Everything Presup!!! w/Toby Sumpter

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today we are back on the topic, well, back on the topic, we're always on the topic of something relating to presuppositional apologetics.

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Part of my goal in doing this channel is not just to make people aware of apologetics in general, but more specifically the presuppositional method, as you guys know, is the specific method that I adhere to.

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I think it is reflected in Scripture that we should do apologetics in this fashion, and so one of my goals is just to tackle that topic from every different angle, and hopefully it is useful for folks as they seek to engage in the defense of the faith in a way that is honoring to the

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Lord and consistent with His word. So I am happy to have as my guest today

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Toby Sumter, who I will invite on the screen with me in just a moment to introduce who he is, but just real quick by way of reminder, if folks are following the channel and they know that I often have pre -scheduled interviews of various guests, theologians, apologists, people like that,

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I have coming up, just as a reminder, Jason Lyle, Dr. Jason Lyle on November 18th to talk about the topic of the historical

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Adam, so mark that on your calendar, November 18th at 9pm Eastern, and I got a couple of other things coming up, hopefully moderating a debate with an atheist and a presuppositional apologist,

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I'll introduce, we're waiting for some responses, but I'll introduce that specific debate and the date and the time so folks can check that out.

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I think it's very important that we do more than simply talk about what we would call meta -apologetics, you know, talking about apologetics methodology, it's important that we actually do it, and so one of the ways we do that is through formal debate and informal discussions with unbelievers, so hopefully you guys can take what we talk about in this channel and couple that with kind of seeing how that's played out when you're actually interacting with an unbeliever, so I think those two things are important to make a connection with.

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Alright, well, without further ado, I'd like to introduce Pastor Toby Sumter, who in just a few seconds here will introduce who he is, and I just want to remind folks who are listening in, we will be taking questions on everything presuppositional apologetics, so if you have a question about anything, transcendental arguments, preconditions of intelligibility, the problem of the one and the many, all those sorts of interesting topics that tend to relate to presuppositional argumentation, feel free to ask your question.

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If you were in the previous livestream yesterday and you did not get your question answered, then retype it in the comments here, and we'll see if we can address some of those.

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Alright, well, without further ado, I'd like to introduce on the screen with me Pastor Toby Sumter. How's it going?

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Can I just call you Toby? Is that okay? That's great. Alright, cool. How's it going, man? I'm doing great.

02:56

Thanks for having me, Eli. Well, it is a pleasure to have you on. I actually saw you for the first time on YouTube.

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You were explaining presuppositional apologetics, and I've heard some good things about you, and I figured, you know what, let me reach out to him and kind of have him on the show to talk about some presuppositional apologetics, so thank you so much for being here.

03:14

I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Alright, well, why don't you take a few moments to tell folks who you are, and if you have content, if you have a channel yourself, a podcast or whatever, you can point folks in that direction.

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Why don't you take a few moments to do that? Sure, thanks. So I'm married and have four kids.

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I'm a pastor and associate pastor at Christ Church here in Moscow, Idaho, and I am also one of the hosts of a podcast called

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CrossPolitik, which is the – I guess that's the logo behind me. And we try to cover politics and culture and current events, applying the word of God to those areas as much as possible.

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So that's who I am. Now, CrossPolitik, what is the specific topics that you cover?

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Is it just politics from a Christian worldview perspective? Do you guys do analysis on current events and things like that?

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Yeah, so it's about, I would say, half news, half – we do a lot of interviews with people who are involved in the public square, people who are either politicians themselves or people who are commenting on politics and culture.

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And yeah, it's both reporting, but also analysis. And we are trying to – we believe that basically one of the reasons we're in the mess that we're in is because the church abandoned the public square and failed to proclaim the lordship of Jesus over every square inch of the universe.

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And so we want to, in our own small way, in whatever way

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God will bless, basically speak into current events, politics, what's going on, and say,

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Jesus is lord of this, and his word has something to say about all of it. And so we're just – everything from immigration policy to taxation policies to whatever

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Biden said this week or Kamala Harris or whatever, whatever insanity is going on in our world, try to bring the sanity of the gospel, the sanity of Genesis to Revelation, all of God's word, to bear in this insane world.

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Yeah. Well, that's super interesting. I think it would be really interesting to hear you kind of unpack for us then.

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You said something very interesting there. You said that Christians have sort of retreated from the public square.

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Why do you think that's the case? Perhaps you can give us an example of how Christians have done that and then maybe connect that with this idea of the lordship of Jesus Christ.

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When we talk about presuppositional apologetics, we talk about the lordship of Christ over our apologetic. But of course, as you know,

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Toby, this is a worldview issue, and so it applies to areas far beyond apologetics. So why don't you share with us a little bit about how

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Christians have abandoned the public square and how we can do better to apply the lordship of Jesus Christ to all areas of life?

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Right. I think the abandoning of the public square probably happened for numerous reasons and happened in numerous ways, but I think it's been driven largely by two particular streams.

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One is, I think, really bad eschatology, where basically we have largely in American evangelicalism,

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American Protestantism, I think for the last, I don't know, roughly century, have basically said that you have a lot of, you know, the end of the world is near.

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Jesus is coming back any minute. And of course, we do profess the physical return of Jesus Christ to this earth, but he gave us marching orders to disciple the nations, and basically the exact timing of his return is not really any of our business.

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But I believe that, you know, sort of the Hal Lindsey's and so on of the last century who say, you know, he's coming back on this date, everybody get ready.

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The idea of, you know, why would I get involved in a politics? Why would I get involved in the culture if it doesn't matter, if it's all going to burn?

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I think that's been part of it. So I think there's sort of an escapist mentality that's crept into the church.

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And I think related to that, closely related to that is a dualism, I think, a certain kind of Christian Gnosticism of sorts, where we've hit against spiritual realities against physical realities and concrete material realities.

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And of course, Christ is Lord of all, Christ is Lord of our hearts, Christ is Lord of our bodies,

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Christ is Lord of the church, he's also the Lord of the state, he's the Lord of our families, our businesses. And so I think, but if you think that being

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Christian and being spiritual primarily has to do with things you think in your head, or things that are happening inside your heart or in your head, and you downplay the importance and significance of, again, material things, business, money, politics, whatever.

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Again, even if you don't completely deny it, it's not as important to you. And so I think, again, you abandon the public square, because it's messy, because it has to do with people, money, immigration reform, you know, whatever.

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And I think, but again, if Jesus is Lord of it all, if we believe in the resurrection of the dead, if we believe in the goodness of creation, and the fact that the gospel has not obliterated the dominion mandate, but has actually restored the dominion mandate, the great commission sending us into the world to disciple the nations is actually an invitation to the nations to get back to work at the job that God gave

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Adam in the beginning, which was to make the whole world fruitful, to take everything in creation and return it in praise to its maker.

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Everything in creation includes economics, includes politics, includes sex and entertainment, and, you know, everything in between.

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And so, absolutely, the Lordship of Jesus Christ over it all, I mean, he is the new Adam, he is the one who is restoring the whole world, through the work of his spirit, through the preaching of the gospel.

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And so all of that is bound together. And one of those pieces that we're trying in particular to highlight, of course, you know, the arts, economics, all of it applies, but we're focused particularly on the public square and public policy and politics.

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Now, you said something very interesting, that one of the reasons why Christians have retreated from the public square, you made mention of kind of a particular eschatology.

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Were you referring to kind of the sort of pre -millennial dispensational mindset, number one?

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Is that what you're referring to, number one? And number two, do you think such an eschatology is a consistent application, or can someone hold that eschatology and consistently apply a kind of presuppositional

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Lordship mindset? Or do you think there's kind of a conflict between those perspectives? I hope that question makes sense.

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It does. Yeah, I'm primarily thinking of pre -millennial dispensationalism, yes.

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Although I do think some of the same pessimism can bleed into some of the other more historic eschatologies as well.

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So more historic pre -millennialism, I think is more biblical, and non -millennialism, sort of more biblical.

