Questions for a Presup Apologist

The Bible as Ultimate Authority and the Transcendental Argument

But I want to kind of go through some questions that I had here. How do we know that the Bible is the ultimate authority, and not just one authority among many? Now, that's a good question, okay? How do I know the Bible?

If I claim that the Bible is the ultimate authority, how do I know that? Okay, well, there are a couple of ways we could answer this question, all right? Well, how do I know anything, okay? Much less the answer to this question.

We know things through revelation, right? The Bible says that my sheep hear my voice. We hear the voice of God, okay? Those who belong to Christ will hear his word. Now, I'm not appealing to some form of subjectivism or anything along those lines.

I'm just making a point that I know the Bible is the word of God because I hear the voice of my master when I read it. That is not to the exclusion of church history, church tradition, all those sorts of things.

There are various ways in which we could answer this question. There are historical aspects as to how we know the Bible is the word of God. There is a supernatural aspect in terms of which God speaks to his children, these sorts of things.

And then there's the apologetic application. Well, how do I provide an actual justification for how I know the Bible is true, and by extension, is the ultimate authority, okay? How am I going to answer that?

Well, for this specific question, I want to focus on how we know that the Bible is the ultimate authority, and not just one authority among many. And the answer to that is, we know it by the impossibility of the contrary, okay?

God speaks to me and speaks to his children through his word. Someone can come along and say, well, but how do you know that's God, okay? And now we're right back into the thick of it, well, how do I know the Bible's true?

Well, it's true by the impossibility of the contrary. Reject the Bible. Reject the worldview that is taught in Scripture, and you lose the foundation for everything. You lose the foundation for intelligibility, logic, science, so on and so forth, which I'm not going to get into the details of that here, I have a bunch of videos as to explain why that is the case and how that is the case, okay?

But you can give a transcendental argument for the truth of the Bible and its necessity as our ultimate authority. So that's one way we can justify, we can justify the claim that we know the Bible is true and it's our authority.

How do I know it? Well, God reveals it, all right? I can't prove to you that God reveals it to me such that I know that this is God speaking, I can't convince you of that, but I can argue transcendentally.

Reject the biblical worldview, and you would lose the foundation for the very intelligibility of your question itself, okay? So again, if you want to know what that looks like, you can check out my other videos where I go into things like that in more detail, but that's a great question.

I'm just keeping track of my stuff here. Next question is, yeah, so how can presuppositionalism be applied to conversations with atheists? Yeah, it's a fair question, so it really, I mean, again, it's going to depend on who you're talking with.

Not all atheists are the same, okay? Again, you could go the very philosophical route with transcendental argumentation, or it can be more conversational and things like that, but again, just as a general principle, presuppositionalism tries to show, when we argue presuppositionalism, we try to show that the atheist, while denying God, actually has to rely on the very truths that the Christian worldview provides.

So for example, you know, again, think of these biblical truths. Proverbs 1 .7 says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, and Romans 1 .18 -21 says that all people have a knowledge of God, but suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

The key point here is that I want my mind to be biblically informed as to what's going on, okay? The atheist confronts me, we have a conversation. In my mind, I know, according to Scripture, that this man has, or this woman, has a knowledge of the God that he is verbally rejecting, okay?

And I know biblically he or she is suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. So the way that I'm going to interact with that person is, I'm going to ask myself this question. How can I, in this conversation with this atheist, how can I expose the fact that they are actually relying on the very God they are denying with their mouth, okay?

And the way you do that is asking strategic questions, the sorts of questions that we've explored throughout, you know, this episode here. You know, Mr. Atheist or Mr. Unbeliever, how do you make sense out of the things you take for granted, okay?

That can be asked in a more sophisticated way, if you're debating someone formally or whatever, or if you're having a casual conversation, you might ask very simply, hey, I'm a Christian, you know, the Bible helps me kind of make sense out of the world around me, how do you make sense out of life?

How do you make sense out of morals? How do you make sense out of something like science and things like that? And listen to what they say, and, you know, as they're talking to you, you kind of interact with what they're saying, okay?

And again, you're moving the discussion in such a direction that you're trying to expose the fact that the things that they're saying rely on the worldview that you are defending, okay? So for example, if the atheist is using logic, ask him, how do you make sense out of that if, you know, outside the worldview?

If he appeals to science, how do you make sense out of something like science and induction and the uniformity of nature in a worldview, you know, that is sound and fury signifying nothing? How do you make sense out of that, right?

Asking these simple questions, you know, the answers that they often will give will expose that they actually believe certain things that are in conflict with their professed atheism, okay? So that's how I would approach someone who's a professed atheist in kind of a casual conversation.

Bonson U and the Reach of Presuppositional Apologetics

Let's see here, got two more questions. Dr. Greg Bonson was a renowned Christian apologist, philosopher, and seminary professor, and his life's work is now at your fingertips with Bonson U. Bonson U aims to bring seminary level education to every Christian anytime, anywhere, absolutely free.

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And soon they're expanding with Bonson U plus and Bonson U live, bringing fresh supplemental learning and real-time engagement. Again, go to apologiestudios .com and start your journey today. Okay, so here's a question here, so how does sola scriptura relate to church tradition?

All right, okay, so again, like I said before, so sola scriptura does not reject tradition outright, okay? But rather it subjects all traditions to the authority of Scripture, okay? Think of the Bereans in Acts chapter 17, verse 11.

