November 14, 2019 Show with Anthony Uvenio, Elias Ayala, & Ryan Galan on “Building Upon the Rock: Developing a Christ-Centered Defense”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown Carwile, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the Church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 .17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 14th day of November 2019.

And we've got three guests on the program today. Two will be joining us during the first hour, and one of those guests in the first hour will stay through the second hour, but we also have a third joining us the second hour.

That's real complicated, isn't it? We've got on the show today Anthony Uvinio, co-founder of New York Apologetics and co-host of The Reformed Rookie. We've also got Eli Ayala, who is the apologist on staff at Historical Bible Society.

And then coming up in the second hour, Anthony Uvinio, unfortunately, has to depart from us after the first hour. But Eli is remaining with us, and joining Eli will be Ryan Galan, and they are going to be all discussing during the two-hour broadcast Building Upon the Rock, Developing a Christ-Centered Defense, and also the conference by that same name and theme that will take place this Saturday, November 16th, at the Presbyterian Church of Islip.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you both back to Iron Troupe and Zion Radio, Anthony Uvinio and Eli Ayala.

Thank you, Chris. I appreciate the opportunity to come on again. And I am absolutely excited to be back.

Yes, and just to let our listeners know, I was just thoroughly blessed and edified and blown out of my socks when I attended the recent conference being hosted by the Spurgeon Fellowship, or the Long Island Spurgeon Fellowship, I should say, at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York.

That was, I believe, about two weekends ago. And it was just an astronomical time, not only because of the wonderful fellowship I had with old friends and new acquaintances, but also because of the teaching and preaching that took place at this conference, and in particular the messages that were delivered by my guests today, Anthony Uvinio and Eli Ayala.

They were absolutely spectacular. And I'm not saying this just because they're my guests. I could have easily not brought it up if I was embarrassed and horrified by what they did, or bored. But I was neither of those.

I was just absolutely blessed, even more than I had expected, because I had never heard Eli, first of all, give a full-length message before. And I don't believe I had ever heard Anthony give a full-length message specifically on a tenet of Calvinism or Reformed theology.

So I was very pleasantly surprised and blessed. Not that I doubted your mental capabilities before that, but I was just... I better stop talking before I actually get myself in trouble, but I'm actually trying to compliment you both of you in a very truthful way, because I was absolutely blown away, and I'll leave it at that.

And I highly recommend, anytime you may hear of an event where either Anthony Uvino or Eli Ayala are speaking, preaching, or teaching, I highly urge you to take advantage of the opportunity to hear them, if at all possible.

New York Apologetics and The Reformed Rookie

Well, first of all, before we go into the message today, I'll allow Anthony to give a brief description of New York Apologetics and the Reformed Rookie.

Apologetics is an organization headed by me and Nick Mitchell on Long Island, where we go into churches, colleges, high schools, and teach people arguments for the existence of God. And we try to promote a Christian worldview and show that it can stand up in the marketplace of ideas.

You know, we're standing on the truth, and edify them so that they're confident to open their mouths and speak the truth, in love, of course. But most people today don't have a good understanding of what Christianity is, nor how to explain a Christian worldview.

So Nick and I, we do great work on the island. Things are really starting to happen down here. I'm real excited. We have a New York Apologetics Long Island chapter meeting now, the third Tuesday of every month, at Whole Gospel Assembly in West Islip.

And if you go to our website, which is www .NewYorkApologetics .com, on the top you'll see a little radio button that says Long Island Chapter. You can click on that, and anybody who's interested in apologetics can come down, learn what the person is going to be teaching for that evening, and then also potentially host a debate or get trained up themselves to become apologists.

We want to turn Long Island right side up for the Lord, so everyone's welcome. And if they come down, they'll hear some good stuff. And on the second level, I also started something called the ReformRookie .com because I want to introduce Reformed theology to people who maybe never heard of it or are just dabbling, getting their feet wet, and something like that, even for children, to start understanding the doctrines of grace at an early age.

I put up the full Keach's Catechism on the website with videos, ten questions at a time, that you can watch and listen to with your children or in your car. So it's been going really well. It's kind of like an outro of Hope Reform Baptist Church because the guys there and Pastor Jensen all contribute to it, whether it be blog articles or podcasts or even the videos that we did for the Doctrines of Grace conference.

I just want it to be a resource for people who are contemplating Reformed theology and just to get their feet wet and start them off at a beginner's level. That's why it's the Reform Rookie.

