Introduction to Apologetics

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Well, tonight we come to the first in our series on the subject of apologetics.
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And while I'm giving an introduction, if you want to open your Bibles and turn with me, we're going to be looking tonight at the third chapter of 1 Peter.
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So you can turn in your Bibles to 1 Peter chapter 3 and focus your attention at verse 13.
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1 Peter 3, 13-17 will be what we will read.
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Before we read though, I want to give a short introduction to the series.
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When I was 19 years old, Jennifer and I were married in this church.
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At that time I would have identified myself, at least if I were surveyed or asked, I would have identified myself as a Christian.
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And I thought that I was.
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I worked for a company at the time which had me in close proximity to other workers.
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And one of the ones that I was working with was a man who was an atheist.
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And I did not know this, but one day I was discussing with another person why I believed faith was very important and how without it, I thought, life would be an exercise in despair if we didn't have something to believe in, something to trust in.
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And keep in mind, I was not born again at the time.
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But I was at least making an argument why I thought faith was important.
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But this man, who himself was a former science teacher, heard my statement regarding the subject of faith and he said, Well, I don't believe that.
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I guess I just know too much to believe all that.
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I'll never forget him saying that to me.
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In fact, I can picture in my mind his face.
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He was just two seats down.
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We were all in little cubbies and we could see each other.
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And I remember him very clearly.
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And his words really did affect me.
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I didn't want to be considered ignorant.
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And I didn't consider him to be ignorant.
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And I began to slowly realize that a lot of what I was at least professing to believe, I didn't really believe.
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And I didn't really believe all the things I'd been brought up with.
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And through a roundabout process, this was the catalyst that God used to bring me to a true faith.
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Because I realized I didn't have any.
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And my living faith, which is a result of God regenerating my dead soul, was sparked by a man who challenged my dead faith.
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As interesting as that is.
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And after that, a lot of events happened, and the most important being that when God saved my soul, He brought a genuine conviction over me, opened my heart to not only believe in Christ as Savior, but trust Him as Lord and want to serve Him in the ministry.
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But for a long time, I would go back to that moment when my co-worker basically said he was too smart to be a Christian.
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And I knew that Christianity was not just a crutch for the intellectually deficient.
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I knew Christ was my Savior and that He had rose from the grave.
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But I wanted to be able to demonstrate the truth of this if I was ever again faced with a person who made such an argument.
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And as a result, I began what would continue through my lifetime up until today, some 18 years later, to study the truth claims of the Christian faith.
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When I was in seminary, my master's thesis was written on the subject of defending the Bible on the areas of science, geology, cosmology, and biology.
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This was many years ago.
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I was 24 when I was doing that work.
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My methodologies of defending the faith have changed quite a bit since that time.
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But my desire to defend the faith has not.
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And so that is my introduction as to why I feel like this subject has a special place in my own heart.
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And what you're going to get over the next several weeks of study is not from a textbook.
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I'm writing all the lessons myself based on my experiences in my own studies.
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And I encourage questions.
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We are going to take a few weeks throughout the series and watch a few videos.
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We're going to look at a few clips along the way.
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We're even going to examine some arguments from atheists.
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So we're going to have a lot of fun over the next few weeks, and I hope have a very enlightening time.
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But tonight we're going to begin in 1 Peter 3 because this really is sort of the heart of Christian apologetics.
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This is the passage that most apologists will look to as sort of their go-to verse when somebody says, Well, what is it that you're doing? Why is it that you're doing this? And in 1 Peter 3, Peter writes this.
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He says, Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed.
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Have no fear of them, nor be troubled.
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But in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.
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Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.
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For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil.
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May God add His blessing to the reading and to the hearing of His Word.
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1 Peter 3, and particularly verse 15, has long been the go-to passage for those who engage in making a defense of the Christian faith.
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And the context of the passage is someone who is under assault.
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Someone who is under attack for their faith.
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If you look at verses 13 and 14, it talks about someone who is doing harm to another.
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And it talks about someone who is receiving suffering on behalf of having defended or stood for their faith.
