March 20, 2017 Show with Craig Biehl on “God the Reason: How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet

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Earth listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 20th day of March 2017.

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I'm so delighted to have back on the program today Dr. Craig Beal who'll be with us for the full two hours of the broadcast.

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Dr. Beal is the founder of Pilgrims Rock, a ministry which develops courses and other material to boost the believer's joy, comfort and faith in Christ and Scripture, and to nurture in believers and their children a

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God -honoring and intellectually defensible worldview that can survive and thrive in the face of sophisticated attacks of unbelief, and instructor for the

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Unbreakable Faith course at the Lancaster Bible College Center for Urban Theological Studies in Philadelphia.

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Today we are discussing Dr. Beal's book, God the Reason, How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr.

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Craig Beal. Chris, it's a privilege to be here, thanks for having me back on. And let me give our listeners our email address right away, it is

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ChrisArntzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the good old

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USA. And for our listeners who were not with us last time, if you could please describe

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Pilgrim's Rock. Well Pilgrim's Rock is the result of about 15 years of teaching a particular apologetics course, and seeing the need for a very specific apologetic that zeroes in on the presuppositions of unbelief as well as belief.

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And so we decided to launch Pilgrim's Rock as a means of disseminating this particular approach.

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It's a Vantillian approach, Shefferian approach, with a lot of Jonathan Edwards thrown in, to target homeschool children and parents, well actually high schoolers and parents, and then we broadened it for churches as well as, of course,

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I do teach it as an adjunct at different colleges at different times.

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So that was the impetus for that, just to, it's a very particular method but we think it's very, very powerful, and we simplified it so that we feel it can be taken out of the hallowed halls of academia and brought into the living rooms of anybody, and that's our desiring goal.

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And if you could, I'd like you to share with our listeners the prayer request that you had pressing upon your heart today.

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Yes, thank you Chris. Just before we came on the program, I received a call from a dear friend and his wife had a knee replacement last week, but it has devolved into a

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MRSA infection, that's a, you know, a staph infection that's resistant to antibiotics, and so they put a direct link into an artery by the heart in order to pump in the antibiotics.

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And so we would just pray, her name is Ellen, if the listeners would pray for her deliverance, for her healing and for strength and comfort for Sam and Ellen, dear friends, dear precious saints in the

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Lord. So just received a call just before the program. Yes, and I will continue to pray after the program is over as well, as I did pray with you privately before the show and will continue to do so.

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And by the way, in your bio you teach the

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Unbreakable Faith course at the Lancaster Bible College Center for Urban Theological Studies in Philadelphia.

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Is that the organization that my old friend Carl Ellis was affiliated with? I believe so, that was back when it was affiliated with Geneva College, I believe.

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Okay, and this book that you've written that we are going to be discussing today,

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God the Reason, How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith, that should be encouraging to everyone listening because if everybody listening out there is anything like me, our faith very often seems anything but unbreakable.

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We can have very fragile moments and dark trials, but let me read some of the commendations that this book has received from guests who have been on the

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Iron Sharpens Iron radio program. Dr. Peter Lilback, President of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, says, �Craig

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Beals� God the Reason is a remarkable book. It presents theology proper, the knowledge of God in all of its transcendent importance and breadth.

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It does so in a way that is accessible, clear, and spiritually invigorating. If you are thirsting for a deeper and more personal knowledge of the

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Lord of the Universe, drink deeply of this study. The divine perfection celebrated here will bless your life, stir your reason, and ground your faith on an unmovable foundation.�

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And Dr. Joel Beakey, President of Puritan Reform Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who has been on this program many times, he says, �This thought -provoking work shows the emptiness of atheism from an angle not often taken.

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Without indulging in technical terminology or obscure philosophical arguments,

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Craig Beals starts with the attributes of God revealed in Scripture, builds a rational worldview upon them, and demonstrates convincingly that without such a

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God, life makes no sense at all.� And then we have someone who

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I haven�t interviewed, who I would love to interview, Dr. John Frame, Professor of Reform Theological Seminary.

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He says, �Craig Beals� God the Reason is a very thorough, presuppositional, apologetic, arguing

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God�s existence and His necessity for all reasoning, thinking, meaning, and therefore living. The book is a continuous, orderly defense of the

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Biblical worldview. Its arguments are clear and cogent. I hope it gains many readers,

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Christian and non -Christian alike.� And then finally, Dr. Richard Gaffin, who I interviewed years ago on this program, right before a cruise he was speaking on.

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He is Professor Emeritus at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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And he says, �This volume explores in a compelling manner how the truth of the being and primary attributes or perfections of God is essential for fundamental issues of faith and life.

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Written for a wide audience, it will be read with considerable profit in our increasingly secularized times.�

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Quite profound and powerful commendations that you�ve received. Well, let�s start the program with a deeper explanation of the truth that God created and sustains everything.

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Well, in the book, what we do is we walk through each attribute, and then for each attribute we expound on the apologetic implications of that attribute.

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So it�s not just a study of the attributes, it�s a study of the implications for apologetics, for worldview, for our faith, of the attribute.

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And so, God is eternal, God is uncreated, God has no beginning, and as an implication of that,

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He�s the creator and sustainer of everything. And therefore, the universe depends on God for its existence for everything on an ongoing basis.

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So nothing could exist if God didn�t exist, if God didn�t order and sustain it every moment of every day.

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And that includes all of what are called sometimes, well, most of the time called natural laws.

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But natural laws really aren�t natural laws per se, they�re really divine laws of how

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God upholds and organizes every quark and atom and molecule in the universe every moment of every day.

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So there�s really no such thing as a natural law that exists in and of itself, it�s just how we observe how

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God is organizing the universe. And so, because God is created and sustains everything, we depend on God for everything.

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We depend on Him for life, we depend on Him for truth, knowledge, and authority, something we don�t always think about, and we depend upon Him, of course, for purpose, meaning, and a moral compass.

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And in addition, because He created all things, we owe Him everything.

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So God needs absolutely nothing, He�s perfect apart from His creation, and He didn�t need to create us, and He didn�t need to create anything, but He did, and because He did, we owe

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Him everything. And so in addition to that, of course, because He�s the author and sustainer of everything at every moment of every day, then everything in the universe displays

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His divine excellence. So you could say that all things bear His fingerprints, so to speak. So everything

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He created displays His excellence, that includes His special revelation, scripture, as well as everything internally, our conscience, our consciousness, externally, everything in the sky, on our dinner table, everything in existence displays

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His excellence, and therefore, as a result of that, and this has profound implications for worldview, unbelief denies the obvious, and unbelief is really willful unbelief that is without excuse.

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So there�s no such thing as a neutral or an innocent unbeliever. There�s only rebels, people deep, deep down.

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Any unbeliever we speak with, um, sharing Christ, sharing the gospel, pointing to the infinite excellence of God, deep down in their soul, scripture tells us, they already know

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God, but they suppress that truth and unrighteousness. So those are some of the worldview apologetic implications of the fact that God created and sustains everything.

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And that�s where we start, and we go from there through all of the attributes, and each of them have significant implications of their own.

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And as we go on, I just want to say this, if people think, well, that implication is also an implication of another attribute, and that is probably going to be true, because a lot of the implications of an attribute are implications of many attributes, because God, of course, is undivided.

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So, but in order to have a book where I don�t name the same implication, you know, ten times throughout the book,

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I sort of divided them up as to what implication might be the most obvious from a given attribute, but they do overlap considerably.

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We have a listener in New York City, Tony, who asks, I don�t know how familiar your guest is with Gordon Clark, but could he, in summary form, give a comparison and contrast between Dr.

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Gordon H. Clark and Cornelius Van Till in regard to their apologetic?

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Well, I knew somebody was going to ask that. Are you a prophet?

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And I can�t believe it�s the first question. Now, we need to ask about the book. But anyways, let me just say this, there�s a chapter in Greg Bonson�s book,

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Presuppositional Apologetics, it�s the book that was published after his death, he has a chapter in there where he goes through the arguments that ensued between Van Till and Gordon Clark.

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It�s a complicated discussion, there was a lot of lack of definition, maybe there was insufficient definition on both sides at times, and sometimes the language used may have been a little bit unclear on both sides.