By the way, you had invited me, and we never materialized it, you had invited me to speak on the Reform Rookie on limited atonement. I don't know if that's...

Yes, I did.

Well, I just know right now that I will never speak on that subject again after hearing Eli Ayala speak. I could never follow that. So we're going to have to come up with a different topic.

I tell you what, you can speak on total depravity and you can wear that tie that you wore today.

It seems that I am the only person with good taste on the planet Earth.

Oh, you got me.

I don't know if I told you, but when you were speaking on total depravity at the conference, Doug Totter, one of my former pastors at Grace Reform Baptist Church in Merrick, Long Island, he was sitting next to me and he leaned over to me while you were speaking and he said, what does that guy have to preach a sermon for?

They should just put your picture up on the big screen. And I realized more than ever that I can always count on Doug Totter for a word of encouragement. But anyway. And folks, I hope to repeat this information later, but if you want more information on the New York Apologetics Ministry or the Reform Rookie, the Reform Rookie, I think I've been watching, I love Lucy too much, the New York Apologetics website is newyorkapologetics .com and that is spelled out New York, not NY but the two words, newyorkapologetics .com and Reformed Rookie is reformedrookie .com and that's reformedrookie .com and rookie is R-O-O-K-I-E and now, Eli Ayala, tell us something about the Historical Bible Society where you serve on the team there as an apologist and this is a ministry that not only sponsors Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, but Dan Badafuco, who has founded this organization, the Historical Bible Society, attorney at law, has been a longtime friend, one of my oldest Christian friends since my coming to Christ in the late 1980s.

Dan became a friend of mine in about 1991 when he became my largest advertising client when I was still an account executive at the Salem Media Affiliate in New York, WMCA, 570 AM, and he remained my largest client there for 15 years and the best thing that came out of that was a very strong friendship and edifying relationship and we love to discuss theology and in fact even sometimes argue over it.

I fully and vividly remember how I was used of the Lord to lead Dan Badafuco to the doctrines of sovereign grace. I gave him a book, Grace Unknown by R .C. Sproul, which is under another title today, I think it might be just under What is Reform Theology or something like that, but at the time it was Grace Unknown.

I gave it to him in the mid -90s for a Christmas present and he looked at me after handing him the book and he said, Are you kidding me? You're giving me propaganda as a Christmas gift? You're unbelievable.

I can't believe you'd give me propaganda as a Christmas gift. You and your Calvinism. All right, thank you. And then he called me up on New Year's Day about, I don't know, 8 in the morning. He said, Chris, I haven't been to sleep.

I've read this book from cover to cover. I believe every word of it.

You win. You win.

I'm a Calvinist. But anyway, that was a very long introduction. Tell us about the Historical Bible Society.

Yeah, I work for the Historical Bible Society as an apologist. I write for the 10-minute apologetics blog. So people visit the historicalbiblesociety .org on the top right. There's a drop-down menu that says Take 10.

And I write apologetics blogs that should take you around 10 minutes to read. I'm not the only contributor there, but I am the primary contributor. I've contributed most of the articles and they're usually as a result of various questions that people ask me and things like that.

So that's what I do. I often help out also when Dan has an event. The Historical Bible Society is kind of like a traveling Bible museum. He has an amazing collection of biblical manuscripts and old Bibles and things like that.

And he goes around from church to church giving presentations on the reliability of the Bible. It's fascinating to be able to do that while having these Bibles, these really old museum-quality material, as he's going through that.

I appreciate Dan, as Chris has just expressed. He's a great guy, and it's been a pleasure working for him. I also am the founder of Revealed Apologetics, which is an apologetic ministry that I started.

Apologetics in general and presuppositional apologetics in particular. Apologetics is called Revealed Apologetics because the command to defend the faith, I believe, is a revealed command. It's found in Scripture, and so every Christian should be engaging in it.

And as a biblical discipline, I believe that there is a biblical fashion in which we are to defend the faith. And so I promote presuppositional apologetics because I find it to be the biblical way to be committed to the foundation of the Word of God as our ultimate authority.

And putting Christ at the forefront of our proclamation and defense, I think, is a very important part of doing all that. So if people are interested in that sort of stuff, they can look me up on Facebook, Revealed Apologetics.

I have videos up there that's usually either teaching or in response to questions that are asked. And if they are avid podcast listeners, I have a podcast on iTunes called Revealed Apologetics, and people can literally email me their questions at revealedapologetics at gmail .com, and I'll do an entire row covering their question.

