:55

The classes officially start by November 1st. So if folks sign up for the premium version of the course, they'll meet with me via a private

01:41:04

Zoom classroom where we could engage the lecture material in more detail. So if folks are interested in that, you can definitely sign up.

01:41:10

Once again, classes will start November 1st, so you can sign up anytime before that. All right. Well, without anything else to announce here, thank you so much for listening, everyone.

01:41:19

If you like this video, click the like, love the like, or love the video, whatever. Share it with folks and make sure you keep updated on upcoming videos.

01:41:28

Subscribe if you haven't subscribed yet also. Thank you so much for your time. Joshua, thank you so much, everyone else for listening.