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So, there�s a considerable amount of overlap between Van Till and Clark, at least

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Clark in his early days, between their two approaches. They seem to diverge somewhat as Clark matured in his thinking or changed in his thinking, and I really don�t want to speak to the details of the disagreement because it was so heated and it would take too much time to qualify the statements and get into the nuances of it, and I would have to, again,

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I would refer you to, Bonson has several sections in Van Till�s Apologetic on this, and in that book,

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Presuppositional Apologetics, he has an entire chapter devoted to it, and of course, there�s no lack of arguments from both sides all over the web.

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But it does bear with respect, and I don�t want to go too much further than this, with respect to how much human beings can know, and one accusation was that Van Till denied that believers or human beings can know truth as God knows truth, or as Van Till would say, we can, and as Schaeffer would say, we can know truth truly, but we can�t know it in the way that God knows it, i .e.,

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as an independent, sovereign, infinite God who knows every angle of every truth, how it relates to every aspect of the entire universe, so we can know it as God would have us to know it, but we can�t know it the way

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God knows it because Van Till was careful to try and maintain the creator -creature distinction.

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Now, there�s aspects of that that Clark certainly would agree with, and beyond that,

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I really don�t want to say any more because it is a very, very difficult and esoteric kind of debate where the confusion on both sides made it such a protracted debate, and so I just leave you with those chapters and the internet, and I apologize for not going any further.

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That�s quite all right, and Tony, I don�t know what date it will be, but God willing,

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I will be having an interview within the next several months, hopefully, with a

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Reformed Baptist who has written a book defending the

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Clarkian side of apologetics, and I will give more details when that interview gets closer to coming to fruition.

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And by the way, Tony, you have actually won a free copy of the book, God the Reason, How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith, compliments of Carpenter Sun Publishing and our guest,

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Dr. Craig Beal, and this will be shipped out to you by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service CV for Cumberland Valley, bbsforbiblebookservice .com,

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so keep an eye open in the mail for that. And not to belabor that question, but it is interesting how the

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Clarkian supporters who have contacted me,

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I don�t want to broad brush my brethren who have that apologetic ideology, but the hostility that I have received from some of them is unusual, whereas the

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Vantillian supporters don�t seem to have that hostility towards the other side, and I mean that typically, obviously there could be

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Vantillians who are rabid anti -Clarkian individuals. It�s just Vantillians, we�re just likeable, lovable.

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You know, there�s caged Clarkians and there�s caged Vantillians, I�m sure, but I think a really good place to start is in Chapter 4 of that Presuppositional Apologetics book by Bonson.

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He does show that there�s a considerable amount of overlap between the two, and I think that�s important to point out, and I think it�s important for both sides to understand that, and that Clark�s thinking did sort of change over time, but there�s a lot of in -house debate where there�s just a lot of commonality, at least in the early

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Clark, between the two, and the heat of the debate is probably not commensurate with any level of differences between the two.

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I think the heat is far, far beyond what it should be amongst � you know,

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Vantill can slice things rather thinly, and he can even go after Schaefer and others for their inconsistencies.

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I mean, he�s very astute that way, but anyways,

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I do think that that thing has gone on probably far too long, and there shouldn�t be any ill rapport on either side in that debate at this point,

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I think. But that�s just me. And, Will, if you could get into further depth on how the universe depends on God for everything.

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Well, God spoke everything into existence by his word, and so natural laws didn�t exist prior to God speaking them into existence, if you can even use that kind of language, because he didn�t really speak the laws into existence.

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He spoke matter, energy into existence, and even time, because God transcends time. But the organization and the sustaining of the universe is an ongoing act of God.

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So the minute God quits ordering, sustaining the universe, the universe disappears.

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It doesn�t exist. It has its existence by God�s power. Now, that doesn�t mean that we�re pantheists.

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God and what he created are separate. We and God are separate.

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But that, at the same time, anything and everything depends upon his ongoing genius and power to sustain it.

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And apart from him sustaining it, that�s it. That�s gone. So everything in the universe is dependent upon God for everything.

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And that goes all the way into the area of epistemology when we get into God�s creatures.

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He�s the source and sustainer of all truth. He knows everything perfectly.

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He knows things that haven�t even happened or haven�t even existed. He knows anything and everything that�s possible to know.

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And so therefore, we depend upon him for that knowledge, which is rather important when you start dealing with people making speculative remarks about the nature of God and his universe when they don�t have revelation to support it.

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So, I mean, we could go into how this affects the nature of miracles because when we think of miracles, oftentimes we think of God intervening into the universe or intervening into our sphere of the world.

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When really miracles are not God intervening, it�s God just doing something a little bit different at a particular time, at a particular place, for a particular purpose.

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Because God is already intervening, if you can use that terminology, in the universe every moment of every day.

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He�s upholding it, ordering it, and sustaining it. And so a miracle is really

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God just doing something different to prove a point, to make a point. And so when people argue against the validity or the reality of biblical miracles or the possibility of biblical miracles, the question really needs to be asked is what�s more difficult for God to do?

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To organize every electron, proton, neutron in the universe every moment of every day, or to put

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Jonah in a whale for three days, or to do any one of the ten plagues upon Egypt, or part the

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Red Sea, or bring manna from heaven, or you name it. These types of miracles that some �Christian scholars� want to explain by sort of natural processes as if God isn�t involved.

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What�s the difficulty of any miracle in Scripture if your starting point is a God who�s spoken into existence and orders and sustains every aspect of it every moment of every day?

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These miracles become rather small things in light of what God�s doing every moment of every day.

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And so when somebody says, �Well, show me some evidence of God. Do a miracle, God. I need to see something supernatural.�

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Well, for one, we don�t need to have a supernatural natural distinction. Everything in a sense is divine.

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Not divine in that it�s equal or part of God. It�s God doing something in the universe.

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So to have somebody to look at a sunset, a sunrise, the stars in the sky, the birth of a baby, their own cognition, their own eyes, ears, and senses, anything and everything in the universe, to see all that organized and upheld perfectly every day by God and then ask, �Hey, show me some proof of God by a miracle.�

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It�s absurd because they�re drowning in a sea of evidence for God�s existence and they�re asking for additional evidence when a sunrise and a sunset is just as big, if we can use the terminology, a miracle as God making the sun stand still in the sky.

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So everything depends upon God at every moment of every day has implications for a great many things that are sometimes attempted to be turned upon Christians to somehow contradict or oppose the

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Christian worldview when really anything and everything are dependents upon God and the universe dependents upon God for all things.

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It�s one of the great underlying strengths of the Christian worldview because apart from God ordering and sustaining the universe, time and chance produces nothing of what we see in this universe from whatever we look at in a test tube to anything and everything that we can see examined through science in this universe is quite impossible apart from an infinite

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God of infinite genius ordering and sustaining at every moment. But that answers your question a little bit long.

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Well, I want you to be as long as you need to be because we do have a two -hour program and I want you to obviously be as detailed as we possibly can get.

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And I�m going to ask a question from one of our listeners before we go to the break and you could answer it when we return from the break.

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This will give you an opportunity to mull the question over because he basically wants three arguments from you.

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Casey, who is originally from the Philippines but now lives in Kannapolis, North Carolina, Casey asks, �What are the top three arguments you hear from atheists and how can you use presuppositional apologetics and then evidence in apologetics to refute those arguments ?�

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And if you could mull that over while we go to a station break. And if anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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But other than that, please give us your first name at least, your city, state, and country of residence.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is

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Dr. Craig Beal, founder of Pilgrim�s Rock, a ministry which develops courses and other material to boost the believer�s joy, comfort, and faith in Christ and Scripture, and to nurture in believers and their children a

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God -honoring, intellectually defensible worldview that can survive and thrive in the face of sophisticated attacks of unbelief.

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And he�s an instructor for the Unbreakable Faith course at the Lancaster Bible College Center for Urban Theological Studies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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We are discussing his book, God the Reason, How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith.

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If you�d like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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Before the break, we asked you, Dr.

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Beal, we posed to you the question from Casey in Kannapolis, North Carolina.