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But sometimes I think, again, can still, some of that pessimism can still seep in and it's like, well, what's the use?

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We're not going to make very much progress anyways. But I think to your second question,

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I think there's a fundamental tension if you don't see,

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I mean, I think people are happily inconsistent. It's sort of this glorious gift of God that all of us, to some extent, are inconsistent, and God's grace is covering all of our inconsistencies.

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And so there's going to be piles of believers in heaven who had all kinds of things. We all had all of our blind spots.

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But yeah, I mean, if your view is that basically the history of the world is kind of a number of cul -de -sacs, where God's sort of trying different plays, that didn't work.

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I guess I'll try this. Oh, that didn't work. I guess I'll try this. That didn't work. You know, your lordship theology is kind of impotent.

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I mean, it's sort of weak, but a more covenantal view of history, seeing

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Genesis to Revelation as one great epic story with Jesus as the hero, you know, that kind of story,

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I mean, that's Jesus's Lord. He was Lord from the garden. He was Lord through the flood.

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He was Lord through the exodus. He was Lord through the kingdoms. And he's

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Lord, of course, on the cross. He's Lord in glory now, and he's reigning until he puts all of his enemies beneath his feet, as it says in 1

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Corinthians 15. You know, there's kind of different, you know, you can, of course, dispensationalist say

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Jesus is Lord and praise God that they do and, you know, and praise God. But, you know, when that's your story, you know, when you say

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Jesus is Lord, it's kind of a different picture emerges. Sure. That's interesting.

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So I know we're going to get to the questions later, but there's someone put a question here that I think is relevant. It's kind of what

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I was going to ask, because we're talking about presuppositionalism, worldview mentality, applying

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Christian worldview to the area of politics. So S. Armstrong asked this question, and maybe you could address it here.

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Do you think people stop being involved in society because the church has stopped asking the congregation to be involved in the politics of the church?

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And I don't know what they're asking specifically, but maybe I can kind of rephrase or paraphrase or maybe re -ask the question.

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Do you think one of the ways that the church has retreated from society is that they have stopped speaking into the area of politics?

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Yes, absolutely. I think we, I mean, uh, you know, uh, not to be beat up on anybody, but, uh, you know, and Andy Stanley famously preached a series of sermons a few years ago called unhitching the old

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Testament from the new Testament. Um, I think we, you know, a lot of that has happened where we were not preaching.

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I mean, we confess that all of the Bible is God's word. All of scripture is

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God breathed and useful in all these ways to equip the man of God for every good work. And of course, when

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Paul wrote those words to Timothy, I mean, the primary thing he had, he was working with was the old Testament.

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All those scriptures are useful, uh, for equipping us to do everything we need to do.

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Um, and so I think, um, absolutely we have, I think the first thing is that we have failed to believe that fully.

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Uh, that it is the word of God. It is authoritative. It is sufficient for all that we need. Um, secondly,

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I think what comes with that is I think we've become, you know, we, we pick and choose the, um, the verses that we like.

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And, you know, even, even reform types sometimes are, you know, camping out in Romans and it's like, you know, Romans for the next six years and, you know, yay

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Romans. But, you know, there's the rest of the Bible. Um, and, and, you know, for that matter, in terms of politics in particular, we have whole sections of the

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Bible that are given to law and justice. And, um, you know, I'm, I'm, uh,

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I'm not at all, um, into the whole social justice, um, movement.

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Um, but I'm grateful that God has brought it to our doorstep because it's requiring us to ask questions about justice.

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And, you know, the Bible has a lot to say about justice. And, um, and so, uh, we, yes, the church has failed to be involved, uh, in the public square.

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Christians have failed to be involved thoughtfully, intelligently, courageously in the public square, uh, because we have not taken

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God at his word. Um, and we have not studied his entire word, Genesis to Revelation to find out what it is, um, that is just in the public square.

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And so we, you know, I think you have well -meaning Christians that end up in the public square and they don't, they have no idea what a biblical worldview is.

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They have no idea what biblical justice is. And, you know, again, I'm thankful for people trying. Um, I'm, you know,

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I'm thankful, you know, we, you know, last few decades, we at least have a fairly, you know, unanimous on let's not kill babies.

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Um, and, you know, so like you can get a, an evangelical Christian and he says, I'm pro -life. I'm going to try to stop, you know, I want to end killing babies.

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Um, and I'm grateful for that, but that's a, you know, the sort of like big E on the eye chart. Yeah. Don't kill people.

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Um, you know, especially the most innocent and those who cannot even defend themselves. Um, but there's a lot more to justice than that.

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And, um, and I think, yeah, we failed to disciple our people. We failed to disciple our nation. Um, the way

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Jesus commanded us to in the great commission. Very good. Now. Okay. So when we talk about presuppositionalism as an apologetic method, and we talk about Lordship over apologetics, and then we apply this to the

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Lordship over every area, every area of life, and a politics is, is one of those areas. And we talk about the importance of applying a

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Christian worldview to the realm of politics, to the realm of justice and things like that. What is that supposed to look like?

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Given the fact that facts and issues are always interpreted within a context, as we learned from Vantill, right?

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Uh, that facts without a context are meaningless. Um, and you have multiple people claiming to operate under the assumption of a

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Christian world and life view, but even within that camp, you have people who differ over the interpretation of what justice looks like.

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And I'm not talking about black and white issues like abortion. I think that's a black and white issue for Christians. I think we should, we should be able to come down pretty strong on a particular position.

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But there are some other nuanced areas that you have people who have a Christian worldview and they're trying to speak to these issues, but they differ.

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What does it look like to say, I believe in Christian justice, or I believe in Christian this, how do we apply that Lordship in an objective way where it just doesn't become subjectivity within the context of Christians who disagree with each other?

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Absolutely. Great question. And I mean, I think the answer is the Bible. So the answer is you have to have an, a fixed standard.

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Um, you know, and so, you know, uh, uh, so the, the, the fundamental question Christians need to be asking all the time and every, and every place.

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And every area of life, but especially, uh, when it comes to issues of justice and morality is by what standard, but you know, what's, what standard are we talking about here?

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We get a bad rap for that. We say it a lot, but I, it's true. I don't, I don't think a lot of people become ashamed of like,

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Oh, the priest supper's coming, you know, he's going to say by what standard, but that's a completely valid response.

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I'm glad you said that, but go ahead. I'm sorry. I interrupted you. No, but I just, but I think that's what we want to do though, in all the particulars.

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So, you know, how, how do we, you know, how do we adjudicate, um, you know, I don't know, uh, uh, uh, racial animosity and crime.

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How do we adjudicate, um, uh, you know, what is, what is just taxation? I mean,

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I mean, our, um, our cry as Christians needs to be to the word and to the standard.

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It's, it's what, it's what Isaiah said to the word, to the standard. And if it's not there, um, then we don't have anything to do with it.

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Um, we're Christians. And so I think, um, I think that's the bottom line. And I would just say the

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Bible says a lot about money. It says a lot about economic policy. It says a lot about, um, hatred, prejudice, injustice.

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And it says a lot about partiality. Um, you know, it, it says it has, I mean, there's again, criminal code in the

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Bible for us, um, that we should be studying. I mean, the it's, it's actually, there's, you know, chapters and chapters, books of it.

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Um, and we of all people should know it. Uh, it's, and I think, so I think that's the issue.

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And I think, um, yes. And even, you know, even within that, I mean, you can have people who agree. Okay. The Bible is our standard.

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And then we gotta, we gotta start passionate out. And we're in kindergarten, basically.

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I mean, we, our, our forefathers would be ashamed of us. Um, you know, the founders of this country, um, the

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Western, um, you know, our reformational fathers, our Puritan fathers, um, you know, they, they knew what the

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Bible said about justice and politics. I mean, they were the ones establishing this country, uh, the colonies and so forth.

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And they intentionally sought to frame governments after the word of God and the principles found there.

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Hmm. Now, do you think that, uh, you know, I agree with you, by the way, they would roll over in their grave to, uh, briefly pop their head up and, uh, you know, metaphorically speaking and observe the ignorance.