I really like to take what people are thinking about and kind of talk about them and give them a resource that they can kind of put those things into a proper context. So that's Revealed Apologetics and Historical Bible Society, and that's kind of what I do.

Great, and the website for the Historical Bible Society is historicalbiblesociety .org, historicalbiblesociety .org. And I urge you also, since he is a client, I also urge all of our listeners that if you have a personal injury, accident, or medical malpractice case, that you want to have somebody represent you who is one of the finest attorneys in the United States, who's been written up in law journals and so forth, who really has a phenomenal track record, and also has become well-known for having an excellent reputation of being a man with Christian integrity, please call Dan Badafuco's law firm.

It doesn't matter where you are in the United States, because he will find local attorneys that he will work with to make sure that you are represented by the best in a law firm. But call them at 1 -800-NOWHURT, 1 -800-N-O-W-H-U-R-T.

And I urge all of you to, if you have family, friends, or loved ones that you know of in that circumstance where they need a personal injury attorney because of an accident or medical malpractice, please make sure you write down that number and give it to them, because we really want Dan Badafuco to stick around as a major sponsor of this program, and to further ensure that if you could help try to find clients for him, if you know of any, or if you yourself need representation in the courtrooms, please call 1 -800-N-O-W-H-U-R-T, 1 -800-N-O-W-H-U-R-T.

Building Upon the Rock: Foundations, Worldviews, and the Christian Worldview

All right, now we're going to be discussing the conference that's coming up. That's this Saturday, November 16th, at the Presbyterian Church of Islet, New York. And that's going to be held at 9 a .m. to 2 p .m.

If you could tell us, we'll start with Anthony, tell us about this theme, Building Upon the Rock.

It's a conference basically about foundations. When we talk about worldviews, every worldview needs a foundation to stand upon. We believe, obviously, that the Christian worldview provides a foundation that defeats all others, all others are intelligible, unintelligible, when compared to the Christian worldview.

So we look to show people what we're standing on as the foundation of our faith, and then expose competing worldviews to our worldview, compare competing worldviews to our worldview, and show them that what they're standing on will not be able to hold them up in the end.

In other words, let's take a naturalist materialist, who all they believe that exists is, has to be something that they see, touch, wear, feel, it has to be something made of atoms or material. Well, when they make truth claims, they're using the immaterial laws of logic to make those truth claims.

So while they deny immaterial realities, they need to use them in order to make truth claims. So we want to show them that they're not consistent in their worldview, and we do an internal critique of it, not just that worldview, any other worldview that competes against Christianity, to show them how they're arbitrary, inconsistent, and cannot provide the preconditions of intelligibility.

So the foundation you stand on is of the utmost importance, and we believe, based on the Scriptures, that once we stand upon the Christian worldview and the Scriptures and Christ, that we can make sense of the world and actually be able to know things with them.

Eli?

Yeah, when we're dealing with, you know, building upon the rock as an apologetic theme, it really is just highlighting for the Christian what is the foundation that we are to stand on when defending the faith.

Because it's very popular for people to concede ground to the unbeliever. A lot of Christians are intimidated by the standards of the world, right? The unbeliever will say, and for some reason we're automatically committed to some sort of scientific methodology that meets the unbeliever's standards, you know?

And then we kind of succumb to the standards that are imposed upon us by the unbelievers. But to stand on the rock is to uncompromisingly stand upon the firm foundation of God's Word, which is where we get the Christian worldview from, that intellectual framework with which we understand and interpret reality.

And that when we stand within that framework, we can fearlessly and uncompromisingly defend the faith and, as Anthony said, refute all naysayers, showing that only upon a particular kind of foundation, namely the Word of God, can anyone make sense out of anything.

And so, really, this conference is going to highlight, because there are a lot of people who are doing apologetics, which is itself a biblical mandate. 1 Peter 3 .15, Jude 1 .3, where he says that he found it necessary that he contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered.

People are engaging in the biblical discipline, but they are engaging in the biblical discipline unbiblically many times. It's that we are defending the faith, but we're standing upon a foundation that is not Christ, because we put other standards over Christ.

Say, perhaps, the standard of scientific investigation. You have people who say, you know, unless you scientifically prove something, then you really don't know it, because all knowledge comes through scientific proof.

Standing on is a scientific methodology. But for the Christian, we are not to be enslaved to a foundation that is not itself grounded in God. And so, while standing on the worldview of the Bible, we can put it over to the unbeliever and show that their foundation, really, is no foundation at all.