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Now, in our modern world, we could look around and we could say, okay, in America, there are times where people have suffered for their faith.
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There are times when people have even died for standing up for Christ, even in our own land.
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But, in today's world, it is much more common to look across the sea and know that there are entire nations where the Christian faith is against the law.
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It is illegal to practice openly or to evangelize openly and can be not only used as a reason for imprisonment, but also for death.
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And you go back 2,000 years, and that was the reality of the day for all believers.
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Christians were hated in the early church by the Jewish community who saw them as a heretical sect.
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They were hated by the Roman community who considered them to be insurrectionists because they refused to say, Caesar is Lord.
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Instead, they said, Jesus is Lord.
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And to them, that was blasphemy, the unwillingness to call Caesar Lord.
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And so the reality that Christians would have to defend their faith is one that spans a 2,000 year history.
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And in verses 13 and 14, that's what we see.
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He says, if you're doing good, who is there to harm you? And the reality is, well, some people do harm you for doing good.
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So he goes on to say, but even if you should suffer for doing good, for righteousness sake, you'll be blessed.
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Have no fear.
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Don't be troubled.
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But here's what you should do.
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One, you are to sanctify the Lord in your heart.
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Now, the ESV says, in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy.
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Jack, you have an NIV? What does it say? Do you mind, sir? Verse 15.
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Okay.
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Thank you.
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I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
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I was just looking at it.
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Thank you.
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The first part, it says set apart Christ in your heart.
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In the ESV, it says honor Christ as holy.
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And in the, I think the King James, if somebody has one, you can correct me, but I think the King James says to sanctify the Lord Jesus Christ in your heart.
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I want to tell you something.
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When it comes to defending the faith, this is the part that a lot of people miss.
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Because the first command in this passage is that when you're going to give a defense for the faith, you need to have sanctified the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord of your heart, meaning He has the place of lordship in your life.
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I know a lot of people who can defend the Christian faith who aren't even Christians.
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I know people who could run you ragged on Bible verses and why the earth's only 6,000 years old and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, but don't know the Lord.
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And so the first part of this passage, when it's regarding you're standing against somebody who's coming against the Lord and coming against His truth, is first and foremost, He should be set apart as holy in your heart.
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And I like to mention that in the early part of this study because we're going to get into some heavy conversation as we go.
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But the primary, primary part of standing for the faith is being in the faith.
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The primary part of standing for Christ is being in Christ.
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I'm going to talk about this later tonight, but I honestly, I'll tell you this, I'd rather stand with somebody who I know knows the Lord and is on fire for Christ, but may not be the best person who can argue.
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I'd rather stand next to them to share the gospel with somebody than a great arguer who doesn't know Jesus or who behaves like a fool.
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Because they may have a great argument.
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They may have a great wit about them.
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But unless the Lord is sanctified in our hearts, we won't do the next thing.
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Because notice what the next thing is.
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It says, honor Christ the Lord as holy in our hearts, always being prepared to make a defense, and it goes on to say this, with gentleness and respect.
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Do you realize that Christianity, your faith, if you're a believer tonight, calls you to behave in a way that honors Christ, even if you're defending someone who hates Him.
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It calls you to honor Him by treating them with gentleness and respect.
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In fact, in the book of one of the Timothys, and I forget the verse specifically, but Paul tells Timothy, he says, when you're dealing with someone, deal with them in love, because God may grant them repentance.
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You deal with them with patience and love, because God may grant them repentance.
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You walk up to somebody, and you pull out your hammer, and you just smash them upside the head.
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You may have a great argument.
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But we're not about winning arguments.
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We're about winning people.
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Right? We're about seeing people come to know the Lord.
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And as far as trying to win an argument, no, we tell them the truth.
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We let Christ win their hearts.
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When I say winning people, Christ is the one who wins the person ultimately.
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He's the one who saves the soul.
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Yes, sir? Thank you.
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Because I want to actually give you the term here when it says with gentleness, and in the ESV it says respect.
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In the NAS it says reverence.