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Um, but do you think that's primarily due to the fear of the old Testament for the modern Christian? They just, cause a lot of these principles you're speaking of, uh, deal with the law and principles of the law that are in the old

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Testament. And I know Dr. James White often says, you know, some Christians are operating under a 27 book

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Canon. Um, and, and, uh, so do you think there's a relation there that the average Christian today just doesn't see are either a relevancy of the old

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Testament or they're just afraid to kind of dig deep because it's just so foreign to them. Yeah, absolutely. And again, I would,

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I would lay that at the feet of pastors. I mean, that's, that's seminaries and pastors have failed us utterly. Um, but yes, absolutely.

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I mean, many Christians have, you know, rarely hear sermons from the old Testament, much less actually delve into Deuteronomy or Leviticus or numbers or whatever.

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Um, you know, maybe an occasional Psalm and, you know, that's all you got. Um, but yes, I think it's, uh, um, you know, it's, um, it, yeah, that's the problem.

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Now I'm going to make a transition here to more specifically the issue of apologetics, but before we go,

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I just feel obligated to do this because someone is, is listening right now and feel, it feels kind of convicted of the fact that like, you know, man,

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I really need to dig into the, into the old Testament. There's a difference between saying you need to read the old Testament more, uh, and actually knowing where to begin, right?

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You say, you guys got to pray more of it's like, well, how do I pray? You got to study more. Well, how do I do that? Uh, can you give kind of a brief, uh, you know, piece of advice as to, uh, you know, where should someone start when they say, okay,

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I'm going to, I'm going to dig into the old Testament. Where should I start? There's 39 books. It's difficult. How would you navigate that and kind of lay that out for someone?

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Sure. I mean, I, I really do. I mean, it's, uh, you know, maybe it just, this is the Sunday school answer, but I do think like Christians should be the people who are reading their

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Bibles, Genesis to revelation, and then start over. So like, that should just be like default, like just do that and do it.

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Like you eat every day. Um, which means that like when you read the Bible like that, you don't have to, every meal doesn't have to be a steak dinner.

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Like, I, like, I don't even remember what I had for lunch yesterday. You know, it's like, like, you know, like we eat, but that doesn't mean that it's not working.

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So read the whole Bible like it's food because the Bible says it's food. That'd be the number one.

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Um, number two, I think a really helpful, um, Bible study, um, tool, um, for starting to understand the old

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Testament better would be, um, I would suggest start in Matthew. Most Bibles actually have footnotes.

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Um, every place an old Testament passage is quoted. And I would suggest work your way through the whole new

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Testament. Um, writing down every old Testament passage that's quoted.

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And every time you see it, go to the old Testament and read that section and then go back and see how the new

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Testament writer used it. Maybe make a little note about it. And then I would just work through the entire new

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Testament. So one of the principles of exegesis is allowing the scripture to interpret scripture. I mean, you know, let

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God tell us what his own word means. Um, and you have enough, it's like, if only we had an authoritative exit, you know, a commentary on the old

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Testament. We do. It's called the new Testament. And so let the new

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Testament authors, the apostles themselves do an old Testament Bible study for you by working your way all the way through the new

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Testament. Um, and, and I would say that will give you, if you do that and you are just taking notes and you just, all the times that the old

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Testament is quoted, um, that is a great introduction to the old Testament. And then from there,

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I think you can probably drill down into certain areas, um, where you're, you know, have particular questions or challenges, um, or, or difficulties.

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But I think, um, uh, one, um, uh, book I'll just throw out another, um, uh, title though, that might be a helpful introduction to thinking about things like this, um, is called the shadow of Christ and the law of Moses.

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Um, by Vern Poitras, um, and Poitras is a, was a seminary professor for many years.

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Um, I think at Westminster seminary. Um, and, uh, but that's a great introduction to seeing

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Christ in the old Testament. Um, particularly he's working through some of the sections of the law that might be more difficult, but he's trying to show how, um, uh, it's still relevant.

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Um, and that there are principles of justice and principles of morality that are found there, even though, um, the particulars of the law have expired.

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Um, the, the, there are, there's what's what theologians call the general equity of the law. Um, the, the principle, the moral principles behind those laws that are still fully applicable.

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And, and they point us to Jesus, but then also point us to what a Christian society ought to look like. Excellent. And folks, if you're interested,

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Vern Poitras has got some really good work in general, not just in the, the reference that, uh,

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Toby just mentioned there. If you guys are interested, he's got some great work, interesting work in the area of the Trinity. Um, if you guys search back, um, in older episodes,

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I actually had Dr. Poitras on to talk about the Trinity. So you guys can check that out. Maybe after listening to that, you can check out some of his books.

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He's got some great stuff. Now let's shift a little bit to a more specified, uh, look at the apologetics here.

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Um, now when you talk about applying the Lordship of Jesus Christ to the area of politics, um, sometimes the voice of the

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Christian can be drowned out in the sense that it is viewed as just one other opinion amongst all of the arguing opinions.

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But of course, as Christians, we believe that the Christian worldview is objectively true. And so, uh, sometimes we're going to have to bring really this issue of the truth of the

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Christian worldview to bear so as to then be able to speak with authority to these specific issues.

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So how do we link now what we're talking about now, you know, having a voice, speaking to these issues, learning, you know, studying the

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Bible and engaging, you know, the word of God and applying it to our lives. How do we then, uh, demonstrate the truth of the

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Christian worldview so that we can speak with authority in those areas and have the backing of, you know, the evidence, uh, the coherency and just the objective truth of the system that we are putting forth.

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Yeah. Um, I, you know, there's several things occurred to me. I mean, one is, I mean,

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I think one of the problems we have had as Christians, and I think this actually goes somewhat to the heart of the whole, um, um, presuppositional method has been,

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I think we have, uh, failed as Christians to the extent that we have been ashamed of the

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Lordship of Jesus. And so when we see this, particularly when people are defending the faith and they're unwilling, uh, or unable to merely say the reason why this is true is because the

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Bible says so. Um, and, and, and, and they say, but I don't believe the Bible and it doesn't, who cares?

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Um, it, you know, it, it doesn't, you don't, um, it's the word of God. Um, my, my, uh,

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I, I pastor with, um, Douglas Wilson and one of the things he's fond of saying is, um, that, you know, if, if somebody, if you have a loaded gun in your pocket, you know, um, your concealed carry, whatever, and you walk up to someone and you say, you know, you, you know, give me all your money.

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Um, and, uh, and they say, why should I? And you say, cause I have a loaded gun and they say, but I don't believe in loaded guns.

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You know, or I don't believe you or whatever. Like it's who cares if, if they don't believe you, you have the loaded gun, you have, you have the sword of the spirit.

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Um, and so, um, just because they don't believe in it, just because they pretend not to care, um, uh, gives is, is no, there's no reason to it.

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Um, fundamentally we do all of our apologetics. We do all of our living before the face of God.

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Um, and, and that means the fundamental thing we need is the blessing of God. That's what we need is the blessing of God.

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We need to please him. And if we please him, then he is the one who is going to do the work for us.

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Um, it, it, and so I would say that in terms of apologetics, of course, but I think that applies to politics as well.

27:32

And so I think, uh, as we bring the word of God to bear on the public square, Christians need to be right out there in front and just say, well, the reason why, um, you know, for example, our, um, our prison system is absolutely wicked.

27:48

It's because the Bible says, uh, that you're not allowed to, um, put people in, um, in, in chains indefinitely.

27:58

That's called slavery. Um, that's wicked. You're treating people like animals. Um, and, and if someone has stolen something, the

28:06

Bible says very clearly that they must return what they have stolen with restitution and then it's over.

28:13

You don't lock people up and treat them like animals. It's dehumanizing. It's wicked. It's unjust. Um, and why?

28:20

Well, Exodus 22 says that. And they say, well, I don't believe in Exodus 22. We don't care.

28:27

It's the word of God. We don't care. Now, now, now I want to clarify for people, um, what you're saying sounds dogmatic because it is.