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What are the top three arguments you hear from atheists, and how can you use presuppositional apologetics and then evidence in apologetics to refute those arguments?

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Okay, Casey, that�s an excellent question, and let me qualify my answer first by saying, this particular approach is geared to exposing irrational, blind -faith assumptions underneath or behind all unbelieving arguments.

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And so, it�s really, what we do in God the Reason is we start from �In the beginning, God�, and we work our way through to a way to do that that affirms

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God�s infinite excellence and the unbeliever�s worldview as rooted in and founded upon irrational, blind -faith and unsupportable and inconsistent with the nature of reality as we know it.

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So, it�s an approach, and it�s an approach that needs to be understood to see any and every argument as founded upon these ultimate -faith assumptions.

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So, what we try not to do is make it a �Okay, here�s the argument, here�s the answer, here�s the argument, here�s the answer.�

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What we do is we first try to establish, �Here�s the issue, here�s the approach, and it can be applied to anything.�

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So, I would highly recommend you pick up the book and go through it, and maybe even the box, which just shows, in a more simple fashion, the nature of presuppositions underlying all predication or all thought, all argumentation, all thinking and knowledge.

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So, that is sort of an introductory caveat. That�s what we try to do.

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Now, in answer to your question more specifically, all sorts of arguments they use.

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I�ll just pick three. Number one would be, and this is as much an argument as it is a picture they paint to show us as being, you know, unreasonable rubes who don�t trust in science or rationality or logic or anything, and it�s the reason in science versus blind faith.

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So, the argument is, �You guys are believing in something that you can�t prove scientifically, whereas we are scientific and reasonable, and we�re looking at the universe that way and, therefore, drawing conclusions that way.�

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Well, this particular soundbite is completely a myth, and, in fact, it�s the exact opposite is true.

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So, what we would do is, we don�t have a quick and easy answer for this one, but what you do is you show that everybody, indeed, operates according to faith in an ultimate authority.

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Nobody reasons apart from an ultimate authority. So, if you were to ask the unbeliever, �Well, what do you appeal for your interpretation of reality ?�

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Ultimately, it comes down to faith in their own personal authority or their own ability to answer ultimate questions according to their limited perspective, their human perspective, that that perspective is sufficient to answer ultimate questions about why we�re here, where we came from, the nature of God, what

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He can do, what He can�t do, and those sorts of things. So, what we do is we start out by showing that everybody uses reason.

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I use reason. Unbelievers use reason. Everybody uses reason. Number two, everybody reasons by faith in an ultimate authority.

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It�s not an issue of, �We�re both looking at the same fact and just differ in opinion as to how to interpret the fact.�

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No, we may both be looking at the same fact, but we�re both appealing to a different object of faith or ultimate authority or standard of truth by which to interpret the fact.

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So, the unbeliever, ultimately, in denying God as the Source and Sustainer and God as having made that fact as part of His overall purpose and plan of redemption and part of His all -encompassing plan that everything in the universe is part of, ultimately, all you have to ask them is a couple questions, �How do you know?

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How do you know ?� and basically, they are trusting their own personal perspective and interpretation of that fact.

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Therefore, their faith is in themselves, whereas we are placing our faith in the

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God who created it, sustains it, and knows everything about it. So, it�s not an issue of two people disagreeing and having �We�re both reasonable and objective people.�

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No, we both interpret reality according to a set of presuppositions or assumptions.

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The unbeliever interpreting that fact according to their assumption that God doesn�t exist and that they can know things apart from God and that their opinion and their perspective ultimately can give a reason and a description and an ultimate answer to the question or to the fact that we�re examining, whereas the believer, it�s

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God and Scripture. So, the first thing that needs to be pointed out is a difference between objects of faith, ultimate authorities, and not a difference of opinion.

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Secondly, we need to point out that their object of faith is their own personal opinion.

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Ours is Scripture. Thirdly, we need to point out that how their limitations preclude them from being an ultimate authority and interpreter of reality, because � and I use this in the box � if they don�t know, if an unbeliever � and I don�t know either.

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I don�t know what�s in my neighbor�s garage unless I go inside and look at it. In other words, I�m limited.

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And if the unbeliever can�t know what�s in their neighbor�s garage without looking inside it, they will readily confess that, that they are limited.

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They don�t know anything. They don�t know everything about the universe. So, given their human limitations, how can they know how, you know, the ultimate questions for one or how a given fact fits into all of reality?

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They can�t do that. If there�s no God, then all facts become what Bent Hill called �brute ,� or they�re just unrelated, chance accidents all popping up.

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It�s the one in the many question that philosophers haven�t been able to answer apart from God until this day.

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So what we do is we show them that their object of faith can�t deliver on the goods.

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Their object of faith cannot answer the question they claim to answer.

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And it�s not an issue of they have science and reason. It�s an issue of they�re trusting in their interpretation, and their interpretation is by a limited person who doesn�t know what�s in their neighbor�s garage, whereas we�re trusting in the interpretation of the guy who created it, knows it, and is adequate to create it, sustain it, organize it.

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Everything in the universe displays His glory and God is adequate to the task. Time and chance is inadequate for anything in the universe.

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So what we need to do in that particular instance is ask four questions.

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Whose ultimate object of faith is authoritative, personal opinion when they don�t know what�s in their neighbor�s garage, or the guy who created the universe?

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Whose object of faith is trustworthy? Can we trust personal opinion? I mean, when an unbeliever tells me to deny

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God, they�re asking me to trust in their view, and they don�t know what�s in my neighbor�s garage. I mean, it always boils down to an issue of faith.

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Third question. Whose ultimate object of faith is reasonable and justified? Well, ours is reasonable.

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A God of infinite excellence who created everything. Everything bears His fingerprints. All design, you know, implies a designer, etc.,

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etc. Theirs is, I know. Based on what? I know.

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And what do they know? They don�t know a whole lot. They�re limited. They�re finite. And lastly, whose object of faith is adequate to explain reality?

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Well, ours is, of course, utterly adequate. Theirs is utterly inadequate. So this idea that they use reason and science and we operate according to faith is false.

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We both operate according to faith, and we both use reason. We just reason with our trust in different objects of faith.

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And with respect to science, science can answer no ultimate question. Science can only explain and describe what

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God is doing at any given time in the universe. And beyond that, science is impossible apart from God.

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Time and chance produce no science because science relies upon fixed universal laws and order, every electron acting the same way.

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It relies on a table of elements that functions the same way today as it did yesterday, and that�s impossible apart from God.

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Time and chance produces no basis for science. So that�s the first one. The second one would be miracles of Scripture are silly, unscientific, and impossible.

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Well, this is how you handle that one. First, in order for the miracles of the

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Bible to be impossible, the God of the universe has to not exist. Correct? You can ask the unbeliever, �If there�s a

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God who�s of infinite power, can He do miracles ?� Of course He can, and any unbeliever will admit that.

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But then they�ll say, �Yeah, but He doesn�t exist.� So then the question becomes, well, what do you have to know to know that this infinite

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God doesn�t exist? And the answer is, they�d have to know everything about everything in the universe and beyond to know that this

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God does not exist. So for them to make the statement, �God doesn�t exist ,� they�re assuming omniscience.

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That�s the underlying presupposition. The underlying assumption is they can know things that they can�t possibly know.

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Well, that�s irrational. So if an infinite God can do miracles, and if it requires knowledge of everything in the universe and beyond to know that this infinite

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God doesn�t exist, which is impossible for them to know, then they have no basis whatsoever to say that Jonah and a whale is irrational or unreasonable.

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Absolutely not. Because in a universe created and sustained by an infinite God, that�s a completely rational and reasonable miracle.

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Because as I said earlier, miracles are small compared to God sustaining every quark and atom and molecule in the universe every moment of every day.

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So the miracles of Scripture 1, they throw that at us all the time. �You guys believe in an ark?

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How unscientific is that ?� Let me just explore that a little bit with you. When you be gracious and kind and loving to the unbeliever, but show them that for them to deny the miracles of Scripture, they need to have the omniscience of the

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God they deny, which in itself is a self -contradictory problem that they have, that they have to be the

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God they deny. So that�s number two. And number three would be the problem of evil.