Let's take the example I just used there for a moment. If the foundation of the unbeliever is a scientific methodology, he takes the position, say, that says that all knowledge comes through scientific proof.

All we need to do to show the absurdity of that position is to ask him what scientific proof did he use to come to that conclusion. Namely, that he can only know things that are scientifically proved.

If he knows that not by a scientific methodology, then he's refuted himself, since he says we can only know things through scientific proof. You see, it's a self-refuting position. And so the foundation, which kind of has the guise of science and intellectual prestige, is really a self-refuting position.

So you're saying, just to repeat, you're saying that to claim we can only know something by scientific proof is a statement in and of itself that cannot be proven scientifically. That's what you're saying.

That's right. So, in other words,.

If that's through scientific proof, if they did not come to know that through a scientific proof.

That's just like the claim of liberals that there is no absolute truth, and you say to them, do you know that for certain? Yes. Well, how can you if there is no such thing as absolute truth? That's right.

And by definition, it's false. It's kind of equivalent to saying, just to wrap my little point of that, it's not just to play an intellectual game, but it is to show that while the Christianization of the worldview given to us in Scripture is a brand of unbelief, showing that, we are very careful that when we teach Christians to defend the faith that we are not adopting.

That crumbles.

Now, that is the essence of presuppositionalism, isn't it? All of what you just basically summarized?

Yeah, the essence. I remember listening to a lecture by Greg Bonson, who is one of the best students of Cornelius Van Til, who's considered the father of presuppositional apologetics. He says, if someone calls you in the middle of the night.

And says,.

What is the essence of Van Til? I must know. He says, well, if you have to give a quick answer that summarizes everything, your answer should be that anti-theism presupposes theism. Anti-theism presupposes theism.

That is to say, that because it is true that God is the foundation of all things, even attempts to refute the Christian worldview must assume the Christian worldview to do so. Now, that's an audacious claim and I understand that by stating that it doesn't demonstrate it.

But the point of the apologist is to be able to make good on that claim by interacting with the unbeliever and doing apologetics, doing worldview critiques, and things like that. So, that's how you summarize, really, the essence of what presuppositional apologetics is about.

Yes, and one of the things that I think is a primary benefit of presuppositional apologetics is that it can and should prevent those with whom you're speaking, those skeptics with whom you're speaking, it prevents them, or at least it should, from going on rabbit trails and demanding that you prove beyond all doubt everything that you are telling them.

Because we know from Romans 1 that everyone from birth knows that God exists and knows that they are a sinner, but they suppress those truths. We don't have to prove the existence of God. We don't have to prove the inerrancy of the Bible.

These things are true and we don't have to spend, we don't have to have our discussions dominated by efforts to prove those things when it is only God and His sovereignty that can open up the eyes and ears and change the hearts of those with whom we speak to believe those things are true.

Obviously He uses us as vessels to evangelize them, to teach the truth, to declare it, but we don't have to prove a long list of things that our critic friends demand that we prove to them. Right?

Right, but we can do one better in that although we don't have to prove God's existence, we can prove God's existence. And I think we should, but not in the sense that we appeal to something external to God that stands over God, that validates God.

There are ways to prove God's existence and it is necessary to do so in various contexts, but we do not have to come to the standards of the unbelievers. For the Christian, God is not a conclusion to an argument.

Rather, He's the precondition for the intelligibility of argument itself. Now again, I know that's a claim and that needs to be backed up, but that's what the conversation will then be about. Right? And this allows, positing God as the bedrock foundation, really, it's an audacious claim.

Without God, you can't know anything. Well, I know a bunch of things. Well, let's talk about it. It really gives the unbeliever no way to escape. And it doesn't give the unbeliever an opportunity to hide his hand.

Many skeptics that I've discussed and debated issues with, they very rarely tell you their own position because if they tell you their position, then they have something to defend. It's much easier to just attack the other perspective.

But the nature of the presuppositional argument, the very nature of it, is that in order to respond to the argument, you must lay out your worldview. That's why the argument goes something like this, that the proof for the truth of the Christian worldview is that if it were not true, you couldn't prove anything at all.

Now, that audacious claim usually causes the unbeliever to say, well, that's ridiculous. I can prove all sorts of things. And then that's where we're going to get into the foundations, really. Show me what you can prove given the truth of what you say about the world.

And, you know, we'd apply kind of what Anthony said at the beginning, where, you know, people appeal to things like the laws of logic, but how do the laws of logic, which are immaterial, invariant, and unchanging, work in, say, a worldview in which the person says that all that exists is matter in motion?