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In the King James I think it also says reverence.
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It's what? Fear.
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Fear.
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Well, that's actually, the Greek word is phobos.
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What word do we get from phobos? Phobia.
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What's phobia? Fear.
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And that's the term.
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That's the actual term used in the Greek.
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When we share and we stand for the faith, we do it with gentleness and fear.
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Not fear of the person.
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Fear of God.
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Reverence for who we represent.
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I am an ambassador of Christ.
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I'm standing as if it were Christ making his appeal through me.
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That's what 2 Corinthians 5 says.
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As if Christ were making his appeal through me.
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So I stand there with gentleness and the fear of God.
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So all this to be said, this all surrounds the idea, and I think it's necessary to understand before we even go to what apologetics is, we understand the capsule that it comes to us in.
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It comes to us in honoring Christ and behaving with gentleness and the fear of God.
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That's the start.
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But in the midst of that, in the midst of that, it says, always being ready to make a defense.
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That word is, and I'll stand for a moment to do this, that is where we get the word apologetics.
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In the Greek, apologetics comes from apo, which is to be away from, and logos, which means, well, that's the ending sigma.
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Apo and logos meaning to speak away.
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And I'll explain why that's the term there works the way that it does.
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All right.
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That's actually, yeah.
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All right.
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So let's now look at your questions for the evening.
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I've got three questions here.
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I've got a lot to say about these questions, so I'll try not to belabor each of them.
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But I hope that you understand now where the passage and how it affects what we're doing.
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The first question that we have tonight on our handout is the question, what is apologetics? Well, I've just told you that it comes from the Greek word apologia, or the term here is apologion, and it means to speak on behalf of oneself.
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It means to speak against the accusations that have been made.
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It literally means to defend yourself.
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How many people here would think the word means to say I'm sorry? Well, you've heard me say that's not what it means.
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But you say that, you'll do something wrong, and you'll say what? I want to apologize, right? I want to apologize for what I did.
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Well, if you say you want to apologize, it doesn't mean you're sorry.
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If you say you want to apologize, it means you want to defend what you did.
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I want to defend my actions, because that's what an apology is.
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An apology is not to say I'm sorry.
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Now, it is in our modern vernacular.
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Words change, and things change.
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But in the original Greek, the language of scripture, rather, the koine, if somebody was giving an apology, they were not saying they were sorry.
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They're giving a defense for why they did what they did or said what they said or believed what they believed.
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And as I said, in ancient Athens, it referred to a defense made in the courtroom as part of the normal judicial procedure.
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After the accusation, the defendant was allowed to refute the charges with an apologia, a defense.
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And the accused would then seek to speak away his accusations.
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That's where the term apologos, to speak away.
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If you come to me with an accusation, I'm going to take your accusation and demonstrate why it's incorrect.
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Make a defense.
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Speak away what you have said.
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And we see this.
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I don't want you to go there, but in your minds, those of you who have been with us on Sunday mornings, we've been studying through the book of Acts for a few years.
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We're getting to the end of the book of Acts.
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And from back in chapter 23, we see Paul being taken before the Sanhedrin.
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And what does he do? He makes a defense.
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He gives an apologia.
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He goes before the governor, Felix.
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Then he goes before Festus.
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Then he goes before Agrippa.
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Every time, he says, I'm making my apologia.
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I'm making my defense.
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So that's what apologetics is.
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It's giving a defense of the faith.
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Now, some people call themselves apologists.
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And that might be a term you want to familiarize yourself with.
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An apologist is someone who makes defending the faith their ministry.
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Some take issue with that.
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Because the Bible never makes such an office known.
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I mean, if we were to say, okay, Jack and Richard, you guys are elders.
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That office is talked about in 1 Timothy and Titus and in the book of Acts and other places.
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So you could say my office is at least outlined in Scripture.
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Paul, you're a deacon.
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You say my office, at least that which I exercise in the church, it's outlined in Scripture.
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The office of the deacon, the diaconate, and the elder.
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Some might say, well, the word evangelist is used in Scripture.