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So they would say the classic syllogism, �If God is all good, he would prevent evil.

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If God is all powerful, he could prevent evil. Evil exists. Therefore, God is either not all good or God is not all powerful.

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Therefore, the God that as he is revealed in Scripture can�t exist because evil exists.�

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Well, the easy answer to that one is, how do they know their premises are true? The first premise, a

45:48

God who�s all good would prevent evil. Well, how do they know that? They can�t possibly know that.

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They�d have to know, again, about everything in the universe and beyond, including God�s nature, to know that somehow a

46:00

God who was good couldn�t allow evil for some reason that�s beyond our limited understanding.

46:06

And secondly, what we need to say is, �Now, are you telling me that because you don�t understand how a good

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God can exist who�s infinitely powerful, at the same time evil exists, because you can�t understand that, therefore, that God can�t exist ?�

46:23

So, what they have done, in essence, is made their own limited understanding, the same limited understanding that doesn�t know what�s in their neighbor�s garage, the ultimate standard of what

46:34

God can and cannot be or what God can and cannot exist. They�ve just repeated the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden, saying that, �My understanding is the ultimate authority in this universe.�

46:47

So, what they�ve said, �If I don�t understand it, it can�t be true. If I don�t understand it,

46:53

God can�t exist.� And that�s irrational, because we�re limited people. My understanding does not constitute the ultimate standard of truth or the ultimate standard of what can and cannot exist in a universe created by an infinite

47:07

God. So, those are the ways I would handle those from a presuppositional perspective.

47:12

Now, for believers handling the problem of evil, there�s a set of rules that they should always employ, and I�ll just throw these out to you and to the audience, just anticipating a further question, and that is this.

47:28

Anytime we come to a great mystery or a theological difficulty, and given the fact that we are created and finite and limited, there will always be mystery.

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It has to be. One believer says, �When we appeal to mystery, it�s a cop -out.� Well, it�s not a cop -out.

47:44

It�s just an acknowledgment of the nature of reality, the nature of God, and the nature of our own human limitations.

47:50

And we�re willing to admit our human limitations with respect to a great many things, but somehow when it comes to God, we become immediately omniscient.

47:59

Well, no, mystery is necessary and to be expected when we are finite and God is infinite.

48:04

So, what do we need to do as believers when we approach things like the problem of evil or sovereignty and human responsibility or preordination and human responsibility, and you name it?

48:15

Well, there�s six rules that I lay out in God to Reason that I think are very helpful. Number one is,

48:21

God�s ways are perfect in every way and infinitely higher than our ways. So, that�s Isaiah 55.

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His ways are higher than our ways as the heavens are above the earth. We have to accept that. If we�re unwilling to accept that, we�re going to have problems with everything, honestly.

48:37

Number two, as created finite and dependent on God for all knowledge, we can only know what

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God has chosen to reveal to us. And He�s revealed to us that He�s perfectly good. And He�s revealed to us that He�s infinitely powerful.

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And He�s revealed to us that the origin of evil resides in the will of created beings.

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And beyond that, we don�t have a whole � we can�t go very much further than that.

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Number three, our limited understanding does not constitute the standard of truth of what can or cannot be true with God or what

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God can and cannot do in His universe. Our limited understanding cannot determine such things. Four, no proposed solution to the problem of evil or other theological difficulty can compromise any revealed attribute of God or any necessary implication of an attribute of God.

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At that point, we�re making our own understanding higher than God�s revelation, and we�re just not allowed to do that.

49:34

It�s wrong to do that. It�s irreverent. Number five, the responsibility and guilt of sin always belongs to the will of the creature who sins, including the four ordained acts of sinners, i .e.

49:48

Acts 2 and Acts 4. And number six, and this is a very important key, and that God has remedied evil at infinite cost to Himself, in redeeming, in the redeeming work of Christ, He upheld and displayed

50:03

His perfect righteousness, and He sufficiently revealed His perfect character in that He couldn�t save a single soul without maintaining

50:12

His perfect holiness and righteousness. He couldn�t even do a good act to sinners without maintaining

50:18

His justice. This God goes to the infinite extent of taking infinite wrath on His own soul in order to maintain

50:26

His justice, to do rightly. And so, He has revealed His perfect character sufficiently that we can fully trust

50:34

His character in the face of mysteries and difficulties, things that we can�t reconcile in our finite use of logic, our finite understanding.

50:43

So, Casey, that�s a great question, and I�ve gone a little long with the answer, but I think it�s needful that we understand that this is not just a quick and easy fix to certain questions.

50:55

There�s certain principles of how they all work together, starting with �In the beginning, God ,� that we can deal with all of such questions.

51:03

So, thank you very much. That�s a great question. And in fact, Casey, I think that you should take the recording of the answer from Iron Trump and Zion Radio�s website tomorrow, which will be archived there, transcribe the answer, and hand it to Carpenter�s Son Publishing for perhaps a booklet to be published with a summary of apologetics to atheists.

51:29

So, I think that would make an excellent little booklet or tract. But we are going to a break right now.

51:37

In fact, I�m going to read another question for you before the break, brother, that you can answer when we return from the break.

51:45

Lou from Sharpsburg, Georgia, says, �Can you give an example of how you put

51:52

Proverbs 26, 4 through 5, into practice ?� And let me read Proverbs 26, verses 4 through 5.

52:00

�Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will also be like him. Answer a fool as his folly deserves, that he not be wise in his own eyes.�

52:11

Perhaps when we return from the break, you could answer Lou from Sharpsburg, Georgia�s question regarding that proverb.

52:18

If anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

52:26

Please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA. And by the way,

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Casey, you have won a free copy of �God, the Reason, How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith.�

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So keep your eye open for a package in the mail from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

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C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for BibleBookService .com.

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And that should be arriving within a week or two. And that�s compliments of our friends at Carpenter Sun Publishing, compliments of our guest

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Dr. Craig Beal, and compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will be shipping that out to you at no cost to you or to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Don�t go away. We will be right back after these messages with more of Dr. Craig Beal and �God, the

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Reason, How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith.� Don�t go away. God willing, we will be right back after these messages.

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01:04:11

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than an hour to go is

01:04:22

Dr. Craig Beal. We are discussing his book, God, the Reason, How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith.

01:04:31

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

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I just received one today in fact from Texas and I also am taking to heart the kind criticisms that I'm receiving of my bellowing laughter hurting your ears and I apologize for that.

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I am trying to move my mouth away when I laugh. I move my mouth away from the microphone when I laugh.

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These are knee -jerk reactions obviously. These are not rehearsed or planned outbursts that I have so it may make it more difficult.

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I leave a lot of this in the hands of my webmaster to muffle those deafening sounds so I apologize if I am disturbing you with the laughter and we'll try to work on that as best as I can.

01:08:00

But we are now returning to our discussion with Dr. Craig Beal and right before the break a listener in Sharpsburg, Georgia asked about Proverbs 26 verses 4 through 5.

01:08:14

Do not answer a fool according to his folly or you will also be like him.

01:08:19

Answer a fool according or answer a fool as his folly deserves that he not be wise in his own eyes.

01:08:27

They seem to be contradictory statements but we will have

01:08:32

Dr. Beal exegete that for us. And Lou from Sharpsburg, Georgia wants to know can you give an example of how you put those

01:08:40

Proverbs into practice? Well Lou that's a great question and to give you specific examples

01:08:48

I did put it into practice with my response to KC earlier when I talked about miracles, the problem of evil and reason and science versus faith.

01:08:58

So that's sort of the that's a picture of how it sort of works but let me just say this let me let me answer your question by showing you or by responding with the principles that are behind the apologetic need to not affirm a fool in their foolishness but to actually show them their foolishness and their need to repent of their foolishness.

01:09:20

That's sort of the import of the verses there are not saying obviously it sounds contradictory it's not it's just a clever way of saying don't use the same assumptions don't argue on the fool's premises don't act like the fool show the fool to be in need of Christ the need of salvation by showing them that indeed their premises are false they're trusting in a false object of faith and their reasoning needs redemption.

01:09:56

So let me just say that what that in the apologetics context what it means is we need to expose that unbelievers are not neutral objective interpreters of God and his word.