28:36

And, and people who disagree with you are also dogmatic. So you have multiple dogmatisms at work here right now.

28:42

When, when you say, and you can correct me if I, if I'm misinterpreting, when you say, I don't care, this is not just the irrational.

28:49

I don't care what you have to say. You are willing to unpack the reasons why you think that's true. Right. And that gets back to what

28:56

I'm originally saying. So why think it's true? So you have the unbelievers saying, okay, I know you believe that to be true.

29:01

Why should I think your book is true? Which brings us right to the quintessential apologetic question. So as a presuppositionalist, how would we engage?

29:09

You know, we're having these conversations about, you know, politics or these issues of the prison systems. How do we now get behind that to the foundational truth of the

29:18

Christian worldview? How would you unpack that for someone who is perhaps a skeptic interacting with you on these issues? Yeah.

29:23

Well, there's again, layers here. I mean, I would say I'm, I think you're free to point to just, you know, how, how's it going for you?

29:31

You know, like how's your prison system working out? You know, is that going well? I mean, how's the culture going?

29:37

You got a lot of people, you know, they, they, are they being rehabilitated and, and, you know, going back into society? How, you know, how's that going?

29:43

So I think you can, you can walk out just results. That would be one thing. I think also, of course, we would go back to, so by what standard?

29:54

Why do we, why do you think this is just, why do you think it is just to incarcerate someone for stealing a car for, for 20 years?

30:04

Why is that just, where'd you get that? You know, lady justice, you know, and all the old paintings and statues is a woman blindfolded or blind holding a sword and a set of scales.

30:16

Okay. And all the old pictures, all the old statues, she's blindfolded or she's blind and she's got a sword and a set of scales.

30:24

Justice, equity, as it's understood historically, not as it's been understood more recently is a biblically defined as eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

30:36

That, that what you are doing in justice, when, when some crime has been committed, as you are restoring a kind of equilibrium to society and culture, that's the biblical standard.

30:49

Where'd you, where'd you get your standard from? And then, you know, obviously we can keep going further up and further in, you know, there's, there's also deeper realities going on that presuppositionalism gets at, which is, you know, the fact of the matter is, is that people actually are naturally at war with God and at war with his system.

31:12

They're at war with his morality and they are at some fundamental level suppressing the truth willfully knowing that there is a

31:25

God that he, his invisible attributes can be known and seen in creation around them.

31:30

They hate that and they are resolute to defy it.

31:36

And that is infecting how they think about the world, how they act in the world.

31:44

And so, you know, you, you, you, you can't, and here's the thing is fundamentally you there's no place you can go in this universe where you are actually outside of God, outside of God's reality and the attempt.

32:00

And so you, and you can't, so you can't stand somewhere and say, let me do some testing and see if I, if I can prove

32:08

God. Well, God's too big to prove. God's too real to prove fundamentally ultimate.

32:17

Now we have real evidence and real and again, helpful argumentation. Sure. Ultimately, it comes down to, are you going to believe the word of God or the word of man?

32:28

Right. Okay. So, so, okay. So now that you, you, you kind of gave some tantalizing phraseology, people might want to tease that apart.

32:37

You said that God is too big to prove. And I kind of, I kind of know what you mean in a generic sense, but those who tend to be more philosophically minded and kind of want to, well, wait a minute.

32:48

If you're going to tell me that we need to live our lives according to this book that you call the Bible and you can't prove that your

32:53

Bible is true, then why should I believe it? So are, are you of the position that you, that the

32:59

Christian world you can be proved? And if so, how would you unpack that for someone who's asking for the proof?

33:06

Yeah, I would say, yes, it, it can be proven what the right adjective is, but it can be proven humanly.

33:16

I think it can be proven in a, to sufficiently, but, but it cannot be proven.

33:24

Absolutely. It can't be proven. And there's, and so there's, and I would say fundamentally, that's because we're finite human beings.

33:32

And so we're, but I would say, absolutely. There are all kinds of evidences. I mean, the scripture itself gives evidences.

33:39

This, you know, John says that he has written these things so that you might know.

33:44

So you might believe and have life in his name. You have, he's referenced,

33:50

Paul references, witnesses of the resurrection, miracles, the testimony of scripture itself, creation.

33:57

There's multiple evidences that are pile up and I would say go a long way to, they are, they are, they are sufficient evidence to compel belief.

34:14

And at the same time, if I would argue, if you could conclusively, absolutely prove the

34:25

God and all of it, then he wouldn't be God. You're, you're trying, someone who tries to, who says,

34:34

I can conclusively, I can add it all up and it's, and there's God. Well, that's not a

34:41

God. That's something you made up. So, okay. So, so what is your opinion then on the efficacy of say a transcendental argumentation, which tries to prove absolutely that, that the triune

34:53

God of scripture lives. So are you, are you an adherent to those forms of argument or do you kind of use a more presuppositional ish cumulative case sort of deal in terms of which reality is best explained by the

35:09

Christian worldview? What, what kind of presuppositionalism just for me to have a context where you're coming from?

35:15

I know folks understand that there's shades within the presuppositional tradition. Where would you land to kind of give folks some context?

35:21

Cause people might agree with you. They might disagree with you, but it kind of gives them a kind of a point of reference to see where you're coming from.

35:28

Give, give me example of like a brief overview of the transcendental argument. Sure.

35:33

Well, just for folks who are listening, a transcendental argument tries to prove something by the impossibility of the contrary. Transcendental arguments typically ask the question, what must be true in order for something else to be true?

35:43

So we asked, what are the preconditions for something else? The transcendental proof for the

35:49

Christian worldview is a form of transcendental argumentation, which tries to show that unless the

35:55

Christian worldview is true, unless the world is the way God says it is, then knowledge, intelligible experience would be impossible.

36:02

And so we argue that the proof of the truth of the Christian worldview is that if it weren't true, human experience wouldn't be intelligible at all.

36:10

And we seek to demonstrate that by showing what happens when the Christian worldview is rejected. And we offer another aspect of the proof in which we actually give a positive explanation as to how the

36:20

Christian worldview does in fact provide those preconditions. I'm just wrapping it up here.

36:25

And if it does provide those preconditions, it's the only worldview that can provide those preconditions since you could only have one transcendental foundation.

36:34

So folks who listen to my channel kind of know that context there. I'm just unpacking it so you can hear where I'm coming from. That's great.

36:40

So I think that's actually helpful argumentation. I think it's true. But the qualification

36:49

I would put on it is I don't think that even that logically valid argument is the kind of thing that then –

36:58

I mean, the problem is not that people don't have a good enough argument.

37:04

The problem is that people reject God. I agree. And so fundamentally,

37:10

God has to change their hearts. But there's not any way of arguing. I guess the point is there's no way of arguing that brings

37:18

God – we can't summon God up in terms of such that the argument will bring

37:26

God so fully and completely present that it breaks their hearts and they repent on the spot.

37:34

I would agree. Because we have summoned up the perfect argument. So I think there's true arguments that are sufficient arguments including the one that you've just walked through.

37:44

But I would also say it's sufficient to make them culpable. They need to repent right now.

37:53

Yeah. But it doesn't – it's God himself that will have to break their hard hearts, give them new hearts and eyes that can see and ears that can hear because they're dead in their sins.

38:03

No, and I'm glad you said that because it's very helpful because then we make the important distinction. Because I would agree with everything you just said there because we would then make the distinction between proof and persuasion.

38:13

So I think we can prove God, but whether someone is persuaded, that's the work of the Holy Spirit. And so I think that's an important distinction to keep in mind.

38:21

All right. Well, that's super helpful. Thank you for that. All right. So what are some ways that we could apply presuppositional apologetics to, say, people who come from another religious perspective?

38:35

So we take a look at the political scene. We have unbelievers of all different shades, right, kind of voicing their views and arguing for the hearts and the minds of people who are engaged in these sorts of debates.

38:46

How would a presuppositionalist engage someone from another religious perspective that perhaps has a book with the divine revelation that they would claim?