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Some people argue whether or not evangelist is an office.
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I think it's a ministry that an officer can hold.
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I think an elder can be an evangelist, a person who's gifted in teaching evangelism.
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But I don't necessarily think it's necessarily an office.
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But some people do.
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And you know people who are evangelists.
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What was Billy Graham? He was an evangelist.
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You know people who are traveling evangelists.
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But the word apologist, when it's applied to an individual, is not used in Scripture.
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And yet, there are people who identify themselves as apologists.
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How many of you remember when Dr.
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James White came to our church? It was on my birthday.
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I was so happy.
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It was my present.
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He is probably, maybe outside of Dr.
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Squall and Dr.
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MacArthur, one of the most influential teachers in my life.
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And having him here was a blessing.
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But he identifies himself as an apologist.
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There's another man by the name of Matt Slick.
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If you've ever gone to carm.org, that's CARM, Christian Apologetics Research Ministry.
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If you've never been there, I recommend it.
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It's a great website.
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CARM.org If you've ever got a question about dealing with other religions especially, because he has entire sections on Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses, Muslims, all kinds of, he's got great information.
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And Matt Slick would be identified as an apologist.
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So the question becomes, well are these guys wrong? I don't think so.
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I will say this, it's not an office that's mentioned in Scripture, but as far back as the second century, there are men who took their role in the church as being men who gave a defense for the truth.
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Men like Tertullian, Justin Martyr, just to name a few.
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Who from the very earliest time of the church, within the first century after the death of the apostles, these men were defending the faith against false teachers and heretics and those from other religions.
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Simply stated, apologetics is defending the truth.
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Are there people who defend the truth as their ministry? Yes.
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But let me add this, that doesn't mean that they're the only ones.
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That just means that they're the ones who have dedicated themselves to doing that as their ministry, but we all are called to be apologists.
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In the same way that we're all called to be evangelists.
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You see, you could say Billy Graham is an evangelist, but I could say you're an evangelist.
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In fact, Charles Spurgeon said, a Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.
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Meaning that he's either seeking to save people from hell, or he's not a real believer.
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He doesn't care that people are going to hell.
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And so that was Spurgeon's pretty bold claim about evangelism.
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He says we're either evangelists or we're imposters.
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Missionaries, he used the term, but he meant it in the sense of people who preach the gospel, teach the gospel to unbelievers.
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Well, I would say the same thing about apologists.
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We're not all called to be Dr.
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James White.
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We don't all have the same gifts that he does, especially gifts for language and things like that.
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We're not all called to be apologists on the same place as him, or Matt Slick, or R.C.
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Sproul, or someone like that.
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But we are called to make a defense for the hope that is within us.
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Going back to 1 Peter 3.
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You have a hope.
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What is your hope? When you die, you're going to see Jesus, and He's going to say, well done.
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Not because of the work that you've done, but because of the work of Christ that you've trusted in.
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That's what we hope in.
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And it's not hope like, oh, I hope my plane arrives on time.
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That's not the same type of hope.
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The hope that it's referring to is a blessed assurance.
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Isn't that the song we sing, Blessed Assurance? Jesus is mine.
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Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine.
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That's the truth that we hold to.
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We hold to a hope that's a sure hope.
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Faith is the evidence of things hoped for.
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So this is what apologetics is.
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Defending our hope.
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Making a defense for what we trust in.
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Taking a stand for the truth.
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So that's what apologetics is.
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Now why do we do it? That's question number two.
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Why do we study apologetics? Well, the most common misunderstanding of apologetics is that it is intended to convert unbelievers.
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Let me explain something to you tonight.
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Apologetics is defending the truth of Christianity, but apologetics alone will never save a soul.
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No one will be argued into the kingdom of God.
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And let me add this.
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If you can argue someone into the kingdom of God, someone else could come along and argue them out of it.
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Apologetics does not convert the soul.
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God converts the soul.
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You understand that? And I say that because I do believe that there are people who enter into the study of apologetics with the mindset that I'm going to go around and just scoop up all the atheists and teach them why they're wrong and they're all going to magically become unbelievers.