01:10:10

So they want us to believe that they come to us saying okay we're both reasonable we're both looking at the evidence and reasonably drawing conclusions from the evidence.

01:10:21

Well that's not true at all nobody's neutral nobody's objective in their interpretation of reality we interpret reality according to our ultimate love or dislike of God or love or hostility towards God which determines our ultimate object of faith either our own personal opinion or God and his word which then determines all our assumptions about God, man, reality, knowledge, truth, authority, and ethics.

01:10:48

So whatever issue they're talking about whether it be God, man, reality, knowledge, truth, authority, or ethics we need to show them that they're interpreting it or their assumption they're making is rooted in an ultimate faith object.

01:11:00

So when somebody says well this isn't it's not right for Christians to criticize this particular type of sin well the question becomes based on what?

01:11:08

Based on your opinion? If we're created by God he he's the one who determines what's right and wrong.

01:11:16

If we're not created by God well all of reality reduces to absolute impossible pointless absurdity.

01:11:23

So and we can show them how that's the case. But so the first principle is we don't allow them to run the discussion according to their assumptions.

01:11:36

We need to show them that nobody's neutral we're both viewing things and discussing or arguing hopefully not arguing but discussing according to ultimate objects of faith or standards of authority and standards of truth.

01:11:51

And then we need to explore and expose their unbelief as being unreasonable and a sinful denial of the clear and compelling knowledge of God.

01:12:01

So you know take them to Romans 1 18 and following and say you know scripture is very clear everybody has a knowledge of God in their heart.

01:12:08

We don't allow them to deny what's reality according to God's explanation. The reality according to God's explanation is everybody knows

01:12:17

God the same way that the demons know of God. They just don't love God. So they suppress the knowledge of God even though they're without excuse and they know they see his divine power they see his goodness his providence they see his righteous judgment in their own conscience.

01:12:33

And Romans 1 talks about that too where they know certain things they do are wrong but they still do them and affirm other people that do them.

01:12:41

And then thirdly we need to show them that unbelief presumes the place of God and the ultimate authority.

01:12:47

So we don't let them get away with you know that they're just being reasonable.

01:12:53

No they're taking the place of ultimate authority and that is very unreasonable especially and I like using the illustration if they don't know what's in their neighbor's garage they're just not qualified to be an ultimate authority.

01:13:05

We need to show them that whatever they're proclaiming they're proclaiming ultimately by faith in their own personal perspective and opinion.

01:13:13

Then next we need to expose that their unbelief is really faith in their ability they have faith in their presumed ability to know what they can't possibly know.

01:13:26

So their limitations preclude them from knowing many things that they state with great dogmatism.

01:13:33

God would never do this. God can't do that. God is like this. Well I think God is like that.

01:13:38

All these statements are meaningless apart from revelation. We need to show them that, that they're limited. They don't know those things apart from God's revelation.

01:13:46

And then we need to show them that that unbelief is not justified.

01:13:54

They want us to justify their unbelief that they're reasonable in it. We can't affirm that they're reasonable in it.

01:14:00

And then lastly we need to show them that they need to repent of repeating the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden and making their own understanding the ultimate authority.

01:14:09

So those are the kinds of things we need to do. We don't answer a fool according to their view of reality, according to their assumptions about reality, according to their presuppositions regarding reality.

01:14:22

We can do that on occasion when we're showing them that it leads to absurdity. So for example, let's just for the sake of argument we'll assume that I'm an ultimate authority or assume that God doesn't exist.

01:14:36

And then we show that that leads to absurdity. We can do that, but that's with the intent of showing their worldview as being false and unreasonable and unsupportable by reality.

01:14:47

But in general, answering a fool according to their folly is to show them that what they're arguing is rooted in foolish trust in their own ability which is rooted in a hostility towards God and a willingness and a willful denial of the obvious.

01:15:05

Now, let me just throw in one caveat. I was at the bedside of somebody in a hospital yesterday who was, it was a convalescent hospital and we had these ongoing talks and he knew all of the arguments.

01:15:18

He's an atheist. And you know what? He was more, he was able to engage with me because I visited him on an ongoing basis and he knows that I care about him.

01:15:30

And he had a grandmother that was a faithful saint. Praise God for faithful grandmothers and parents.

01:15:36

And he couldn't get away from that, but he had, you know, he could point out hypocrisy at the drop of a hat in the church.

01:15:44

But so I started using these things very subtly and nicely, but you know what? They all had to be done with love and grace and kindness and that he had to know that I was concerned about him.

01:15:55

You know, sometimes we, you know, we call them caged Vantillians or caged whatever Calvinists when they become a five point

01:16:02

Calvinist. They need to lock them up for a few years till they settle down. Well, that's what we need to do.

01:16:08

We need to remember that sometimes the greatest evidence for the truthfulness of what we proclaim is the love we show people and the love of Christ that comes in and through us.

01:16:17

We don't need to be intimidated. And one of the great things about this approach is it takes away the intimidation because quickly we can see that they're arguing from an indefensible position.

01:16:27

And rather than blasting them, we can gently show them that as it fits into our discussion and then point to the infinite excellence of Christ and the infinite love of God who would take infinite wrath on himself that they might have happiness forever.

01:16:43

So in answering a fool according to his folly, we're not blazing our guns at the middle of their forehead and blasting them to death and being obnoxious in the process.

01:16:53

We're speaking the truth in love, but nonetheless, we're speaking the truth and we're showing the invalid, the irrational, the blind faith, ultimate basis of what they're arguing for.

01:17:07

And then we point them to Christ. So long answer yet again, Lou, but I hope that helps.

01:17:13

Thank you, Lou. And please give us your full mailing address so we can ship out to you a free copy of God the

01:17:21

Reason How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith. For some reason, I'm having a hard time saying infinite excellence back to back those two words.

01:17:29

I don't know why I keep tripping over those words. But this is compliments of Carpenter's Son Publishing.

01:17:36

And it's also compliments of our friend who is our guest, Dr. Craig Beal and our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

01:17:47

We'll be shipping that out to you at no charge to either you or us at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:17:54

Thank you very much, Lou. Keep listening and spreading the word about Iron Sharpens Iron in Sharpsburg, Georgia and beyond.

01:18:02

We have Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker from Shepherds Fellowship in Greensboro, North Carolina.

01:18:11

And Pastor Vanderwerker has a question. On a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest priority, how important is it to press the fact that the unbeliever utilizes faith in his ability to A, observe,

01:18:29

B, reason, or C, come to a true conclusion?

01:18:35

That's observe, reason, and come to a true conclusion. And he says, this is a great show with several exclamation points.

01:18:44

And welcome back, Pastor. I know he asked the question, he asked me about the two Bible verses and he might have been, last time with the box, he might've been looking for 1

01:18:52

Peter 3 .15 and taking all thoughts captive. But I gave him a sort of roundabout answer of God, in the beginning,

01:19:00

God. But thank you for coming back. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would say it varies as to the encounter.

01:19:11

Now, everybody's different and Schaefer makes this point and he's very good about this. He says that we need to treat people as individuals and people as individuals have different concerns, different personalities, different...

01:19:24

We need to listen to them from, you know, to understand where they're coming from.

01:19:30

And that's showing them respect. And Schaefer was very, very adamant about that. He says, we can't have a cookie cutter approach.

01:19:37

And I know you're not advocating that. So what I would say is sometimes it's a 10, sometimes it's a one.

01:19:44

I remember once I was having a discussion with a PhD in biology about all of this stuff and it came down to her dog.

01:19:51

She was... The greatest argument for God's existence was the loving kindness of her dog.

01:19:57

And you know what? A lot of my other comments went right over her head and they didn't relate at all.

01:20:04

But she could see that that dog was no accident. And sometimes, you know, the ultimate object of this approach is to get people into the

01:20:16

Word because nobody's saved by a good argument. They're saved by the Spirit of God and the Word of God. And so if I don't ever have to mouth a single apologetic word, so to speak, and I'm just pointing out the infinite excellence of Christ, that he would love the unlovable to make them lovable and that he would suffer infinite wrath to make us infinitely happy and all of those beautiful, glorious things of the gospel.