38:56

How would you interact with someone like that as we navigate these waters of saying, here, this is why we think the

39:02

Bible should be the foundation so that we can speak authoritatively to these issues? Yeah, that's a good question. So I live in Idaho.

39:07

There's a lot of Mormons here, actually, just north of Utah. So I have interacted over the years with a number of Mormons.

39:15

We also live in a university town. And actually, in our university, I've also interacted with a lot of Muslims who are here overseas.

39:23

So I've done that over the years. And I think, obviously, I don't know that there's – it's not like there's a two -minute gut punch judo move that does it all quickly.

39:35

But I think the general approach is to ask –

39:40

I mean, I think what you want to do is you're asking, why is your book, your standard, authoritative?

39:49

Why is it trustworthy? Is it consistent? Is it coherent? Is it reasonable?

39:55

I think those kinds of things, along with what is the fruit that it produces and so forth, and then you're comparing that with Scripture.

40:04

But that would be largely – and what you're trying to get to fundamentally is why do you believe this?

40:14

This is your standard. Why? And what are the reasons for it?

40:20

What is the evidence for it and so forth? And is it consistent? Is it coherent?

40:26

And what are the results? And comparing that to the Christian faith and Scripture.

40:32

So you do kind of a worldview analysis, like, hey, what's your foundation? Why do you think it's true?

40:38

And kind of listen to what they have to say and do kind of a worldview comparison to say, hey, this is why

40:43

Christianity is better, right? Right. Even I can use that language, but okay. Absolutely.

40:49

So you would use what we would often call in those who are in the apologetic trade an internal critique of the unbeliever's worldview.

41:00

So why don't we actually take an example of that? Now, you mentioned Mormonism. So what would an internal worldview critique look like if you were to do it to a person who holds to the

41:10

Mormon religion? Yeah, I would begin walking through, you know, just, you know, where did

41:18

Joseph Smith come from? You know, what is the background? What is his story?

41:25

Then, you know, where did the Book of Mormon come from? And, you know, are you okay with, you know, changes to the

41:32

Book of Mormon? Are you okay with the fact that, you know, I don't know, black people are second, you know, second class human beings, according to the original version.

41:41

Are you okay with polygamy? Why or why not? And so I would walk through some of those kinds of things with them and ask them, why do you trust these things?

41:56

And, you know, I think ultimately what I'm going to be driving at, though, is the system of doctrine that's found in the

42:03

Book of Mormon is a system of works righteousness with really no real clear hope of salvation, no real understanding of grace.

42:14

And so, you know, what I've done in the past is, you know, in addition to sort of some of those sort of inconsistencies and incoherences in the book itself, drive hard at the fact that, you know, you don't know that you are beloved by God.

42:34

You don't know that you're accepted by God. You don't know that all of your sins are forgiven. You're hopeful.

42:39

You're trying hard. You think that God will help you if you do your part. But that's not real.

42:48

That's not justification. That's not peace. That's not joy. You don't know that you are fully and completely accepted by God.

42:56

You are loved by him, that you were under his grace and under his blessing. You know, you talk to Mormons.

43:02

They don't have that. They're trying. They want to have peace.

43:07

They think they have semblances of joy. There's sort of that burning in the bosom thing going on.

43:13

But, you know, talk to them. Does it last? No. Is it inconsistent? Yes. And then, of course, you know, given the fact that you can actually talk about Jesus with them because they profess to believe in the

43:27

Bible. And so a big part of what you want to drive at, too, is showing them the inconsistencies between the Book of Mormon and the

43:32

Bible. And the Jesus that is presented in the Bible is not the same Jesus that is being presented in the

43:38

Book of Mormon. And so that would be kind of a sketch. Now, I really like what you mentioned where you said, you know, does it work?

43:46

What does it look like? Again, looking at the practical implications of the view doesn't necessarily prove or disprove.

43:53

But I'm glad you mentioned it because it's a powerful tool in real -life conversation so that we can set the practical impact of having

44:02

Jesus in our life versus the practical impact of not having Jesus in our life. So it has a very powerful existential punch to it when we're able to talk about those issues.

44:10

So I'm actually very glad that you mentioned that because not a lot of people tend to mention that specific element.

44:15

So, all right. Well, thank you so much for that. Now, I want to make an important connection here with the presuppositional methodology and the importance and role of theology.

44:25

So when we're talking about people having to defend the faith using presuppositional method, engaging unbelievers,

44:31

I always tell people the best book on apologetics, and it sounds super Christian, super cheesy, but it's true.

44:37

The best book on Christian apologetics is the Bible itself because in my experience, and perhaps you share this, like 90 % of the objections against the

44:45

Christian faith is based upon misunderstandings and caricatures of the Christian faith. So reading the

44:51

Bible, living in the scriptures is super important. Now, what role does theology play, systematic theology play, in being better equipped to utilize a presuppositional approach?

45:02

Can you be a little more specific? Are you looking at anything in particular? What are you thinking there? Well, what

45:08

I'm asking is when we're doing apologetics, our apologetic is not detached from the soil of Christian theology.

45:16

So I guess I'm asking you, what is the importance of knowing theology as it relates to having a powerful apologetic?

45:24

Yeah. Well, I mean, so much of the presuppositional apologetic method is based on actually a theology proper in terms of who

45:34

God is and what kind of God we serve. The idea that in him we live and move and have our being.

45:45

All that we are is held together by his word. Those would be key details where there's nowhere you can go in this universe where you are not being held together constantly by him.

46:02

So there's a certain kind of an ontology there, sort of a theological ontology.

46:08

But also, I think, necessarily then an epistemology of the thoughts that are going through your mind.

46:16

That is held together by the word of God. We are radically contingent creatures.

46:22

I think also a soteriology is all bound up in all of this. I alluded to this earlier, but the presuppositional methodology is based fundamentally,

46:32

I think, on what is popularly referred to as Calvinism.

46:39

The idea that we are dead in our sins and trespasses, as it says in Ephesians 2, and that we are dead unless God makes us alive.

46:51

And it's not as though we are sick and we need some medicine. No, we're dead and we need resurrection.

46:58

And the task of the preacher, and I would say to a lesser extent, but also a significant extent, an apologist, is proclaiming the truth of the gospel, proclaiming

47:09

Christ crucified. And all of us, whenever we're doing that, we're like Ezekiel in the graveyard.

47:16

We're Ezekiel preaching to dry bones. And so all of our arguments, all of my most persuasive metaphors or analogies or whatever turns a phrase, all my winsomeness is nothing.

47:32

Dead bones don't care. I mean, just walk through a cemetery sometime and just to remind yourself, try to get them to care.

47:42

They don't. But can these bones live? Well, Lord, you know. And so I think that's the soteriology that's so significant in this project is that we are vessels, we are messengers, and God is often pleased to use our faltering attempts.

48:04

And at the same time, it never adds up to resurrection. It's not like you're like, wow, look at that. That was the argument.

48:11

It was the killer. It was the clincher. No, it wasn't. It was the spirit of God showed up and made dead people alive.

48:18

And fundamentally what presuppositionalism is trying to do is actually trying to get people to look at their dead hearts, which is hard to do because dead hearts don't want to look at dead hearts.

48:28

But you're fundamentally trying to say, look, everything you have, everything that you are is a gift from God.

48:35

And you say, I don't know if there's a God. What are you, insane? Like you have hands and they work, you know, like your eyes and you're like, you can, have you tasted chocolate?

48:46

You know, like that's, you know, you have this chocolate proof for God's existence. There's probably a transcendental argument somewhere.

48:54

Absolutely. Absolutely. But that's, again, it's, that's a, but there's a soteriology baked into that.

49:01

And I talked earlier about, you know, doctrine of scripture as well. I mean, the fact that we're talking, you know, why would we bring out the word of God to people who don't believe in the word of God?

49:10

Because it's the word of God. And, and, and yeah. Is there room for proving its coherence?