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I believe in my heart that there are men who could come face to face with the living God and deny Him.
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I do.
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I believe they did it with Jesus.
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They came face to face with God in the flesh and they put Him on a cross.
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Because apologetics does not have the power in and of itself to save the soul, some people think that it is a fruitless study.
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In fact, I had a professor in seminary back years ago because I was a student of apologetics who told me it was worthless.
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You didn't need to do that.
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And their attitude is somewhat noble, I think.
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Their attitude is, well, it doesn't need to be defended, it just needs to be proclaimed.
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Alright? And while that may sound noble, it ain't biblical.
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It might sound noble, but it ain't biblical.
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Because throughout the New Testament and throughout his writings specifically, the apostle Paul spent a great deal of time giving a defense for the faith.
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If you read Acts, just Acts alone, Paul would go into a city and he would go into the synagogue and he would reason in the synagogue.
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But what is reasoning? It's making a defense for something.
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It's proclaiming something, but it's reasoning about why it's the truth.
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And then he would go into the marketplace and he would reason in the marketplace.
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That's an example of apologetics in action.
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And as I said, apologetics and evangelism go hand in hand because when we're proclaiming truth, we're running into objections.
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If you've never heard an objection to your faith, I can honestly tell you, you probably have never shared your faith.
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And if you're not running into objections, you're probably not telling anybody about it.
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And as I said, our ability to overcome those objections is not going to win the person because it's God who does that, but our defense can demonstrate the fallacies inherent in their worldview.
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We can at least help them to see the deficiency of their worldview and how Christ is the only...
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The Christian worldview is the only worldview that really makes sense.
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So the main purpose of apologetics is to demonstrate and defend the truth claims of Christianity.
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And this not only has value when dealing with unbelievers, it also has value for believers as well.
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You realize apologetics can be good for you too? You say, well, I'm already a believer.
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Yeah, you may already be a believer.
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But are you not encouraged when you learn more about the truths of your faith and more about how you can defend those truths and how you have a defensible faith? Apologetics reminds us that you don't have a blind faith, that you're not just believing on something that has no basis.
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When you follow Jesus Christ, you're following a literal person who literally lived 2,000 literal years ago, who literally died, was literally buried, and literally rose from the grave.
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And when you stand for Jesus Christ, you have something to stand for.
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And apologetics helps you understand the realities of why that is so.
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Knowing that we have a faith that is reasonable and defensible encourages us to more boldly proclaim it.
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You know what I almost always hear when I say to someone, you know, why aren't you sharing your faith? Because people come to me and say, I don't share my faith.
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I'll say, why not? Because I don't know what to say if people ask me a question.
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I'm afraid they're going to ask me something I don't know.
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You know what my answer is? What are you doing about it? Because honestly, if you'd been, I don't know, for the last 10 years, week in and week out, going to auto repair class, and you couldn't change the oil in your car, I'd ask you why.
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But if you've been going to church for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 30 years, and you can't tell somebody about Jesus because you're afraid they're going to ask you a question you don't know, first of all, even if you didn't know the answer to the question, that shouldn't keep you from telling them about Jesus.
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But on the other side, why don't you know? So that's part of what this is about.
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The more we know, the more bold we are to proclaim it.
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All right, third question, and this is a three-parter, and we're going to finish tonight, Lord willing, because I want to move on next week.
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I've got a lot to teach in the next, so I don't want to get bogged down.
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But the third question tonight is, are there different ways to engage in apologetics? And the answer is yes.
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There are at least three schools of thought in the area of apologetics, and within those there are subcategories that we're not going to get into, quite frankly because it's unnecessary for the scope of this class to get into too much of the minutiae.
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But you do need to understand the three main categories of apologetics for this course because we're going to be focusing on one particular kind, and I'm not going to tell you tonight what that is.
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And if you do know, don't tell anyone because I'm going to ask you a question later, and you've got to come back next week.
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And Jack knows in your Sunday school class you always end with a question, right? You want them to come back having thought about the answer.