01:20:42

And I never have to point out the fact that their unbelief is faith in a wrong object and all those other things that you mentioned.

01:20:49

Praise God, because that's where I want to get them to anyways. And if I can avoid all of the argumentation, great.

01:20:58

Don't need to go there. But even when I use these sort of arguments, they're very subtle.

01:21:04

It's not that I'm blasting at them. I'm just sort of saying, now, are you really, are you trusting in your own opinion on this?

01:21:14

And can you really know that? And you know, we're doing it very gently. So I would say for certain people who have placed themselves as sort of internet pundits who know everything and are blazing away and showing how we're irrational and unscientific, it's nice, maybe on a scale of one to 10 at times to just go to the 10 and say, well, let me just show you that all of what you're saying is absolutely unreasonable and that you're actually sitting on blind faith, especially if there's an audience and we're going back and forth and we need to expose that.

01:21:47

Other times at the bedside of somebody, it just really just depends. It's a great question, but it really depends upon the sensitivity and the caring and the love of the person who's interacting with the unbeliever and what the unbeliever is presenting, where they are, how tender their heart is, whether they need to sort of be put in their place in a gentle, nice way to show that they don't have all the answers.

01:22:16

So I'm sorry I can't give you a definitive answer on that, but it really, sometimes it's a one, sometimes it's a 10, sometimes it's a five.

01:22:23

And if you have a follow -up question to that, please do that and I'll try and answer that as well.

01:22:28

But that would be my perspective on it. Well, thank you very much, Sterling, Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker, and you are going to be receiving in the mail compliments of Carpenter Sun Publishing, a free copy of God, The Reason How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith by our guest,

01:22:47

Dr. Craig Beal. And that will be arriving in the mail, God willing, within a week or so from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service CV, bbs .com.

01:22:57

That's CV for Cumberland Valley, bbs for biblebookservice .com. And since I've heard very wonderful things about you and Shepard's Fellowship from some of my other listeners,

01:23:11

I'll give you a plug for your congregation. The website for Shepard's Fellowship of Greensboro, North Carolina is sf for Shepard's Fellowship, off for of, g for Greensboro, and then so, why it's so,

01:23:30

I guess that's an abbreviation for south, so .org, s -f -o -f -g -s -o .org.

01:23:38

And that's Shepard's Fellowship of Greensboro, North Carolina. And we welcome your questions always,

01:23:49

Pastor Sterling. And hope to hear from you again soon with your questions for our guests.

01:23:54

Keep spreading the word in North Carolina and beyond. Chris, could I interrupt for a second?

01:24:00

Oh yeah, sure. For Pastor Sterling, feel free to contact me through the website.

01:24:06

And if you were on the website before, we just switched providers, our host providers.

01:24:11

So if you get a scary message, just type in the URL, www .pilgrimsrock .com,

01:24:17

and that message will go away till we get our SSL certificates straightened out. But go on there and click on the webinars tab, and you'll see we're offering free webinars.

01:24:26

And I'd like to offer those to you personally at any time that's convenient to you. We can just do the webinar.

01:24:32

I'll do it live, and you can ask questions of me as we go along. Any of your other listeners, Chris, can do the same.

01:24:39

Just contact me. I'll schedule those things custom, or they can sign up for any of the ones that are there.

01:24:45

And we get into some of these topics in greater depth with a lot of pretty slides that they can view, and it's live so they can ask questions, and I hear them and they hear me.

01:24:54

So just thought I'd make that available to you, Pastor Sterling. And an appreciation for you doing this, and for the other listeners as well.

01:25:02

Oh, that's great. That's a very generous offer. That's pilgrimsrock .com. pilgrimsrock .com.

01:25:08

There's no apostrophe, obviously, in the pilgrims. Just pilgrimsrock .com.

01:25:15

And let's see. We have a listener again in Slovenia, Joe in Slovenia, who says,

01:25:24

I've been reading recently about Ghazali's argument for the creation of the universe and the existence of God from the impossibility of an infinite number of past events prior to today, which would have to be true if God did not exist and creation was eternal.

01:25:46

Please ask Dr. Beal to address this proof. What does he think about this argument as an apologetic with naturalistic atheists?

01:25:54

Thank you for sharpening us today. Oh, you are welcome. And thank you for listening, and all the way from Slovenia.

01:26:02

That's fantastic. Now, here's the issue. Now, sometimes people argue about, well, it's just presuppositions.

01:26:10

It's not evidence and that sort of thing. Well, that's just a false sort of picture of things. Evidentialists deal with presuppositions and presuppositionalists deal with evidence.

01:26:20

In fact, we deal with evidence comprehensively because we believe anything and everything in the universe is clear, compelling, and comprehensive evidence for the existence, power, genius, goodness, and holiness of God, even in our conscience.

01:26:35

So those types of arguments are helpful and can be unhelpful, but mostly helpful.

01:26:43

But what we need to do in using those types of arguments, we need to understand that any unbeliever will interpret that type of argument according to their ultimate faith commitment or ultimate faith assumptions or ultimate faith presuppositions.

01:26:59

So their presuppositions, as Van Til would say, are like a set of glasses glued or cemented to their face.

01:27:07

So whatever argument you bring to an unbeliever, if you don't challenge those ultimate presuppositions or assumptions they have about God, man, reality, knowledge, truth, authority, and ethics, they're gonna interpret every argument you bring to them through that lens and dismiss it accordingly.

01:27:24

So those arguments are fine if we wanna just show that it's absurd that everything that we have came from nothing, and that's fine.

01:27:35

But they're not good if we think that their neutral, objective observers and interpreters of the evidence we're gonna bring to them and that we're just gonna pile on evidence after evidence after evidence, and they're somehow gonna be swayed by that to come to faith.

01:27:50

It doesn't work that way, and Van Til called it the blockhouse method. There's an underlying assumption that somehow their mind or intellect hasn't been affected by sin and isn't driven by their inclination or by their heart, which it is.

01:28:07

And we have a webinar on that, by the way, The Myth of Neutral Science, where we show that the inclination of the heart overrules the intellect.

01:28:16

And so those are good arguments, but they have to be understood in light of the fact that the mind is interpreting things according to the ultimate assumptions, faith assumptions of the heart that are in turn determined by whether or not they love or hate

01:28:36

God. So it may not be getting deep enough with the unbeliever if we don't deal with those ultimate assumptions through which they're going to interpret that type of argument.

01:28:47

But the argument itself is helpful. It's nice for a believer to know that anything and everything in the universe is absolutely impossible by random chance or time and chance.

01:28:59

A single protein is impossible according to random chance, and that's nice to know, because everything somehow came from a single cell in a swamp.

01:29:09

You know, that single cell, more sophisticated than a space shuttle, it's nice to tell the unbeliever that. It's that your simple cell isn't so simple, and it requires a whole lot of things that all of science and the money of the universe has yet to duplicate.

01:29:22

And so that's helpful. But I don't use that argument thinking that that's going to convince them or that by combining a bunch of those types of arguments without dealing with their ultimate faith commitment and assumptions, it's going to be effective.

01:29:35

No, I have to dig deeper to their ultimate faith commitments. But great question. Thank you.

01:29:41

Well, thank you, Joe, in Slovenia. And thank you also for giving us an

01:29:46

American address. Where your daughter lives in Georgia, so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will be spending a lot less money shipping this free copy of God the

01:29:57

Reason out to you. That's God the Reason, How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith by Dr.

01:30:03

Craig Beale. And once again, we thank Carpenter Sun Publishing, Dr. Beale, and Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for making this gift to you possible.

01:30:14

And once again, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service's website is cvbbs .com. So look for a package with that return address on the envelope or package,

01:30:24

I should say. And we look forward to hearing from you again with more questions from Slovenia.

01:30:30

And thanks for listening and keep spreading the word about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in Slovenia and beyond.

01:30:38

And we are going to our final break right now. If you have any questions, please email us at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:30:49

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the good old

01:30:57

USA. And before we go to the break, I'm going to ask you a question from Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says,

01:31:07

When all is said and done, Dr. Beale, isn't a miracle of God required for any lost person to even believe any of what you're saying?