49:17

It's, you know, its impact, its truthfulness, all of its historicity. Yeah, absolutely. We can, we can prove all of, we can,

49:24

I don't mind bringing those evidences to bear at all. But that's not making it the word of God. It is the word of God.

49:30

Whether or not anyone believes it is a loaded gun. It is a sword. Very good. Now, I just want to remind folks, if you have any questions, you can write them in the comments.

49:39

Preface your question with question so that I could differentiate them between the questions and the comments. I'm going to have one more question for you,

49:47

Pastor Toby, before we go to some of the comments and questions here. So there are a few questions here for you. But here's my, here's my question.

49:54

And this often comes up. What is the relationship between presuppositional methodology and Calvinism?

49:59

I often get the question, do you have to be a Calvinist to be a consistent presuppositionalist? What's the relationship there?

50:06

Yeah. I don't know that I would say you absolutely have to be a

50:12

Calvinist to be a presuppositionalist. But I would think that you would be kind of an odd presuppositionalist.

50:19

I would sort of want to press you on like, so why, why, you know, you've got the

50:25

Lordship of Christ. You've got, you know, the, you know, the, you know, infinity of God.

50:31

You've got doctrine of scripture. You understand that fundamentally this is a dead heart problem.

50:37

So where's the hang up? I guess that would be what I want to know. But, you know,

50:43

I suppose maybe, maybe you've got a four point Calvinist or something like that, that maybe is a little iffy on perseverance of the saints or something like that.

50:52

I don't know. I got an Amaraldian presuppositionalist. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe. But I think it's,

50:59

I think they're closely connected. I think they are. I think presuppositional apologetics really is, in many respects, an apologetic method that has just developed directly out of the soil of Calvinism.

51:11

It's just saying if these things are true, then how ought we to proclaim the gospel and defend the faith?

51:17

And I think that's what Ventile and John Frame and others and Greg Bonson and so on. That's what they were attempting to do and have attempted to do.

51:25

Well, thank you for that. That's excellent. All right. Well, at this point, I'm going to move into the questions segment where I'll take some questions here.

51:33

Are you okay with questions unrelated to our topic? Because I know some people are familiar with who you are. Sure. All right.

51:40

Okay. Let's see here. So Augerer asks, would the modern vocabulary of culture wars actually be related to the principalities and powers we are called to engage?

51:53

Yes. I'm not sure if I understand all that he's intended to ask there. But in the

51:59

Bible, principalities and powers, I would argue and could demonstrate from several texts, include human authorities and spiritual powers.

52:09

All of those things. And so kings, princes, governors, judges, people in authority who have power are some of the principalities and powers.

52:19

And then I would say in some context, it's included certain kinds of spiritual forces that are at work in the world as well.

52:25

And so, yes, absolutely, principalities and powers is not just a spiritual term, but also political.

52:33

And so when it says that Christ is putting all the principalities and powers underneath his feet, I mean, that's a political.

52:41

Statement. And so that includes all who wield authority in a certain respect.

52:47

All of us, that authority comes from Christ, and therefore it needs to be wielded in submission to Christ.

52:52

And so, yes, culture wars fundamentally, the culture war, whatever, the one that matters, at least.

52:59

Obviously, there may be others, but the one that I'm interested in, the one that Christians are interested in, is the one where we are bringing the lordship of Christ to work.

53:06

We're commanding everyone to bow the knee to Jesus. So every prince, every king, every parliament member, every

53:14

Supreme Court justice, every mayor, every police chief, every pastor, every father, every authority must bow to King Jesus.

53:24

And, yes, there are spiritual forces at work. So be on your guard, confess your sins, and pray at all times.

53:33

Amen. Thank you for that. So Scott has a question here with respect to Reconstructionism.

53:39

He says, how has Pastor Doug Wilson been so miraculously successful when the rest of the Reconstructionist movement seems to be falling apart because of infighting?

53:46

Now, we know Reconstructionism, maybe you could define that for folks. There is a lot of infighting in these kind of theological discussions.

53:52

And I suppose from this person's perspective, Pastor Doug has been successful in not succumbing to some of those infighting sort of things.

54:02

Is that something you could speak to? How has he been able to kind of navigate these issues and avoid some of the issues that other groups have unfortunately fallen into?

54:11

Yeah, so, yeah, for those who don't know, so Reconstructionism is sort of a broad term, I think coined by Rush Dooney back in the 60s.

54:22

But basically broadly is attempting to describe the idea that all of life should be reconstructed according to the word of God.

54:33

That's broadly what it intends. Incidentally, I was just reading a book this last week in which

54:38

Rush Dooney's, I was excited sort of to find that Rush Dooney's Institutes of Biblical Law were

54:45

Christianity Today's book of the year in 1976. Oh, wow. Which, you know,

54:51

I've just been sort of chuckling about that ever since I read that. And so Christianity Today, how do you feel about that?

54:57

Anyways, yeah, there was, I think, to answer the question,

55:02

I think the reason why God has blessed Pastor Doug Wilson and our community as much as it has is actually related to,

55:13

I think, one of the key things that Pastor Doug inherited from his dad, who was an evangelical evangelist, is still living for many, many, many years.

55:23

His ministry really focused on very practical Christianity. And I think the problem with a lot of reconstructionists, theonomists, whatever, is

55:33

I think they lose the forest for the trees. And so, you know, the most important place to practice biblical justice is in your heart.

55:46

If you are not confessing your sins and getting clean before God every day, then you have no business talking to anybody else about their sins.

55:55

And I think piles and piles of people who call themselves reconstructionists are running around with logs in their eyes, trying to take other people's specs out.

56:04

And it makes traffic jams. So I think, you know, practice biblical justice.

56:09

Start with your personal life. Reconstruct your life according to the word of God. Okay? Now go to your marriage.

56:16

Are you in fellowship with your wife? Are you faithful to your wife? Are you ministering to her like Christ loved the church?

56:22

Are you laying your life down for her? Are you making her more and more like Jesus? Now go to your kids.

56:27

Are your kids growing up loving the Lord Jesus? Do they love him? Are they excited to go to church with you?

56:34

You know, are they on your team? Is there loyalty? Do you have fellowship together? Do you love dinner time?

56:40

Okay? Reconstruct your family according to the word of God. Okay? Now go to church.

56:46

Love the brothers and sisters in your church. Submit to your elders. Pray for your pastor and your elders.

56:53

Be in fellowship with one another. Confess your sins to one another. Worship God faithfully. Okay? Reconstruct church.

56:59

Okay? I mean, we have nothing really to say to the magistrate if we don't have our house in order. If you're fussing, if you're sitting on a soapbox on the internet, cranking about the latest thing that the

57:10

Supreme Court did or Kamala Harris said or whatever, I mean, again, I know we all have eyes on our head and we can see it and we can say it, but if you're sitting on a soapbox, if it's taking up time and energy, the question is, is your house in order?

57:24

Is your family in order? Is your heart clean? Are you in fellowship? Are you walking in the joy of the

57:30

Lord? Okay? In that place, then, okay, go fight win. But I think many, many

57:35

Reconstructionist communities, from what I can, that's overstatement, from what I can tell, looking from a distance,

57:41

I would say it looks to me like that's what's happened is that they don't have their own houses in order, their own families, their own churches.

57:47

They're not walking in the joy of the Lord. They don't have first things first. But you need to practice justice there in little ways first.

57:55

He who is faithful in little can be faithful in much. If we're going to start talking about executing people, that's what justice is, right?

58:01

I mean, we're talking about the sword. We're talking about wielding the sword. You better get really good with being just with dealing out spankings, right?

58:09

I mean, if you're disciplining your kids, are you doing it in justice? Do you understand that? Are the principles of justice being walked out in your home?

58:16

And are you in the joy of the Lord? Is it a happy place? Very good. Thank you for that. Here's a question that Scott asks.

58:23

I'm going in order here, so he's got a couple. But we'll do – is two more questions okay?

58:28

I know you have to go at the top of the hour. Is that okay? We can cut it shorter if you need to. Two more. All right.