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So if everybody goes around and tells them the answer, if you know the answer, that might ruin somebody's week of thinking.
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So don't just go around and tell everybody the answer.
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But there's three schools of thought, and I do happen to ascribe to one of them.
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And if you know what that is, like I said, maybe hold it to yourself.
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But we're going to talk about the three of them tonight, and I'm going to ask you the question at the end.
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I want you to think about which one you think is most biblical.
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And next week we're going to take a little survey.
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And it doesn't matter, you're not going to hurt my feelings if you disagree with me.
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It's okay.
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It certainly is an opinion question, but I'm going to teach you why I think one is more biblical.
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But there are three schools of thought, or three methods of apologetics.
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Classical, evidential, presuppositional.
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Classical, evidential, presuppositional.
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Classical apologetics is where we'll start.
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Classical apologetics, as denoted by the name, has been the most dominant in history.
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If you go back through history and you study the apologists, especially in the first few hundred years of the church, the classical method tended to have a foothold.
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The classical method presents Christianity as rational.
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Classical apologists will often utilize various forms of rational arguments to prove God's existence.
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There are arguments called the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the ontological argument, and on and on and on.
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And each of these arguments is used to fundamentally prove by simple rationality that God must exist.
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I'll give you an example of a cosmological argument.
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An argument for the existence of God.
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The cosmological argument, rather, is an argument for the existence of God that claims that all things in nature depend on something else for their existence, i.e.
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they are contingent, and that the whole cosmos must therefore itself depend on a being that exists independently and necessarily.
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You say, that's kind of confusing.
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Let me simplify it.
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Everything around you is an effect.
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You're the effect of something.
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Your parents, right? They were the effect of something else.
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They were the effect of their parents.
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This earth is the effect of something.
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The moon and the stars and the water and the air are all effects of something.
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A cause.
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But you can't take that back forever.
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There has to be a first cause which is itself uncaused.
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There has to be something that started it all.
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It's just like these guys who talk about the Big Bang.
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They'll say a Big Bang happened, that the whole universe was held in a small, dense space, and then it exploded and became all that we have.
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And you say, well, what was there? Couldn't have been nothing, because if it was nothing, it'd still be nothing.
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You know what comes from nothing? Nothing.
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If you take nothing and put it in a jar, and you seal the jar for a thousand years, you know what's going to be in there when you open it up? Nothing.
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Because nothing comes from nothing.
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Now there are men like Stephen Hawking who argue that the universe did start from nothing, but if you listen to his argument and spend time with it, you will realize that he argues that nothing is something.
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And if nothing is something, it's not nothing.
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That's a cosmic...
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Yes, sir? Okay.
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But you understand what I mean? If there was ever nothing, there'd still be nothing.
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So there's always been something.
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And whatever that thing is, it's uncaused.
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And whatever that thing is, it is the cause of all other things.
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And that cause, which is the cause of all other things, is by necessity itself independent of all other things, because it's uncaused.
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This is the cosmological argument for the existence of God, that He is the uncaused cause of all things.
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That's a classical argument for the existence of God, one of many.
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And that's a rational argument, based on the idea that there can't be nothing if there is now something, because there must always have been something if there remains something.
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And the one thing that caused all other things must itself be uncaused.
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Did I confuse you? I'm not trying to.
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I'm just trying to help you understand.
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That's a type of classical argument.
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The classical apologist seeks to prove rationally that God exists, and then demonstrates that God, who does exist, has acted historically as is accounted in the Christian scriptures.
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So this is key.
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The classical apologist begins with rationality, proving the existence of God, and then hones in on which God? Our God.
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You see? That's key.
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The next is the evidential apologist.
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As the name suggests, this relies on evidences to prove the existence of God, and the truth claims of Christianity.
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This may be and is considered by many people to be the most scientific of the three methods, because it seeks to begin in a neutral position, not making any claims up front.
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I want to read a quote here.
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In distinction from classical apologetics, the evidential apologist believes that the occurrence of miracles acts as an evidence for God's very existence.