01:31:18

After all, if we are Calvinists, we believe in the ordo salutis, where the regeneration of a dead lost sinner is required before he can even see the truth, yet even at any rate believe it.

01:31:35

So we will have you answer that question when we return from the break. And anybody else who'd like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:31:44

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Craig Beale. Tired of box store

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01:38:08

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest for the full two hours with about 25 minutes to go has been and will continue to be

01:38:17

Dr. Craig Beal. We are discussing his book, God, the Reason, How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith.

01:38:24

Our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. If you have a question for Dr. Beal, and if you do,

01:38:30

I would advise sending it in very quickly because we're running out of time. That's chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

01:38:37

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Before the break, Dr. Beal, Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, asked the question that if the

01:38:45

Ouro Salutis is true, that we Calvinists believe that faith, that regeneration precedes faith in order for us to even see the truth, let alone believe in it, isn't a miracle required for belief in anything that we're discussing today?

01:39:03

Dr. Beal Well, absolutely. I mean, nobody's born again apart from the Spirit of God and the

01:39:09

Word of God, and that's absolutely true. But in Scripture, we see

01:39:14

Paul very often reasoning with unbelievers. In fact, Acts 17 is probably the most pointed example of a presuppositional sermon or presuppositional argument we have in Scripture where he comes to a bunch of Athenians who don't know the

01:39:30

Old Testament, don't know the New Testament, and in three sentences points out their sin, that it's unreasonable to think that you can make

01:39:39

God when he made you. So he's presuming that they have an internal knowledge that God exists even as he makes the sermon.

01:39:46

He's presuming that they know better, and it's very helpful for a believer to understand that. Then he goes on to say he doesn't need to be served because he's the one who made everything.

01:39:55

He needs nothing. And then he goes on to call them to repent because Christ has risen from the dead after, in addition, making the point that God is the one who determined where we're born, where we live, et cetera, et cetera.

01:40:10

So we're called to reason with unbelievers, and God can use that because we're bringing

01:40:15

Scriptural truth, we're bringing the implications of Scriptural truth to them, and it will be the

01:40:21

Word of God and the Spirit of God that saves them, but that doesn't preclude us listening, reasoning, and showing them their need of repentance by pointing out their sin, that their sin is ultimately faith in the wrong object.

01:40:36

It's idolatry of faith in their own opinion and their own perspective. And God uses conviction about their sin when we point out the fact that God created everything, therefore we depend on him for everything, and we owe him everything, and we're not giving him everything.

01:40:51

So it's a good segue into the gospel. So yes, God is the only one who saves, and it's his power, but he uses his people, and he uses his

01:41:05

Word, the implications of his Word, and how we interact with unbelievers. And I would say this, that apologetics really, ultimately, is more for the believer than it is the unbeliever.

01:41:15

I mean, the closer or the faster we get an unbeliever into Scripture, the better, but the more we are confident, the more we are assured that Scripture is absolutely authoritative, and that views contrary to Scripture are really rooted in blind faith and are untenable and unjustified, the quicker and the more confidently we'll be able to quote

01:41:38

Scripture and read them Scripture and reason with them from Scripture because we know of its power, and we know that all other worldviews are false, and we don't have to get intimidated.

01:41:48

And God also uses our love to people to help soften them to the message of the

01:41:54

Word and the work of the Holy Spirit. So yes, regeneration either accompanies faith or precedes faith, depending upon your view.

01:42:02

I know a lot of Reformed folks say that it's a flashbulb and it all happens at the same time, but that doesn't preclude

01:42:08

God working through means of people, discussion, and love, and kindness, and anything else that God would use to bring people to saving faith, ultimately that is produced by His Word and His Spirit.

01:42:23

So good question. Yes, in fact, Ronald follows up with an email, excellent answer.

01:42:31

I was not trying to disagree with you that God uses means, and I know that He does use means such as evangelism to open the eyes of His elect, but I was just referring to an apologetic answer as to why some people who may articulately hear the truth, even voluminously, and yet still reject it, it is because at its root a miracle of regeneration is required for their eyes and ears to be opened.

01:43:02

Right, and that's a great point. I didn't think he was questioning me at all. I thought it was an excellent question. It is on the mind of a lot of people, so I'm glad you brought it up,

01:43:11

Ronald. Excellent. By the way, Ronald, you're receiving the final copy that we have to give away today of God, the

01:43:17

Reason, How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith by our guest, Dr. Craig Beal.

01:43:22

Compliments of Carpenter's Son Publishing and compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will be shipping that out to you.

01:43:32

CVBBS .com will be on the shipping label CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com.

01:43:38

So keep your eye open for that. Anybody else who wishes to purchase the book who couldn't win one today or perhaps even those who won one will like to purchase additional copies.

01:43:50

And I'm pretty certain that many of you will want to do that after you begin reading this book. Go to pilgrimsrock .com,

01:43:57

pilgrimsrock .com and you could order more copies of God, the

01:44:03

Reason, How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith. And the next two questions

01:44:11

I want to ask you, actually, I think has a lot to do with the essence of the

01:44:18

Reformed faith. I'll ask these two in a combined fashion.

01:44:24

We depend on God for everything and we owe God everything. That seems to be in a nutshell a summary of Reformed theology.

01:44:36

If you could expound on that. Those are chapters in your book. Yeah, indeed it is.

01:44:43

It's a shame that we as believers don't uniformly understand that.

01:44:50

But again, when we come to faith in Christ, we bring a lot of baggage with us. And I think it's important to understand, and this dawned on me several years ago when

01:44:59

I was working through this, that we understand very clearly that as a believer in Christ, as regenerate, as born again, we have new life.

01:45:11

We're justified by Christ's perfect work and we have new life that accompanies that.

01:45:17

We're not justified by new life, but we have it. And yet we struggle with sin, you know, besetting sins or at least the remnants of the old man that keeps bothering us, however you want to define it.

01:45:33

Nobody's perfect this side of glory. We don't live consistent with our new worldview. But we have a new direction.

01:45:38

We have a change of every aspect of our being, a new love, ultimate love.

01:45:45

And so we're very cognizant of understanding that. But we little understand sometimes that our thinking about the way we think and our thinking about God and these ultimate types of issues and our dependence upon Him for knowledge, truth, and authority, epistemology, it's an area that we don't always equate with piety.

01:46:09

We don't always equate how we think with an issue of ethics or godliness or the fear of the

01:46:15

Lord. And so we can, every believer should understand what you said, what we articulate in the book, that we are dependent upon God for everything, including knowledge, truth, and authority.

01:46:28

And apart from Him, we have nothing and we owe Him absolutely everything, which is the foundation of the gospel.

01:46:34

We owe Him perfect obedience. And, but our thinking, just like our actions, is progressively being sanctified, even though it's completely sanctified positionally, we're still growing in that.

01:46:51

And we need to grow and view the way we think about things and how we understand God and ourselves as an ethical issue as well.

01:46:58

And the Reformed view of that is a more mature biblical understanding of the nature of reality as a created being before God.

01:47:09

And everybody needs to come to a greater understanding of that. It would solve a whole lot of problems, certainly would eliminate a lot of wrong views of justification if we understood that given the fact that we owe

01:47:22

God everything all of the time, that there's no other way to be justified by the imputation of Christ's perfect righteousness.

01:47:29

Now, I know that our Arminian friends or non -Calvinist

01:47:35

Christian brothers and sisters, in their hearts,

01:47:42

I think one of the compelling, the most compelling factors that causes them to oppose the sovereignty of God over all things is that they want to defend the character of God.

01:47:59

And if on the one side of the coin, we owe God for all things, on the other side of the coin, they believe would force us to view

01:48:14

God as also being guilty of all sin in its heart.

01:48:21

Because they would say that if you believe God is in control of everything, that he's the author of evil and therefore he is not all good.

01:48:30

So in their efforts to defend his character as being all good, they see

01:48:37

Calvinism as contradicting this. How do you respond to that argument? Well, in discussing this with another believer who loves

01:48:47

Christ and who believes that Jesus paid the penalty for their sin, we need to, I think it's very helpful when we understand, when we ask them enough questions to really understand the root of their concern.