These are a perfect example, right? It says here in Acts 17, 11,. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

And so even the teachings of the Apostle Paul were evaluated against what? The standard of Scripture, right? So tradition has a role in helping believers understand and apply Scripture. I don't deny that at all, but it must always be secondary and subservient to the Word of God, right?

Jesus warns us against elevating human tradition above God's Word when you see something like Mark chapter 7, verses 8 through 9, where Jesus says, You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.

You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition. Again, that was a misuse of tradition, okay? They were going outside the confines of the words of God, and they were elevating traditions of men over the words of God.

And so while church history, again, provides wisdom and insight, we don't reject that at all, okay? It is Scripture alone that is, what? Theanoustos, breathed out by God, 2 Timothy 3 .16, and authoritative for all matters of faith and practice.

That's a great question, super important question, I hope that my answer makes sense, okay? Let's see here. Okay, so here's a question. How do I respond to my Catholic friend who says that I do not have a right to interpret Scripture?

Okay, yeah, so this often comes up in conversations between Protestants and Roman Catholics, and Catholics will often say, I'm not sure that this is the scholarly Catholic position. I mean, there are Catholics who are pretty sharp and will bring up some good objections I think the Protestant can answer, but nevertheless, you do hear this in kind of popular conversation, like, you know, by what right do you even interpret Scripture?

You can't interpret the Scripture unless you have, you know, the infallible interpreter or something along those lines, okay? Now to this question, I would say that an important presupposition that I have as a Christian is that human language is a sufficient mechanism to convey truth, okay?

I would ask the person, wouldn't you agree? Someone says, well no, I don't believe that human language is a sufficient mechanism to convey truth, because you can interpret people's comments, you know, any way that you want, okay?

To which I would respond, thank you for agreeing with me in saying that human language is a sufficient mechanism to convey truth. The Catholic would turn around and say, well I didn't say that, I said that, you know, it's not sufficient, okay?

And I would say again, well thank you for admitting that it's sufficient. You see what I'm doing here, okay? If human language is not sufficient, okay, then I could just kind of misinterpret everything they're saying and reinterpret it in light of what I want them to say, okay?

The fact is that we presuppose that language is a sufficient mechanism to convey truth. Does that mean language is always clear? No. But it does not logically follow that, because sometimes it can be difficult to convey truth through language.

It does not logically follow that it is an insufficient tool, okay? I do think that there is a, you know, human language, the meaningfulness of human language, is sufficient because God has chosen to reveal Himself in words.

God reveals Himself in words, and the misinterpretation of God's Word, okay? Someone has, they say, well there are so many interpretations of the Bible. Again, when people bring this up in discussion, I get a little confused, because just from a logical perspective, it does not logically follow that because there are multiple interpretations of a text, you know, say like in the Gospel of John, that therefore we can't know what the right interpretation of that text is.

Nor does it follow that we can't be justified in the particular interpretation that we offer. I mean, just imagine being a math teacher. If I were to give, you know, a question on a test, you know, what is 2 plus 2?

And one student says 2 plus 2 is 9, 2 plus 2 is 40, and another student says 2 plus 2 is 100, and then one student says 2 plus 2 is 4. And then I look at all these answers and say, well, you know, 2 plus 2 has been interpreted so many different ways, I guess we can't know, you know, what's the right—of course not.

We'd be wrong for drawing that conclusion, okay? So I think that a key presupposition is that human language is a sufficient mechanism to convey truth, and therefore I think that we can go to the Scriptures and interpret, okay?

And then we can challenge people's interpretations in light of how the language is being used, so on and so forth, okay? I think that we can do that with the Bible. We do it all the time, right? And if human language is not a sufficient mechanism, and you need this infallible, you know, tradition, how is that infallible tradition communicated?

Well, it's communicated through human language, isn't it, right? So now we're going to have to interpret the tradition, this infallible tradition that supposedly is required to understand how to interpret the Bible, you see?

And so, kind of, you push the issue back one step, and so I don't think that that is a good point to bring up, all right? All right, I think that does it for the questions here. I hope this is helpful for folks.

Sola Scriptura, Biblical Principles, and Closing Encouragement

Now, so kind of just to summarize these things, so presuppositional apologetics and sola scriptura are connected in many different ways, but one important way is the shared understanding of the authority of Scripture, and how the authority of Scripture informs our apologetic, and informs every other area of our lives.

That does not mean I don't take advice from friends, or I don't take advice from family, but all the advice that I'm given, and when people are trying to help me make some application that might not be explicitly mentioned in Scripture, I can still bring those things into, you know, under, you know, the authority of Scripture, and evaluate them in light of biblical principles, okay?

This is important because the Bible doesn't always explicitly tell us, you know, this is what you should do, don't do this, okay? There are some areas that you're like, well, you know, for example, the Bible doesn't say, you know, there's no 11th commandment that says, thou shalt not, you know, an example I use, thou shalt not do cocaine, you know, if I give it to you like an extreme example.

But I think that we can all agree that there are clear biblical principles that we can use to evaluate whether doing cocaine is a good idea or not, okay? So the Bible equips us with principles that we could apply as we navigate, you know, questions with wisdom that the Bible doesn't explicitly address, okay?

All right, well, that is it for this episode, guys. I really hope that this was beneficial for you. If you are a first-time visitor here to Revealed Apologetics, please be sure to click the like button, the notification bell as well, so that you get all updated videos coming out.

We're going to be coming out with some pretty consistent content from here on in, and I'm looking forward to providing that for you in the future. Thank you so much for listening in, guys. Until next time, take care.

God bless. Bye-bye.