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In this way, the evidential apologist does not believe that the philosophical and scientific arguments for God's existence must logically precede arguments from miracles to establish biblical Christianity.
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Alright, that may be a little confusing.
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Let me explain it.
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The classical apologist says we first rationalize God's existence.
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Then we prove the Christian God based on the rational belief that God does exist.
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The evidentialist says we begin with neutrality and only evaluate the evidence.
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That's what science is supposed to do, right? You don't bring anything except the hypothesis, what is or is not, and you test to see what is or is not.
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That's how science works, right? Or at least that's how it's supposed to work.
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So the evidentialist says we start from neutrality and then evaluate evidence.
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Here is an example.
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It might be things like archaeology or the fulfillment of prophecy, the miracles of the Bible, and proof for those miracles from things like archaeology and history, eyewitness reports and things like that.
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Often people use evidential arguments without ever realizing it.
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You ever heard somebody try to prove the Bible by saying, hey, the Bible gives prophecy that's later fulfilled, and that prophecy is proof that it's a divine book.
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I mean, I've used that argument myself, showing the prophecies that happened 500 years before Christ are fulfilled in Christ.
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We know these books were written hundreds of years before Christ, and here they are fulfilled in Christ.
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And so we're able to use those arguments.
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That's an evidential argument.
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You don't have to have a starting point.
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You simply say here's what it said 500 years before Jesus.
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Here's what it says about Jesus when He came, and this is a fulfillment of that.
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That's a miracle, and a miracle is evidence for a miracle worker who is God.
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You see what I'm saying? That's an evidential argument.
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Make sense? Is that clear? Norman Geisler.
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How many of you guys ever heard of that name? Norman Geisler.
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I know you know Norman Geisler.
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I know you guys.
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Norman Geisler is a classical apologist, not an evidentialist.
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And what he says is this.
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He says the difference between classical apologetics and evidential apologetics on the use of historical evidence is that the classical sees the need to first establish that this universe is a theistic universe.
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So the classical will say we have to prove first that it's a theistic universe, and then we demonstrate that the miracle is a result of it being a theistic universe.
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The evidentialist says no, we demonstrate that these miracles have happened, and then we extrapolate the fact that it must be a theistic universe for miracles to happen.
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Have I confused you? I'm not trying to.
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Do you understand? They just have different starting points.
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One starts with rational argument for the existence of God, and then says, okay, now that we know that, we see miracles, we point them at that God, because he must be the reason for it.
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Evidentialist says we start neutral, we look at the evidences, and we point those back, and extrapolate from that there must be a God.
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So the evidentialist says we don't have to start rationalizing God.
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We simply start with the evidences that we have, and that points back to God.
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Third, presuppositional.
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Oh, by the way, let me add one last thing to the evidential.
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The evidentialist believes this, that the preponderance of the evidence concludes the truth.
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The preponderance of the evidence will conclude the truth.
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Thus the term evidential.
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That's how it works in court, isn't it, John? We build a case based on evidence, and we present that case as our defense or our prosecution or whatever.
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Both sides present evidence for their side.
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The tendency among evidentialists is to elevate logic and reason and objectivity.
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We're logical, we're reasonable, we're objective.
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That's what the evidentialist would say.
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Third is presuppositional apologetics.
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We're getting to the end.
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I know we're a little over time.
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I promise I won't hold you too long.
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Presuppositional apologetics.
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A presupposition is something that is assumed before an argument begins.
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In a sense, it is something that is taken for granted.
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It is presumed to be true and unnecessary to prove.
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If I said, I'm trying to think of a good one for right now.
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If I said Jack Bunning is sitting in that chair, would I have to prove it? No, because everybody knows that he's there.
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You see him.
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Some of you might have to turn around.
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I can speak from the presumption that Jack is here because he's here.
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I don't have to prove it.
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I just speak from that position.
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That may be a very weak example of presupposition, but I came up with it just as I was sitting here thinking about how to give an example of what a presupposition is.
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It's presumed something is true.
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I don't have to prove that.
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I just start talking to him.