How do you get things like conceptual laws in a world that's purely physical? So again, there's an example of that suppression you mentioned in Romans 1, where the unbeliever actually has to suppress the truth about God and borrow from the Christian worldview in order to fight against it.

And so that's what the presuppositional method tries to do.

Yeah, every time... We do worldview comparison.

And showing...

Go ahead. I'm sorry.

And, well, we do worldview comparison and showing that the Christian worldview really is the only perspective that can make sense at a human experience.

Yeah, every time you hear an enemy of Christ, an atheist, an agnostic claim that something is evil, they are borrowing from our Christian worldview. It was fascinating. It was fascinating when I orchestrated a debate years ago between Dr. James R. White and Alpha Omega Ministries and David Silverman, who was, at the time, the president of American Atheists, the organization started by Madeleine Murray O 'Hare in, I believe, the 60s.

David Silverman's thesis was that the New Testament is evil. And he, at one point, during the cross-examinations, got backed into a corner by James White because James forced him to admit, because of the fact, it was clear that an atheist really has no grounds upon which to define evil and good.

Silverman basically said, well, evil and good are determined by whatever the majority of people believe in any particular geographic area on the planet during any particular era of time. And so he said, well, are you saying, then, that if you were being marched through the gates of a Nazi death camp during World War II, the most alarming thing that you could say in protest to this is, I find this personally offensive.

You couldn't say this is evil. You couldn't say it's wrong. And he agreed to that. And keep in mind, David Silverman is a Jewish atheist, an ethnically Jewish atheist. But I was very glad that the Lord, sovereignly in His providence, used James to back Mr. Silverman in a corner to admit that, because I don't believe he ever would have voluntarily used those words himself.

Right. I think Dr. White did an excellent job exposing his inconsistency there.

When we come back from our first break, I just want to briefly have you differentiate between presuppositionalism and evidentialism, because I do have heroes who are evidentialists as well. The late R .C. Sproul and the late John Gerstner were evidentialists.

I don't believe they are now. But they even wrote a book together defending evidentialism. But we're going to be going to our first break right now. If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, please send an email to chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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We're now back with our guests, Anthony Uvinio of New York Apologetics, and also Eli Ayala of the Historical Bible Society and Revealed Apologetics. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com, and I just want to quick mention to you, Eli, that I had a wonderful time of fellowship recently with Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven in Deer Park, Long Island, New York, formerly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, where he served as their pastor for decades, but he wanted me to personally send to you his greetings because we were having a discussion after that conference that you were involved in, and I told him how wonderfully blessed I was by that conference and mentioned you specifically to him, and he lit up like a Christmas tree and had some very high regards to send you.

I really appreciate that.

Yeah, well, before the break, I wanted you to, just in a summary form, give us some reasons that presuppositional apologetics is unique when contrasted against the backdrop of evidentialism, which some great men of God and great heroes of mine have used as their apologetic method and philosophy, but if you could tell us the difference.

Are you asking me or Anthony? I don't want to...

I'm asking both of you, but I was asking you to start because before the break, you were stressing presupposition.

Okay. Apological apologetics, it is the traditional method used throughout the moral argument that God did not exist.

Amen. Amen. And Anthony Uvinio, one of the tenets of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is that the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Doesn't apologetics make us actually... I mean, perhaps not everyone, but it sure has with me, made me enjoy my faith more, enjoy things that would normally be perhaps purely an exercise in discomfort and anguish and getting your blood pressure raising to a dangerous level when you're interacting with people who reject what you believe.

I have come to a point in my life, I'm not saying that those things that I just mentioned never occur in my life, they do very often, but I can say that I have come to enjoy the struggle, I've come to enjoy the battle, if you will, when I am trying my best, by the grace of God, to explain and defend Christian truth with those that oppose it.

It is no longer an intellectually intimidating thing, or at least not as much as it used to be. And it is actually something that gives me joy. Tell us about yourself. Obviously, you've taken up this as a primary thing in your life, apologetics, and have actually started a ministry dedicated to it, so tell us about that aspect of it.

Doesn't it make life more fun?

Certainly it does, but I thought you were asking God. You know, you're hogging up the conversation again, Anthony. Listen, just for those of you who are listening, Eli presupposed that Chris was talking to him.

But if we listen to the recording, the evidence will show that I asked Anthony the question.

Christian apologetics is not just with God who's rescued. Because now you know the foundation upon which you stand, and you can actually see that you have. You have reality, you have truth, and you have belief.

And truth is the way things really are.