01:48:59

At the root of their concern is they're trying to protect God's justice vis -a -vis human responsibility for what they do and delivering

01:49:09

God from responsibility for sin. And we need to compliment them on that.

01:49:15

And I say that that's absolutely right that we can't compromise on any attribute of God.

01:49:21

But then moving on from there, we need to show gently and kindly that we can't compromise on any aspect of God.

01:49:29

And then we go to Acts 2 or Acts 4, and God foreordained the acts of the people who crucified Christ and these sorts of things and show that given the fact that God created us and we can only know what he's revealed to us, and given the fact that he's infinite and we're finite, there's always going to be this gap, infinite gap between our understanding and God's understanding of things.

01:49:54

And mystery is going to be inevitable. So the real difference sometimes between Arminians, however consistently

01:50:01

Arminian they are, is often where we place the mystery. And I think in discussing this with them, it's important to at least first make the case that there has to be mystery given who we are and who

01:50:14

God is, and then show that we may differ as to where we place the mystery, and then move from there to show that, but whatever we do in dealing with this, we want to make sure that we don't impinge upon perfect grace and that salvation is indeed only by what

01:50:33

God has done on our behalf, and faith itself can never be meritorious. It only unites us to Christ and thereby united to him in the bond of love.

01:50:43

What he did is credited to us via imputation because he did it as our representative, as our covenant head, as our substitute.

01:50:50

So there's a progress of granting them a legitimate hearing, showing them that there's an issue of mystery, showing them that wherever we place the mystery, we can't compromise in any way the fact that we have nothing to boast about, even from the fact that we exercise faith.

01:51:09

Even that is a gift. So a lot of the Arminians with whom I've spoken who really love

01:51:14

Christ, they're happy to agree that they don't want to take any credit for their salvation, but they really, really struggle with us sounding as if we've made

01:51:23

God the author of evil or responsible for sin, and we need to show them that indeed, he can never be that.

01:51:29

And some superlapsarians don't help in this regard because they sometimes make it sound like God is the author of sin.

01:51:35

Well, God's sovereignty is a holy sovereignty. Anything and everything he does must be holy, and he's not three or four times removed from evil.

01:51:44

He's completely removed from evil. He doesn't do it indirectly or for any sort of purpose, but he's not dependent upon that which is most contrary to his character to accomplish his will.

01:51:55

And we need to emphasize that, and we have a good, we have a long discussion about that in God the Reason. But at the same time, we need to point out to them that we can't compromise his sovereignty either, and we certainly can't compromise his grace.

01:52:09

Yeah, if you have evil things occurring at the hands of evil men, and you believe at the same time that God is a powerful

01:52:21

God, then you have to either believe that he is in control of evil men and everything they do, or you believe that the will of Satan has victory over the will of God at times on this earth.

01:52:36

In fact, you might even say more often on this earth. So that obviously is not an option. So obviously

01:52:42

God, even though he's not the author of evil, he is in control of all things that occur.

01:52:48

And one thing that I've never heard a logical answer to, to the non -Calvinist who makes the report that God has nothing to do with evil occurrences on this earth, and they will blame

01:53:05

Calvinists for teaching that God is the author of evil. I asked them to explain 2

01:53:12

Samuel 12, where Nathan the prophet is confronting

01:53:17

David for his sin, and he is informing

01:53:24

David of what is going to be happening as a means of chastisement for his sin by committing adultery with Bathsheba and having her husband

01:53:35

Uriah murdered on the battlefield. God himself speaking through Nathan says to David, Thus says the

01:53:44

Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household.

01:53:51

I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.

01:54:02

Indeed, you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and under the sun.

01:54:09

So therefore you have some very powerful statements there revealing that God is certainly involved in evil occurrences that are being used of him to chastise

01:54:22

David. Okay, what I would say is this, I would say that the believer takes comfort in two ways in this discussion, in this tension, this theological tension.

01:54:34

On the one hand, he takes comfort on the one pole that, you know, God isn't somehow beholden to evil or taken aback by it or surprised by it or unable to control what's going on and that all of reality isn't part of his purpose and plan.

01:54:51

So we take comfort in that. But no believer who knows that the beauty of every God, every one of God's attributes, the beauty of his attributes are his holiness.

01:55:01

Edwards makes this point very clearly that power can be ugly or beautiful depending upon whether it's a holy or unholy power.

01:55:08

Same with wisdom, knowledge, love. Love can be an evil love if it's the love of the wrong object.

01:55:14

So God's holiness is what makes God beautiful. It makes all of his attributes beautiful.

01:55:20

So theologians need to be very, very careful because I take great, believers take very, very great comfort in the thing that very, the very heart of God's beauty is his holiness.

01:55:33

And so if I'm explaining theology in a way that compromises his perfect holiness, that somehow

01:55:38

God is responsible for moral evil, then I've done a disservice.

01:55:45

Now, these descriptions, like Romans 9, the clay, you know, taking from one lump of clay, well, the clay is a fallen lump.

01:55:54

And so he's taking people whose inclinations are already inclined against God and he's channeling them like he channels the hearts of kings to do his judgment.

01:56:03

Yes. So, but that's not making the heart itself evil in the first place.

01:56:09

Right. And so Superlatives when it sort of orders the decrees and makes God making, sort of condemning people before there's a basis for that condemnation, it takes away from that sort of holy, perfect goodness of God.

01:56:23

I know I'm going to make some enemies out there with this. John Gill is yelling at you from heaven.

01:56:32

Well, because, you know, we can't compromise either one. And so if we don't have a place for mystery, that anytime somebody sins, they're responsible for it because God's justice is based upon the fact that it's a righteous judgment.

01:56:48

He can't judge somebody for something he's responsible for. It's moral evil.

01:56:54

Now, calamity and judgment against sin and all that, God can freehand with that because everybody's corrupt and sinful.

01:57:01

And that's why we have calamities, you know, in that other verse that people use and say, you know, God, I'm the author of calamity.

01:57:06

Well, that's not moral evil. He can't be the author of moral evil. He can be the author of natural evil, which is calamity.

01:57:13

So however we deal with this, we're going to reach a place where there's an impasse. But whatever we do with that impasse, evil doesn't reign supreme.

01:57:22

God is sovereign. And anything God does directly or indirectly is perfectly good and holy.

01:57:28

We can't compromise either one. And we have a tendency to want to sort of tie those two ends together in a logical framework, which is getting beyond, that's getting beyond our limitations and our reverential deference to God as dependent upon him for everything.

01:57:51

And the last thing we want to compromise is his holiness, because that defines the beauty of every other attribute.

01:57:57

So I know we just have this tendency. We got to tie those things together.

01:58:04

But God is not responsible for moral evil. He can't be. It's so antithetical to his character.

01:58:10

He hates it. And if he's responsible for moral evil, then he can't justly judge it. Obviously, obviously,

01:58:18

God foreordained the crucifixion of his own son at the hands of wicked men.

01:58:26

But at the same time, he said it would have been better for Judas if he had never been born.

01:58:31

He was obviously holding Judas responsible for his betrayal. But at the same time, Judas was used to bring about the messianic prophecy that was required for any man to enter into heaven, being the death of his son on the cross.

01:58:47

Yes. In fact, we have a couple of chapters where we deal with Acts 2 and Acts 4 and make the case that indeed

01:58:54

God foreordains the free, unconstrained choices of evil people.

01:59:01

So that's another issue. Can people make free... Do they choose without an external constraint or somebody that makes them do it?

01:59:09

Or are they responsible for it because their own inclination desired to do it? Well, those people who crucified

01:59:15

Christ did it according to their own inclination. Yes, and we have to go now. We're out of time. I would definitely want you back.

01:59:20

Please stay on the line so I could reschedule another interview with you. And I want to just make sure our listeners have your website.

01:59:27

It's pilgrimsrock .com, pilgrimsrock .com. Thank you so much for being our guest today.

01:59:33

Dr. Beal, please stay on the line so we can reschedule you. I want to thank everybody for listening today and especially those who wrote in questions.

01:59:40

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.

01:59:47

Please tune in tomorrow. We have Dr. Carl Truman on the program and we look forward to hearing from you and your questions.