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Now, if I was talking to Jack and he weren't here, you guys might want to call the guys with the coats and have me brought one of the lab coats and have me taken away.
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But I can talk to him because I know he's here and you guys know he's here and I don't have to prove that.
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The presupposition list states that a necessary prerequisite to any knowledge claim is the truth that God must exist.
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No, rather, let me say this again.
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The prerequisite to any knowledge claim is the truth that God does exist.
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Not that he must, but that he does.
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And let me give you a few examples of why that is.
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If God did not exist, we would have no reason to believe in the uniformity of the universe, thus all scientific inquiry would be useless.
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There would be no reason to believe in an orderly universe if there was not a creator of the universe, if there was no God.
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If God did not exist, our brains would not have been designed for thinking, thus we would have no reason to trust our own thoughts.
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That was an argument from C.S.
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Lewis.
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He said, if I didn't believe my mind was designed for thinking, I'd have no reason to trust my own thoughts.
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So if somebody comes up and says something to the effect, well, I don't think God exists, well, why do you think your thinking matters? If God did not exist, morality would have no transcendental foundation, thus we would be unable to identify anything as objectively evil or objectively good.
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So somebody says, I don't believe in God because of all the evil in the world.
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Or do you get the idea of evil or morality? Well, it's my ideas of evil morality.
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Okay, is there anything above you or is there anything above any of us that makes a statement as to what is good? Because an unfeeling, unthinking, cold universe that has no intelligence can't determine anything as good or bad.
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And what makes you better than Hitler? Well, I've never killed anybody.
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What makes killing somebody bad? You see, there's a presupposition that people have that they don't even know they have.
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Presuppositional apologetics exposes the logical flaws of other worldviews and demonstrates the biblical worldview as the only one that makes consistent sense of reality.
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Now, some people think that presuppositionalism is inherently circular and circular reasoning is flawed.
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If you use God to prove God's existence, you're arguing in a circle and that doesn't work.
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Well, I want a quote from Van Til.
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Cornelius Van Til was one of the great thinkers of the last century and he wrote a lot on this subject and this is what he had to say.
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He said, To admit one's own presuppositions and to point out the presuppositions of others is therefore to maintain that all reasoning is in the nature of the case circular reasoning.
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The starting point, the method and the conclusion are always involved in one another.
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Basically, what he's saying is all arguments are in a sense circular because all arguments begin with some form of idea that has to be proved by that idea.
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It may be a little confusing, so let me say it like this.
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The presuppositionalist believes that man is unable to escape his presuppositions.
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Do you know why two scientists can look at the same evidence and come to vastly different conclusions about that evidence? Because of their presuppositions.
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Now you ask the question.
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You leave today and you go talk to four different climate scientists about climate change.
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Is it possible that if you talk to four different guys that you can get four different answers about the reason for the heating or cooling of our world? Do you think it has anything to do with the evidence or something to do with the presuppositions? The presuppositionalist believes ultimately that it is part of the unbelievers depravity to suppress the truth of God and that depravity governs their reasoning so the unbelief is their presupposition which in turn governs their conclusion.
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They are predisposed to unbelief because they are sinners and yet they know God exists so they rebel against that knowledge.
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Now if I have tipped my hand as to which one I would support I didn't mean to but I do believe one of these is biblical while the other two are not unbiblical I think that they support the one that I think is most biblical.
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So I want to encourage you this week to think about these three things.
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You've got the classical that begins with the rational the evidential that begins with the neutral position and then says let's look at the evidence and then there is the presuppositional which says there is no one who is neutral and everyone brings a presupposition and the goal of apologetics then is to point out the presuppositions of the person that you are giving your defense to.
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Alright, well I hope that was helpful.
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I hope that was a fun introduction.
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I hope that didn't confuse you.
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Next week we will have part two of our study of apologetics and I hope you all come back and continue to study with us.
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Can we pray to end? Father I thank you for this time to study.
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I pray that this will be used by you to help us to better understand our call to defend our faith but to always do so with gentleness and reverence.
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In Christ's name, Amen.