58:34

Two more. So here's another one from Scott. He says, Reformed critics of federal vision tend to blame federal vision on Van Til and presupp.

58:41

I'm not familiar with federal vision, so I guess this person is and sees that perhaps there's a link between federal vision and Cornelius Van Til and presuppositionalism.

58:51

Is there a relationship there as far as you can tell? I am not sure on that one.

58:58

Okay. All right. Thank you very much. That's good. That was quick. All right. Let's see here.

59:03

We're scrolling down. All right. Here's a question by Sage. Interesting question. How do you presuppers know that God is omniscient?

59:10

So we make claims about God. How do we know that he has the features that the Bible says that he does?

59:18

Well, I mean, I would – there's two questions there. How do we know? Well, I would say the Bible tells us that he knows.

59:24

I would also say you can also run the opposite.

59:30

He doesn't know everything. What kind of world do you end up in there? It's completely inconsistent with a –

59:38

I would say, again, you end up with maybe a random view of history, cul -de -sac view of history, rather than a view of history that sees

59:48

God as consistently unrolling a plan that's based on his omniscience, based on his knowledge.

01:00:00

I don't know. That's where I would start. I don't know if you would add to that. Yeah. No, that's fine. I mean, omniscience is something that is revealed, but I would also argue that omniscience needs to be implicitly presupposed in order to have knowledge about anything.

01:00:14

So if we were to say, for example, there's no omniscience anywhere, then there can be some element of reality that can falsify things we think we know.

01:00:23

So I would think that the omniscience of God provides a theological background for a coherent worldview, and that relates to issues of both metaphysics and epistemology, things like that.

01:00:34

So that's where I would stand there. In order to know something, there must be omniscience somewhere, if I can say it in very simple terms.

01:00:41

That's my view. All right. Let's see here. If I could squeeze this question in, it might be a curveball.

01:00:50

Okay. Maybe. And then we'll wrap it up here. I'm so sorry. I hope these questions are okay.

01:00:56

Great. Okay. Okay. So Agra asks, do you presuppose Calvinism for intelligibility with a priori reasoning?

01:01:06

So let me clarify, because he's asked questions related to this. So I argue that the

01:01:11

Christian worldview provides the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience. And then there was the question that was asked.

01:01:17

I asked you about the connection between presuppositionalism and Calvinism. And so if we take the idea that the

01:01:25

Christian worldview that provides those preconditions for intelligible experience is a

01:01:30

Calvinistic understanding, then he's asking, do you presuppose Calvinism for intelligibility and all the theological trappings that go along with that?

01:01:38

So I'm not sure if that question is clear enough. You want to take a stab at it? I have some things to say, but I'll let you go first, and maybe

01:01:45

I'll share some of my thoughts. Yeah. I mean, I think the answer is yes. But I also think that you – because I think – so the issue isn't necessarily everything that's going through our minds when we talk about presupposition.

01:02:02

What we're talking about is reality. What is the case? And obviously, one of Van Til's lines that he loved to say was thinking

01:02:11

God's thoughts after him. That's what we're attempting to do. Faithful presuppositionalism is simply trying to think

01:02:16

God's thoughts after him, trying to echo reality. And so to the extent that we can, that's what we're trying to do is we're trying to think consistently based on what is actually real.

01:02:27

And so Calvinism is real. So in that sense, absolutely. Now, we're all reasoning with greater or lesser degrees of consistency and coherence.

01:02:39

We're creatures. I think you froze up there,

01:02:46

Toby. I don't know if you can still hear me. That would be my shorthand. Okay. I'm sorry. You froze up just a little bit there.

01:02:53

But I think we got what you had to say, yeah. So people can presuppose Calvinism without knowing that they're presupposing a

01:03:00

Calvinistic understanding of the world. Exactly. Right. Okay. So, for example, as I said, omniscience, in order to have knowledge, omniscience has to exist somewhere.

01:03:08

Now, you might not explicitly believe in omniscience, but in order for your specific assertions of knowledge to be possible, you have to be presupposing those categories.

01:03:18

And it would be the job of the apologist to kind of unravel that and unpack that. That would be what I would add to that.

01:03:24

All right. Well, we are at the top of the hour. I'm going to stay on just a little bit longer because there are a few questions still lingering there, and I want to respect your time.

01:03:31

But, Toby, I want to say thank you so much. This has been a really, really good conversation.

01:03:38

I love your pastor's heart when you get going. You're not one of those, like, monotone, boring talkers.

01:03:43

I feel like when you speak to the issues of, like, politics and family, you're preaching. But what lies behind that also is kind of just a genuine love for the

01:03:52

Lord that comes through in what you have to say. So thank you so much. I appreciate it, Eli. Thanks very much for having me on your show.

01:03:58

All right. And is there – can you just let folks know who are listening in just now and missed the beginning where they can find your content, your podcast, or a blog that you might have?

01:04:07

Yes, sir. So I'm a pastor at Christ Church here in Moscow, Idaho. You can find that website at Christkirk, K -I -R -K.

01:04:14

It's the old Scottish word for church, Christkirk .com. I'm also at CrossPolitik, singular

01:04:20

CrossPolitik .com, where you can find the podcast. And then I also have a blog that you can find at www .TobyJSumpter

01:04:32

.com, so my full name with my initial J .com. All right.

01:04:38

Well, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. And hopefully we can connect again in the future and do something else if you're okay with it.

01:04:43

I'd be happy to, Eli. I really appreciate it. Thanks for what you're doing. All right. God bless, brother. You can click off.

01:04:49

I'm just going to stick on a little bit longer. And thank you so much. Thank you. All right.

01:04:55

Well, that was wonderful. I heard about Toby. I've seen him around on Facebook and YouTube, and I thought he had a lot of great things to say.

01:05:02

And in this discussion as well, I very much appreciated what he had to say, especially with the application of the Christian worldview to the realm of politics.

01:05:10

I think that needs to be done with the conviction of the truth of the Word of God, right, and then applying those convictions to every area of life.

01:05:18

He's speaking about the importance of the lordship of Jesus Christ over every area, every facet of our life.

01:05:24

The lordship of Jesus Christ is never compartmentalized. It is always applied in all things.

01:05:30

And so as Christians, I think we could all do a better job at consistently applying that truth.

01:05:36

All right. Well, I kind of feel bad. Toby had to leave. He had kind of like an hour window.

01:05:46

There we go. I almost started speaking in tongues there. And so I want to respect his time.

01:05:52

But at the same time, I know in the live stream yesterday, there were some questions that didn't get answered.

01:05:57

So I'm going to try my best to take a stab at some of these questions. And I apologize if I skip your question.

01:06:02

It's definitely not on purpose. It's just how it appears on the little thread that I'm scrolling down. So let's see where we left off and see if I can tackle a couple of them.

01:06:13

All right. This is not a question, but it's a comment. Mr. C says, doesn't that imply a decision on our part?

01:06:20

I think, if I'm correct, Mr. C is referencing something that Toby said with respect to the sovereignty of God and salvation and that it is the work of the spirit to persuade.

01:06:29

And so I think maybe that's the context there. Yeah, I would say that man has to make a decision. But man making a decision is not inconsistent with a

01:06:37

Calvinistic understanding of soteriology. That decision, that utilization of the will, is itself a gift of God.

01:06:44

Faith is granted to us. Philippians 1 .29. It is a gift of God. Ephesians 2 .5

01:06:50

-8. So as Calvinists, we would affirm both the sovereign work of God upon the heart of the unbeliever, giving him a heart of flesh and removing his heart of stone.

01:07:01

And once his nature has changed, the person does make a genuine choice out of a new nature to place his faith in Jesus Christ.

01:07:09

So if that's what Mr. C means, I hope that applies to what he's trying to ask there. All right.

01:07:15

Let's go here. All right. We got a couple of questions here.

01:07:22

Yeah, Pink Noise, he says, hey, Eli, we need to see that part two with Leighton Flowers and Sean Cole.

01:07:28

Absolutely. I want to get that set up. I was actually I think I had COVID around that time.

01:07:35

And so I had them on the first time. And then with COVID, it kind of messed me up. And I really never followed up.

01:07:40

But they're definitely interested in doing another round. So hopefully we can get that done in the future. OK, thank you for that.

01:07:48

Marcus Lobato asks, how is the best way to respond to the criticisms that we must refute every worldview conceivable to prove

01:07:55

Christianity? Yeah, I would reject that. That's a common kind of objection to transcendental argumentation.

01:08:02

When we argue, for example, that the Christian worldview provides the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience and knowledge.

01:08:08

We are, in essence, saying that the Christian worldview is the only transcendental.

01:08:13

You cannot have two transcendental foundations that provide equally the preconditions for intelligible experience and knowledge.

01:08:21

If you have two ultimates, then you have kind of a worldview plurality and you're still stuck in some form of skepticism as a result.

01:08:27

So you could only have one transcendental. But here's the thing. If Christianity does provide the transcendental preconditions for intelligible experience and knowledge.

01:08:36

If it in fact does it, when the Christian lays it out and shows here, given the Christian metaphysic, given the Christian epistemology and ethic, the three fundamental foundations of a worldview.

01:08:44

If the Christian worldview provides those preconditions, then it follows that it must be the only worldview that provides them because you cannot have more than one necessary precondition for intelligible experience.

01:08:56

So I would argue that if you demonstrate that Christianity is a necessary precondition, laying the case out, then it follows that it is the only one since you can't have multiple transcendental.

01:09:08

So you do not have to inductively disprove every competing perspective. All you need to do is show that Christianity does in fact meet those preconditions.

01:09:16

And because of the nature of transcendentals, you could only have one foundation. So I would reject this common objection where folks will say something to the effect.

01:09:25

You have to disprove every other worldview. You can't just say Christianity is true without actually going through every single possible option out there.

01:09:34

Okay? All right. Mr. C asked the question, can

01:09:39

I ask to be saved? Yes, absolutely. The Bible says those who call upon the name of the

01:09:44

Lord will be saved. Just know this, that your calling upon the name of the Lord is itself a gift of God and it would be a result of the working of God's Spirit in your heart.

01:09:53

So yes, I believe you can ask to be saved, and I would hope that you genuinely do so.

01:10:00

I know that you come on a lot of these, a lot of the videos, and you ask great questions, by the way,

01:10:05

Mr. C. I do appreciate it. But I do hope that as you listen, and God uses the words that are spoken here, even in the midst of kind of technical theology and philosophy, that God uses this to convict your heart and bring you to repentance.

01:10:18

Because the Bible even says not only that faith is a gift of God, not only that faith is granted to you, Philippians 1 .29,

01:10:24

repentance itself is granted as well, 2 Timothy 2 .24. So yes, you can ask to be saved, and my prayer is that you do.

01:10:32

So thank you so much for that question, Mr. C. Pink Noise asked the question, can truth be illogical?

01:10:39

Nope, it cannot be illogical. If something is illogical, it violates the laws of logic.

01:10:45

It is by definition incoherent. And if something is true, one of the trademark foundations of that which is true is consistency.

01:10:53

So if something is not consistent, it cannot be true. To say that truth can be illogical would literally be suggesting that logical impossibilities are possible.

01:11:07

So that would actually be an incoherency, and so I would say that truth cannot be illogical in that regard.

01:11:14

Thank you so much, Pink Noise. Let's see here. Yeah, Alyssa Scott asked the question, can you give a few examples of transcendental arguments?

01:11:27

Absolutely, that's a good question. It's important to understand that transcendental argumentation is not something that is an idiosyncrasy of a presuppositional form of argumentation.

01:11:39

Presuppositionalists utilize a transcendental argument, but transcendental arguments actually have a long, rich history throughout the course of Western philosophy.

01:11:46

You see transcendental forms of argumentation in Aristotle when he's trying to demonstrate the necessity of the law of non -contradiction, so that you prove the law of non -contradiction by the impossibility of the contrary.

01:11:57

If you deny the law of non -contradiction, you have to assume it. If you deny, for example, the law of identity, you have to assume, even in your denial, the law of identity.

01:12:06

So truths of logic can be proven transcendentally by showing that it's true by the impossibility of the contrary.

01:12:13

Deny it, and you actually have to assume it. So you see that in Aristotle, and you see transcendental arguments come to more fully robust manifestations in the work of Immanuel Kant, who tried to demonstrate that there were these transcendental categories that provided the preconditions for knowledge and things like that.

01:12:31

So you see different kinds of transcendental arguments. The presuppositional transcendental argument is actually a little different than some of the traditional transcendental arguments we see throughout the course of Western philosophy.

01:12:42

So, for example, the presuppositional transcendental argument is an all -encompassing argument.

01:12:50

We're trying to argue from a worldview perspective. But throughout the course of philosophical history, you have what we can call localized transcendental arguments.

01:13:02

That's not really arguing for the truth of an entire worldview system, but it is arguing for the truth of some proposition.

01:13:08

So, for example, a localized transcendental argument, a good example of a localized transcendental argument would be something like René Descartes' Cogito Ergo Sum, I think, therefore

01:13:18

I am. And so I prove my existence in that even in my denying my existence,

01:13:23

I have to presuppose my existence in order to deny my existence. So I would say that the demonstration of self -existence is a sort of localized transcendental argument.

01:13:33

So you see, all sorts of arguments like this, they can be used in a number of ways.

01:13:39

All right, hope that answers your question. Redefine Living says, awesome upload, by the way. Thank you so much.

01:13:45

If those who are listening don't know what Redefine Living is referring to, yesterday

01:13:50

I had Christian apologist Anthony Rogers on to talk about the philosophical problem of the one and the many and how the doctrine of the

01:13:57

Trinity solves this very important and prolonged philosophical problem. So if you want to check that out, definitely it's long, but it'll be helpful if you give it a listen.

01:14:08

Thank you. All right, let's see here. All right, well,

01:14:13

I think that is it. Slam RN is living evidence that human beings can be omnipresent.

01:14:23

I'm just kidding. Slam seems to be on every live stream, every Apologetics live stream.

01:14:28

Thank you so much for your support. And I'm sure everyone else who you kind of hop on in the comments there appreciates your presence.

01:14:35

So thank you so much. All right. Well, I hope that satisfies everyone's questions. I know that we can't answer literally everything.

01:14:41

And even in my responses, it might raise more questions. But keep asking questions, keep thinking critically.

01:14:47

And hopefully you can see the connection between having a proper understanding of some of these complex issues and having a fully robust and consistent

01:14:56

Christian worldview that provides a context to kind of grapple with these things. Some people say that if you adopt a

01:15:02

Christian worldview, it kind of vitiates against, say, like scientific progression.

01:15:10

So if you say, well, God did it, then what's the point of doing science? And that's just that's just silly. Acknowledging that God is the fundamental foundation that even gives science a coherent context doesn't remove questions.

01:15:20

We still ask the questions, you know, God created the world in a certain way. How did he create it so that certain things function the way that they do?

01:15:28

We begin to explore our curiosity as we're able to kind of pursue our curiosities as we seek to explore more and more the world that God created.

01:15:37

And it is the context of God and his revelation that allows that beautiful process of science to even get off the floor.

01:15:44

So hopefully you guys see these awesome connections and how the Christian worldview really provides a foundation for all of these sorts of things.

01:15:51

All right. Well, that's it for this episode. Thank you so much. The next. Well, I don't know what

01:15:57

I'm going live next, but I got a couple of good things coming up and I will definitely let folks know.

01:16:03

Thank you so much for the support. If you've enjoyed this live stream, please click the like button or the heart button.

01:16:08

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01:16:14

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01:16:20

Also, if you don't already, you can follow Revealed Apologetics on Instagram. I make short little funny videos that kind of talk about apologetics related things.

01:16:29

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01:16:39

And of course, you can look up some of my articles on revealedapologetics .com, the blog. And I think that's it.